Battle Dice in Magazines

The latest issues of Games Quarterly and Game Trade magazines feature the Marvel Heroes Battle Dice game. GQM has an article I wrote on how I came to design the game, along with some insight on the design process. GTM doesn’t have much to say on the game this issue, but it comes with a promotional Stealth Wolverine figure bagged with it!

Play This! Lunch Money

In my first few articles for Games Quarterly Magazine, I pushed some of my favorite games. I wrote an article about Lunch Money from Atlas Games for issue #2, but the editors decided that the game’s subject matter might be a bit too edgy for the family-friendly magazine they wanted to produce.

I just remembered the other day that this piece was still collected stray ions on my hard drive. Rather than let it languish further, I thought I’d share it with the world. Written in 2004, it’s a bit dated, but everything I wrote about Lunch Money is still true. It’s a great game.

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Queen of Death Done

This week, I turned in the revisions for Queen of Death, the third in my Lost Mark trilogy of novels for Eberron. My editor, Mark Sehestedt, only asked for minor changes, and I burned through them.

I commented to Mark that it stunned me how far the trilogy had deviated from my original pitch. Few recognizable bits of the original remained. The story ended up surprising me as I went along, and I enjoyed it all the more for that. I hope those who read it feel the same.

Freshening Up

Some sharp-eyed readers may have noticed the site morphing around into different shapes at a moment’s notice as I played with the layout. Last night, I showed my wife a few new templates I was considering, and she said she liked what I already had here. Heeding her advice, I decided to just tweak things around a bit.

I changed the background color, added a navigation bar under the header, and tightened up the sidebar. I also made the main typeface a bit larger, which should make everything easier to read. Let me know what you think!

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.”