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I had a great time at Origins. All of my seminars went well. The attendees asked sharp questions, and my fellow panelists were a joy to work with. I spent a lot of time in the Green Ronin booth, showing people how to play Dracula’s Revenge, the new board game I developed for Human Head Studios.

At the Origins Awards ceremony last Friday night, I got a few thrills. First, I was asked to present the miniatures awards, so I got to be on stage in my tux and hand out some trophies to the some deserving souls.

Second, the Redhurst Academy of Magic picked up both awards for which it had been nominated: Best Roleplaying Game Supplement and Best Graphic Design of a Book. I didn’t win for the Best Game-Related Short Fiction, but my friend and fellow Alliterate Stephen D. Sullivan did.

On Saturday night, I attended the first ever Hall of Fame banquet. I got to dine with Hall-of-Famers Sandy Petersen, Greg Stafford, and Lou Zocchi, along with Steve Kenson, Robin Laws, and Tim Gerritsen. I even got to shake hands with Charles Roberts, who designed Tactics, the first modern wargame. You couldn’t ask for much more from a night.

Dracula’s Revenge debuted at Origins this past weekend. Lots of people came by to play the game, and they all seemed to like it. The copies we had at the show were flown in from China. The rest will arrive in January on the proverbial slow boat.

I’m told that Dracula’s Revenge #2 is now in comic book stores across the nation. You can also order it directly from IDW . This concludes the two-issue miniseries. It ends with a bit of a cliffhanger that leads straight into the Dracula’s Revenge board game.

Wizards of the Coast launched a website for the Knights of the Silver Dragon series of young-adult novels. The first of these is my own Secret of the Spiritkeeper. The site comes with some cool features, like an interactive map of Curston, the city in which the novels are based. Check it out!

This week, I managed to take care of a bunch of smaller things. These include:

An entry in Hungry Little Monsters, the next charity jam book from Sean K. Reynolds, my coauthor on Unapproachable East.

A couple of articles for Games Quarterly Magazine.

An essay for the latest edition of Warzone from Excelsior Entertainment. .

An essay for the second edition of Godsend Agenda from Khepera Publishing.

And now I’m off to Origins. Whew!

I just signed contracts for two novels in the Knights of the Silver Dragon series, of which Secret of the Spiritkeeper is the first. These won’t see print until the summer of 2006, but they form a two-book story arc that shakes up the setting with a catastrophic event.

Next week, I’m off to the Origins Game Expo. I’ll be running demos of Dracula’s Revenge at the Green Ronin booth. I’m also helping out with some seminars:

6/24, 10 AM: Freelancing for Beginners.
6/24, 1 PM: Game-Related Fiction.
6/24, 2 PM: Intermediate Level Freelancing.
6/25, 10 AM: Freelance Writing for d20.
6/25, 3 PM: Origin of a Game.
6/27, 2 PM: Freelancing for Beginners.

Because of the show, I won’t have time to post an update next week. The week after that, though, I’ll report on what happened at Origins. Three of my projects are up for Origins Awards—Redhurst for Best RPG Supplement and Best Graphic Design, and “The Price of Freedom” for Best Short Story—so hopefully it’ll be happy news.

I added a lot of content to the Dracula’s Revenge site today. This includes some new wallpapers, a new cover shot, and a free PDF of the game’s rules. We’ll have a limited number of copies of the game at the Origins Game Expo next week. If you’re going to be there in Columbus, Ohio, be sure to stop by and pick yours up quick.

Dracula’s Revenge #2 should be in stores next Wednesday, June 23. My friends at IDW Publishing tell me they got reorders on the first issue and hope to sell out soon. Be sure to pick up both if you can. Again, we should have some copies at Origins, but they’ll be even rarer than the board game.

The fine people at Mysterious Galaxy Books in San Diego have asked me to participate in a seminar at Comic-Con International. It’s Sunday, July 25, at 12-1:30, and the topic is “Fantastic Fiction for All Ages – the Young Adult Market.”

Mysterious Galaxy’s own Maryelizabeth Hart moderates me as well as Timothy Zahn, Jeff Mariotte, Emily Drake, and Sherwood Smith. That’s fine company to be in. Afterward, assuming we can get a few early copies, I’ll be signing copies of Secret of the Spiritkeeper as well as just about anything else shoved in front of me.

Guardians of Order has an iCal page on its site that details the ship dates of upcoming releases. It turns out The Authority Role-Playing Game has been pushed back to August 16. This means no game for Origins, but it should be ready for Gen Con.

I just finished the interview with Michael and Evo at The Dragon Page Radio Talk Show. The guys were easy with this rookie, and I had a great time. The show’s topic was young adult fantasy and science-fiction novels like my upcoming Secret of the Spiritkeeper, due out in August from Wizards of the Coast.

The Dragon Pagers allowed me to ramble on with only gentle prods to keep me in line. The show may be rebroadcast later this week, and if I find out when I’ll post the details here.

This is short notice, I know, but I just got asked to be on Dragon Page, a radio show about science-fiction and fantasy. The show airs live tonight at 6 PM Phoenix time, 9 PM Eastern. Go to www.dragonpage.com for details about how to listen in locally or over the internet.

I went to BookExpo America last weekend, and I had a great time. Probably the best part was when Peter Archer, the managing editor of the novel department at Wizards of the Coast asked me how my Eberron novel was coming along, and I told him I’d turned it in the night before.
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Last Thursday night, I finished the first draft of the first volume of my trilogy of novels set in Eberron, the new fantasy world from Wizards of the Coast. I had a great time writing it, and I’m looking forward to getting my editor’s comments so I can start in on the second draft.

I’m doing more and more fiction writing these days. While it’s different from designing games, it’s a lot of fun. As I wrote this book, the plot and the characters seemed to morph beneath my feet. I kept surprising myself as I motored along, which I suppose is a good sign. With luck, you’ll all be surprised too when you finally read it, sometime in early 2005.