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On Saturday, Marty and I caught The Spiderwick Chronicles film, based on the books by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi. Tony and Holly are both tabletop gaming refugees, and I got to meet them and sit on a panel with them at the 2006 Comic-Con.

Marty and I both enjoyed the film. I haven’t read the books yet, but we have an autographed copy of Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide, complete with a sketch from Tony. The movie only whetted my appetite for the books, which I hope to pick up soon. It had fun characters, good action, and some excellent moments of suspense, plus a cool ending.

On Sunday, I moved out of my old office and brought everything into the house. Don Perrin and Dan Schooff showed up and gave me a hand. I couldn’t have managed it without their help.

Now, of course, I’m surrounded by boxes. Eyeing all of it, it’s clear most of it can’t stay. There may be a pallet headed for eBay or Hobby Hearse in the near future. I’ll let you know when.

The fine people at FlamesRising.com are running a contest about your favorite horror game. Just write it up in 250 words or less, send it in, and wait for a tentacle-faced Ed McMahon to show up at your door. There are only 16 entries as I write this, so your odds are much better than in the “Facing Down Cthulhu” Sweepstakes.

My friends at Cryptic Studios just announced the Champions MMO, as well as the fact they’ve purchased the property and licensed it back to previous owner Hero Games so they can keep making the tabletop RPG.

Jack Emmert, who’s in charge of Cryptic, has loved superhero RPGs forever. I remember chatting with him about my Brave New World RPG before it even hit shelves, and he just glowed with the superhero love.

I’m thrilled for Steve, Darren, and Tina at Hero, especially Steve, who broke into RPG writing many years ago with Dark Champions. This should be a good shot in the arm for them, and I’m looking forward to many more great things from them.

Many years ago, the original Hero Games crew set itself off on a course to create a Champions computer game. They even asked me to write some of the adventures for it once it got off the ground. Sadly that day never came.

Ray Greer, one of those original Heroes, had vowed not to shave his beard or cut his hair until the game shipped. He looked awful shaggy for a long time. I knew for sure the project was dead when I finally saw him looking trimmed again.

Now, though, it looks like it’s going to happen and be better than ever. This is a great teaming of creators and concept, and I’ll be first in line to play.

Sadly, I can’t talk about it yet, but I finished writing a book late last night. It should be out later this year, and as soon as I can I’ll tell you all about it.

I hate being a tease about such things, but I’m just thrilled to have topped that particular peak and had to share.

Back to the Blood Bowl comic scripts now. Woot!

My latest essay is up at Storytellers Unplugged. This one’s about my recent trip to Hollywood for a preview of the Mutant Chronicles film, why I was asked out to fly out for it, and why I went.

Boom! Studios today banged out a press release for my upcoming Blood Bowl comic-book miniseries: Blood Bowl: Killer Contract. See below for the full text.

While we’re at it, here’s the concept art for the one of the three variant covers for issue #1. That’s #7 Dunk Hoffnung sailing over the crowd, with M’Grash and Spinne opening the way. Lads Helloven provided this piece and handles the interiors too.

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ICv2.com has posted an open letter from Peter Adkison, CEO of Gen Con and Hidden City Games (and all-round great guy), about Gen Con’s entry into Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. If you’re interested in the show (and what self-respecting gamer wouldn’t be?), it’s worth the read.

I voted this morning in the Presidential primaries here in Wisconsin. I had to register with the new address and vote at a different place, but in this state you can walk up and do so on the day of the polls and then vote right after. You can also vote for whoever you like, without having to be a registered member of any party.

Last night, Ann went to see Barack Obama speak while I sat home with the kids. I also watched after a nephew and niece, the kids of my step-brother Dan Schooff and his wife Alyssa Whitney. Alyssa served as treasurer for Governor Doyle’s first campaign, and Dan ran the campaign the last time around. Dan also served as our state assemblyman for six years, but he’s now the Deputy Secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Administration.

Dan managed to snag some VIP seats for himself and the ladies, so they got to sit only a few rows back from the stage in the Flood Arena at Beloit College. Ann called me up when Obama started to speak, and I listened to the entire speech over her cell phone.

While it was a strange way to join such an event, it reminded me of listening to an old speech broadcast over the radio. Here, in 2008, I experienced the speech much the way my grandparents would have listened to, say, FDR 70 years ago.

I’m excited about this election, and I hope you are too. No matter who you plan to vote for, get out and vote and be involved. If the last decade has shown us anything, it’s that politics really do matter.

If you live in Wisconsin, as I do, don’t forget we have a primary tomorrow, and get yourself down to the polls. If you’re paying any attention to the world at all, this would be difficult to miss, but it always bears repeating.

