In honor of Dangerous Games: How to Cheat launching today, I’ve updated my schedule at this year’s Gen Con, where the novel is set. This year, the show runs from August 15—18. I’m an Industry Insider Guest of Honor again, 11 years running. I’m also working with the Writer’s Symposium once more.
If you can make it down to Indianapolis for the show, be sure to track me down at one (or more!) of these events and say hi. My schedule includes:
How to Cheat, the second book in the Dangerous Games trilogy of thrillers set at Gen Con, is on sale now. I uploaded the ebook to the various resellers last night, and at the moment you can purchase it through:
Or you can grab it right here on my site. I’ll have it up with other resellers soon, and I’ll have print copies available in about a month.
Over at GeekDad.com, James Floyd Kelly gives it a rave review. He says:
It’s a whirlwind story… I read the entire 200 pages within hours of getting my digital copy. Matt’s thrown a great little mystery into the mix along with some fun name drops, more behind-the-scenes details of the game publishing world, and a very likable lead character and a despicable villain.
At Amazon.com, John Patrick gives it 5 stars! He says:
In this book we see the tone shift from mystery story to suspense story. The final act is straight out of an 80’s action film, complete with a Rocky-style reunion between the hero and his lady. This book was a quick, fun, read just like book one. I can’t wait to read book three and find out what happens in the final act.
At DriveThruFiction.com, Megan R. gives it 5 stars too! She says:
Fun. Fluff. Eminently readable. Something to curl up with and enjoy….
For a taste of the book, look below for a free preview that include the first four chapters of the book, including the murder of the book’s first victim.
Spread the word! Thanks for your support!
My next novel – Dangerous Games: How to Cheat – releases today, Tuesday, July 2. This is the second book in Dangerous Games, the third of the 12 for ’12 trilogies I wrote last year, and it’s set at my favorite place on Earth: Gen Con, the largest tabletop gaming convention in America.
People who read the first book in the trilogy – Dangerous Games: How to Play – often commented on how many real-life gaming personalities showed up in the book. (I posted a long list of them earlier.) To some, it may seem like I’m dropping names, and to an extent that’s true. I had a ball putting all those people into the book, but that’s because they’re all my friends.
I’ve been going to Gen Con since I was 13 years old, and I’ve gotten to know a lot of people in the tabletop gaming industry. For a long time, I made my living as a full-time freelance tabletop game designer, something I still keep my hand in. I’ve worked with literally dozens of companies and hundreds of different folks.
Once I started putting friends into the book, I found it hard to stop. There were just so many personalities that were perfect for one line or another. The main problem is that, even with three books to play in, I couldn’t possibly manage to work in everyone I wanted – or put them into the spotlight for as long as I would have liked.
Still, I did find space for a lot of them. Consider the following a checklist for the fine people who made their way into How to Cheat.
How to Cheat, the second novel in the Dangerous Games trilogy of thrillers set at Gen Con, is slated to be released to the public as an ebook on July 2. Backers of the Kickstarter campaign that funded the books have already been enjoying the story for weeks, but this is the chance for the rest of the word to get in on it too.
Print copies should go on sale through DriveThruFiction in August.
If you’re interested in grabbing the first book in the series – Dangerous Games: How to Play – you can purchase it here or through any of the regular channels. For one more week, you can also grab it as part of the Bundle of Holding +3 package, a pay-what-you-like bargain that features fiction from my fellow RPG writers Colin McComb, Greg Stolze, Mur Lafferty, Scott Fitzgerald Gray, John Scott Tynes, and Robin D. Laws too.
Either way, get reading. I’ll have How to Cheat ready for you next week, and How to Win – the third book in the trilogy – should be out in early August, just in time for Gen Con.
Steven Saus over at Alliteration Ink recently launched a Kickstarter for a new anthology of speculative fiction stories edited by Nayad A. Monroe. It features a fantastic lineup of storytellers, including Maurice Broaddus, Jennifer Brozek, Cat Rambo, Lucy A. Snyder, Tim Waggoner, and LaShawn M. Wanak, and it leads off with an introduction by Alasdair Stuart.
These are all writers you should be reading.
The anthology – What Fates Impose: Tales of Divination – is packed with stories about what happens when people can predict their future. Many of them go wrong, of course, in spectacular and entertaining ways. By way of a taste for the book, Steven sent me this guest post about his visions of the future.
Late on Wednesday, Allen Varney launched the Bundle of Holding +3. You might recall that the first one ran back in February and that you got a copy of Hard Times in Dragon City if you paid more than the average for it. The sequel – Bundle of Holding +2 – ran last month and featured a number of excellent indie roleplaying games.
This time around, the Bundle of Holding returns to its roots, featuring fiction from veterans of the tabletop gaming industry. Pay as little as $1, and you get ebook editions of:
Pay the current average or more, and you get a number of bonus ebooks too.
That’s a lot of reading for not much cash, and better yet, a portion of the proceeds goes to charity. This time around that bit of the bundle goes to two organizations that promote freedom of speech: PEN International and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Ironic bit of trivia: Allen Varney – the man behind the Bundle of Holding – is also a murder victim in Dangerous Games: How to Play. He not only agreed to have his fictional self get killed but then helped revise those bits to make sure I did it right. Here’s what he has to say about the book:
“In How to Play, Matt Forbeck writes a blood-soaked love letter to Gen Con and the roleplaying hobby. If you enjoy seeing famous game designers brutally slaughtered (and who doesn’t?), Dangerous Games is your victory condition.”
