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On Saturday, I blipped down to Hoffman Estates (north side of Chicago) for a wrap/Halloweeen party for High Voltage Studios. They celebrated not only the upcoming holiday but also the six different video games the company completed this year, including the Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law game on which I worked.

I had a great time. The place was decked out with horror movie posters, inflatable ghosts and gravestones, and a looped DVD of clips from various horror films. They also had an bar, keg beer, blackjack tables, and a DJ spinning tunes for a lively dance floor.

The costumes stunned me. I couldn’t even recognize some of my friends under them. Kevin Sheller and his fiance Jessa came as Birdman and Birdgirl, and their costumes beat out the ones seen on the live-action parts of the show. Eric Nofsinger made such a good Edward Scissorhands that I didn’t recognize him until I was on my way out the door. Micah Skaritka’s evil clown getup was so perfect he had to tell me who he was.

The unexpected highlight of the night came in the form of an old pal who’d also been invited to the party, along with some other friends from his company. However, due to NDAs, I’m not sure if I’m at liberty to reveal the identity of the mysterious luchadores I encountered that night. Such is the way of the computer game business, but perhaps it’s all for the best.

For myself, I didn’t get the invitation until last Wednesday and have been stuffing my family’s things into boxes ever since, so I didn’t have any time for a proper costume. My wife has a great costume, but it was her night for her book club, so we went our separate ways for the evening. I wore a High Voltage T-shirt under my button-down and went as an employee. I was told I should have come with an ax in my head (via special effects trickery, I hope) and been an “ax-employee.”

The Black Library, publisher of my Blood Bowl novels, has a new forum up. If you haven’t been there for a while, stop by and check it out. It’s something cool to do while you wait for Blood Bowl: The Omnibus, due out in the UK on November 5 and the US on November 27.

My fellow Alliterate and good friend Lester Smith is not only a great game designer but also a wonderful poet. In recognition of his talents, he was named the president of the Wisconsin Society of Poets. If you’d like to sample some of Les’s latest work for free (as well as selected bits from other poets), sign up for his new mailing list and have his latest opuses zapped straight into your in-box.

The Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law video game I worked on with High Voltage Studios has been officially bumped to 2008. Word is that Capcom didn’t want to release the game in such a crowded period of time. Putting a little breathing space between it at the third Phoenix Wright game won’t hurt its chances either, I’d guess.

While delays aren’t any fun, I’d rather the game had a chance to grow some legs rather than get sucked back into the sea by the pre-holiday tsunami. Birdman fully endorses this product and/or service.

P.S. Thanks to my friend Andy Friedl for the heads-up.

My fellow Alliterate and pal Stan! just came up with a doozy of a Cthulhu cartoon, just in time for the Halloween season. If it tickles you enough to want to share it with those around you, Stan! has opened up a Cafe Press store with this little doodle available on dozens of different products.

This reminds me of the friend who sent me four plush Cthulhus when our quadruplets were born. While they were fantastic toys, I couldn’t bring myself to put them in the cribs with the kids. Explaining them to the NICU nurses just wouldn’t be worth it.

Many of the talented folks over at Storytellers Unplugged are posting bits of fiction in lieu of essays this month. For my time-crunched self, I went with a trifecta of six-word shorts (one of which I posted here last year). Enjoy!

30 Days of Night, the film based on the graphic novel, opens tonight. My good friends at IDW published the original story, and my friend Jeff Mariotte co-wrote the novelization of the film* two original tie-ins based on the series. I’ve not met Steve Niles—who wrote the story (and the novels with Jeff)—but I’ve had a couple of long chats with Ben Templesmith—who drew the story—at Comic-Con, and he’s a fine gentleman as well. Best of all, IMDB lists my great pal Ted Adams as a co-producer, along with some guys named Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert.

The story is set in the small town of Barrow, Alaska. Vampires invade the town in December, just before the sun sets, not to come up again for 30 days. Harrowing disaster ensues.

It’s a fantastic high concept, but Steve and Ben turned it into a wonderful, all-too-human story as well. Here’s hoping the film is a monster hit too.

*Thanks to Christian Johnson of Cinerati fame for catching that goof. (Tim Lebbon novelized the film.) Check the comments on this post for a chance for fast fingers to claim copies of Jeff’s books!

If you’re on the hunt for the coolest accessories in gaming—you know, those things that you don’t need to play a game but which make it so much better—be sure to stop by Gamer Bling. The site has a growing list of reviews of cool bits for your tabletop games, and it’s blessed with a self-deprecating sense of humor to boot.

