If you’ve read a comic in the last 20+ years, you should already know Jim Lee. As an artist, he defined the look of the X-Men in the early ’90s. His X-Men #1 (written by Chris Claremont) is still the best-selling comic book of all time, having racked up 8 million copies in print. He parlayed that into becoming one …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

In my quest for gathering blurbs, I turned to Mike Stackpole too. I’ve known Mike for maybe 20 years, and when I was fresh out of college, Mike was already chasing down the kind of career I wanted for myself. He’d started out as a crackerjack game designer, both for tabletop and video games, and he parlayed that into a stellar …

With the blurb from Dan Abnett in hand – which Marc Gascoigne of Angry Robot had lined up for me – I set off to scare up some blurbs on my own. Asking someone for a blurb is the literary equivalent of asking them to help you move. You only ask it of people you know well enough to hope …