Leverage: The Con Job Is on Sale Now

ConJobCoverMy latest novel, The Con Job, hits shelves today – December 31, 2012 – all across the land. It’s the first novel based on the hit TV show Leverage, which sadly aired its final episode on Christmas night, ending a wonderful five-year run. Two others are slated for later in the year: The Zoo Job by Keith R. A. DeCandido and The Bestseller Job by Greg Cox. 

The Con Job is set at Comic-Con International, the annual pop-culture entertainment festival held in San Diego every July. I’ve gone to the show several times, and it’s the place where I first met one of the show’s creators, John Rogers, long before Leverage ever hit screens. It’s one of my favorite events of the year, and by the time you finish the book, I hope you’ll see why.

The set-up for the plot is that a crook is ripping off aging comic-book artists, then turning around and selling their art in an auction at Comic-Con, with much of the proceeds supposedly going to the Hero Initiative, a real-life organization that helps support ailing comic-book creators in need. The Leverage crew – a team of thieves who use their abilities to do good – discover that the money will be stolen instead, and they set a plan of their own in motion to recover the artwork and the cash and give the crook his due.

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Dangerous Games: How to Win is Done

DG-3DLast night, I wrote “THE END” on the final page of Dangerous Games: How to Win, the third and final book in the trilogy. I just created a PDF of the first draft and sent it out to all the backers at the $100+ level. If you’re one of those kind souls, be sure to check your email for that.

At the moment, I’m diving into the 10th of the 12 for ’12 books – the first Monster Academy novel – which still puts me behind the curve. As I announced on my blog earlier in the month, this means I’ve written 10 novels already this year – including Leverage: The Con Job, which hits stores on December 31st. I’m still shooting to have all of the 12 for ’12 books completed by the end of January, which will mean writing 13 novels in 13 months.

Wish me luck. Meanwhile, I hope you’re all having wonderful holidays. You played a big role in making 2012 a fantastic year for me, and I’m looking forward to 2013.

The Baker’s Dozen: Going for 13 in 13

As December rolls on, it’s clear I’m not going to be able to write a full dozen novels this year. There are a lot of reasons for that – including some cool things I can’t quite announce right now – but at the moment they mostly involve me wanting to be able to enjoy the upcoming holidays with my kids. I might be able to lock myself into a room for the last ten days of the year and get it done, but I have other responsibilities beyond just these books.

However, there is something I’m pretty sure I can manage, and that’s to write 13 novels in 13 months. That means finishing off all of the 12 for ’12 novels and the Leverage novel I wrote this spring in grand total of 13 months.

I’m trying to wrap my head around how that’s a downgrade from doing 12 novels in 12 months, and I can’t. It’s more like extending the streak, right?

So, that’s the new plan. A baker’s dozen of novels in a baker’s dozen of months, all winding up at the end of January 2013. Sound good?

Then it’s time to go make the donuts.

12 for ’12 Update

On Friday, just in time for the end of NaNoWriMo, I finished off Dangerous Games Book 2, tentatively titled How to Cheat. I’ve shipped off first-draft PDFs to my high-end backers, and I’m starting in on Book 3 today.

In November, for NaNoWriMo, I wrote over 102,000 words for Dangerous Games Book 1 and Book 2, plus the script for Magic: The Gathering: Path of Vengeance #4, my twelfth comic in that series. For December, I’m hoping to amp it up to about 150,000 words, which will include Dangerous Games Book 3 (How to Win) and the first two books of the Monster Academy trilogy.

That’s a hellaciously tall order, but if I can make it, I’ll have written a dozen novels in 2012, as planned. You might note that this still leaves me with a third Monster Academy book to write, which I plan to tackle in January.

This past summer, I replaced that one in my 2012 writing lineup with Leverage: The Con Job, a tie-in novel based on the Leverage TV show on TNT. That book was 80,000 words, much longer than the 50,000-word 12 for ’12 books. I also had to polish it and turn in a final draft. As a result of all that, it’s going to be in better bookstores everywhere at the end of this month. It took up a lot of my time, but I think it’ll prove to be worth it.

So, wish me luck on this final sprint to the end of this insane project. All I want for Christmas is another week. Barring that, I’ll take a metric ton of coffee!

