Forbeck.com

We’re going to have a houseful of kids (over and beyond the five who live with us) to help us ring in the New Year tonight. Some of them might not be able to stay awake until the event actually hits our time zone, but they’ll manage to celebrate the event when it happens somewhere farther to the east, I’m sure.

Wherever you are and whoever you’re with, here’s to an enchanted evening, a memorable morning, and a better year beyond.

I forgot one:

My pal Jason Blair just had his first comic book hit stores this month: The Long Count. Jason wrote the words, Leanne Buckley drew the pictures, and Mark Smiley of Archaia Studios Press presented it to the world.

I gotta get me to a comic store fast.

A few of my friends have bits in the works that might interest you.

First up, Rich Dansky’s first creator-owned novel, Firefly Rain, is due out January 8. This is the debut novel for Wizards of the Coast Discoveries, the new all-original imprint from Wizards, and knowing Rich it’s bound to be great. I don’t know any more about it than what’s online and a few private hints from Rich, but I’ve already pre-ordered my copy.

Next, fellow Alliterate, Open Design for RPGs originator, and former Dragon Magazine editor Wolfgang Baur is running a special promotion for his young but fantastic magazine of d20 gaming goodness, Kobold Quarterly. Those who subscribe soon can pick up a free set of Q-Workshop dice along with their first issue.

Finally, another fellow Alliterate and author Steve Sullivan has a new book of Blue Kingdom novellas out from his Walkabout Publishing. Blue Kingdoms: Zombies, Werewolves & Unicorns covers an unusual range of topics in a pair of dark fantasy tales guaranteed to keep you flipping pages.

Capcom now has an official site up for the Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law game on which I worked. It’s a snazzy introduction to the game, with all sorts of screenshots and cool Flash bits, so stop by and check it out.
Oddly, the synopsis still lists the game as due November 13, which was the original ship date. The latest information I have says it should be out January 8 instead, a week from Tuesday.

Capcom is running a sweepstakes with prizes for the first 500 pre-orders through their site, although as with most such contests, the details reveal that no purchase is actually necessary to enter and win.

Still, why wouldn’t you want to pick up such a fun and handsome game? It’s available for the Wii, PSP, and PS2. I plan on cracking my copies open as soon as they arrive. I had a hoot working on this game, and I cannot wait to see and play the final results.

My son Marty has a good friend Thomas who now only lives three doors down from us in our new place. They’re both in third grade and Cub Scouts together, and Thomas often comes over to play games after school. Thomas calls today and says that he’s just found out that his cousin—actually his cousin’s husband—is a friend of mine, someone I’ve known for almost 20 years. He also mentions that his cousin’s family is on their way to his house right now and would like to stop over and say hi.

“Who’s your cousin?”

“Jordan Weisman.”

Could have knocked me flying with a feather.

Sure enough, a few hours later, Thomas and his family bring over Jordan, Dawn, and their three boys for a short, fun visit. The Weismans live in Seattle, of course, but they started out in Chicago and are back this way to visit relatives, including Thomas’s dad, a.k.a. Dawn’s uncle Rick. To cap it all off, it turns out that Rick works at the next desk over from Monica Valentinelli of Colonial Gothic and FlamesRising.com fame (among many other things).

It’s a nanoworld after all.

Rumble in the Jungle, the fourth in my series of Blood Bowl novels, is now on sale not just in the UK but throughout the world! Be sure to put it at the top of your post-Christmas shopping list. If you’re interested in a “first bit’s free” trial, the Black Library has posted a short, free sample to whet your appetite.

Meanwhile, I hope you all had/have happy holidays as we wrap up the year!

No matter where you are or what you’re doing, I’d like to wish you the happiest of holidays. Here at Casa Forbeck, we’re settled in for several days of Christmas with various family factions. I expect to eat and drink far too much and see face-splitting grins on many young faces. What a great way to wrap up a year.

Here’s to peace and joy for us all.

Erick Wujick is dying of cancer and apparently doesn’t have many days before him. In the tabletop games industry, we know him best as the creator of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness RPG and Amber Diceless Roleplaying. He’s spent the last few years in the computer gaming industry, currently with Totally Games. No matter where he’s been, though, he’s done great, groundbreaking work.

I only met Erick once, at a Greenfield Hobby Distributors open house back in the early ’90s. I was just starting out as a freelancer back then, and he had nothing but encouragement for me. He recommended I do something for his friends at Palladium, advice I never got around to executing, despite my respect for Kevin Siembieda and his crew there. He mentioned that the TMNT game had already financed a round-the-world trip for him, high praise from any freelancer.

He was warm and kind, and I wish our paths had managed to cross more often. Although we ran in similar circles, they rarely did. I’d hear about him through other mutual friends, though, and keep up with him that second-hand way.

Now, in roughly the same way, I learn he’s dying, and I barely know what to say. Fortunately, Kevin has set up a new ErickWujick.com website for me to give it a shot.

If Eric or his work touched your life in any way, please stop by that site and let him know that. In the end, these words may not be all that much, but they’re all we have.

My latest post on the Storytellers Unplugged site is up and awaiting your kind attention. This month I talk about negotiations, both with myself and my publishers. I hope you enjoy it. Feel free to comment either here or there.