My advance copy of Rumble in the Jungle, my fourth Blood Bowl novel, showed up in the mail yesterday. It looks fantastic. While I really loved the covers by my pal Max Bertolini, this in-your-face cover by Philip Sibbering tickles me silly. It captures the essence of Blood Bowl in such an iconic way.

This book moves the action from the Old World to Lustria (the Blood Bowl equivalent of South America) to see the Bad Bay Hackers take on a team of amazon (the Lustrian Lusties) in the Tobazco Bowl (played inside an active volcano, of course) for the undisputed championship of the world. Oh, and a hunt for Dunk Hoffnung’s long-lost sister, plus encounters with cunning lizardmen, shambling zombies, ball-crazy buccaneers, cannibalistic pygmy halflings, amorous fishwomen, and more.

Look for it on shelves around the end of the year!

John Passarella writes award-winning horror novels, along with the occasional Buffy book (which is how I know him, through the IAMTW). He’s also a husband and the father of three kids, the eldest of whom (Matthew) has a brain tumor he’s been battling for over six years. Matthew is on the road to recovery now, after nearly seven years of treatments, including multiple brain surgeries.

For the past five years, in an incredible act of generosity and hope, Matthew and his parents have organized Matthew’s Miles, a walk-a-thon to raise money to find a cure for brain tumors. None of this goes to them. It’s all directly given to Children’s Cancer Foundation.

In conjunction with the walk, the Passarellas run an auction of autographed books. To help out in a small way, I’ve donated signed copies of Prophecy of the Dragons and The Dragons Revealed to the cause. Over a dozen other authors, including at least four from the New York Times Bestsellers Lists, put up books too. Jimmy Rollins from the Phillies donated an autographed bat, and Kevin Ollie from the 76ers sent in a signed photo too.

If any of that interests you—and you happen to be near Logan Township, NJ, be sure to check the auction out. It’s all for a good cause.

Today’s e-mail from my favorite online shopping site, dealnews.com, came with a listing for 100 tiny six-sided dice for only $1.90, including shipping. There’s a game in there somewhere. (I know, I know. It’s Champions.)

Better yet, they go down in price if you buy in bulk. You could get, for instance, 1,000 dice for only $13.20, plus $1.70 for registered air mail. Madness!

Last night, we accepted a counter-offer on the house we wanted. It’s a grand, old place in the same school district we’re in now, so the kids won’t have to move away from their friends, but it’s in a nicer neighborhood. It has almost twice the space of our current house—which we need, since we’re bursting at the seams here—and sits on 8/10 of an acre.

Best of all, the seven of us are moving up from a 3-bed/1-bath to a 4-bed/4-bath. It’s a good bump in our mortgage payments too, but doable. The down real-estate market meant we got pinched a bit in selling our old place, but we more than made up for that by getting an excellent deal on the new place.

I’m almost embarrassed at how cool my new office in the house is. It’s huge and features wood-paneled walls, a separate entrance, a fireplace, leaded-glass windows, and a number of secret closets, one of which contains a wet bar. It’s ridiculous.

The only real hurdle is the inspection, which we’ll conduct on Monday. Assuming that goes well, we close on Halloween. Wish us luck!

I try to follow literary trends as best I can, and it seems like we have a wealth of historical novels these days—far beyond the Michener-like epics—and a dearth of science-fiction. It’s almost as if the two genres have flipped around, that historicals have supplanted the purpose of science-fiction.

In many ways, we live in the science-fiction world our parent read about. We have instantaneous, world-wide communication. I spend a lot of my time wandering around cyberspace. We can cross the country in a matter of hours rather than weeks. The future is here.

Good science-fiction comments upon the present by showing where the future might lead us. Now that we’re in the future—nearing the singularity, the scientific event horizon beyond which predictions become much more difficult to make—perhaps we’re looking back at the past to find patterns that show us what might happen next. Or maybe we’re just using that atavistic setting to comment on our present, fulfilling a role that science-fiction used to take.

There’s a lot of talk these days in the computer game industry about user-generated content. It’s done a tremendous amount for online communities, like Second Life, which is sometimes billed as a game but is more of a toy. Case in point is Metaplace, the new venture from Raph Koster, author of A Theory of Fun for Game Design.

It’s easy to see how games and online communities are converging on each other in new and exciting ways, and the opportunity to make your virtual items portable and usable in many settings could be the killer app for such sites. Think of it as the d20 System for MMOs. (There’s a lot more to it than that, of course, but as a slack metaphor, it works.)

A friend of mine, Erin Quick-Laughlin, is working on something similar to this over at www.someelement.com. His group’s vision is to bring online development to the masses—or at least those so inclined to use such tools. It reminds me of how the Mac revolutionized publishing by making desktop publishing a reality. It’s going to make for an interesting ride.