Spiffed-Up Site

Amortals is due out in the UK on April 1, 2010, not even two weeks away. With that and Vegas Knights and Guild Wars 2: Ghosts of Ascalon coming down the pike this summer, I thought it was time to give the website a new look with a bit more spit and polish. I don’t normally pimp things too hard here, but I think it’s time to step that up for a little while.

Check out the sidebars. If you click on a sidebar’s header, it collapses. Also, you can drag and drop the bits in each sidebar to rearrange them as you like. Pretty slick stuff, all part of the Suffusion theme I’m using.

What do you think? Do you like the tabbed sidebar with all the images in it, or do you prefer the long sidebars I had before? And does the revolving featured-pages bit work for you, or is it too distracting. As with every good website, Forbeck.com is a constantly evolving work in progress.

Tools I Use: Scrivener

One of my favorite programs over the past few years is the Mac-only writing program Scrivener. If you’re doing any kind of creative writing, give it a try. I raved about it on my Twitter feed a couple weeks back, and David Johnson – the sales and marketing man and chief tea-maker for the program’s publisher, Literature & Latte – asked if I’d be willing to provide a testimonial for it. Once I finished up Vegas Knights, I did just that, joining a host of authors including Lou Anders, Tobias Buckell, Maureen Johnson, Antony Johnston, and Charles Stross on Scrivener’s testimonials page.

Here’s what I had to say:

Scrivener is brilliant, one of the best reasons to own a Mac. I’ve written comic books, screenplays, and novels in it, and it’s been invaluable in each format. The corkboard display makes breaking down a plot a breeze, and it helps keep me on track throughout the entire project.

Scrivener is that perfect sort of program. It’s intuitive enough that you can just jump in and use it, but it’s also wildly versatile and features plenty of power under the hood should you care to tinker with it. I wrote thirteen published novels in Word, and after writing my latest two in Scrivener, there’s no way I’m going back!

Gary Con 2 This Weekend

My son Marty and I will be heading up to Lake Geneva for Gary Con 2 this weekend. The current plan is to spend Saturday afternoon and evening there. If you’re in the area and up for some old-school type gaming, come on out and join us!

Family Games: Writers and Games Announced

Family Games: The 100 Best – the sequel to the award-winning Hobby Games: The 100 Best – should be in stores sometime next week. If you can’t find it at your friendly local gaming store, you can pre-order it through Green Ronin‘s site, and they’ll offer you their Walk the Plank game for only $5 (about $10 off).

Editor Jim Lowder did a great job with lining up some serious talent for this tome, and the writers chose some excellent games to discuss. It’s also bookended by two of my favorite folks. Mike Gray leads off with the introduction, and Wil Wheaton cleans up with the afterword. For my part, I wrote about the Pokémon Trading Card Game, possibly the most popular tabletop game of all time.

There’s a full list of the writers and their games after the break. For Internet-meme fun, I bolded the ones I’ve played. I’m batting .500, which isn’t bad, but it leaves me lots of great games yet to play.

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The Leverage RPG

If you’ve been reading my Twitter feed, you probably know that I’m a huge fan of the TV show Leverage. The acting is sharp, the stories are great, and it looks fantastic. I’ve known the series’ co-creator, John Rogers, for a few years, and the love he has for Leverage shows through in every episode. My son Marty has started watching the show with me this year, and we’re having a ball with it.

When I spotted that Margaret Weis Productions has a Leverage RPG in the works, I shot them a note about how much I loved the idea. They kindly offered me the chance to lend a hand with it, and I graciously accepted.

(This is the first meta-con involved with the game. Call it “The Writing Job.” Imagine Nate Ford saying, “Let’s go steal us an RPG.” The game is due out this summer, which means scrambling to fit it in, but that fits perfectly with the nature of the show, so I’m game – so to speak.)

Vegas Knights Away!

Late last Thursday night/Friday morning, I finished the Vegas Knights death march and submitted the manuscript to my publisher, Angry Robot. The book is slated to appear in the UK this June, and in the US in July, so I cut it awfully short. I’m pretty happy with the book though. It combines many of my favorite topics: gambling, Las Vegas, magicians, and more. I’ll be sure to tell you much more about it soon.

Next up, I’m working on a new draft of the Brave New World screenplay for Reactor 88 Studios. While time is tight on that, I’m going to be ramping up the PR machine for Amortals and Vegas Knights soon, so expect to see me spending more time updating things around here and getting the place spiffed up.

Amortals Cover and First Review

The fine folks at Angry Robot are gearing up their diesel-powered PR machine for the impending debut of Amortals. Check out the snazzy action-movie-style cover on the left for a good gander at their graphic-design chops. I’m in total love with it and have been staring at it as my computer’s desktop background for months.

I have a lot more to say about the book and to help promote it myself, but I’m still blazing away at Vegas Knights, my next novel after that. Just brace yourself for loads of information about the book and why you’re going to want to grab copies for yourself and all your friends.

While I’m chained to my keyboard, though, the Robots are still hard at work. They recently released e-book ARCs (advanced reader copies) of Amortals to their Robot Army. If you’re a blogger or reviewer with a penchant for great genre fiction, you can volunteer for the Robot Army and get early access to Amortals and all sorts of other excellent books too.

They must have some fast readers in the Robot Army because one of them has already posted Amortal‘s first review, and it’s a good one. (Whew!) As Lisa Farrell writes, “I really enjoyed this novel. It’s gripping, exciting, imaginative.” My favorite part of the review, of course, is its complaint: “My only gripe is, this novel is really American. I mean really American.”

Guilty as charged. I can’t wait for the rest of you to read it.

Ghosts of Ascalon

More news about my upcoming Guild Wars 2 novel is finally official. The book is done and should be out sometime this summer. The title has been changed from Fall of Ascalon to the far better Ghosts of Ascalon, which rings truer on multiple levels.

The biggest change is the addition of a co-author to the marquee: Jeff Grubb. Jeff’s a fellow member of my Alliterates writers group – although he’s in the Seattle branch, while I’m part of the Wisconsin lineup. I’ve known him since way back when I used to run RPGA events for his Marvel Superheroes Roleplaying Game at Gen Con, in the mist-shrouded past of the mid-’80s.

According to the official FAQ about the book:

As one of the chief game designers and writers of Guild Wars 2, Jeff Grubb has been heavily involved in working with Matt Forbeck to integrate Guild Wars 2 lore into the narrative of the book. As the editorial direction of Ghosts of Ascalon progressed, it became apparent that Jeff’s contributions to the novel merited his inclusion as a coauthor.

As one of the two in-house lore masters for Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who knows the game and its world better than Jeff. Couple that with the fact that he’s a fantastic writer with over a dozen previous novels under his belt, and you can guess at how much his contributions meant to this book. I can’t wait for you to read it.

P.S. Massively and Kotaku have both picked up on the story, and so far the reaction seems good.