Just a reminder that I’ll be at OddCon for a short while this weekend. I’m scheduled for a seminar on Saturday at 2:30 PM. It’s called “Game Fiction,” and it features Monica Valentinelli, Matt McElroy, Pat Rothfuss, and me.
I’ll likely have to take off in the early evening to get back home, so it’ll be a short trip for me. If you’re going to be at the show, be sure to track me down and say hi!
Ed Healy and Rone Barton of the Atomic Array podcast interviewed both director Simon Hunter and myself this week for a special edition Mutant Chronicles edition of their regular show. I had the pleasure of meeting Simon and his son at the premiere on Tuesday night (about which I’ll write more soon), and it’s a thrill to hear him hold forth on the film for the podcast.
By the way, if you want to see the Mutant Chronicles film in a theater, you’ll have to move fast. I understand it’s showing only for a single dayopening for its wider run–tomorrow, April 24–in a limited number of cities.
By happy coincidence, the Blu-Ray/DVD release is scheduled for my birthday, August 4. I already have my pre-order in.
A couple of things I contributed to have finally been announced, so now I can mention them here. Both of them are “celebrity jam” books to which many of the top names in the tabletop gaming industry are contributing.
First, there’s Family Games: The 100 Best. This is the sequel to Hobby Games: The 100 Best, and it focuses on games that are theoretically more accessible to the wider market. Once again, my friend Jim Lowder brings us all together for one of the best “best list” books around. The book features a foreword by the ever awesome Mike Gray, plus an afterword by the always incredible Wil Wheaton.
After that, look for Descent: Journeys in the Dark: Quest Compendium, Volume One. (Which is several mouthfuls for a title.) The inestimable Will Hindmarch gathers the designers for this one, which features an introduction by board game guru Alan Moon. If you play the game, don’t miss out on this.
With luck, both should be out this summer, and I cannot (but sadly must) wait to see them both.
Way back in 2006, I wrote about the many losses game designer and filmmaker Todd Downing had suffered in the previous year. I’m glad to say that things are looking up for Todd and his family, and you can read all about it in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. I wouldn’t say the story has a happy ending, because it’s clearly far from over. However, it’s great to see that good people can survive horrible years and have better ones ahead.
My latest essay for Storytellers Unplugged is now up. It’s a short note about my long history with the Mutant Chronicles, and what a great time I had writing the novelization.
It must be Mutant Chronicles Week.
Today, I’m doing an interview about the Mutant Chronicles film (or at least my novelization of it) with Ed Healy for the Atomic Array podcast. Tomorrow, I’m heading out to LA for the US premiere. (I’ve never been to any kind of film opening before, so this should be fun in many different ways.) Then, Thursday, the movie opens a limited engagement in select theaters around the nation.
Of course, if you can’t wait until then, you can always rent and watch it via Amazon video (which works with computers, Rokus, or TiVos) or through the Xbox 360.
To whet your appetite, here’s a five-minute preview of the film, featuring director Simon Hunter and stars Tom Jane, Ron Perlman, and Devon Aoki.
EDIT: The layout of my site cuts off the right half of that. Fortunately, you can see it in full, with other videos about the film, elsewhere.
My friends at NCSoft who work on City of Heroes/City of Villains just had their group renamed Paragon Studios and have a snazzy new logo to go with it. The best part, though, is this entry on their jobs board: Powers Designer.
That’s right. They’re looking for someone whose full-time job will be to design powers for superheroes.
I love living in the future.
I’ve been officially cleared to announce that the novel I’m currently working on is Guild Wars: Fall of Ascalon, to be published by Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster. It’s a tie-in novel based upon the hit MMORPG Guild Wars. As ArenaNet (the game’s developers) mentioned last year at PAX, the novel focuses on the time period between the original Guild Wars games and the upcoming sequel Guild Wars 2.
I’ve been working closely with the crew at ArenaNet on this book, and they’ve been a real delight. They count a number of excellent novelists among their staff, so they grok how a novel works and how to best braid it into the ongoing development of the computer game.
I can’t say much more about the book at this stage. However, I can report that the information about the book that you can find on some bookstore websites–like the page count, release date, and so on–seems to be placeholder material taken from the ISBN (book code) database. Don’t trust any of it yet.
More news when I can tell it.
Sadly, I had to cancel my trip to the GAMA Trade Show in Las Vegas this week. Too many deadlines have piled up like a 16-car accident on a slick, foggy day in front of me, so I need to clear through those before I can take that much time out of the office with a clear conscience.
I understand that GAMA has found people to cover my seminars for me, so no one should be forced to get through the show without any chance to chat about game design and freelancing. My biggest regret, of course, is not being able to see all my friends out there this week, but I’ll have other chances this summer at Comic-Con and Gen Con instead.
Back to work!
The very kind Jenifer Rosenberg (wife of my pal Aaron Rosenberg) recently interviewed me for ComicMix.com. Our chat covered my work from games to novels to comics and all points between and beyond. Be sure to check it out!