My Gen Con schedule is starting to fill up. Besides my duties as an Industry Insider Guest of Honor, I’ll also be helping out with the Writer’s Symposium and hopefully something cool with my friends at Reactor 88 Studios. At the moment, you can find me at:
Friday, August 6, 1pm: The Short and Long of Writing Fiction
Saturday, August 7, 1pm: How to Make a Living as a Writer
Saturday, August 7, 3pm: This Pen’s For Hire
Hope to see you there!
My latest column is up at The Escapist. In “The Art of Writing Tie-In Fiction,” I discuss some of the differences between tie-in and original fiction. Stop on by for a read – it’s free – and let me know what you think.
Over on Booklife, Jeremy L. C. Jones is running a series of short author interviews about collaborating on fiction. In the latest installment, he hit Jeff Grubb and me up to chat about how we worked together on our upcoming novel Ghosts of Ascalon, based on the Guild Wars 2 MMO. Be sure to check it out.
My friends over at Gameplaywright.net have just opened up pre-orders for the special edition of The Bones, a book of essays about everyone’s favorite random number generators: dice. It features pieces by some of the brightest lights in the gaming industry, including Keith Baker, Jason L Blair, Greg Costikyan, Ray Fawkes, Pat Harrigan, Jess Hartley, Fred Hicks, Will Hindmarch, Kenneth Hite, John Kovalic, James Lowder, Russ Pitts, Jesse Scoble, Mike Selinker, Jared Sorensen, Paul Tevis, Jeff Tidball, Monica Valentinelli, Chuck Wendig, and Wil Wheaton. Plus a little bit by me titled “Daryl Hannah’s Dice Saved My Marriage.”
The special version is a hardcover edition limited to just 100 copies, each of which comes with the PDF of the book as well. Will Hindmarch, who put the whole book together, will sign and number each of these personally.
I already have my PDF of the book, and it’s fantastic. If you’ve ever owned a dice bag, if you’ve ever spun a d6 on its point, if you’ve ever wondered about the most basic tools we use to determine our fate, this book is for you.
Over at Storytellers Unplugged, I just posted a note called “Plans Change.” It’s about what the change in Angry Robot’s publishing schedule means for me. Go check it out.
The downside of Angry Robot moving from HarperCollins to Osprey is that they won’t be releasing any books for a few months during the transition. This includes both Amortals and Vegas Knights, which were slated for shelves in the UK this spring and the US this summer. The new schedule for the UK looks like this:
Amortals: November 2010
Vegas Knights: March 2011
The US schedule isn’t as firm quite yet, but the books should be out shortly after their respective debuts in the UK. The books will be distributed in the US through Random House, so they should be available just about everywhere.
The upside is that this gives me a bit more time to polish the books so they’ll be bright and shiny for your reading pleasure. As Troy Denning has often told me, an editor’s scorn for a late book lasts only a little bit, while a bad book sits on the shelf with your name on it forever, so I’m going to make the most of that.
While I was out last week, my pals at Angry Robot announced that they’d left the HarperCollins family and joined the growing Osprey flock instead. While this has caused some understandable turbulence in their release schedule, I think this is a fine thing. I was happy to be a HarperCollins author, but with the troubles wracking the publishing industry on a weekly basis HC has been trimming a lot of things, like the experimental and innovative HarperStudio.
A novel (in all senses of the word) imprint like Angry Robot, designed to work like an indie publisher within a massive conglomerate, had to look like easy pickings for any bean counter. It was always going to be a challenge to make it fit, and when you’re looking for things to trim the square pegs go first. Fortunately, Osprey had the perfect square hole ready and waiting to slot Angry Robot in.
I’ve been a fan of Osprey’s books ever since I discovered them in college. They do the best illustrated military history books in the world, bar none. I first spotted them by way of Angus McBride, the legendary artist. Angus had been creating covers for Iron Crown Enterprises‘s Middle-earth Role Playing books for years, including some books I’d worked on. When I spotted his gorgeous artwork on Osprey’s books too, I couldn’t help but be drawn in.
Angry Robot may seem like a strange fit for Osprey, but gamers know that the line between military history and genre fiction is thinner than many would like to admit. Dungeons & Dragons – the original fantasy roleplaying game – grew out of Chainmail, a set of historical miniatures rules. Modern games started with and owe a huge debt to war games, going all the way back to H. G. Wells‘s Little Wars.
To top that off, the fact that Osprey is already a long-established indie publisher means that the Angry Robot sensibilities fit better with it than they ever could have with a giant like HarperCollins. This seems like a great match, and I’m thrilled for Marc Gascoigne and Lee Harris, the soul of Angry Robot, as they join up with their new partners in publishing.
In a post over at Gameplaywright.net, my friend Jeff Tidball celebrates his first year as a full-time freelancer. In his post, he quotes something I said to him a while back:
Day jobs seem permanent, but it’s an illusion. Matt said he preferred knowing right where the wolf was all the time, right outside his door. He’d rather dispense with the illusion of permanence and deal with the reality that there are no guarantees.
Earlier today, I spotted the full cover for Ghosts of Ascalon on the official Guild Wars 2 wiki. Speaking of which, if you’re at all interested in learning more about the upcoming Guild Wars 2 MMO, that wiki is a great place to find a solid collection of the bits that have been announced so far. The entry on the novel, for instance, is filled with good stuff.
While you’re at it, be sure to check out the newly launched Guild Wars 2 blog. The game’s actual designers are peeling back all sorts of veils there with every entry.
Anyhow, the cover for the novel looks fantastic, and the image I found includes not only the front cover but the spine and back cover, along with all the teaser text too. I cannot wait to see this thing on shelves and to hold an actual copy in my hands.
Soon. Soon.
Ever imagine what might happen if Superman and Lex Luthor lost their jobs and wound up having to live together? Well, wonder no longer. DQniel Kaufman just released a pilot for his new web video series Roommates. Besides Dqniel, it features my friends Miranda Horner as Lois Lane and Mike Selinker in a stunningly funny turn as Mr. Mxyzptlk. Be sure to check it out.