A few reviews of my work — both past and future — have come in from different quarters over the past week. Here’s a quick roundup.

Over at BlogCritics, Greg Barbrick raves over Book of Extreme Facts. He bought it as a Christmas gift for his son but couldn’t resist reading it himself. I had a wonderful time doing the research for this book and co-writing it with IDW founder Kris Oprisko, and I think it shows throughout.

Guys Lit Wire enjoyed Guild Wars: Ghosts of Ascalon. As the review states up front, “Books based on computer games? It’s the best of both worlds!”

On her blog, Gill Polack gives Carpathia its first non-blurb review I’m aware of. She calls it out for being a bit pulpy in spots — a charge to which I’ll gladly cop — but she winds up loving it despite that. As she says:

Forbeck’s capacity to build tension is wonderful. Where most writers would add one, two or even three lines of worry, he adds a fourth and a fifth and they’re all well-founded and reasoned out. We know that things are going to go wrong (the Titanic, after all, did sink) but in Carpathia it goes wrong in all kinds of new ways. In a typically Forbeckian fashion, characters are not wasted and the story is fast and evil right until the end.

It’s a tribute to Stoker, and a good one.

To top all that off — and to get away from my work — fellow Angry Roboteer Lauren Beukes assembled a wonderful collection of recommended Christmas gift books from many of her worldly and famous writer friends, among which I’m happy to count myself. Check out both Part One and Part Two for the full list. (I chipped in a graphic novel recommendation in Part Two.) It’s a fantastic roundup, and I wish I not only had every one of the recommended books in hand but the time to read them all.

PLUS: Forgot to mention Paul Barrett’s kind review of Vegas Knights on his blog too. “A good book that will keep you engaged and is well worth your time.”

I just found out yesterday that Guild Wars: Ghosts of Ascalon was translated into Italian and released into the wild as I Fantasmi di Ascalon sometime last year. For me, that’s particularly cool because my sister Jody spent a dozen or so years in Italy and married a wonderful Italian man who’s now the father of their two beautiful sons. I’ve been to Italy three times myself, and I absolutely love the country and hope to get back someday and explore even more of it.

According to the Ghosts of Ascalon FAQ on the Guild Wars 2 website, other translations are still in the works too. The German edition has been out since last fall, and I have a copy of it on my shelves. The French version is due out from Bibliotheque Interdite (which also publishes translations of my Blood Bowl novels) in June, and a Russian edition is due out from EXMO at some future date.

If you parla Italiano, check out the book’s page at the Multiplayer website. It includes a flip-through preview of a good chunk of the book’s first chapter to get you started. Read it and let me know what you think.

Ghosts of Ascalon, the Guild Wars book I wrote with Jeff Grubb, just picked up a nomination for the Scribe Award for Best Speculative Original. The International Media Tie-In Writers (IAMTW) gives out the Scribe Awards at Comic-Con every year to the best in tie-in novels of the past year. In the past, the judges have nominated my Mutant Chronicles and Knights of the Silver Dragon: Prophecy of the Dragons novels, and Mutant Chronicles won the Best Game-Related Adapted novel award in 2009.

This time around, Ghosts of Ascalon is up against some stiff competition in its category from David Mack, Sean Williams, Keith R. A. DeCandido, and Nathan Long. I don’t know what the book’s chances of winning are, but I’m proud to be in the company of such great authors. It really is an honor just to have the book nominated.

Be sure to check out the IAMTW blog for a full list of the nominations in each category, plus the naming of Peter David as this year’s grandmaster. Congratulations to Peter and all the rest of the nominees!

Pat Rothfuss, author of the excellent The Name of the Wind, has set up Worldbuilders — his annual fundraising drive for Heifer International — once again. As an incentive for fans of genre fiction, Pat and dozens of other authors have donated all sorts of prizes that you can win for taking part in the drive. Every $10 you chip in nets you a chance at winning something cool, like an autographed copy of a great read. Plus Worldbuilders matches 50% of your donation, making your bucks go farther.

Alternatively, you can purchase things from Pat’s online store, all proceeds of which go to Heifer. Pat also auctions off all sorts of rare items like editorial criticisms, rare books, and more.

I just sent off an autographed copy of Guild Wars: Ghosts of Ascalon today, so it should go up into the book lottery soon. If you can chip in something too, please do. It’s a great cause, and it’s heartwarming to see so many authors and readers banding together to do some good in the real world.

