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My friend Rich Kummer, former owner of ACD, pointed me to a new gaming blog a friend of his is writing as part of a class. Brandon is clearly a sharp guy asking intriguing questions. I may not always agree with his terminology or his sentiments, but it’s fun to watch him wrestle with various issues either way.

Meanwhile Matt McElroy tells me his excellent site, FlamesRising.com, has gotten a facelift, and it looks great. He’s also provided updated links to an interview with me, a review of Dracula’s Revenge (the board game), and a review of World of Darkness: Ghost Stories too. The site’s much more readable and has a fashionable Web 2.0 feel to it. If you enjoy horror or dark fantasy at all, give it another look.

There’s a heartwarming story going around the web about Patry Francis and her book The Liar’s Diary. Patry busted her hump writing the book, which got rave reviews in hardcover. Then she was diagnosed with cancer, making her unable to do much if anything to help promote the book.

Yesterday, the book came out in paperback, and over 300 bloggers banded together to flog it for she who could not flog. I had planned to join in but had a relatively insane day yesterday in what’s been a nutty year already. But me being a day late doesn’t make the book any less good.

Be sure to check it out if you can. Even if it’s not your type of tale, make sure to read Susan Henderson’s excellent encapsulation about how this all came together.

Tommy Lee Edwards, the fantastic artist who provided covers for my Dracula’s Revenge comics from IDW, is taking part in the Ride for Kids on May 4,2008. For this event, thousands of motorcyclists ride to raise money for the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation, which funds research for a cure for brain tumors in kids.

This is a great, worthy cause all by itself, but to sweeten the pot, Tommy lined up permission from Lucasfilm to provide limited-edition prints to the first 300 donors who contribute $30 or more (plus shipping costs). Appropriate to the event, these feature a squad of stormtrooper biker-scouts from Star Wars, and Tommy signs and numbers each print. Be sure to check it out.

Fellow Alliterate and longtime friend Steve Sullivan recently launched his own publishing company, Walkabout Publishing. He already has four books out with more in the works.

This joins two other self-publishing efforts from the Alliterates. Steve was involved in the first too—Popcorn Press—along with Lester Smith and Rob King. For the second, Wolfgang Baur is ramping up his fifth Open Design project as well as building his new baby, Kobold Quarterly.

Lester also runs PoemTee.com (which offers his poetry on T-shirts) and Hobby Hearse (which sells rare and used games). Meanwhile, Don Perrin continues spinning lead with his latest miniatures company, True North Miniatures, and publishing articles about it in HMG Magazine. Plus, he keeps many of the rest of us in print with his Quality Print-on-Demand.

Meanwhile, many of us still write novels and design games. We’re a busy lot!

Friday afternoon, my father wore his judge’s robe for the first time. My 85-year-old grandmother flew out from Michigan to help him into it during his investiture ceremony.

My father’s 14 grandchildren sat in the jury box (which has 14 seats)—all except for his namesake (and my son) Kenny, who stayed home sick. His brother Patrick proudly carried Kenny’s framed photo around as a substitute. Dad gave a little speech, acknowledging his parents, his wife Nancy and each of his kids, including the steps (as I’ve called my step-siblings since even before my father and their mother married). Then he found and used his gavel for the first time to adjourn the event.

Afterward, we gathered for a reception at La Casa Grande in Beloit. My mother did me a huge favor by watching my kids (and a few extra to boot!), with help from Missy Henderson and Dana Bull-Beckwith.

Saturday morning, we woke up to find the event as front-page news in our local paper. We couldn’t be prouder of Dad, of course, and we think Rock County is as lucky to have him as a judge as we were to be his kids.

My latest essay is up at Storytellers Unplugged. Still deep in depression about the results of last night’s Packers-Giants playoff game, my thoughts inevitably turned to football fans and how we’re all alike under the facepaint. I hope you enjoy it.

For some reason, the folks at Nextcat (a networking site for people in various entertainment fields) have placed me on their featured people page for the gaming category. Steve Ince, who I’ve met online through the IGDA Writers SIG, headlines the page, while I share the bottom ranks with the likes of John Tynes, who makes for no shabby company at all.