The Next Big Thing Blog Tour

My friend Alex Bledsoe tapped me to be one of his minions join in the Next Big Thing blog tour. It’s kind of like a chain-mail letter – the things we used before emails and Facebook by people who don’t read Snopes.com – but instead of wasting postage it infects the blogs of authors around the net. Since it’s really just an excuse for each of us to tell people about our latest works, most writers don’t do much to avoid it – unless they’ve already had it recently.

The only cure for this infection, it seems, is to answer the questions and tag more folks. So, bear with me as I try to get this out/off of my system. For purposes of this self-interview, I’m going to talk about the Dangerous Games trilogy I’m writing at the moment.

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Dangerous Games Book 1 Is Done!

I just wrote “The End” on the first book in the Dangerous Games trilogy, killing off my NaNoWriMo goal of 50,000 words in a total of 16 days. On this, the final day, I cracked 5,600 words for a grand total of 52,252 in the book.

That’s not as fast as I was hoping for, but I’m still pushing to get a second novel done this month – right after I write my 12th issue of the Magic: The Gathering comic. If I’m lucky I’ll wedge a Thanksgiving celebration in there somewhere too.

I’ll be packing this up into a PDF and sending it out to my higher-level backers tomorrow. A couple weeks after that, I’ll offer it up to the other backers who have it coming, as a way of saying thanks for their patience.

Woot!

NaNoWriMo and Me

Sometimes when I tell people about the 12 for ’12 challenge, they say, “Hey, that’s like doing a NaNoWriMo every month!” National Novel Writing Month is an annual challenge that writers can accept in which they try to write 50,000 words over the course of a month. It’s been happening every November since 1999, and last year over 250,000 people joined in the fun.

Since I’m planning on writing at least that much – and hopefully a lot more – this month, I figured I’d sign up this year myself. I’ll post my progress here in the sidebar so we can all follow along.

If you’re taking part too, let me know. You can even check out my page and add me as a writing buddy. We’ll have a fantastic month!

Cool Kickstarters

While I’m not running a Kickstarter of my own at the moment – and have no plans for one till at least the end of the year – I am involved in a few of them and am backing some others that deserve wider attention. If you want to keep up with what I’m looking at on Kickstarter, you can check out my profile there and even follow me if you like. Meanwhile, here’s an annotated list for you.

First, the drives I’m (at least) tangentially involved with:

  • Dungeonlands: Tomb of the Lich Queen: A fantasy roleplaying killer dungeon for use with Savage Worlds and Pathfinder. Creators working on it include my pals John Wick, Jason Engle, Jim Pavelec, and Aaron Acevedo. It’s already funded, but if it hits its $16k stretch goal, I’m writing a short story to add into the mix. Time Left: 3 days!
  • IRPMUS: An improvisational roleplaying game from my friends Don Schlising and Jesse Theiler. It’s a fast and fun game with little prep time that mixes RPGs, LARPs, and improv. I’ll write the foreword for this one. Time Left: 10 days!
  • Hillfolk: My pal Robin Laws’ new tabletop roleplaying game, featuring his also-new DramaSystem engine. Robin’s lined up a fantastic crew of creators to chip in alternate settings for use with the game at various stretch levels, including Jason Morningstar, Michelle Nephew, Ken Hite, TS Luikart, Jason Blair, Emily Care Boss, Chris Pramas, Rob Weiland, Steve Long, Eddy Webb, and more to come. My WW2.1 setting – time travelers stuck in the midst of World War II – has already been unlocked. Time Left: 23 days.
  • One Shot: A dark roleplaying game about vengeance by Tracy Barnett. If it hits its $11k stretch goal, I’ll write a short story for a One Shot anthology including tales from Jason Blair, Jennifer Brozek, Hal Greenberg, Jess Hartley, Will Hindmarch, Josh Roby, and Ree Soesbee. Time Left: 24 days.
  • Global Domination: A deck-building board game of dark futuristic warfare by my friend Dan Verssen. Think of it as a dystopian Risk with more meat to it. I wrote the stories and flavor text for this game a while back and had a blast with it. Time Left: 28 days.

