Tied-In Released

The IAMTW has just released its first book, Tied In: The Business, History and Craft of Media Tie-In Writing. Edited by Lee Goldberg, the book features essays about all aspects of writing tie-in novels from Donald Bain, Max Allan Collins, Tod Goldberg, Elizabeth Massie, William C. Dietz, Aaron Rosenberg, Paul Kupperberg, Jeff Mariotte, Raymond Benson, Robert Greenberger, David Spencer, Greg Cox, Burl Barer, Jeff Ayers, Nancy Holder, Brandie Tarvin, Alina Adams and William Rabkin. There should be a hard-copy version available soon, but in the meantime you can pick up the Kindle version or other ebook versions for your e-reader for the low price of $2.99.

Keep your ear to the ground for the results of the IATMW’s Scribe Awards too. They’ll be given out Friday night at Comic-Con.

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.