My favorite time of year is coming up soon: Gen Con (August 13—16)
I’m an Industry Insider Guest of Honor at my favorite show once again, and my schedule is packed. All of the seminars are in Room 212 of the Indianapolis Convention Center unless otherwise noted. All events (except for the VIG mixer) are free, although you must have a Gen Con badge to attend, and I recommend getting a ticket for each if you can, especially for the Friday afternoon concert.
I’m planning to be at Comic-Con this summer, from July 23—26. Anyone else out there going to be there? At the moment, I have one panel planned:
FRIDAY, JULY 24
3:00-4:30 Scribe Awards/Media Tie-in Writers Panel – third annual presentation of the International Association of Media-Tie-in Writers (IAMTW) “Scribe” awards, honoring such notable franchises as CSI, Criminal Minds, The X-Files, Star Trek, Stargate, Star Wars and Dr. Who. Followed by a panel of nominees, including James Rollins (Indiana Jones), Matt Forbeck (Mutant Chronicles), Bob Greenberger (Hellboy), Keith R. A. DeCandido (Farscape), Stacia Deutsch (Dark Knight), Nathan Long (Warhammer), Tod Goldberg (Burn Notice). With moderators Lee Goldberg (Monk) and Max Allan Collins (GI JOE). Room 4.
I hope to see you there!
I just finished reading This Is Not a Game, the latest novel from Walter Jon Williams, and honestly I’m surprised the book hasn’t gotten more buzz among the circles in which I hang. For one, Walter is one of the original generation of cyberpunks. (His big breakout book was Hardwired, back in 1986. I had the pleasure of sitting on a panel with him at the World Fantasy Convention in Madison, WI, a few years back, and I took the opportunity to let him know how much I’d enjoyed that book.)
For two, Walter’s a tabletop gamer. He wrote a Hardwired supplement for R. Talsorian’s Cyberpunk roleplaying game, and he’s a part of the legendary RPG group that’s included George RR Martin and Roger Zelazny, among many other talented writers.
For three, he’s been involved alternate reality games (ARGs) too. He worked on Last Call Poker, the ARG designed to promote the Western video game Gun.
This Is Not a Game is a modern-day thriller about a woman who designs ARGs for a living. In it, reality and ARGs blur together in exciting and innovative ways. Walter’s not the first to tread this ground–Charles Stross did a great job of working ARGs and MMOs into his Halting State, for instance–but Walter knows a lot about the inner workings of such games, and he puts it all on display here. It makes for an intriguing read and hopefully introduces a lot more people to how powerful these sorts of games can be. If you’re interested in such things, be sure to pick it up.
Yesterday, I wrapped up my first draft of the Guild Wars novel I’m writing and shipped it off to my editor and the fine people at ArenaNet. I had a lot of fun working on it, and I think it all coalesced into a fine tale in the end.
According to Simon & Schuster’s website, the book is due out February 23, 2010. I don’t know if that’s carved in stone quite yet, but it’s as good a guess as any.
Much as I loved working on the book, it’s a huge relief to have it out the door. I’m sure, given the nature of such tie-in novels, that it will come back for revisions, but I’m thrilled to know that the bulk of the work is complete.
Now I’m going to take a couple days to pay bills, maybe get my taxes going (I filed for an extension), and tackle another couple details that need to be knocked down. Then it’s back to the keyboard to wring Amortals out of my brain. It’s been lurking there far too long and needs to be let out.
I just posted my latest essay for Storytellers Unplugged: “Whistle While You Work.” Tune in to see me date myself and discuss what kind of music works for me when I’m writing.
The Janesville Gazette ran an article on June 4 about the new statewide smoking ban coming to Wisconsin. In it, they interviewed tabletop gaming-industry legend Duke Seifried. You might recall I sat next to “Uncle” Duke at Gary Gygax’s funeral last year and had a chance to catch up with him. Shortly after that, he had a triple-bypass in in May of 2008. I haven’t seen him since then, but I heard reports that he’d recovered and has been playing gigs with his jazz band, the Duke Seifried Trio, in both Janesville and Beloit.
The Gazette article relates how Duke was diagnosed this April with a lung disease called idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, likely caused by cigarette smoke. Although Duke doesn’t smoke himself, he spent many nights performing (and playing games, I’d guess) in smoke-filled rooms over the years and was exposed to a lot of second-hand smoke. There’s currently no cure for the disease but a lung transplant, for which Duke is too old. He’ll need to be on oxygen regularly within the year.