Just a few minutes ago, my first post for Tor.com went live. It’s called “Dungeons & Dragons Returns to Comics,” and it talks a bit about the history of D&D and its publishers with comics. Then it riffs into a quick rave about the new D&D comic from IDW, written by my friend John Rogers, who also runs the TV show Leverage. (Those with decent short-term memories may remember I wrote part of the just-released Leverage RPG too. It’s all so circular.)

Tor.com is a great website, and I’ve been following it for a while. It started out dedicated to things published by Tor, one of the greatest science fiction and fantasy publishers in the world, but it’s steadily spreading out to cover more and more aspects of geek culture.

While at the World Fantasy Convention a couple weeks back, Tobias Buckell introduced me to a number of people in the Big Bar on 2. One of them was Irene Gallo, the art director for Tor, Forge, and Starscape Books. She noticed the fantastic cover Richard Anderson created for the copy of Guild Wars: Ghosts of Ascalon I was carrying around. We got to chatting, and she mentioned that Tor.com wanted a blogger to help out with gaming.

And so here we are. I should be posting regularly to Tor.com from here on out, as time permits. I hope you enjoy coming along with me on this new ride.

Last week, Ed Schlesinger, my editor at Simon & Shuster, sent over a copy of Guild Wars: Die Geister von Ascalon, the German edition of Ghosts of Ascalon. It looks amazing.

I don’t know if all German novels are printed this way, but Marco Lupoi and his team at Panini Books knocked this one out of the park. As you can see from the photo, it towers over the English edition. It also comes with a classy spot varnish on the text on the front cover and spine, and the cover has huge endflaps that fold into the book.

It’s also bit pricier. It retails for €12.95, which comes out to just over $18 at the current exchange rate. That’s more than double the $7.99 cost for the US version. Still, it’s gorgeous, and by all accounts Cora Hartwig did an excellent job with the translation, something that can’t be easy when you’re dealing with a fantasy world in which so much of what’s there has been made up from whole cloth.

If you’d like to see a sample of the German book, check out its publishers’ page. Scroll down, and you can download a sample of the first 36 pages of the book for free.

The German version of Guild Wars: Ghosts of Ascalon — Guild Wars: Die Geister von Ascalon — officially hit stores yesterday in Germany. It’s published by Panini, a publisher I know best from its long relationship with Marvel Comics in Italy and through my friend Marco Lupoi. If you speak German or can fake it well enough, you can download and read the first three chapters for free.

Big thanks go out to translator Cora Hartwig, as it can’t be easy to translate a fantasy novel like this. My favorite part of the free sample is the translation of my dedication:

Von Matt: Wie immer gebührt der größte Dank meiner Frau Ann und meinen Kindern Marty, Pat, Nick, Ken und Helen. Ohne ihre Liebe, Unterstützung und ihr Verständnis kann ich gar nichts tun.

It just tickles me to see “Frau Ann” and “meinen Kindern Marty, Pat, Nick, Ken und Helen.”

If you speak German, be sure to look out for Guild Wars: Ghosts of Ascalon — a.k.a Die Geister von Ascalon — in deutsch next week. It hits stores in Germany on August 24. If you can’t wait that long, head on over to GamesCom this weekend, at which my co-author Jeff Grubb will be reprising his Comic-Con role as official autographer of free copies of the book.

My friend John McLintock is running a series of contests to celebrate the 5th anniversary of his gaming blog “Roll Dice and Kick Ass!” As part of this, I’m donating a signed copy of Guild Wars: Ghosts of Ascalon. You can also win games and books from other authors and designers like Bill King, Academy Games, Q-Workshop, Jim Swallow, and many more. Check John’s blog for all the details.

Actually, Guild Wars: Ghosts of Ascalon hit stores yesterday, but I’ve been away from the computer for a few days and I’m just getting to write about it now. It’s available in numerous electronic formats as well as in the traditional flattened-tree-pulp version. If you put your mouse over the widget to the right, you should get a pop-up image that can steer you toward the right place to make your purchase. To whet your appetite, be sure to download a free PDF of the first chapter.

So far, the reviews for the book have been fantastic. My co-author, Jeff Grubb, has an excellent roundup of them on his site, and the four reviews on Amazon so far have all rated the book at five stars each. If sharp fantasy adventures set in a vividly built world are your thing, be sure to pick it up. I hope you get the chance to enjoy it!