– Allen Varney, with the Lead Pipe in the Dealer’s Room
This is a fantastic lineup of books from a team of authors I’m honored to call friends. If you’ve been thinking of picking up Dangerous Games: How to Play, this is a great chance to do that and top it off with a stack of fantastic tales from other folks too.
There are less than 10 days left on this deal, so don’t delay. Get in on it soon, grab some great books, and give a little bit to some fantastic causes too.
That’s one long title.
Earlier this week, I launched a contest to give away a couple of Gen Con badges that the Gen Con Writer’s Symposium slipped my way with a wink and a nod and a “You know what to do.” I didn’t, really, so I did what I always do when confronted with such riddles: I made something up on the fly. Entrants had to post who they wanted to see at the Gen Con Writer’s Symposium either on Twitter or on that original blog post, and away we went.
In total, we had 57 entries into the contest. Some people mentioned multiple authors, and I went along with that in the enthusiastic spirit of fun I’m sure they were intended. Each person only got one entry into the contest though, no matter how many writers they name-checked.
The winner of the two badges for Gen Con and two ebook copies of Dangerous Games: How to Play is Kimberly Burke! She said she wanted to meet Maurice Broaddus at the show, and hopefully now she can make that happen.
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Now that summer’s here, my eldest son Marty is back to posting things on eBay for me once again. It’s hard to keep track of the steam of things he puts up there for auction, but they’re mostly games and books we don’t need around here anymore. This includes some author’s copies of things I worked on, like The Authority RPG (of which I wrote a chapter), Silent Death: The Next Millennium, and a whole slew of Brave New World RPG stuff.
If you win the auction for one of the items I helped create and would like them autographed or personalized, just let me know. I’d be happy to scribble something on them for you before Marty ships them out.
So far, we’ve had a lot of great entries for the The Dangerous Games Gen Con Writer’s Symposium Contest. Once again, to join, all you have to do is write on Twitter something like: “I want to go to Gen Con and meet <insert author name here>. #GenConWriters http://wp.me/ph1fv-1hT”
Your entry needs to include the following bits:
Alternatively, you can leave a comment on that original post. The grand prize is a pair of badges to Gen Con, plus that winner and the next five runners-up get copies of Dangerous Games: How to Play.
At the moment (10 AM Central Time on June 13), we have 73 entries, and they mention the following authors:
Note that superhuman fantasist Patrick Rothfuss is way in the lead, tied only by me. I have an unfair advantage there, of course, as I’m running the contest on my site, and I’ll let you in on a not-so-secret: I’m already in the Dangerous Games books. Mike Stackpole and Mercedes Lackey are close on Pat’s heels though, and it wouldn’t take much to swing the numbers their way. At the moment, though, it looks like Pat’s going to make an appearance in Dangerous Games: How to Win.
Which reminds me: I need to get back to polishing that book!
The fine folks in charge of my favorite event of the year (Gen Con) have given me two badges to the show to give away in support of the Gen Con Writer’s Symposium. Since Gen Con is the greatest gaming convention in the world, I decided to run a little contest to see who gets them both – one for you and one for a friend. Here’s how this works.
The contest runs on Twitter from now until noon Central Time on Friday, June 14. To join, all you have to do is write on Twitter something like: “I want to go to Gen Con and meet <insert author name here>. #GenConWriters http://wp.me/ph1fv-1hT”
To be clear, your entry needs to include the following bits:
For your convenience, the Gen Con Writer’s Symposium website has a full list of the writers who will be helping out with the seminars this year. You can name anyone on that list that you like. I’m taking part in the symposium, but you get no extra points for naming me.
At the end of the contest, I’ll randomly select a qualifying entry to win – probably by rolling a lot of dice – and I’ll announce the winner here on my site. The grand prize is a pair of 4-day badges for Gen Con. Marc Tassin, who does a fantastic job running the Writer’s Symposium, will mail the badges out to the winner. If that’s you, I’ll need your mailing address at that point.
The badges do not come with hotel, travel, event tickets, and so on. That’s all up to you to cover on your own. The badges are $70 each right now or $80 each after June 29, so it’s a nice prize as-is. To top it off, I’ll toss in free copies of Dangerous Games: How to Play ebooks for both you and your friend.
I’ll also randomly select another five runners-up, and I’ll give each of them an ebook copy of Dangerous Games: How to Play too.
In addition to that, I’ll keep a rough tally of the number of people who request each writer. I’m in the middle of revising Dangerous Games: How to Win – the third book in the series – right now, and I’ll give the writer with the most mentions a cameo in the book.
Spread the word, and have some fun with your entry if you like. Embellish all you want. Tell me what you want to learn from that writer, what you’d say to him or her, or even what game you’d play together. All that’s not necessary, of course, but it’s better, as in “more fun.”
Now, I realize some people don’t truck with Twitter. If you’re one of them, you can enter the contest by leaving a comment on this post instead. You don’t have to bother with a link or the #GenConWriters hashtag here, but make sure you include a writer’s name either way.
Thanks for taking part, and good luck!