This week marks the beginning of Rejected ENN’s run on the Escapist Publisher’s Club. In its place, I’ve decided to give you some inside info on this week’s episode, similar to what Matt does for the weekly video posts. To discuss the move, check this forum thread.

This week’s feature story is an idea I’ve had for a while, but had been struggling to iterate. My foray into the Dragon Age pen-and-paper roleplaying game led me to read both Dragon Age novels, and that got me thinking about game literature in general. I’ve picked up quite a few novels as PAX freebies and such, and they’re always useful to have on long ferry or plane rides. Meaning no offense to the game writers who often create them, however, they are typically not that hot.

I already had the idea of using the horrible dialogue in Resident Evil as grounds for a romance novel, but it wasn’t until I pitched the story to Paul that everything really clicked. The “people who like books that aren’t very good” part of the venn diagram was his idea, and really brought it together.

Not including video, Paul and I generated over 70 graphics and sound files for this episode. Notable among these was the narration for Resident Evil: The Spencer Mansion Liaison, which was cut significantly to reduce the length of the episode. I’m including the full version here, for your listening…uh…pleasure (no SFX or music though, I’m afraid):

Resident Evil Romance (long version)

Huge thanks to Dale Friesen for lending his superlative pipes to such an icky task–makes me want to write more things for him to narrate :).