Moore for Free

Michael Moore’s latest film, Slacker Uprising, debuts today. I’ve yet to see the film so cannot comment on its content. However, the most interesting thing about the film is how it’s been released: online, for free, to anyone living in the US or Canada (or willing to pose as such). Love Moore or hate him, at least now you don’t have to pay to see what his latest fuss is all about.

No matter how you plan to vote in the upcoming election, take the moment to register to vote–and then this November 4 go out and do it. If the past two presidential elections have taught us anything, it’s that it doesn’t take a whole lot of votes to sway an election one way or the other.

RIP Brian Thomsen

I received a couple notices this evening that Brian Thomsen passed away of a heart attack on Saturday. I knew Brian from his days as the head of the fiction division at TSR, and although I never had the pleasure of working with him, many of my friends did. I just saw Brian at this past Gen Con, only a month ago and chatted with him for far too little time.

For Brian’s family and and our many mutual friends, I’m saddened he left us so suddenly and so soon.

GAMA’s Top Job Open

My friend Anthony Gallela recently announced that he is stepping down as the executive director of GAMA to join Bucephalus Games as its full time VP of Sales and Marketing. It looks like company president Dan Tibble‘s new venture is taking off, so it’s time for Anthony to jump on that rocket for the ride and hold on with both hands.

This, of course, leaves GAMA without an executive director, so the search for a new one starts… now. The board hopes to take résumés for about a month and then interview candidates at their board meeting in Columbus in November. If you think you’ve got the chops for the gig and wouldn’t mind living in Columbus too, give them a holler.

Multiple Causes

IMGP4385.JPGThat’s our kids on the first day of school, just a couple weeks back. The one on the right is in fourth grade, while the four on the left just entered first.

When we first found out Ann was pregnant with quadruplets, we took the news about as well as you could expect. In other words, we were terrified. Soon after, we started digging around for answers and looking for help. One organization stood out as the best group of people to whom we could turn: MoST (Mothers of Supertwins).

MoST is staffed and filled with people who’d already gone through the long, strange trip on which we had surprisingly embarked. They helped us get our heads screwed back on to our spines and gave us the informational and emotional support we desperately needed. Now, they’re starting a new funding campaign, and they have a video (posted below) that tells about the kind of people the money goes to help. Check it out, if only to see photos of families with even more kids than ours.

The Toy & Game Inventor Awards

200809170041.jpgThe fine people at the Chicago Toy and Game Fair (Chi-TAG) and the Toy and Game Inventors Expo (TAGIE) just launched a new awards program aimed at honoring not toys and games but the people behind them: the TAGIE Awards. On November 21, at a gala dinner at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, they plan to hand out the inaugural awards for Excellence in Game Inventing, Excellence in Toy Inventing, and “Rookie” Rising Star Inventor of the Year.

If you are a toy or gaming industry professional, you can join in for free by stepping up and nominating anyone you think is worthy of any of the awards. Then you can sit back and wait for the fun with the rest of us.

I’ve been asked to attend the dinner as a guest, and I’ll be participating in the “Meet the Experts” at the show on November 23. If you’re in the area and want to chat, this is probably as good a chance as any to sit down and say hi!

Mutants in the House!

mutant-chronicles-poster.jpgUPS just showed up with a big box o’ books from Random House. I sliced it open to find my author’s copies of my novelization of the upcoming Mutant Chronicles film.

There’s nothing like holding a fresh copy of one of your novels in your hand. It has that new-book smell.

To celebrate, I found a copy of a movie poster that uses the same image as the one on the cover of the book. I also tracked down a trailer for the film. Consider it a preview for the novel as well.

Flames Rising Needs Monsters

My friends at FlamesRising.com are looking for writers and artists to contribute monsters for this year’s run up to Halloween. I chipped in a fun one, which you can look for on their site next month. You can also find bits from E.E. Knight, Jess Hartley, Jason Morningstar, Monica Valentinelli, Rich Dansky, Gregor Hutton, Alana Abbott, Jared Sorenson, Jason Blair, Brad McDevitt, Leanne Buckley, Jeff Preston, Aaron Acevedo, and many more.

If you’d like to join the fun, just hit their site and give them a shout.