John Rogers is my kind of writer. He got a degree in physics but gave up working in that field to become a stand-up comedian. From there, he moved into TV, where he became a producer of Cosby. (I grew up listening to Bill Cosby albums. He’s the funniest man ever.) John also created the Jackie Chan Adventures cartoon and wrote the first draft of the Transformers movie. Today, he’s the showrunner for Leverage, a fantastic Robin-Hood-crooks-heist-a-week show on TNT.

But John’s an alpha geek at heart. Throughout all this success, he’s kept playing roleplaying games and reading comics. He wrote and co-produced an unaired pilot based on the Global Frequency comic written by Warren Ellis. He wrote comics for Boom! Studios and DC Comics, including the seminal run on the new Blue Beetle. He even chipped in a chapter of the latest edition of Manual of the Planes for D&D.

I started reading John’s writing on his blog several years back, and he’s drive-you-to-tears funny. When he’s not peeling back the curtain on how Hollywood works, he writes the kinds of political rants that I wish I had the time to write and the energy to defend. Fortunately, he’s out there doing it, and probably better than I could manage. I met him at Comic-Con a bit after that, and he’s just as hilarious in person.

Still, throughout all the fun, John has a sharp sense of drama and can be serious when he wants or needs to be. When he read Amortals to give me a blurb, he was in the middle of ramping up for the production of the third season of Leverage, which makes me that much more thankful for his kind words:

“I plowed through Amortals in one sitting.  Forbeck takes a smart sci-fi concept, examines its repercussions in society, and then weaves all that through a top-notch crime thriller.”

–  John Rogers

I’ve known Jordan Weisman for well over 20 years, and watching him work has been a real ride. He’s a serial entrepreneur, ricocheting his way from one great idea to another. He started out as one of the founders of FASA, creators of Battletech and Shadowrun, after which he founded FASA Interactive, which he later sold to Microsoft. After working with Microsoft for a few years, he founded WizKids, creators of HeroClix and Mage Knight, the first collectible, pre-painted miniatures game. I created their first collectible card game, High Stakes Drifter.

During that time, he also headed up the development of the Beast, the first commercial alternative reality game (ARG), designed to promote Steven Spielberg’s A.I. (I worked on that game for him with Pete Fenlon‘s post-ICE crew.) This later became the foundation for 42 Entertainment, a company he founded to develop almost every other major ARG you’ve probably heard of, promoting things like Halo 2, The Dark Knight, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Nine Inch Nails. His latest ventures include Nanovor from Smith & Tinker and Arcane Legions from Wells Expeditions, as well as co-writing a couple series of ARG-style novels: the Cathy’s Book series (with Sean Stewart) and the Personal Effects series (with J.C. Hutchins).

So, Jordan, he likes to make things. He’s like a mad scientist without any of the mad – a happy scientist of fun. Mix that with his sharp business acumen, and you can only marvel out how often his amazing plans actually work. To top it all off, he’s a fantastic family man. Watching him and his wife Dawne raise their sons from cradle to college has been stunning fun. He’s also a great friend, which is how I was able to get him to carve out enough time to read Amortals and write this blurb about it:

“Amortals starts with a bullet to the head and gets more dangerous from there. Matt Forbeck has constructed a disturbingly real future and placed at the center of it a fascinating character, a man destined to witness his own death time after time all in the service of his country.”

–  Jordan Weisman

The first time I met Richard Knaak was many years ago at one Gen Con or another. They tend to blur together over the years into one long convention that spans months in your sleep-deprived mind. He was a Dragonlance author back then, one of the best, although he’s added several feathers to his cap since. He’s written several novels for Warcraft and Diablo – burnishing his reputation as one of the finest tie-in fantasy novelists around – plus a long list of others. His latest World of Warcraft novel, Stormrage, just released this month and rocketed straight up USA Today‘s bestsellers’ list.

I had the pleasure of editing three novels Richard wrote for the Age of Conan series published by Ace. Besides the excellent writing, the best part about each book was its ending. Every one of them made me want to stand up and cheer the hero while also making me wonder what new adventures life might have in store for him. As both a writer and an editor, I can tell you that’s a damned hard thing to do, but Richard made it seem easy and natural, even when the trilogy came to a thundering end.

Ever the professional, he agreed to read Amortals and give me a blurb. He wrote:

“With Amortals, Matt Forbeck takes the hard-boiled detective story and the SF genre and forges a fascinating, gritty saga like none other!”

– Richard Knaak

If you’ve played many MMOs over the past few years, you’ve probably played a game that Jack Emmert helped create. As the chief creative officer of Cryptic Studios, he led the design for City of Heroes/City of Villains, Champions Online, and Star Trek Online. Every one of them offers sharp combination of engaging gameplay and clever storylines designed to keep you coming back for more.

I first met Jack back in the ’90s when I was the president of Pinnacle Entertainment Group. He was a huge tabletop roleplaying gamer in those days, and we had many beers at Origins, Gen Con, and other conventions. He contributed to our Deadlands and Hell on Earth game lines, and his writing was always sharp and inventive, a pleasure to publish. He was working on his post-graduate degrees at the time, and you could see how he jammed every bit of his brilliance into the game writing as he must have been putting into his school work.

