Scribe Awards Nominees Named

The IAMTW has named the nominees for its inaugural set of Scribe Awards. See the full list after the cut. Sharp-eyed readers may notice that my Prophecy of the Dragon snagged an award for Best Young Adult Novel.

Also, Steve Sullivan, one of my fellow Alliterates, has a novel up for the same award. My pal Jeff Mariotte has novels up for two awards: Best Speculative Fiction Original Novel and Best General Fiction Original Novel. Several of my fellow Black Library authors–Steven Savile, Nathan Long, James Swallow, and Christa Faust–picked up nods too, as did my friend Alice Henderson.

Congratulations to all the nominees! Here’s to learning about the winners at this year’s Comic-Con.

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Dragonships, Ahoy!

Via Publishers Lunch:

Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman‘s DRAGONSHIPS series, drawn amongst a back drop of Viking-like warriors, three opposing groups of Gods, ships powered by dragons and the ultimate quest for salvation and survival, to Tom Doherty at Tor, with Brian Thompson editing, at auction, by Christi Cardenas of The Lazear Agency (for Weis) and Matt Bialer at Sanford J. Greenburger Associates (world English).

Congratulations to both Margaret and Tracy, and to my agent Christi Cardenas, on this huge sale! (I’m sure Matt Bialer’s a heck of a guy too. I’ve just never met him.)

No Games Expo for Me

Sadly, I won’t be able to make it to Games Expo 2007, much as I wanted to. A rash of illness running through the house has put me behind on my deadlines, so it’s staying home, shackled to my computer instead. (Thankfully, it’s a laptop.)

It kills me not to be able to join my friends behind Games Quarterly for their inaugural show, but deadlines come first. I still plan to make it to Adepticon at the end of the month and GTS in April though. I hope to see some of you there!

Spiritkeeper Book Club

Barak Blackburn pointed out a report of a children’s book club in his local paper, the Daily Hampshire Gazette. In it, there’s a picture of a boy talking about a book he’s just read, my Secret of the Spiritkeeper. Barak sent me a link to the article, but it only lasted for a hour before expiring. Otherwise, you would need to pony up for a subscription to see it.

Thanks for the report, Barak!

Care to Tanga?

It seems I’m always shopping for a great deal on a new toy, and the internet is the high-powered rifle I use to hunt the big game, like the Wii I picked up last week. One of the coolest sites for picking up great deals is Woot.com. Their gimmick is they only sell one thing each day, at a rock-bottom price, until their stock is gone–unless it’s a Woot-Off, a rare event in which they sell items one after the other, around the clock.

If that sounds like fun, check out Tanga.com. This runs much like Woot, but feature not only tech gadgets but tabletop games. To top that off, they run puzzles every day, via which you can earn Tanga points to spend on the site in other ways. Apparently Scott Alden of BoardGameGeek.com and Jeremy Young and Matt Molen of Ãœberplay are behind Tanga, so you know it has some serious gamer cred. If you’re a gamer who loves good deals, be sure to check it out.

Campbell in Games Quarterly

I just received a copy of Games Quarterly #12 in the mail. Among other wonderful things, it features an interview I conducted with actor Billy Campbell. I really enjoyed talking with Billy, and I think you’ll enjoy reading the results. The magazine also comes with articles by Jeff Tidball, Mike Selinker, and Mur Lafferty, plus an interview with Will Shortz, the puzzle master for the New York Times. Cap that off with short fiction by Ed Greenwood and a Settlers of Catan expansion called Fishermen of Catan, and you’ve got great value for your US $4.95.

My Better Half in the News

My wife, Ann, is a school social worker in Janesville, Wisconsin. She works with grade-school and middle-school kids and supports homeless students throughout the district. Whenever I wonder about how useful what I do is–especially in the face of how screwed up society can be–I take solace that Ann’s out there fighting the good fight for the kids who need it most.

The Janesville Gazette just ran a three-part article about homeless students, and it includes some choice quotes from Ann. The pieces appeared on yesterday’s front page and today’s. If you’re interested in how my better half spends her days–mired in a reality that poses a stark contrast to my fiction–be sure to read the articles from Sunday (1 and 2) and Monday.

You may need to register for a free account to read some of the material. Either way, be sure to scroll down the page on Monday’s article to see a photo of Ann at work!

The DS, the Wii, and a Good Spanking

Recently, I needed to pick up a Nintendo DS Lite for a project I’m working on. It’s a great little machine. The PSP dominates it graphically, but the DS touch screen makes for a fun, innovative interface.

On a similar note, I embarked on a hunt for the Nintendo Wii. After a few days of searching, my pal Jason Blair tipped me off to a page on the Target website that gives in-stock information for stores near you. Using this, I found stock in Rockford, Illinois, only a half-hour drive from my house. Unfortunately, when I called to check on this, the people at the store denied they had any Wiis around.

I little more surfing found a comment that revealed that Target likes to hold on to its Wednesday stock until the evening. I called the same place on Thursday morning and discovered they had 15 units. After taking Patrick to the doctor for a previously scheduled appointment, he and I raced down and picked up one of the last three.

So far, we only have Wii Sports and Wii Play, but the kids just love it. The motion-sensing controllers are every bit as amazing as you might hope. Unfortunately, one of the controllers stopped sensing swings, which made playing baseball a bit one sided.

Fortunately, a Google search saved the day. It turns out the solution for dealing with an obstinate Wii controller is to turn it over and spank it with a sharp smack.

I wondered if this might be a gag to get people to break their remotes, but since ours was already broken, I figured I’d give it a shot. The first time I was too gentle, it seems, so I took a deep breath and whacked it good.

Viola! It worked!

IGDA and Karma

I had a great time at the IGDA meeting in Madison on Wednesday night. The speaker, James Gee, did a fantastic job, with much of his hypotheses about gaming and learning dovetailing nicely with Raph Koster‘s A Theory of Fun for Game Design and another project I’m working on. Tim Gerritsen and I sat on a panel with James at an academic seminar a couple years ago, but I left thinking he’d only scratched the surface of what his work is about. At the meeting, I got the full-bore version of it, and loved it.

I also won a new graphics card, courtesy of ATI. Now I can upgrade the old X600 I have to a shiny new Radeon X1300 PRO. To offset my good fortune, though, I got nicked for speeding on the way home.