Beukes Takes London

Lauren Beukes – author of the excellent Moxyland and Zoo City, and fellow Angry Robot author – is due for a rare visit to London from her home in South Africa. During this, she has a signing at Forbidden Planet on July 29, from 6—7 PM. For this, you can order one of a limited edition of 100 hardcovers of Zoo City that are exclusive to Forbidden Planet. This is the first ever hardcover from Angry Robot, which makes it a fine collector’s item.

Lauren will also be a guest of the British Fantasy Association and the British Science Fiction Association during her trip. If you’re in the UK, be sure to hunt her down and grab a book fast. Look for all the details at the Angry Robot site.

I’m a Cheap/Dream Date

To help raise money for the ENnie Awards given out at Gen Con for the year’s best tabletop roleplaying games, the award committee asked me to serve as one of a slate of “dream dates” for the pre-ceremony VIP cocktail reception. This runs from 6:30 to 7:30 PM in the Westin Hotel Grand Ballroom IV. Because of the Reactor 88 events starting at 7:30 PM, I’m going to have to miss the ceremony, but I’ll be happy to hang around with the highest bidder for as much of the cocktail hour as you can tolerate me.

The winning bid includes a ticket to the reception, which normally goes for $35 alone. I’ll also toss in an autographed copy of my Mutant Chronicles novelization, pulled from my author’s stash.

The other dream dates include 12 to Midnight, Brennan Taylor, Cubicle 7, Gaming Paper, Jeff Tidball, Paizo Publishing, Pantheon Press, Posthuman Studios, Rite Publishing, Stan!, Triple Ace Games, White Wolf, and Wolfgang Baur. Bid for any one of us and help out the cause.

The minimum bid is $50, and at the moment I’m going stag. Don’t make me drink alone.

Stuck at Great America

That's Ken's head, then Ann and Helen. Marty's in the gold shirt, next to Nick.

Yesterday, Ann and I took the kids to Great America, along with their uncle Nick Kolinsky, who was down for a long weekend. The kids had each earned a free ticket to the park through a reading program at school, so it didn’t cost us much at all, and they always have a wonderful time there. Last year, Nick and Helen were just a bit too short to get on some of the bigger rides, but this time around they cleared that hurdle.

This year, we had some extra excitement. We got stuck on two of the rides.

The first was the Whizzer, which has been there since I was a kid. When we got near the top of the first drop, the coaster froze, and the clouds that had been mumbling about rain all morning finally started to make good on their implied threat. A staffer came up to reassure us and ask us to stay in our seats. About ten minutes later a woman with a tool belt and a man in a tie joined him. They explained the situation to us, then each grabbed on to the side of one of the coaster’s cars and gave us a push. The coaster’s motor finally kicked in then and brought us to the top and finally past the point of no return.

It was a great ride, and after we crawled out of the cars, the man in the tie gave each of us a coupon that would let us skip the line for any one ride. Pat was annoyed because he and his uncle Nick had been waiting to get on the first car, so they missed out on all the excitement.

Later in the day, we tried to ride the Giant Drop, a ride that hauls you up into the air on a pole and drops you into a second or so of freefall. This time, the ride got stuck before it even started going up. Unfortunately, the restraints were stuck too, and we had to wait ten minutes or so for someone to come let us out.

All we could do was laugh – and collect another line-jumping coupon.

Gen Con Party

The fine folks at Reactor 88 Studios have lined up an afterparty following their big event at Gen Con: Reactor 88 Studios: Behind the Scenes. With luck, we should have a rough-cut of the InSpectres proof-of-concept to show there. In that, you’ll see me in all my gory-zombie goodness.

Come to the event if you can and then join us at the afterparty. It’s at the SubTerra Lounge, the same place as last year, and it’ll be a blast. With three excellent DJs – you may know them by the names Matt Grau, Marcelo Figueroa, and Mike Eck – spinning tunes, it should be fantastic.

Shadowrun: Spells & Chrome E-Book Out

Sometime back in May, Catalyst Game Labs released its first new fiction anthology for Shadowrun, entitled Spells & Chrome. John Helfers edited the book, and it includes stories from Jason Hardy, Jason Schmetzer, Jean Rabe, Phaedra Weldon, Kevin Killiany, Steven Mohan Jr., Bradley P. Beaulieu, Steve Kenson, Dan C. Duval, Stephen Dedman, Marc Tassin, Jennifer J. Harding, William H. Keith, Ilsa Bick, and Mike Stackpole. Oh, and I wrote a sharp little tale called “No Such Luck.”

