Aural Review

In the first episode of a brand-new podcast, “Nameless1,” Daniel Gaghan covers a number of female characters in his “Women in Fantasy Review.” The first book he tackles is none other than Marked for Death, my first Eberron novel. (The next one up is Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, and you can’t ask for better company than that.)

Daniel talks about the three main females in Marked for Death: Esprë, Sallah, and Te’oma. He’s particularly fond of Te’oma, a flawed but powerful woman. I wonder how he’ll feel about her when he gets to reading The Queen of Death? While I didn’t intend it at the outset, the Lost Mark Trilogy is, in many ways, Te’oma’s tale.

Origins Online Registration Starts Tomorrow

Registration for Origins – the second-largest gaming convention in North America, after Gen Con – goes live tomorrow, May 24, at noon Eastern Time. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m one of the gaming guests of honor at the show this year, and I hope to see you there.

At the moment, I don’t know what my schedule will be, and I’m not listed in the events right now. I suspect GAMA will get that all pulled together soon. I’ll let you know details as soon as I have them myself.

I’ll arrive sometime on Thursday, July 5, and stay through to Sunday, July 8. (Normally I’d come in on the Wednesday before the show so I could be there right when the convention starts, but I’m spending July 4 with my family instead.)

See the full press release after the break.
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RIP Angus McBride

Word is that Angus McBride has left us. Angus was a phenomenal artist, illustrating dozens of military history books for Osprey as well as many of the covers for Iron Crown‘s Middle-earth Roleplaying Game. I had the honor of having his artwork grace Cities of Middle-earth: Minas Tirith, to which I contributed some small bits.

Angus was always a professional, and his art made even the most fantastic things seem grounded and real. He created some of the best artwork ever seen for The Lord of the Rings, and he leaves behind a stunning body of work.

House Hunting

Ann and I are on the hunt for a new house. When we bought our three-bedroom/one-bath home, we only had us and Marty in the house, and we had plenty of room. Now we are seven, and the quads will be five years old in about three weeks. While we love our house, it’s bursting at the seams.

So, if any local readers know of a five-bedroom (or four plus a den) house with at least two bathrooms going up on the market in southern Wisconsin soon, be sure to let me know. On the flip side of that, if you know anyone interested in a wonderful 3 bed/1 bath, we should have one ready to sell in just a bit.

And, yes, handling all this cuts into my writing time, but that’s how life works. If I waited until I had the time to do something, I’d never do anything, right?

Pirates of the Blue Kingdoms Hits Shores

My friends at Popcorn Press (fellow Alliterates Rob King, Lester Smith, and Steve Sullivan) have just released Pirates of the Blue Kingdoms, a fiction anthology edited by Steve and my friend Jean Rabe. I haven’t read it yet, but with a line-up of writers that includes Robert E. Vardeman, J. Robert King, Lorelei Shannon, Lester Smith, Marc Tassin, Kathleen Watness, James M. Ward, Paul Genesse, Brandie Tarvin, Steve Winter, Dean Leggett, Jason Mical, Kelly Swails, and Jean Rabe & Stephen D. Sullivan, I’m looking forward to getting to it soon.

Freelance Writing Tips

My friend Monica Valentinelli of Flames Rising fame (among other places and publications) just launched a blog aimed at giving freelance writers some of the tricks of the trade. Freelance Writing Tips is fresh and only now getting started, so stop on by and get in on the ground floor.

Heroes? Time?

In a recent comment, Hegs writes:

It’s unrelated but did you see the Episode 20 of Heroes?

It will please fans of Brave New World! I won’t spoil it…

I’m sad to report I’ve not seen any but a few minutes of Heroes yet. I hear great things about it, and Jeph Loeb, whom I’ve known and respected for years, is behind it, but I’ve not had the time.

It’s wild to see elements of BNW show up in TV and in comics (such as Marvel’s Civil War event), but I can’t claim to have inspired them. We’re all drinking from the same communal trash can of cultural wopatui, and sometimes it gives us similar visions.

It’s been a busy year so far. Outside of The Daily Show and the occasional Colbert Report, I haven’t watched more than a couple hours of TV since Christmas. Episodes of Lost are stacked up and waiting on my ReplayTV, but I haven’t been able to get to them yet. I predict I’ll end up picking up the DVDs of both Lost and Heroes this summer when things slow down.

As a freelancer, it’s always hard to maintain a balance between work and free time, and I often tack over hard to one side or the other. The trouble is that I like being busy, and I have bills to pay. I also have my wife and kids, who top everything else for me, and that doesn’t leave me much time for anything else some days.

No complaints though. If the worst problem I have is that I’m too busy to watch all the great shows on TV or see too many movies in the theater these days, I’m doing all right. Still, I’m going to find some way to see Spider-Man 3 soon. I’m too much of a Spider-Geek to not.

Cool Things at GTS

By the third day of any convention, the standard question is, “What’s the coolest thing you’ve seen?” I didn’t make it that far into GTS this year, so I never had a chance to answer that. To make up for it, here’s three cool things I saw at the show. That’s not to say there weren’t tons of other things, but these stuck out at the show and are things I remember even now.

Dust: The Game: Paolo Parente–a pal from the Mutant Chronicles RPG days–is an amazing artist, and he has his own project called Dust. He puts out toys, comics, and models kits irregularly, but they’re always full of sharp and sexy imagery. A stand at GTS showed off an upcoming board game for the setting, a Risk-like game with all sorts of cool components. Paolo’s day job is with Rackham, the French miniatures company that makes incredible things, but I always enjoy seeing what he does on his own.

Titan: Valley Games announced that it’s bringing back all sorts of classic games, including Hannibal and Titan, the all-time classic, plus others from the old Avalon Hill bookshelf line. Can’t wait to see these.

Phoenix Horizons: Damage Control Games showed off a preview of their upcoming starship battles miniatures game, and it looks great. It’s a spiritual successor to Silent Death, of which I’m a longtime fan and had the honor of working on the second edition.

There were many more things, of course, but these surprised me, as I hadn’t heard of any of them before. And now I’m looking forward to them all.