Prophecy Imminent

On Saturday, I got my first copy of Prophecy of the Dragons in the mail. It looks great. Emily Feigenschuh created a fantastic cover and her interior illustrations fit perfectly. Look for it on shelves everywhere in June.

This is the second book I wrote in the Knights of the Silver Dragon series of young adult novels I created for Wizards of the Coast. Other able authors have written most of the other books, and this one will check in at #13 in the series. It’s the first of a special two-part story that wraps up in book #14, The Dragons Revealed, due out in August.

Big Shots

We just had a photographer in here from Rockford Memorial Hospital. They’re going to place an advertorial in an upcoming issue of US News & World Report, and they chose our kids as their subject. We completed an interview with their writer last week, and the photos will help illustrate that piece.

The quads were born at RMH almost four years ago. The photographer who came by today, Tom Holoubek, also took the first ever pictures of them at the moments of their births. It was great to see him again. At the time he took the photos, he called it “the most amazing thing he’d ever seen.”

Of course, back then, we were terrified the kids wouldn’t survive. Born as 29-week preemies, their NICU doctor only gave them each a 70% chance to live. This time around, we were all smiles instead.

DJA Site Updated

Our able webmaster Peter Gifford of Universal Head just updated the Diana Jones Award website. The site now describes the 2006 shortlist in detail.

By the way, if anyone in the gaming industry would care to co-sponsor the annual Diana Jones Award party and awards ceremony at Gen Con Indy this summer, be sure to ping me. If you’re an industry professional who plans to be at the convention, be sure to set aside Wednesday night for the event.

Would You Dance?

At the Alliterates meeting on Monday night, Lester Smith gave me a copy of his first printed book of poems: Would You Dance? It’s not available to the public yet, but should be soon, via Popcorn Press.

This is great stuff, Lester at his best. To be more erudite about it, here’s the blurb I gave him for the back cover:

“Deft, sharp, sometimes dark, often hilarious, and always wise, Lester’s poems illuminate both the everyday and the sublime and make them shine.”

Dark Side, Here I Come

Today I bought the first Windows machine I’ve ever owned. I’ve used Windows machines a lot. At Human Head, I had a Windows laptop, and at Pinnacle, we had a dozen or so Windows computers, so technically I owned part of those.

This one, though, is the first that I’ve paid money for and brought into my house. Don’t get me wrong. I love my iBook, and I’m not giving it up.

This new machine, though, is for games. This is the one area in which the Mac lags. There are games for the Mac, but most of them are just ports of the Windows versions that come out months if not years after the original.

This is especially true for kids’ educational games. There are some older ones available for OS 9, but the latest Macs can’t run these at all.

So, Windows it is. Now, I just have to get my hands on some of those games.

Protospiel Update

Protospeil’s front page now lists me as the guest of honor for this year’s convention in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I’ve never been to this show before, but it sounds like a blast. It’s the only American convention I know of that’s dedicated to gathering aspiring board game designers, which seems like a great way for people to test ideas and get a lot of learning packed into just three days.

Michael P. Bledsoe Dies

Michael P. Bledsoe passed away on May 4 at the age of 50. He hadn’t been involved professionally in the gaming industry for some time, but back in the ’80s he designed the Dr. Who Roleplaying Game and the second edition of the original Star Trek Roleplaying Game for FASA. According to his obituary, he was buried near Biloxi, Mississippi, today.

I didn’t know Michael, but I enjoyed his work. His widow asks any of his friends from his days in the gaming industry to sign his online guest book.

Sextuple Hoax

This story’s a bit old, but I’m just now getting around to poking into it. On April 12, a couple that claimed to have given birth to sextuplets admitted that it had all been a hoax.

As the father of quadruplets, I’m not surprised that someone tried this kind of a scam. People ask us all the time “what did you get” for having so many kids at once. There’s a modern myth that if you have so many kids at once the big companies get together and hand you everything you could need.

Maybe that happens with sextuplets and septuplets, but quadruplets are old hat these days. We didn’t get much from companies at all. I think a three-month supply of formula was about it.

The people in our community, though, poured out the support for us. We had dozens of people coming in and out of the house at all hours to give us a hand with the kids: feeding, diapering, doing laundry, cleaning up, and more. At one time, we had 30 to 40 volunteers coming through every week.

This is the kind of support that matters more than money. It’s one thing to get cash to help out. Money always comes in handy. But we could not have purchased the sort of help that these wonderful people gave freely.

That’s what tripped up these hoaxers. When their community started to rally around them, the media got involved, and the whisper-thin web of lies they’d woven unravelled.

To me, this illustrates both what’s wrong with the world–and what’s right.