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I just spotted the blurb for Marked for Death, the first in my upcoming Eberron trilogy of novels, on page 37 of Game Trade Magazine. This means it’s available for retailers to preorder now through their favorite distributor. If you plan to buy the book, please let your friendly local gaming store or book store know so they can get it in for you right away.

I finished the first draft of my Blood Bowl novel yesterday, just in time to take a few days off for Christmas. Whew!

Next up, I’m revising my outline for the second book in my Eberron trilogy. Then I’ll revise the outlines for my next two books in the Knights of the Silver Dragon series. After that, it’s the outline for the next Blood Bowl book, which is to be a trilogy too. I’ll squeeze my next article for Games Quarterly Magazine in there somewhere as well. Soon after the start of the year, it’s headlong into writing the second Eberron book.

It looks like 2005 is shaping up well. It should see two of the Eberron novels and at least one Blood Bowl novel see print, plus a few other things I’m working on, although it’s too early to say about those yet.

I’d like to thank everyone out there for your support in 2004. It was as crazy a year as ever, but having wonderful friends and family around me every step of the way meant it was a more fun kind of frenzy. I’m looking forward to sharing 2005 with you all too and having more fun than ever.

I know, I know. It’s been deathly quiet around here lately. My New Year’s resolution last year for weekly updates hasn’t been 100% successful, but it seems that I might be able to slide through with a solid B.

I spent a week in LA in early December, doing some consulting for a company that shall currently remain nameless. They were great people, though, and I think we’ll be making some wonderful games together in 2005.

While there, my hosts and I mounted a field trip of sorts to Gen Con So Cal on the Thursday of that show. They only stuck around long enough to get the lay of the land. After they left, I managed to find all sorts of friends to hang out with into the midnight hour. One of the great things about the adventure game industry is how many friends you make in it, and you get to see them a lot during the summer convention season. When that ends, though, it can be a long, cold winter (especially here in Wisconsin) before you get to see them again. Gen Con So Cal breaks that up nicely. Now I’m looking forward the GAMA Trade Show in Las Vegas in March, where many of us can get together again.

Since I got back, I’ve been buried in my first Blood Bowl novel, which should be out sometime next summer. As I tell people, it’s a fantasy football novel, but not the kind that involves the NFL. It’s dwarves, elves, ogres, zombies, vampires, and more playing a version of American football that’s more like rugby than anything else. It combines sports, fantasy, and humor, which I haven’t seen done in too many other places. One of Robert Lynn Asprin’s Myth Adventures books featured “the Big Game” (a riff on the University of Michigan-Ohio State rivalry), which the closest thing I can think of. Blood Bowl is hyperviolent too, which changes the tone a bit. It’s not gory, per se. It’s so over the top it’s more like a Warner Bros. cartoon at times.

Anyhow, I’m back to that now. More when I can come up for air! Until then, best wishes for happy holidays to you all!