Good evening et all. Sorry to keep you waiting.

Tonight I’d like to talk about my father. Yes, I’m sure you’re curious about what the studio has been up to since the announcement on Xeawn’s Gaming Corner that we’ve shifted focus from content reporting to content creation.

All in due time, I assure you.

Tonight, however, I’d like to talk about my father. Permit me to wax poetic, if you will.

All the time when someone is accepting an award, they’ll thank their mothers. There is of course grand reason for that; they carry us kicking and screaming safely into a world that truly wishes us far more harm than good, often to great detriment and always to inconceivable pain unto themselves. They sustain us with their bodies, minds and souls. A mother’s love is the closest thing to that of God’s.

And yet, it troubles me that far too often a father’s work, sacrifice and contribution is overlooked for the sake of “I’d like to thank my mother for making me the man that I am today.”

My father is a great man, the greatest corporeal one I know for that matter. I don’t just say that because he is my father; I have no love of meaningless airs and casting accolade and bouquet simply for the sake of doing so. No, I believe that does a disservice both to the caster, as well as the castee.

You have heard me say that my mother contributed greatly to my desire to become a writer, sitting me on her knee and reading to my sister and I the illustrated The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (the entire novel in a large hand painted form). This is true; this contributed greatly to my desire to write and my love of fantasy. Her support has carried me also.

Ah, but I would be dreadfully remiss and dare I say a wretched losel were I to cast aspersions by way of omission to the grand contributions of my father also.

I pause. I pause, because the enormity of the contribution this man has made to my life, far more than even he can comprehend, is so very large that I find the very idea of it difficult to grasp in mental hand and put word to feeling and experience.

I am my father’s son.

Currently I am reading through the Myth series by the late Robert Asprin, in order for the first time. My introduction to the series had been when I was very young, my father handing me a copy of “Little M.Y.T.H. Marker” to read. You see, elementary school held no great interest for me; never mind numerous other…barriers to my enjoyment, I had no love for “See Spot Run”. In fact, my first three completed novels at school were “Charleotte’s Web”, “The Complete Works of Alfred Hitchock” and “The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe” during the first grade.

I cheated a little; I had been reading Hitchcock and Poe since summer break between Kindergarten and First.

Little M.Y.T.H. Marker introduced me to a world that I did not yet know existed. True enough, I had an eye and ear for fantasy, and of course loved the macabre and dour realms of Hitchcock and Poe, but this was a level of genius literature I had not yet known existed. Not long after I devoured that novel was I handed from my father a copy of “Mything Persons”, and so on and so forth.

From my father, I read “The Destroyer” series of novels, or as many of the several hundred as I could get my hands on. From my father I read “Assassin Fantastic”. From my father I read everything by Fred Saberhagen and Anne McCaffrey that I could find.

My father bought me my first copy of Kilobyte, and my copy of Ender’s Game as well as Ender’s Shadow. My father introduced me to Solomon Kane. My father brought me into the world’s of vampires and werewolves, superheroes and villains, international spies and realms of fantastical mystical wonder.

For as long as I can remember, I wanted a library, just like my father. I now have one in my study. For as long as I can remember, I wanted to be writer, just like my father had been. I am on that road now.

I can defy the genres of fantasy and speculative fiction, creating an odd fusing of fantasy, speculative, sci fi, romance, horror, gothic, noir and mystery all rolled into one because of two statements my father would always give no matter the question.

“Not bad, but let’s dig a little deeper.” a variant being “Let’s plum that one a little further.”, and “I don’t know, what would you like it to be/what do you think it is?”

“Dad, what are a werewolf’s powers?”

“Hmm, what do you think they should be?”

“Well, I mean they shapeshift at a full moon and they’re crazy savage beasts, right?”

“Not bad, but let’s plum that one a little further.”

Enough is never good enough for me, and I have no desire or drive to create anything that you can receive anywhere else. True, there’s nothing new under the sun, but the reason why I continue to toil towards making my vision a success rather than being willing to simply draft whatever’s clever, is because of the man that made me who I am, and the questions he never stopped asking.

My father has pushed me far harder than anyone else to become as great as I can be, and then exceed it. My father has instilled in me an inherited will to never roll over and accept defeat no matter the circumstance, even when being metaphorically slashed to ribbons by foe and friend alike. My father has instilled in me a love of fantasy, of history, of tactical warfare, of hand to hand combat, and of family.

I am the man that I am today, because my father fought hard to make that happen.

So, as Dragon House Studios is reborn with the goal of creating content (such as upcoming video game The Blackest Rain: The Forever Tomorrow and upcoming cross media project Necropsia) rather than simply reporting on it, I would like to thank my mother, yes, but on this occasion I would like to extend the greatest and warmest of regards and gramercy to my father.

Without him, I can safely say, there would be no Dragon House Studios.

-Eugene “Xeawn Cross” Ward