Local businessman and philanthropist Ken Hendricks died this morning at the age of 66. Ken dropped out of high school to join his father’s roofing company, and he later built one of the largest roofing companies in the midwest. He sold that and started ABC Supply, which became the nation’s largest roofing supply company. This made him the wealthiest man in the area, by far.

Ironically, Ken died from a fall last night while inspecting new construction going on over his garage. The man had to have been on countless construction sites over the years, and he certainly knew how to handle himself around one. It seems a simple slip caused his end.

Those who visit this site regularly might recall that my wife Ann lost a childhood friend on New Year’s Day last year. Melissa Bessen slipped on the stairs in her apartment and died from the fall. The way her and Ken’s deaths mirror each other—both random acts taking their victims from us far too early—serves as a stark reminder of how short life can be and how lucky we each are to be able to cling to it and each other as long as we can.

In one sense, Ken was like Mr. Potter from It’s a Wonderful Life. He had a ton of money, and it sometimes seemed like he owned half the town. But he had George Bailey’s kind and generous heart, and he was well-loved for it.

Ken, along with his wife Diane, was a committed and involved citizen of Beloit and did a tremendous amount of good for countless people. He also pushed environmental responsibility, with green roofing research and projects, and he sponsored the nascent Beloit Film Festival among many other artistic endeavors. Although I’m sure Diane will soldier on without him—she’s a strong and kind woman who has my deepest sympathies for this tragic loss—Ken will be impossible to replace. Beloit never knew another man like him and probably never will again.

I was up until 4:30 AM working on the final bits for The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Superheroes and Villains, Illustrated (which I’m working on with Yair Herrera for IDW and Alpha). I ran the spellchecker, sent off the files, and collapsed into bed for a couple hours before I had to get up to get the kids ready for school.

It’s been a bit quiet around the website lately. I’ve been scrambling to keep up with my many projects, and the sale and purchase of a house, along with the attached move, sucked up just about every spare moment I had. To clue you in as to how busy that is, I still haven’t posted my Gen Con 2007 report yet.

Not that I’m whining for myself. I’m having fun and doing good work. I’m in a wonderful new place, and I’m enjoying every moment I can with my wife and kids. My only real stress point is finding a wide balance point for it all, and that’s a good problem to have.

I have one more deadline to beat before the end of the year. It’s for an extended piece of serial fiction to be released for free on the web, but that’s all I can say about it at the moment. I’ll let you know the moment it goes live.

After that, it’s the New Year, with several projects already lined up. These include, at the least, work on two large computer game projects, plus my twelfth mass-market novel, the contracts for which I’m looking over today. I have a few more personal projects I’m hoping to carve out some time for, but as always they have to compete with paying work and my family for my attention.

In the meantime, I hope to post a bit more regularly here. Just as soon as I get a few hours more sleep.

I’ve written a number of comics over the years, and it always stuns me what a different discipline it is from any other kind of writing. In a film, play, novel, game, or whatever, you have a bit of wiggle room as to the time you can take up or the number of pages. Comics, though, have a far more restrictive form.

Most comics feature 22 pages of story, and the pages are laid out in two-page spreads with any number of panels on them. Most comics have a splash (full-page illustration) or two in them, or even a massive double-page spread, but the average page contains anywhere from four to eight panels.

As a writer, you designate the number of panels on the page and what happens in each of them. You’re restricted to asking your artist to show static images, and they all have to make some kind of sense when strung together. This forces a certain kind of pacing on the story, especially when you consider where to place your cliffhangers, staggering revelations, and plot twists.

These favored tools of any adventurous writer work best at the start or end of a page, not in the middle, and they’re best if they come at the start or end of a spread. This makes the pacing even more rigid.

Compared to a novel, it’s like going from free verse to iambic pentameter. Robert Frost compared free verse to “playing tennis with the net down.” If so, the comic-book form raises a good, solid net over which to try your game.

Fortunately, there are tools to help you get your game on. While writing the first issues of Blood Bowl: Killer Contract for Boom! Studios, I gave a new writing program a shot at the recommendation of John Rogers.

The program (Scrivener) was originally designed to help with writing screenplays or novels, but the latest version comes with a comic-book script template by Antony Johnston that’s nearly perfect. It let me rearrange panels and pages as much as I liked and automatically renumbered them. When working with an editor, an artist, and a licensor, this alone saved me a lot of headaches.

If you’re interested in writing comics—or just writing in general—be sure to check it out.

My pals Jeff Tidball and Will Hindmarch just launched Gameplaywright.net, their new joint blog on the confluence of games and stories. The site is up and running now, although it officially goes live tomorrow. If you’re looking for some sharp and thoughtful writing on how such things work and inform each other, you need go no further.

Rumble in the Jungle, the fourth in my series of Blood Bowl novels, is on sale in the UK. Those of us in other parts of the world must wait until Boxing Day for our fix, but the fortunate souls in Old Blighty can get theirs now.

However, the non-British aren’t entirely out of luck. The Black Library has posted a short, free sample to whet your appetite.

In other news, I delivered the script for the first issue of the Blood Bowl comic book to Boom! Studios. It picks up directly after the end of the events of Rumble in the Jungle and continues the adventures of the Bad Bay Hackers as they make their bid to repeat as the Blood Bowl champs!