My latest essay is up at Storytellers Unplugged. When you click over to read it, be sure to check out the website’s snazzy and modern new look too.
This time around, I comment a bit more about the cancelation of my next novel from Wizards of the Coast. Now that it’s a few days later, I can honestly say I’m not all that bugged by it, and the essay might help to explain why.
Hobby Games: The 100 Best is up for an ENnie Award for Best Regalia (a “product used to complement role playing game play”). My pal Jim Lowder edited this book of 100 essays written by many of the best designers about the many of the best games, and my friends at Green Ronin published it. I have a single essay in the book myself, so I’d take home less than 1% of the award. Still, I think it’s worth a vote, and if you’re so inclined you can enter your ballot starting tomorrow.
Either way, be sure to check out the ENnie Awards. Even if you don’t vote, they make for an excellent guide to some of the finest things that came out for roleplaying games last year. Congratulations to all the nominees, and good luck to them all in the finals!
Erin Evans, one of my editors from Wizards of the Coast, called the other day. I immediately took this to be a bad sign. Editors are generally happy to work with you entirely by e-mail until something goes wrong. They they call you to break the bad news personally (which, honestly, is a brave and classy act). So when I got the voice mail on my cell phone, I suspected something was up.
I called Erin back, and she let me know in as polite and professional a way as possible that I do not need to keep working on the novel she commissioned from me, as the entire series of books (a sub-line for one of Wizards’ worlds) has been canceled. Management at Wizards apparently wants to do something different with the book department, although I’m not privy to what it is. They’ve removed a number of books from their schedule recently, including (it’s reported) their entire Wizards of the Coast Discoveries line of original fiction.
For myself, this is not a bad thing, as I’ve had too much to do lately to spend any time on the book, which wasn’t due until December. All I ever put on paper for it was the initial pitch. Despite that, I get to keep my initial advance, so I really can’t complain. It’s decent money for a few pages worth of work, and I now have a bit more time to work on more pressing things without feeling guilty about not getting rolling on the book yet.
The news is a bit sadder for the people who’d gotten farther along on their work, like Jeff LaSala, Marcy Rockwell, Paul Kemp, and Ari Marmell, plus Steve and Melanie Tem and many others I probably don’t know about yet. They all have my sympathies.
Here’s to my wife, Ann, who has given me 16 years of wedded bliss (plus five wonderful kids!) and still puts up with me as well as ever. Plus, she’s taking me to see The Dark Knight tonight instead of Mamma Mia! I’m a lucky man.
Michael Pinto at Fanboy.com gives Blood Bowl: Killer Contract #2 a shout-out, which is great. However, my local stores claim to not have gotten their copies in yesterday when they were supposed to arrive. Anyone out there seen one in the wild? Let me know!
The Comics Continuum has a preview of Blood Bowl: Killer Contract #2. This includes the first five pages of the book, along with the two basic variant covers.
Comic Book Resources has a set of previews too, and it features the third variant cover, which I’d not seen until now.
Look for it in stores today!
I just found out that Blood Bowl: Killer Contract #2 will be in comic-book stores tomorrow! It’s hard to believe that it’s already been four weeks since the first issue hit stands, but here it comes!
If you still haven’t picked up issue #1, you can find a preview of it at Comic Book Resources. Then, when you hit your friendly neighborhood comics store tomorrow, you can pick up both issues if they still have #1 in stock. In the meantime, check out Cover A and Cover B of issue #2!
My friend and the editor of my Idiot’s Guide books, Kris Oprisko of IDW fame, just started a new audioblog: Gomek Soundbombing. Kris is a huge music fan and has spent the last couple years living in Spain with his wife and kids, broadening his horizons, along with his musical tastes. Check it out!
My family’s been in the newspapers around here a number of times lately, for various reasons. My sister Kim–who lives with her family in Shorewood, just north of Milwaukee–is heading up an effort to give every house in the village a reusable shopping bag.
Meanwhile, my son Ken’s photo was in the Janesville Messenger. We were at a Cinco de Mayo celebration at the middle school where my wife Ann was a school social worker. (She’s moving to a new building next year to concentrate more on helping homeless students in the district.)
Then Ann, Nick, Ken, and Helen appeared in the Stateline News as part of a photo montage about the Fourth of July celebration here in Beloit down at Riverside Park. We had a wonderful time watching the concert and the fireworks. The city managed to get the park cleaned up well despite the flooding from previous weeks, and enough people stayed away because of the flooding that we had great seats and lots of room to roam around.
Of course, there’s also the news that my father will be back in the courtroom “in a few weeks.”
ETA: Kim was on the evening news in Milwaukee too!
