It’s not often I get to work on a project and actually scoop the people I’m working with, but Mark Truman gave me permission to beat the drum ahead of time, so I’m doing so.

See, Mark’s company (Magpie Games) is working on a Shakespearean role-playing game called The Play’s The Thing. They have a Kickstarter up right now, and I highly encourage you to check it out. Since the project is doing amazingly well in terms of funding (at the time I’m posting this, it’s just passed the 300% mark), Mark wants to put together a little anthology of “what if” stories — ways that Shakespeare might have taken a different turn, or the original stories placed in new settings. He approached me last weekend about doing one, and almost immediately I had a ton of ideas for it. Surprisingly, no one had yet claimed Hamlet, so I snagged it and sent Mark off a short pitch for a hard-boiled retelling of Hamlet tentatively titled “I Knew Him.”

Danny Hamlet is approached by his friend, Vincent Horatio, and gives Hamlet a recording from the deathbed of his father, Don Hamlet. The Don was the head of the Elsinore mob and implicates his advisor, Claudius, as the one who killed him. He demands that Danny avenge him.

Once I get my Far West story done, I’ll be diving into this one. If you’re interested in supporting the anthology and the game, head over to the Kickstarter and give it some love. And by “love,” I mean “cash.”