If you noticed it’s been quiet around here, that’s because I just spent the last week in Stockholm, working on a new video game for Avalanche Studios. I can’t say much more about the game than that at the moment, but I’m having a ball working on it, and most of that has to do with the hospitality and creativity of the excellent people at Avalanche.

I spent a week in Sweden, and I was out with a different group of people every night. Much of that has to do with the fact that some of my earliest writing gigs were for Target Games, working on the various Mutant Chronicles games, and the people who were part of that now-defunct company have formed many new companies of their own in a kind of creative diaspora.

I’ll try to post more on this later, but right now my body is running seven hours ahead of schedule. That was only compounded by the fact that Sweden (and most everyone else outside of the US) still does their Daylights Savings Time the old way, so I had to “Spring forward” for a second time this year this morning.

Still, I had such a wonderful time that the only thing I can complain about is how tired it made me. That’s not bad at all.

The guys at Kenzer and Co. took some photos of Gary Gygax‘s funeral. They caught me in a few of them. In the second, I’m talking with Brian Jelke and Chris Clark, and in the third, that’s me between Brian and Monte Cook.

Some folks reported from ENWorld videotaped the ceremony and the gathering afterward too, with the family’s kind permission, of course. I haven’t heard yet about how they hope to share it, but I’ll let you know when I do.

Just handling a little housekeeping around here. I don’t know if anyone but me noticed, but the link to the Downloads (now Freebies) page was broken. I fixed that and revised the About page and put up a new photo there. I also put a new photo in the header. That’s me in Monteverde, Costa Rica, last summer, crossing a suspension bridge in a cloud forest.

Do you like that, or do you prefer the old illustration of me as a pirate? That came from the Doomtown CCG from way back when, courtesy of artist Lissane Lake. It’s a fun shot, and I have the original and its brother illustration hanging here in my office, but I wonder if it’s better to have something slightly more professional.