The fine folks at Geek.Kon have announced that I’ll be a guest again at their show this year. I had a great time with them last year and agreed to join them again. The line-up of my fellow guests so far includes Bill Bodden and Aaron Pavao, both of whom were there last year, so it’ll be like getting the …

I had a great time at the Stateline Literacy Council‘s annual awards banquet at La Casa Grande, here in Beloit tonight. I was only there for about an hour and a half, but I got to meet a lot of wonderful people and catch up with my neighbor Tony Grover, who lives down the street. I also chatted with the two other authors …

Saturday afternoon, Marty and I drove out to Lake Geneva for Gary Con II. This is a small gaming convention that the Gygax family and their friends have held on the anniversary of Gary Gygax‘s death for the past two years. It started out as a gathering of such folks at the wake after Gary’s funeral. The family decided it …

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!

At this year’s Gen Con, my pal Dan Tibbles of Bucephalus Games gave me the birthday present he’d been threatening me with for months. I had no idea what it might be, and when he handed me my very own card for his company’s game Bill of Rights, he caught me by surprise. I had the chance to play the …

I had a fantastic time at the TAGIE/ChiTAG conventions this weekend. I drove down on Thursday morning and made it in time to join the panel on “Design and Development,” moderated by my friend Mike Gray of Hasbro. It’s always a kick to join Mike on one of these panels because I remember sitting in the audience of one of …

Later today, I’m off to TAGIE (the Toy and Game Inventor Expo) held down at Navy Pier in Chicago. Assuming rush-hour traffic doesn’t devour me alive, I should be on my first panel at 11 AM on “Design and Development,” moderated by the ever-excellent Mike Gray. Tomorrow, I have two panels. The first, “Online and Interactive,” starts at 10 AM, …

The voting is open for this year’s TAGIE Awards, and since the award ceremony is on Friday night, I assume that they’ll have to close the voting soon. For all my game industry friends out there, the Game of the Year nominees are strong. They include Reiner Knizia, Peggy Brown, and Arne Lauwers. Be sure to stop by the website …

I’ve been asked to be a speaker again at this year’s Toy and Game Inventor Expo (TAGIE). I had to back out at the last second last year due to a family illness, but I had a great time at the show the year before. The convention is held on Navy Pier in downtown Chicago on November 19 and 20. …

I had a jam-packed weekend. I started off by taking Ann down to the High Voltage Software Halloween party in Hoffman Estates on Friday night. This is held in a motion-capture studio–essentially a wide-open warehouse–filled with dozens of wildly creative people competing to come up with the best costume. Ann went as a geisha girl–a.k.a. ninja momma–while I broke out …