My author’s copies of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Drawing Superheroes and Villains Illustrated finally showed up yesterday. It’s the first time I’ve held a printed copy of the book in my hands, and it looks great. Yair Herrera did a wonderful job bringing everything I wrote to life.

On a personal level, the best part about the book is that I own all of the characters in it. Most of the writing I do is for tie-in novels, computer games, or book packagers, and while I can’t complain about the contracts, I don’t own very much of that writing. In this case, I negotiated a deal that gave me the underlying rights to all of the characters in the book. After all, what would IDW do with them?

Now, of course, the trick is figuring out what I should do with them. Seems a shame to let an entire book’s worth of superpowered characters lie fallow. Hmmm.

From what I’ve been told, my latest book—The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Drawing Superheroes and Villains, Illustrated—is in stores as of yesterday. If you’re interested in drawing all sorts of different types of super-powered characters—or seeing a whole slew of new ones that I created for the book—be sure to pick it up.

While I’m plugging that, let me give a big thanks to Yair Herrera, the Argentine artist who took my concepts and breathed so much life into them. Without him, all I’d have would be words instead of all the wonderful pictures—which would make for a lousy book on drawing.

Early last year, before Wizards announced it would release a new “fourth” edition of Dungeons & Dragons this year, I completed work on The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Creating Dungeons & Dragons characters. Unfortunately, because the book was written for the game’s third edition (3.5, really), it was bound to be outdated pretty quickly. Delays in the process added up to the book never coming out.

Ironic, then, that I find a review of the book posted on the web. My favorite quote:

Overall it’s not a bad book and the author Matt Forbeck does a pretty good job and if you can’t find a gaming group then it’s worth a read.

I’m so glad to know that. And if there’s really a copy of the book somehow out there, I’d love to see it—no matter which reality it’s from.

Man, I love that title.

Aaanyhow, here’s the cover for my next “How to Draw” book, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Drawing Superheroes and Villains, Illustrated. Because we didn’t have the rights to use any established characters, I came up with a slew of brand-new costumed heroes and crooks, which the awesome Argentine Yair Herrera shows you how to draw, step by loving step.

This book is scheduled for release on September 2, just in time for going back to school. And learning to draw new things.

My latest book, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Drawing Manga: Shoujo, Illustrated, was released yesterday, June 3. As I’ve mentioned here before, I’m about as far away from the target audience for this book as you could imagine, but I still had a great time working on this book.

Shoujo, for those not in the know, is Japanese for “girl,” and manga means “comics.” That makes “shoujo manga” code for “best-selling comics that girls around America are snatching up wherever they can find them.” They usually come in books that look like thick, oversized paperbacks, and you can pick them up in most bookstores and many comic-book stores too.

While I’m no shoujo manga-ka (“girls comics creator”), the artist on the book—the terribly talented Tomoko Taniguchi—is. She’s authored many wonderful volumes of shoujo manga, and she showed me around the genre like an expert tour guide threading a gaijin (foreigner) through Shibuya Crossing (Tokyo’s version of Times Square filtered through a Wachowski brothers lens).

If you love shoujo manga and have any interest in drawing—or if you know someone else who fits that bill—be sure to check this book out. It’s in stores now.

Penguin recently posted a cover and details about my next book with manga-ka Tomoko Taniguchi: The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Manga: Shoujo, Illustrated. This should be in stores on June 3. Before I started work on the book, I hadn’t dealt with a whole lot of shoujo manga (Japanese girls’ comics), mostly because as an American male narrowing in on middle age, I don’t really fit the target demographic.

Still, I had a great time digging into the genre and working with Tomoko on this book. She taught me a lot about shoujo in particular and Japanese culture in general, and she’s a talented and versatile artist who knows the subject cold. If you enjoy shoujo manga and drawing—or know someone who does—be sure to check it out.

A bit of digging through Amazon.com shows that I have three new books and one repackaged book due to hit shelves this year.

First up, we have the novelization of the Mutant Chronicles film. This is listed as shipping August 26, but I wouldn’t put too much faith in that until the film’s release date is set. Still, they have the cover there, which looks great.

Next comes The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Drawing Superheroes and Villains Illustrated. No cover up there yet, but it should look great. Yair Herrera of Chile drew all the gorgeous pictures, while I arranged the words around them. This is set for September 2.

After that, for September 9, we have a repackaged book in the Knights of the Silver Dragon Gift Set. This features the first three books in the Knights of the Silver Dragon series—including the first, my Secret of the Spiritkeeper—in a slipcased set. It also comes with Ree Soesbee’s Riddle in Stone and Dale Donovan and Linda Johns’s Sign of the Shapeshifter.

Finally, there’s the book I mentioned a while ago but couldn’t say much about. I still can’t say anything more than what’s up on this sparse listing, but since it’s a hardcover book titled Orcs, you might guess what it’s about. On November 4, you should be able to read the whole thing.

Whew!

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 recently began work on The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Superheroes and Villains, Illustrated. This is another “how to draw” book for IDW Publishing, in the vein of the manga books I worked on with Tomoko Taniguchi. This time around, though, the equally talented Yair Herrera joins me to bring my notes to life and provide the real meat of the book.

Because we don’t have the rights to use any established heroes in this book, I get to come up with a whole new slate of characters for Yair to draw. For me, this is tons of fun. Look for the book sometime in 2008.

This week, I wrapped up work on The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Drawing Manga, Illustrated: Shojo, the second I’ve written in the how-to series for IDW and Alpha Books. (Third if you count The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Creating Dungeons & Dragons Characters, which is a CIG but not about manga.) This is due sometime in 2008.

No, I’m not a Japanese girl—the people at whom shojo is targeted—nor have I ever been. However, my co-author Tomoko Taniguchi once was, and she’s one heck of a manga-ka of top-shelf shojo to boot.