The sales drive for Carpathia, my next original novel from Angry Robot, is gearing up. This Titanic-themed horror novel will be out in time for the 100th anniversary of the tragic loss of the “unsinkable” ship, which means we’ve less than eight months to go. Part of getting that marketing machine in motion involves the release of the cover, which you can see here.

The fine folks at Angry Robot showed me a half-dozen ideas for the cover, and we unanimously settled upon this one as the best of an excellent lot. Look for it on shelves in March, 2012.

Yesterday I learned that Martin H. Greenberg passed away. He was one of the great anthologists of SF and fantasy, and I cannot tell you how many of his collections I’ve read over the years. As a boy, I discovered him from his work with Isaac Asimov, and I always marveled at how often his name cropped up since then and how many fantastic authors he worked with.

While I was in college, I heard about him as a teacher from my pal Blaze Miskulin, who took classes from Dr. Greenberg at the University of Wisconsin—Green Bay. I had some great profs in school, but that one made me jealous.

Recently, I had a short story published in Hot & Steamy: Tales of Steampunk Romance, which Dr. Greenberg edited, along with Jean Rabe. I worked directly with Jean on the project and had no real contact with him, but it still gave me a thrill to see his name on the cover of an anthology in which some of my work appeared.

Dr. Greenberg brought a lot of happiness, knowledge, and fun to his authors, students, and readers. My deepest condolences, though, to his friends and family, who will miss him far more than the rest of us. We’re all poorer without him.

My son Marty is still posting more things on eBay. This week, he has a couple of gems from the collection of Liz Danforth. These include the rulebook from the Champions 2nd Edition boxed set and the extremely rare City of Carse from Midkemia Press, a generic fantasy sourcebook published in 1980. The current bid is 99¢, but these often go for more than $60 through online stores.

He has a number of other things from my collection up there too, including some stuff from Shatterzone and the Star Trek RPG. Check in for more later today too.

The kid’s working on saving up enough money for an iPad. Give him a hand. He’s almost there.

With school out, my son Marty is listed a bunch more things from the games collection in my attic on eBay. We also have a few things left from the collection of Liz Danforth up there now. If you’re looking for old, good games cheap, be sure to check out our listings. He’ll be adding to them regularly over the next few weeks.

You’ll also help keep Marty too busy to play ding-dong-ditch on me while I’m trying to write, so that’s a double bonus.

You can tell when I’m busy because I don’t post around here nearly as often as I’d like. Things like Twitter and Facebook make it easy for me to toss out quick updates or observations with far less effort, so I tend to rely on those rather than writing bits for here—or for GeekDad or Tor.com, both of which are kind enough to publish my posts too.

In the meantime, though, I took part in a couple interviews that were released over the past week. First, I joined the crew at the RedPhoneZone for a discussion of one of my favorite movie series, the James Bond films. We had a great time, ranging over the entire gamut.

Today, Sue London posted an interview with me over at Writing Insight. In it, I talk about the ups and downs of being a freelance writer, plus a description of me as a superhero action figure.

At the moment, I’m gearing up for a quick trip to Seattle later this week for a still secret-project, so expect a bit more silence here as I keep my nose to the virtual grindstone, even as I wander about.