The InSpectres Teaser

Reactor 88 Studios just released this teaser for its upcoming proof-of-concept short for a film based on the InSpectres roleplaying game by Jared Sorensen. Reactor 88 plans to show off the short at this summer’s Gen Con. If you’re there and care to join us, the big event is Friday, August 6, at 7:30 PM in the Westin, Capitol III. I hear there will be an afterparty at the SubTerra Lounge, the same place we used after the Brave New World: Revolutions debut last year. Hope to see you there!

My Family in the News

Yesterday, the Beloit Daily News ran an article on the Welty Environmental Center, a great place out on the edge of town here that’s dedicated to teaching people (especially kids) about nature. Ann takes the kids out there regularly in the summer for various classes and activities, and reporter Daniel Thompson showed up while they were there. Read the article to see what Ann has to say about the place, and if you cock your head the right way and peer at the photo that accompanies the text, you might see Patrick in the blue shirt on the left and Nicholas in the white shirt on the right.

Release Dates Released

Angry Robot just released its upcoming publishing schedule all the way up to the middle of 2011. This includes my first two original novels, Amortals and Vegas Knights. According to this, Amortals will hit the UK in November 2010, and North America in January of 2011. Vegas Knights storms the UK in March 2011 and North America in April 2011.

To hold you over until then, be sure to look for Guild Wars 2: Ghosts of Ascalon by Jeff Grubb and me. It’s due out on July 27, only three weeks away! An advance proof of the book arrived at my door today, and it looks pretty snazzy. This should mean other copies are on their way to reviewers too. I can’t wait to see the real thing.

Back from the Rockies

If it seems like it’s been a bit quiet around here, that’s because I haven’t been around. I spent most of the last two weeks on one of those classic family road trips that American families insist on inflicting upon themselves every summer they can. (Cue up Lindsey Buckingham’s “Holiday Road” from National Lampoon’s Vacation.)

Ann and I packed the kids into the minivan for a two-day drive out to Colorado, where we spent a night at the house of my cousin Tim Kuhn, a professor at the University of Colorado. He was off at a conference in Singapore, but his wife Sophia and their two young kids – plus his mother, my Aunt Joan – took great care of us.

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Brave New World & InSpectres at Gen Con

In that last post about my Gen Con schedule, I buried a notation about this year’s Gen Con event from Reactor 88 Studios. According to the official listing:

Come see what Reactor 88 Studios is working on. We will be showing updates on the development of Matt Forbeck’s Brave New World, and we will also be be offering a first look at the film based on Jared A. Sorensen’s InSpectres, which is currently in production. We will talk about the processes of production as well as showcase some new film-making technology that is changing the way films are getting made.

This should be a lot of fun. I hope to see you there.

My Gen Con Schedule

Gen Con just posted the schedule for the Industry Insider Guests of Honor. Once again, I’m honored to be such a guest, and a number of fantastic game designers are joining me, namely Steven Charbonneau, Michael Elliott, Steven Ellis, Mike Gray, David Hill, Eric Lang, Brian Lewis, Stan!, Owen K.C. Stephens, Jeff Tidball, and Bryan Tillman.

Combine this with the stuff I already have set up, and I have ten events scheduled at the show. I’ll be all over the place, so be sure to hunt me down and say hi!

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Gibson on Futures and Writing

William Gibson (author of Neuromancer among many other fantastic books) spoke at this year’s BEA about how how the Future as we once knew it is over. We caught up with it and live in an eternal and evolving now.

In science-fiction – the great harbinger of the Future – stories about the Future rarely have really been. As he notes, “[I]maginary futures are always, regardless of what the authors might think, about the day in which they’re written.” You can’t comment on things that are in the distant days to come, and who would really care if you did? It’s far more interesting to discuss what’s happening now, and even if that inevitably leads to thinking about where it all might lead, that’s a warped reflection of where we are at the moment and the vectors upon which we believe we’re traveling.

The best part of his talk, though, comes in his closing paragraphs:

A book exists at the intersection of the author’s subconscious and the reader’s response. An author’s career exists in the same way. A writer worries away at a jumble of thoughts, building them into a device that communicates, but the writer doesn’t know what’s been communicated until it’s possible to see it communicated.

Novelists should carve the last clause on the wall above their desks. You don’t know what your book is about until its done. You may have ideas about it, and you may railroad your text down a rigid set of rails in that direction, but until you finish the book, you can’t really see it. That’s why you write the book in the first place.

Writing is an act of exploration and discovery, for the writer as much as for the reader. That’s where the magic is. You sit down to express an opinion or to tell a story, and when you’re done, you – and hopefully your readers – can figure out what you really meant.