Steve Sullivan, one of the illustrious Alliterates, launches a brand-new radio show tonight, along with author Linda Godfrey: “Uncanny Radio.” It concentrates on things strange and macabre, and it features an original theme song by another Alliterate, Tim Brown.
If you live near Burlington, WI, you can pick Manwolf (Steve) and Linda (Linda) up directly at 89.1 FM. For the rest of us, we can tune in live via the web.
I’m home today (like always, since I work here) with the wife and kids, enjoying another snow day. We’re supposed to have at least a foot of snow over the course of these 24 hours, including possible thundersnow.
Does that sound like a northern hero’s name or what? I saw lightning here during a snowstorm earlier in the year, flashing in the sky out back of my house. It seems so unnatural–this collision of distinct forms of weather–but there it is, happening anyhow.
What a wild world.
While I won’t be able to make it out to the Game Developer’s Conference later this month, I’ll be there in spirit. As a card-carrying member of the IGDA, I pitched in to help the Game Writers SIG with part of the writing for a party game for the IGDA Members-Only Party.
If you make it to the party, the black Villain cards are my fault. I’m looking forward to hearing the live-action results.
A while back (9/29/2006, to be exact), I wrote about a family friend, Steve Shea, whose wife Sallie had been diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis, a progressive lung disease, for which the only hope is a transplant.
They got the call today, and with any luck Sallie will be breathing easier by tomorrow. It’s major surgery, of course, so good vibes sent her way would be appreciated.
It’s a tragedy for someone else, of course, who once owned the lungs, but it’s a stellar example of how even in death we can find hope for life. I always keep the organ donor box on my driver’s license checked, and I hope you do too.
On a lighter note–and on the day after a crackerjack Super Bowl (I didn’t have a dog in that fight, but what a great 4th quarter)–ICv2.com reports details about the Blood Bowl comic I’m writing for Boom! Studios. As reported:
The Blood Bowl series, scripted by bestselling fantasy author Matt Forbeck, will be based on the Games Workshop fantasy football parody game. Blood Bowl: Killer Contract, like most other Boom! GW titles, will be a five-issue miniseries, which will then be collected into a 128-page trade paperback.
As for the “bestselling,” I don’t know for sure where they got that, but I like it. As far as I know, the only such list my novels have made was when my first Blood Bowl novel cracked Locus’s bestselling tie-ins list, so I suppose that’s it. Either way, I’ll take it.
Now, back to writing the next issue!
Fellow IAMTW member James Reasoner, his wife Livia, and their family lost their home to fire last Tuesday. The Western Writers of America have set up a fund to help out, and Livia’s agent has offered to gather books to help restock the Reasoners’ lost library. Details (by way of my pal Jeff Mariotte) after the cut.
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I know, I know. It sometimes seems like half the posts on this blog are about one sort of tragedy or another. Such things are a part of life, and as the gaming industry gets older, we’re going to lose more and more of our founders and heroes. It’s good to take a moment to remember them, especially when they’re still with us and can appreciate it.
Bob Bledsaw, president and co-founder of the Judges Guild, has terminal cancer with only a short while left to him. The Judge’s Guild published the first ever D&D adventures, before TSR (the game’s first publisher) got around to doing them. This included the legendary City State of the Invincible Overlord, which sparked many adventures in my teenage years.
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I forgot to mention another game I worked on that came out recently (well, before Christmas): the 1 vs. 100 DVD Game
I wrote a few hundred trivia questions for the game, and I had a ball doing it. I finally found a way to get paid for all those decades of accumulating useless knowledge. Honestly, though, after the first hundred or two, I’d run through all the easy ones and had to start looking to the world around me for any kind of inspiration. Fortunately, we live in a strange and interesting world, so such triggers aren’t hard to find.
I finally had a chance to play through the Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law game on the Wii, and I loved it. It looks just like the cartoon, and the actors did an excellent job with the dialog. I laughed lots, especially at the stuff I didn’t work on at all. (Jokes work better if you don’t know the punchline beforehand, I think.)
Sadly, my name was left off the credits. This happens, especially in large productions like videogames, and more especially if you’re not in the office when the credits list is created. While I’d love to see my name up on the screen, it matters little compared to being a part of it in the first place. It’s an unintentional oversight, I’m sure, and the checks all cleared, so I cannot complain.
As the critics have pointed out, this is a short game. It’s based on cartoons that last under 12 minutes, so that’s no surprise. For someone as busy as me, that’s actually a bonus, and I still clocked in several hours playing the game. I didn’t want to wait until my comp copies showed up, so I paid good money for my copy, and the game was worth every cent.
My friend Rich Kummer, former owner of ACD, pointed me to a new gaming blog a friend of his is writing as part of a class. Brandon is clearly a sharp guy asking intriguing questions. I may not always agree with his terminology or his sentiments, but it’s fun to watch him wrestle with various issues either way.
Meanwhile Matt McElroy tells me his excellent site, FlamesRising.com, has gotten a facelift, and it looks great. He’s also provided updated links to an interview with me, a review of Dracula’s Revenge (the board game), and a review of World of Darkness: Ghost Stories too. The site’s much more readable and has a fashionable Web 2.0 feel to it. If you enjoy horror or dark fantasy at all, give it another look.