In my quest for gathering blurbs, I turned to Mike Stackpole too. I’ve known Mike for maybe 20 years, and when I was fresh out of college, Mike was already chasing down the kind of career I wanted for myself. He’d started out as a crackerjack game designer, both for tabletop and video games, and he parlayed that into a stellar …
Gary Con II Rocked
Saturday afternoon, Marty and I drove out to Lake Geneva for Gary Con II. This is a small gaming convention that the Gygax family and their friends have held on the anniversary of Gary Gygax‘s death for the past two years. It started out as a gathering of such folks at the wake after Gary’s funeral. The family decided it …
Stateline Literacy Council Banquet
This Thursday, March 25, the Stateline Literacy Council is holding its annual awards banquet at La Casa Grande, here in Beloit, Wisconsin. At the SLC’s request, I’ll be there for the social hour, from 5:30 — 6:30pm. They will have some copies of my books for sale, and 100% of the proceeds will go straight to the SLC’s benefit. I’ll …
Blurbs: Billy Campbell
With the blurb from Dan Abnett in hand – which Marc Gascoigne of Angry Robot had lined up for me – I set off to scare up some blurbs on my own. Asking someone for a blurb is the literary equivalent of asking them to help you move. You only ask it of people you know well enough to hope …
Blurbs: Dan Abnett
To help kick off my hunt for kind words in advance of the publication of Amortals, the publishing director at Angry Robot – Marc Gascoigne – sent me a starter blurb from Dan Abnett. It reads: “Matt Forbeck does near-future so well, I think he’s been there. Actually, I think he designed it. Then he kicked its ass.” – Dan …
Gathering Blurbs
I’ve had a dozen novels published to date, but everyone of them has been a tie-in. That means that the marketing for them has mostly on the strength of the brand to which the novel is tied. With my upcoming Guild Wars 2: Ghosts of Ascalon novel, for instance, Simon & Shuster is betting that the players who have ponied …
Spiffed-Up Site
Amortals is due out in the UK on April 1, 2010, not even two weeks away. With that and Vegas Knights and Guild Wars 2: Ghosts of Ascalon coming down the pike this summer, I thought it was time to give the website a new look with a bit more spit and polish. I don’t normally pimp things too hard here, …
2010 Scribe Nominees Announced
The nominees for this year’s Scribe Awards – given out by the IAMTW for the best tie-in novels of the previous year – have been announced. The awards will be given out at Comic-Con International this July. Congratulations to all the nominees, especially to my pals Nathan Long, Jeff Mariotte, and Aaron Rosenberg. I’m glad to see such great work …
The Future of Publishing
Here’s a brilliant little presentation that DK (publishers of The Marvel Encyclopedia I revised last year) put together for an internal sales conference in February, as Penguin’s blog tells it. It’s a clever piece about the end of publishing as we know it and the hope that gleams straight through that. Be sure to watch it all the way through. …
Tools I Use: Scrivener
One of my favorite programs over the past few years is the Mac-only writing program Scrivener. If you’re doing any kind of creative writing, give it a try. I raved about it on my Twitter feed a couple weeks back, and David Johnson – the sales and marketing man and chief tea-maker for the program’s publisher, Literature & Latte – …