Like all fame, this is of the fleeting sort. I’ll be replaced soon, I’m sure, but I’ll bask in the virtual limelight while I can.

Last year, a group of marketers decided to try to sell a package of Mac shareware by means of an alternate reality game (ARG). To that end, they launched MacHeist, and for every mission you went on (puzzle you solved) you received a discount on the package. (Wikipedia has a good article on it, including the criticisms of the concept as well.)

The game part of MacHeist 2 is over, but the package is now for sale. I didn’t have time to play through most of the missions, but I stopped by to watch how the community of players tackled the intricate puzzles together to solve them as a group. This reminded me a lot of how Cloudmakers.org formed to solve the riddles in the first ARG on which I worked: the Beast.

No matter whether you play the game or not, the package is an insanely good deal—assuming you have a Mac and don’t already own much of the software. For myself, the cost of CSSEdit and Pixelmator alone is worth it. (I already have and use 1password, which rocks.)

Plus a quarter of your purchase price goes to a charity of your choice. If you buy through this link, they’ll toss me a couple more apps as a referral bonus, but don’t let that sway you either way. I’m just intrigued by how a small group can successfully use an ARG to help make them a lot of money. The deal’s only been going on for just over a week, and they’ve already sold over $800,000 worth of packages on the site.

I wonder, of course, if you could manage the same sort of promotion to sell games, perhaps in conjunction with a site like Tanga.com (which is like Woot.com, but with a heavy board game rotation). Any takers?

Darrel Hardy kindly pointed me to a Gamasutra.com roundup of the major online reviews for the Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law video game. Overall, they’re positive, especially about the writing, for which I’m grateful. They all say roughly the same thing: Funny game, but don’t expect dozens of hours of deep, involved gameplay (as you get in the Phoenix Wright games on which the Birdman mechanics are based).

I think that’s a fair call, as it’s what the team at High Voltage set out to do. In that sense, we hit the target dead center. The reviewers’ scores seem to depend entirely on how much the reviewer wanted Phoenix Wright rather than Birdman.

As a short, snappy comedy, Birdman demands less involved gameplay. While I love the Phoenix Wright games (I’m playing through the third in the series with my son Marty right now), the convoluted mysteries of that game wouldn’t play well with Birdman, each episode of which is only 15 minutes long. I’m biased, of course, but I think the game hits the sweet spot. As the reviews show, though, that’s a matter of personal taste.

The fine folks at Pulp Gamer recently posted a podcast featuring Aldo Ghiozzi of Impressions and myself blathering on about games publishing at last year’s GAMA Trade Show. I had a great time working with Aldo, especially since he and I come at the question of “Getting Your Game Published” from different angles. I often handle seminars like this on my own, and working with Aldo was refreshing.

Be sure to check it out if you get the chance, and you can listen to the sound of my voice changing in timbre as I move the mike around all over the place. (Man, I talk fast. I run on adrenaline at these things, and it shows in my pace, I think.)

Just today, I signed a contract for my next fantasy novel with Wizards of the Coast. This will be my 12th mass-market novel, and it should hit shelves sometime in 2009. That’s all I’m at liberty to share right now, but I had to share the good news.

According to the marketing mavens at Amazon.com, the Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law game on which I worked should be in stores today. Be sure to get yourself down to just such a store soon and pick up a copy for your Wii, PSP, and/or PS2.

I had a fantastic time working on the game. The Birdman show is hilarious, and I got a special kick out of knowing I was writing dialog for stars including Gary Cole, John Michael Higgins, Peter MacNicol, Paget Brewster, Michael McKean, and Lewis Black. As a writer, you can sometimes hear a character’s voice in your head, but having DVDs featuring those characters already talking really helps you get inside them and make their words ring true (and funny!).

I’d like to especially thank the game’s producer, Kevin Sheller, as well as my co-writer, Micah Skaritka, who wrote more chunks of the game than I did. We spent a number of days locked in a writers’ room together, spitballing ideas back and forth. I couldn’t have asked for a funnier, more talented crew to work with. Also, many thanks to Matt Corso, Eric Nofsinger, John Kopecky, and the rest of the management team at High Voltage Software, who helped make the whole experience so much fun.