After Jack moved on to the computer game industry and City of Heroes became a smash hit, he wound up hiring many members of my old Pinnacle crew – Shane Hensley, Zeke Sparkes, John Hopler, and more – some of whom still work with him at Cryptic today. I’ve managed to avoid that fate by stubbornly refusing to move, but he was still kind enough to forgive me for that and read Amortals. Here’s what he had to say about it:

“A near-future detective story that asks a fundamental question: what is it to be human when you never really die? A taut existential action thriller and a must read!”

– Jack Emmert

Ken Hite was once talking with someone who had started to slag Rich Dansky. Ken put a hand up to stop the man and said, “Before you continue, do you remember the bit in Grosse Pointe Blank, when John Cusack asks the friend he’s not seen for ten years to help him get rid of a body? And the guy just does it without asking a thing? That’s how Rich Dansky is for me.”

I can only agree. Rich is a mensch’s mensch and a fantastic friend. The fact that he’s also a hell of a writer helps explain how we came to hang in the same circles.

Rich started out at White Wolf countless years ago, where he was best known for his excellent work on Wraith: The Oblivion and outstanding books like Charnel Houses of Europe. That’s also where he was when I first met him, back when I made most of my living off creating roleplaying games too. He wisely managed to segue from that into a long-term career with Red Storm Entertainment, where he’s now the manager of design and also serves as the Head Clancy Writer for all of Ubisoft‘s Tom Clancy-related titles. This is a man who knows his technothrillers.

On top of that, Rich is a firecracker of a novelist. His Firefly Rain – originally published in hardcover by Wizards of the Coast‘s now-shuttered Discoveries line – is a as great a Southern gothic ghost story as you’re bound to find. The paperback edition is due out from Simon & Shuster on April 6, so those unfortunate enough to miss it the first time around can finally get to enjoy it too.

It’s no surprise then that when I asked Rich for a blurb that he kicked out a doozy:

“Amortals fuses cutting-edge technothrillers with old-school action and storytelling. Matt Forbeck tells a wickedly cool, scarily plausible story that hits the ground running and then picks up speed.”

– Richard Dansky

The next blurb for Amortals came from my longtime friend Monte Cook. He’s probably best known for his work as one of the co-designers of Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition, but his career has spanned much more than that. He started out in the gaming industry back in 1988, working for Iron Crown Enterprises. In 1990, he became the Hero System/Champions line developer and edited the first book I ever wrote entirely on my own: Western Hero. Even back then, it was clear that Monte knew what he was doing. He treated me well and always encouraged me to push harder and give the job my best.

Monte later moved on to TSR, the original publishers of Dungeons & Dragons, where he worked on projects like Planescape, Dark Matter, and The Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. When Wizards of the Coast bought TSR, he moved out to Seattle and became part of the core team for 3rd Edition. He and his wife Sue left Wizards in 2001 to launch Malhavoc Press, which published standouts like Ptolus and Arcana Evolved. A few years ago, he and Sue moved back to Wisconsin, and Monte joined my writers’ group, the Alliterates, which means I get the bonus of seeing him a lot more often. Since then, he’s also written the excellent The Skeptic’s Guide to Conspiracies and launched the ambitious and entertaining DungeonADay.com.

About Amortals, Monte said:

“With Amortals, Matt’s whipped up an action-packed thrill-ride with the occasional sucker punch to the brain you won’t see coming.”

– Monte Cook

For some reason, the book seems to inspire blurbs with boxing metaphors. That can only be a good thing.

As I’ve mentioned, I hit up a lot of great people for blurbs. One of the early replies came from Ben Templesmith, one of my favorite comic-book artists of the last decade. I met him through our mutual friends at IDW a few years back. About Amortals, he wrote:

“It kicks like a mule & whispers sweet nothings in your ear like Mike Tyson in a boxing match.”

– Ben Templesmith

Ben is one of those amazing talents that stuns everyone upon arrival. He’s most famous for his work as the co-creator of 30 Days of Night, a vampire story in which a band of bloodsuckers rolls into the northernmost town in the US to party just as the sun sets for 30 days. The high concept sets the story up, but it’s Ben’s artwork (along with Steve Niles‘s writing) that pile-drivers it down. Ben’s also rightfully well known for his work on Fell with Warren Ellis, and he’s proved his own chops as a writer with Welcome to Hoxford, Wormwood: Gentlemen Corpse, and Singularity 7.

Ben’s illustrations are the antithesis of the standard line art you see in most comics. When you first look at his work, you wonder how such energetic and seemingly rough-hewn pictures could tell stories so well. It’s because Ben does an amazing job of infusing his creations with such human expressions and poignancy that they form a fresh and sometimes disturbing storytelling style. Plus, the work’s just beautiful.

Ben’s also as hardworking and level-headed a guy as you’re likely to find, especially rare in someone with a sharp a sense of fun. He’s relentless in finding new things to do and then doing them well, even while maintaining a grueling calendar of promotional events. Speaking of which, be sure to check out his latest comic book, Choker, written by Ben McCool. It’s on stands now, and it rocks.