Rusel DeMaria became a professional author in 1981. In 1990, DeMaria founded Prima Publishing's strategy-guide division, originally Secrets of the Games but later renamed Prima Games, with Ben Dominitz. Over the next six years, he wrote numerous strategy guides and experimented with different styles of writing and layout which have since become common in strategy guides.
Rusel DeMaria (center) with Edward Kilham (left) and Lawrence Holland (right)
When Lawrence Holland and Edward Kilham began working on the 1993 LucasArts video game Star Wars: X-Wing, DeMaria was brought into the project early to write The Farlander Papers, a novella that was included with the game and told the story of player character Keyan Farlander's first mission as a Rebel starfighter pilot. Following the release of the game, DeMaria co-authored X-Wing: The Official Strategy Guide with the game's mission designers, David Wessman and David Maxwell. The strategy guide contained strategies for every mission in the game and continued Farlander's story. It also provided much early information on the workings of the Alliance Starfighter Corps.
When LucasArts released the sequel to X-wing, Star Wars: TIE Fighter, in 1994, DeMaria was once more involved in the project, authoring The Stele Chronicles, a second novella telling the story of the game's main character, Maarek Stele. He once more teamed up with Wessman and Maxwell to produce TIE Fighter: The Official Strategy Guide, in which he continued Stele's story.