London, 2nd August — After much debate, the shortlist for the fifth annual Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming has been announced. The award is given to whatever the Diana Jones Award Committee believes has best demonstrated ‘excellence in gaming’ in the previous year. This year the committee has shortlisted three items. In alphabetical order, they are:
Great Weekend
I had a wonderful weekend. On Saturday morning, I drove down to Games Day Chicago. The team there, led by the Black Library‘s US sales manager Vince Rospond, treated me like gold. They’d flown in 50 copies of Blood Bowl for the show, and we sold out of them just after 1 PM, just over three hours into the show. …
Games Day Chicago
A last-minute reminder that I’ll be at Games Day Chicago this Saturday. As noted on the Guests page, I’ll be there signing copies of my Blood Bowl novel, which is so spanking-new that it won’t be generally available in the UK until August and the US until September (unless you find it at Gen Con Indy, at which I’ll also …
Adventures for Reluctant Readers
Wizards of the Coast is launching a new library program called Adventures for Reluctant Readers, aimed at getting kids to read novels. The program includes a copy of Secret of the Spiritkeeper, so if you know any librarians who might be interested, please don’t hesitate to point them in the right direction. Thanks!
Back at It
It’s been quiet around here for two reasons. First, I just finished Dead Ball, the second in my Blood Bowl trilogy, at 11 PM on July 16. Second, on July 17, I bundled the quads and a couple of able helpers in the minivan and chased up after my wife and eldest son for a week’s vacation near Watersmeet, Michigan. …
High Stakes Gaming
At last I can finally mention something about this. (Non-Disclosure Agreements do cut into my fun.) High Stakes Drifter is the mystery CCG I worked on last year for a then-unnamed company. (It’s WizKids! Ah, that feels better.) It started out as something entirely different and morphed into the final game after several development iterations with guidance from Jordan Weisman …
Conan at Comic-Con
While I won’t be at Comic-Con this year (thanks to all you who asked), the good people at Conan Properties will. If you’re at the show, be sure to catch their seminar on Friday morning at 11:30 in Room 3. In addition to the guys from CPI, you can get the skinny on the latest Conan stuff from Dark Horse …
Calling all GW Artists
It seems the powers that be at Games Workshop have decided to return hundreds if not thousands of pieces of original artwork back to the artists who created them. Unfortunately, they’ve lost touch with lots of these folks. If you know any of them, please pass this on to them as soon as possible. I’ve included the entire post, plus …
To Sleep, Perchance to Scream
Here’s a fascinating article on sleep paralysis, the phenomenon of finding yourself paralyzed with a terrifying dream just as you drift off or wake up. I never knew this had a name, but I experienced it at least twice when I was in college. These were the sort of nightmares that keep you up for weeks because you’d rather not …
Poetic Alliterates
Last night at the Alliterates meeting, we tried something new. We each brought a favorite poem to read and chat about. I choose two. I love “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost, but picking it is like saying the Beatles are your favorite band. It’s just too easy. So, I also brought along a short poem by John Keats …