[GDN] So from comic books to an MMO game, that’s a heroic leap to say the least, how did that come about?

[DG] It feels pretty natural to me (that freelancer thing again!). What I am at my core is a geek writer in love with fictional characters. I’ll go anywhere to hang out with them. Books, comics, games, TV, movies... In this case, I had a friend who heard about the KUNG FOO! project and immediately thought of me as one of her most hardcore gaming friends. When I mentioned that I had also done a lot of comic book writing she was like, "oh, right, whatever...." as if the credentials for writing for an MMO were to have power leveled through EQ back when you actually lost levels as opposed to being, I don’t know, a professional writer or something. And that’s probably true. [winks]

[GDN] Oh right, you did that series for Vertigo called USER which was, ironically, about an MMORPG, is that what led you to Perfect World?

[DG] No, I don’t think anyone here has actually read it! But USER is definitely my love letter to text-based RPGs and one of--scratch that--the most personal piece of writing I’ve published to date.

What have you been doing in the last few years? Fighting crime in costume? Leveling up your D&D character? Playing MMO games until one day you said "Gee, I could write better than these guys do!"?

I’ve been in the civvie sector, laying low. If you don’t go underground from time to time, you forget how to blend in.

Actually, I’ve been very honored to have spent the past few years working with Dogs4Diabetics (D4D), an innovative non-profit organization that provides medical alert assistance dogs to youth and adults who are insulin-dependent type 1 diabetics. Through a program of training, placement, and follow-up services, D4D gives these dogs to qualified diabetics fee of charge. The dogs have been specifically trained to identify and, more importantly, act upon the subtle scent changes that hypoglycemia (low blood glucose) creates in body chemistry, changes totally undetectable to humans. This is a critical service because hypoglycemia is an acute side-effect of insulin-dependence with a 100% correlation rate; in fact, the more aggressively a diabetic uses insulin therapy to normalize their blood sugar levels, the more he or she is at risk for debilitating lows that can result in seizure, comma, or even death in as few as twenty minutes.

And I’m not just the D4D Director of Development, I’m a client [rakes back her thick, shining hair] (a reference to the Hair Club for Men -Ed.).

D4D is the program that gave me Cody, my amazing Golden Retriever Hypoglycemic Medical-Alert dog, who In addition to being the unofficial Perfect World mascot, also saves my life about three times a week.

You can learn more about this amazing life-saving nonprofit at www.dogs4diabetics.com