It’s great to have a close race still going on with the Democrats this late in the process, as it means we get candidates stumping around the place for our vote. Chelsea Clinton will be here at Beloit College this afternoon, and Barack Obama will visit the same venue later tonight. There’s talk that Hillary Clinton might show up tomorrow too. John McCain, meanwhile, tours the middle part of the state, and I’ve not heard any word about Mike Huckabee.

Most years, the slates have already been decided by now, and the closest we get to the candidates is watching them on TV. Seeing them in person gets everyone more jazzed up for the elections than ever.

Storytellers Unplugged, the communal writers blog to which I contribute a monthly piece, just snagged a nomination for a Stoker Award from the Horror Writers Association. If the website wins, the award will go to our founders/moderators/organizers Joe Nassise and David Niall Wilson. These two put in a ton of work to make the website sing, and they deserve every accolade they get. Here’s hoping they get the big nod too.

Word is that Gen Con has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. This comes on the heels of the news that Lucasfilm recently filed suit against the company over bills related to the latest Star Wars Celebration, which Gen Con put on last year.

This is not good news. I love Gen Con, and I love the people who run it. Peter Adkison, who owns the company with his wife Melissa, is a longtime friend, and this cannot be any fun for him.

However, it seems that the two recent announcements are closely related. The Star Wars Celebration was the first (I believe) without a new Star Wars film to help rouse the fanbase, and Gen Con likely lost money on it. Combine this with three years of trying to get Gen Con So Cal up and running, and you have some holes that have formed in this sturdy ship’s hull.

However, the core business of Gen Con Indy (the original and only in my heart) is reportedly solid, a good money maker on its own. Without the other shows draining Gen Con’s coffers, the company stands a good chance of turning itself around.

It’s possible that the Lucasfilm suit forced Gen Con into involuntary bankruptcy. The last time I checked, it only took three dedicated creditors to force this to happen, but there are ways to engineer such things if you’re determined. I’d guess that Gen Con would have preferred to settle the issue with Lucasfilm quietly, but that didn’t happen. Now they’ll get to negotiate a settlement in the open and with the help of a bankruptcy court instead.

Clearly, Peter (who founded Wizards of the Coast and sold the company to Hasbro) could pay this debt out of his own pocket if he wanted, but that’s why Gen Con is a corporation (an LLC, to be exact). One of the biggest reasons to incorporate a business is to insulate your personal assets from that of the business. Beyond your initial or continued investment in the company, it should be able to stand on its own. If it succeeds, the owners get to share in that success, but if if should fail or fall on hard times, creditors can only go after the assets of the corporation, not those of the owners too.

I’m hopeful that Gen Con will weather this storm and come out into sunny days soon. I’m not changing my plans to attend the show this summer—and every other summer to come.

I got back from Hollywood last night after one of the smoothest trips I’ve ever had. The good people at Paradox Entertainment (particularly Fred Malmberg and Jay Zetterberg) flew me out for a preview screening of the upcoming Mutant Chronicles movie and supplemented that with a couple of excellent nights out.

As I’ve mentioned here before, I’m writing the novelization for the film, and I turned in the manuscript nearly a year ago. That was, of course, long before the film had been completed, and I worked entirely from the script, using my imagination and my long experience with the Mutant Chronicles games to bring it to life.

It’s no surprise that director Simon Hunter’s film differed from the images in my head. As with most films, the story changed a bit during shooting and editing too, so there are some inevitable discrepancies between the movie and the script-based book.

To fix that, I watched the film twice. Paradox set up showings (for other business reasons than just helping out me) in a private screening room on the Sunset Strip, and I sat and took notes, tapping them out on my laptop as the film rolled on. Now I get to go back and polish the book until it more closely resembles the film. There aren’t all that many large differences to resolve, but being able to see the film means I can pay a lot more attention to descriptions of the people and places than I could before, and make them more accurate.

As for the movie, I loved it. I’m bound to be biased, of course, having worked on both this novel and for years on the games on which the film is based. But it looks great, the actors do a wonderful job, and there are some truly fantastic moments in it. I can’t wait until you all get to see it too.

My pal Mike Selinker just had his latest game published: Key Largo. Mike’s a wonderful and imaginative designer and has created a number of excellent games, but this one is something special because of his co-designers: Bruno Faidutti and Paul Randles. Bruno is one of the great European board game designers, but Paul’s the one that makes this project something Mike cares about so much.

Mike and Paul were the best of friends, but Paul died of pancreatic cancer just over five years ago. At the time, they were working on Paul’s final game design, which eventually became Key Largo, a game we can now all enjoy. Anyhow, Mike can explain it all far better than I. It’s a poignant story, of course, but rather than being a tale of woe, it ends up being a tribute to a great friend.

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The great guys at Pulp Gamer recently posted a podcast of the “Career Freelancing” seminar I gave at last year’s GAMA Trade Show. If you want to know what it’s like to make a living as a freelance game designer/novelist/whatever-else-I’m-doing-this-week, be sure to give it a listen.