I first encountered Duke when I was in high school. I was publishing a gaming fanzine called The Quill and Scroll, and I spotted an ad for one of Duke’s wargame weekends. I called him up and interviewed him about it, which may have been one of my first interviews, now that I think about it. He was warm and chatty as could be, even though I was just some kid who’d called him up out of nowhere.
I’ve had the honor of meeting him several times since then, and you will never find a more engaging tale spinner with such a wild history. Besides founding one of the first miniatures manufacturing companies in the US (Heritage), he’s sculpted over 10,000 figures. He builds stunning dioramas of Middle-earth battles and runs massive games using them at big gaming conventions every year. He was the first vice-president at TSR, the company that created Dungeons & Dragons, and he put D&D toys into the mass market back in those days.
Duke also claims to have been a CIA agent, which I can’t verify, but honestly don’t want to. It’s one of those stories that’s so well told it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. You can enjoy it either way.
We often say we don’t take the time to remember people until they’re gone. I heard that many times at Gary’s funeral, but less so when Dave Arneson died this year. Gary’s death reminded us that we should take the time to honor people while they’re still with us, so that’s what I’m doing with Duke. If you get the chance, you should too.
The press release went out early this morning (my time), which means I can finally announce that I’ve signed a deal for two original novels with Angry Robot, a new imprint of HarperCollins run by my old friend Marc Gascoigne (formerly of Black Library fame). This puts my new novels in some excellent company among the early Angry Robot releases, including books by my friends Rob King, Tim Waggoner, Dan Abnett, and (also announced today!) Maurice Broaddus.
As the press release says, the first of these books is Amortals, a gritty science-fiction mystery thriller in which the wealthy have unlocked the secret of eternal life by backing up their minds and uploading them into clones–which works fine until the world’s oldest man wakes up in a new body and has to solve his own murder. The second is Vegas Knights, a modern fantasy heist/con story set in the City of Sin, in which a few young wizards decide to use their talents to break the bank, only to get played by wizards working for the house.
These are both stories I’ve been itching to tell for a long time, and I’m thrilled to finally be able to sit down and start writing them–just as soon as I polish off the first Guild Wars novel, of course! One of the banes of the working writer is that after a full day of writing other stuff, it’s difficult to carve out time to work on your own stories, especially without a guaranteed sale waiting for those books when you’re done. Now I have that, and I’m ready to roll!
More as I write it. Woot!
It’s on the internet, so it must be official. I’m once again to be an Industry Insider Guest of Honor at Gen Con this summer. That means you’ll be able to find me roaming Indianapolis from August 12—16, hunting for games, books, and friends like a hungry dog. Once again, I’ll be part of a great crew this year, including Richard Borg, Reiner Knizia, Matt Wilson, and my fellow Alliterates member Stan! My seminar schedule isn’t set yet, but I’ll post it here once it is–or you can find it on my Gen Con guest page then too.
The guys at Reactor 88 Studios also have a huge event in the works to promote the Brave New World movie we’re working on. I don’t have firm details on this yet, but once I do, you’ll be the next to know. Either way, I hope to see you at the show!
Although it’s not been officially announced, I can now tell you a little bit about the book that’s sucked up most of my time for the past few months: a revised edition of The Marvel Encyclopedia for Dorling Kindersley. This is an updated version of the original edition, released in 2006, and I’m told it should be available starting in October of 2009.
I had a wonderful time working on this book, and it gave me an excuse to read more comics than I have in a long time. I had to go through the book, identify the entries that needed updating–plus suggest new ones to include–and then make all of the changes. My editor, Alastair Dougal, did an excellent job keeping me on track and making sure I filled in all the holes I’d uncovered, and layout guru Robert Perry did a great job of gathering the best illustrations we could find and making the book look even better than ever.
I’ll let you know more about the book as it gets closer to its release. In the meantime, I think I need to make an assault on the editorial walls of Marvel Comics. Anyone out there have any leads? I doubt I’ll ever know more about the Marvel multiverse than I do right now.
I haven’t posted here much recently. There are many excellent reasons for this, but it’s mostly because I’m behind on my work and am spending as much time as I can on catching up. To see me repeat that theme, check out my succinct post for this month on StorytellersUnplugged.com. Thanks!