It’s only available in e-book format at the moment. You can pick up an epub version through Catalyst, or you can get the Kindle version through Amazon. I had a ball writing my story, and I think the other authors did too. If you have the chance to read it, let me know what you think.

I, Zombie

Last Saturday, I ran down to Bolingbrook, Illinois, to join the Reactor 88 Studios team in the first day of shooting for the InSpectres proof-of-concept short. I had been asked to play a zombie.

I spent the first couple hours at the Reactor 88 office, sitting for makeup. The talented and lovely Margret Ebert labored over me to make me uglier than I’d ever been, and she did a hell of a job. In advance of the shoot, she bought a suit at Goodwill and did horrible things to it, including tossing matches at it when her butane lighter ran out of fuel. When I got there, she made me look worse than the suit.

Once I got on the set, I had the easiest job of any of the actors. I had no lines, not even “Brains!” I just grunted and groaned a lot.

The strangest part of the day was lunch, when I weirded out everyone in the local Subway. Then I realized I couldn’t eat a sub without messing up my makeup, so I made do with a cookie and soda instead.

The trickiest part of the day had to be the fight scene I had with Brian Barber. We mixed it up pretty good, and the weather was so hot at one point that my makeup started to melt off of my face and drip onto his. This only inspired him to scream louder, so hopefully it comes out even better in the final cut.

The cast and crew and director Darren Orange were all fantastic and clearly there to have fun and make a film. Everyone was excellent. I made some new friends, played a little Guillotine while waiting to be called to the set, and then groaned myself hoarse. Good times.

We should have a rough cut of the film to show at the Reactor 88 event at Gen Con: Reactor 88 Studios: Behind the Scenes. That’s at 7:30 PM on August 6 in the Westin, Capitol III. I hope to see you there.

Ghosts of Ascalon on iBooks

My iPhone 4 arrived Wednesday, and I spent a lot of time poking around in it. One thing I discovered is that Guild Wars: Ghosts of Ascalon is available for pre-order through iBooks. The best part about it is that you can download a free sample of the book right now. As a bonus, it goes all the way into Chapter Three, much farther along than the free PDF you can download elsewhere. If you have an iPhone 4, be sure to check it out.

Massive Guild Wars News and the First Review

Jeff Grubb – my co-writer for Guild Wars: Ghosts of Ascalon – has been all over the place these days, promoting the book. Since it’s due to hit shelves on July 27, less than two weeks away, now’s the time, and I appreciate the help.

ArenaNet updated their page for the book. Head over there, and you can read a PDF of the first chapter of the book for free. You can also pick up a copy of a map of the world of Tyria that appears in the front of the book. On top of that, they updated the book’s FAQ page, on which they reveal that the book will be translated and published in German, French, Russian, and Italian, as well as the original English.

Jeff also wrote a blog post for ArenaNet on writing the book. Besides details about the book, he also reveals the name of the second book in the series (Edge of Destiny) and the name of its author – the founder of my writing group, the Alliterates: J. Robert King. As a bonus, at the bottom of that page, you can get free Ghosts of Ascalon wallpaper for your computer desktop in a wide variety of resolutions.

Massively interviewed Jeff about the book, and he gave out all sorts of good details about it. Shawn Shuster of Massively had a chance to read the book before the interview, and he offered up a kind review of it too.

Jeff also spoke with Mike Fahey at Kotaku, who’d also had a chance to read the book. Mike clearly enjoyed the book, calling out the fact that “It’s character-driven history.” In the course of the interview, Jeff also reveals that “We’ve taken characters out of the book that appear in the game, and there are figures from the game that appear in the book. There’s a strong connection between the two.”

Jeff went on to speak with Ten Ton Hammer about the book too. In his interview with them, he talks a bit about how the book worked out, and he also mentions Rob King’s book again, which I can’t wait to read.

Angry Robot on the Air!

I have the coolest publishers.

The Angry Robot podcast launched today, hosted by the excellent and talented Mur Lafferty. Listen in and hear Mur interview the Angry Robots themselves: Marc Gascoigne and Lee Harris. Also be sure to check out the official Angry Robot theme song by John Anealio, which heads off the episode.