It’s been quiet around here for two reasons. First, I just finished Dead Ball, the second in my Blood Bowl trilogy, at 11 PM on July 16. Second, on July 17, I bundled the quads and a couple of able helpers in the minivan and chased up after my wife and eldest son for a week’s vacation near Watersmeet, Michigan. Now I’m home again, struggling to get back into the groove.
In other news, the Black Library now has a page up for my first Blood Bowl novel. They purport to have a sample excerpt up there soon.
I was late on Dead Ball, far later than I’d like to admit, and my editor (Christian Dunn) was terribly understanding about it. He turned around the comments on it before I got back, and they glowed. He’s asked me to change a single scene that may have transcended the borders of good taste, at least in his estimation as editor of many of the Black Library’s fine books. I had wondered about this when writing the scene, so I’ll make the changes soon and send off the final draft straight away. The book’s due out in December, which now doesn’t seem all that far away.
After that, it’s some work on the top-secret game for a toy company that I think I’ve mentioned here before. All of the major chains (Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Target, Toys-R-Us, etc.) have picked up the game, so you should be able to get it just about anywhere in the US–at least anywhere near a city of any size. That should hit stores in December too. That’s about a month after High Stakes Drifter, which I mentioned a week or so back, from WizKids.
Then it’s on to revisions for The Road to Death, the next in The Lost Mark trilogy for Eberron. My editor, Mark Sehestedt, claims it’s better than Marked for Death. At least he asked for fewer revisions, so that’s a good sign. That book sees shelves in January 2006.
When that’s all done, I barrel into the next two books (for me, that is) in the Knights of the Silver Dragon series. These should hit stores in the summer of 2006.
Whew! I think I need another vacation. 🙂