And now, some cool things I have nothing to do with:

  • The Coriolis Defect: A time-travel roleplaying game by Jay Little. You actually get to rewind your actions in the middle of a game and try again. Time Left: Ends today!
  • Six Guns Lasers: A supplement for the Twilight Sector campaign for Traveller. Time Left: 2 days!
  • 12 Days: A beautiful holiday-themed card game designed by James Ernest and Mike Selinker and published by Boyan Radakovich, all pals. Time Left: 3 days!
  • Project Eternity: A video game roleplaying game from Obsidian, the folks behind Fallout: New Vegas and many other excellent games. My friend Chris Avellone’s one of the designers and is writing a novella for this. It’s up over $2.5 million already. Time Left: 5 days!
  • Beyond the Sun: A science-fiction anthology edited by my friend Brian Thomas Schmidt, featuring stories from Robert Silverberg, Mike Resnick, Nancy Kress, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, and a host of other excellent authors. Time Left: 7 days!
  • GoldieBlox: An engineering toy for girls. My daughter’s a bit too old for this, but it looks cool without being condescending. Time Left: 7 days.
  • Decode DC: A 30-episode podcast about Washington DC from Andrea Seabrook of NPR fame. Essentially it’s public radio going straight to listeners for funding. Can’t be cut by people who may or may not like Big Bird. Time Left: 8 days.
  • Fireside Magazine #3: A great new fiction mag follows up two successful Kickstarters for the first two issues with a third. Brian White does a great job editing these. Time Left: 11 days.
  • Ammo Trackers: Chits to track your ammunition use in all kinds of games, from my friend Jeff Valent. Time Left: 14 days.
  • Dark Sci-Fi Maps and Deckplans: It’s just what it says, suitable for use with all kinds of games. The art’s by my friend Jeff Preston, so it’ll look great. Time Left: 17 days.
  • Geek-A-Week 4.0: The latest expansion to Len Peralta’s fantastic set of trading cards for geeks of all stripes. This one features my pal Richard Garfield, plus there’s a fan set too. The only real problem is I’m not in these – yet. Time Left: 19 days.
  • Lust: A prose/comic/art book by Steve Niles and my friend Ben Templesmith, the team behind 30 Days of Night. Time Left: 20 days.
  • Restless Dead: A zombie-fighting roleplaying game by my pal Matt Grau. It’s designed to be played at home or via the Infrno virtual tabletop. Time Left: 21 days.
  • Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition: The latest edition of the now-classic roleplaying game. This time around, it’s being published by the Onyx Path (a.k.a. White Wolf 2.0), and my pal Rich Thomas is heading the drive. It’s already at over $170k! Time Left: 21 days.
  • The Monster Hunter International Employee’s Handbook and RPG: My pals at Hero Games turn Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter International novels into a roleplaying game. Time Left: 21 days.
  • From the Sea: A charming animation project about a creature named Cthulhu who’s trapped in a dark carnival run inside the belly of a whale. Time Left: 21 days.
  • Castle Dice: A massive dice-building worker-placement game by my pal Luke Peterschmidt. He actually ran demos of this at the Diana Jones Award party at Gen Con, and people loved it. Time Left: 24 days.
  • King of Crime: A new card game about gangland battles in the 1920s, from my friend Dan Smith (a.k.a. Smif), who worked on Silent Death: The Next Millennium with me, ages back. Time Left: 24 days.
  • Timmy and the Moon Piece: The first children’s book written and illustrated by Mike Kunkel, who created the utterly charming Herobear and the Kid graphic novel. Time Left: 24 days.
  • Shaker: A video game roleplaying game by Brenda Brathwaite and Tom Hall, a pair of industry legends. Time Left: 24 days.
  • An Unforgiving Land, Reloaded: A series of stories and essays about life in the Black Rock Desert, by my friend Jason Waters. Time Left: 24 days.
  • A Tragedy in Five Acts: A Shakespearean roleplaying game from my friends Michelle Lyons-McFarland and Matt McFarland. Time Left: 25 days.
  • Alphabeast Soup: A children’s book about a wizard gathering ingredients for a potion, written and illustrated by my friend Andy Hopp. Time Left: 26 days.
  • The Settlers of Catan Gaming Board: A very cool and officially licensed game-tiles holder/board for Settlers of Catan. Comes in plastic or wood, with an aluminum board stretch goal. Time Left: 39 days.
  • Star Trek: Renegades: A fan film from the team behind Star Trek: Of Gods and Men, directed by Tim Russ, who wrote a foreword for my Star Wars vs. Star Trek book. He also acts in the film, along with Walter Koenig, Garrett Wang, Robert Picardo, and Ethan Phillips, among Star Trek actors. Time Left: 46 days.