Forbeck.com

I just went through all the static pages and updated them a bit. This includes new entries for “Current Projects” and “Upcoming Appearances.” I also posted a new picture of me and my family under “About Matt Forbeck.” Check it out if you want to see exactly why I do what I do.

As I mentioned before, the fine folks at GAMA have asked me to handle their freelancers seminar track at this year’s GAMA Trade Show. This is in Las Vegas from March 14 through 17. I’ll be moderating two seminars: Freelancing for Beginners and Advanced Freelancing. I’ve managed to wrangle some top-notch talent to help me out: Keith Baker, Kenneth Hite, Brian E. Lewis, and Aaron Rosenberg.

If you’re interested in learning more about freelancing in the adventure games industry, this is the place to be. Monday, March 14, is the big day, with six hours worth of seminars running the gamut. If you miss those, each of the two three-hour sessions will be repeated later on in the week.

While not running seminars, I’ll be wandering around the show. I’m not with a company this year, so catch me when you can. I hope to see you there.

Last summer, after the last GAMA elections, the new board hired me to lead a task force charged with reworking the Origins Awards. That job’s now done. As with most things where you get lots of different inputs and try to forge a consensus, I don’t think it’s perfect for anyone. Hopefully, though, most people will be happy with the results.

If you’re a game designer, you can sign up with the Academy (which runs the Origins Awards) for free now. If you want to support the Academy’s efforts, you can buy a supporting membership for $30. This also gets you a free badge to Origins, good seats at the award ceremony, and entrance to the post-awards party. (I got mine right away.)

If you created or published a gaming product in the last year, the Academy website is now open for submissions. The deadline is February 7, so be sure to get yours in now. Good luck!

Spike Y. Jones just gave a kind review to my Seven Cities d20 sourcebook on RPG.net. Atlas Games published the book back in 2002, so it’s like a trip in the Way-Back Machine to read about it now. Still, Spike’s an excellent editor and notoriously demanding, so his praise means that much more, no matter when it might arrive.

The fine folks at GAMA asked me to help out with the freelancers’ seminar track at this year’s trade show in Las Vegas. I lined up some premier talent for them: Ken Hite, Keith Baker, Aaron Rosenberg, and myself. If you want to know more about freelancing in the adventure game industry and how to do it well, you could do worse than to corner the members of this motley crew and pummel them with questions. If you show up at the GAMA Trade Show at the Riviera on March 14 (with repeats later in the week), you’ll get your chance.

I just found out that my old buddy Bill King (William King of Warhammer novels fame) has a blog. In it, he writes about the writing process and his upcoming stuff. To me, it’s like sitting in our flat and listening to him rant or rave about something again. It’s always brilliant. I recommend checking it out.

You can now preorder my first Blood Bowl novel through Amazon.com by clicking here. Here’s a preview of the cover:

I’m tired of surfing to read the various websites I keep up with, so I started fiddling around with an RSS newsreader. When I tried syndicating this site, nothing happened. I fiddled around with my Movable Type installation a bit, and bingo! I now have feeds for RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, Atom, and RSD. Or so I think. I’ve only tested the RSS stuff. If anyone cares to try the others and report back, please do. In the meantime, if you’re a newsreader too, enjoy!

Last night, inspired by one of Aaron Williams’s excellent Full Frontal Nerdity strips, I busted open my year-old ReplayTV and upgraded the hard drive from 40 GB to 200 GB. Everything went well, if not smoothly, especially considering I was using an iBook running Linux programs through Terminal, attached to the guts of a Firewire/USB 2.0 external hard drive enclosure, rather than the standard tower Wintel machine with a couple open hard drive bays. I now have five times the space on the thing, which I’m sure I’m sure my kids will soon fill with multiple episodes of the finest entertainment from PBS Kids and Nick Jr.

Like most great hardware hacks, it voided my warranty (which was already expired anyhow) and ran the risk of turning my cool toy into a large doorstop. There were a few heart-stopping hiccups, but through the glory of the web and a bit of trial-and-error I was able to figure out how to circumnavigate them. It’s comforting to know the two years of the electrical engineering major I started at the University of Michigan didn’t entirely go to waste.

I just took on a gig as the content guru for Conan Properties, the people who own Robert E. Howard’s Conan. I’ll be working with authors, publishers, and other licensors as the arbiter of all things Conan, the original fantasy hero. This should be a blast, as I’ve been a Howard fan since I first stumbled upon his stuff in high school, and the company has lots of great products in the works. Wish me luck!

My illustrious editor Mark Sehestedt tells me that Marked for Death (the first in my Eberron trilogy, The Lost Mark) is at the printer right now. The book is slated for a March release, which suddenly seems not all that far away. This is my first full-length mass-market novel, so you can imagine how excited I am about it. You should be able to pre-order it through your local game or book store now.

Will Eisner, the comic book and graphic novel legend, died on Monday. I only met him once, at a book signing at an American Book Expo where he graciously personalized a copy of Dropsie Avenue for me, but I miss him. He was a master of the sequential art form and did more to bring it respectability and literary weight than anyone else in the field. We should all aspire to be so passionate about our work and to lift it to such heights.

I’ve been spending some time on a new forum set up at WorldsofDnD.com. There’s not too much traffic yet, but a good number of Wizards novelists stop by to post. If you’re interested in discussing Dungeons & Dragons novels with other fans and asking questions of some of your favorite authors, stop by to give it a look.

My friends at Guardians of Order (publishers of The Authority RPG, of which I wrote the player’s chapter for them) just announced that they had a rotten 2004, mostly due to the plummeting value of the American dollar versus their Canadian version. Because of this, they’re asking people for help by purchasing some of their excellent games now. If you love good games and good game companies, you can find the details here.

It’s ironic that GoO is having such problems with the exchange rate. Because I’m writing books for Games Workshop’s Black Library, the exchange rate has helped me instead. That’s living in a global and ever-changing economy for you.