I just completed an article for Games Quarterly Magazine about Daryl Hannah and Hilary Shepard’s new board game LIEbrary. (It’s their second published effort, believe it or not.) It tells the true story of how Daryl Hannah cost me my job and saved my marriage. You’ll have to wait until GQM #8 hits stands this spring to find out exactly how.
My Office
Over on his blog, Lee Goldberg mentions a coffee-table book he has about writers and their workspaces: The Writer’s Desk by Jill Klementz. Lee (who’s the VP of the IAMTW) posted a shot of his desk and challenged other writers to do the same. It struck my funny bone, so here’s mine, on a fairly uncluttered day.
I try to keep things ergonomic and straightforward. This is my office, which is one room located over an insurance business near downtown Beloit. On the desk, you see my iBook, which I carry with me just about everywhere.
On the left wall, that’s my good-bye card from Games Workshop: a copy of the cover of Deathwing put on a pasteboard and signed by the whole Design Studio crew. On the right wall, that’s Patriot’s mask in the museum display box. David Ross wore that at Gen Con 1999 for the debut of my Brave New World RPG. We produced Patriot’s public execution in Pinnacle Entertainment‘s booth, and David played Patriot. I still have the manacles around here somewhere.
What you don’t see here are the filing cabinets, my couch, a few other bits of artwork (including the originals of the pictures of me as Fasthands Freddy) and the overflowing bookshelves. I have one bookshelf on which I keep one copy of everything I’ve written or designed–or much of it, at least. It’s crammed full. This year, I should probably break down and expand the collection into another of the bookshelves.
Space Hulk Recap
The illuminating John McLintock wrote a two-part article about the old Games Workshop board game Space Hulk. As I read it, the memories flooded back.
I haven’t played Space Hulk in years. I don’t even have a copy lying around any more. But I loved that game.
While at the GW Design Studio, I worked on Deathwing and Genestealer, the two supplements for the first edition of the game. These were some of my first professional credits. I found out later that Genestealer won the Origins Award for the Best Science-Fiction/Fantasy Board Game of 1990, which makes it my first major award-winner too.
John’s comments on the game are spot on. If you’re interested in one of the most elegant miniatures/board games around, check them out.
Edit: John’s up to three parts on the article now. Be sure to read them all.
New Photo
I just updated the photo on my “About” page. Just so you don’t have to go digging for it, though, here it is. If you click on the thumbnail, you’ll see an even larger version too.
DC Comics Battle Dice Away!
I just finished the first draft of DC Comic Battle Dice for Playmates Toys. This uses the same system found in Marvel Heroes Battle Dice, which should be in stores this month.
Coming up for the stats for the DC heroes challenged me a bit more this time around. Marvel has published a set of encyclopedias that features numerical statistics for their characters, but DC doesn’t have such a resource. Sure, there are the Who’s Who sets from way back when, but I need something more modern. I relied on The DC Comics Encyclopedia from DK Publishing, supplemented by a lot of my own reading.
Being forced to read comics for work? Ah, it’s a rough life. 🙂
Words in My Mouth
The Stateline News, a free weekly newspaper published here in Beloit, ran a “People You Know” article about me in the Sunday (12/31/05) edition. If you’re a local, you already have it. If not, my apologies, but there’s no web link to any such piece.
Mostly, I’m happy with it. I always appreciate free publicity, even in a publication with such a clear right-wing bias. (It regularly runs statement papers from the Cato Institute as editorial pieces.) However, the article did liberally misquote me in a couple places. For example, “Our young people need to understand the value of education and hard work.”
While I don’t disagree that there’s value in education and hard work, I would never have given this quote. For one, I never refer to those under eighteen as “young people.” Second, to imply that only the young need these values–and that merely by being older I’ve climbed some kind of mount from which I can dispense my hard-earned wisdom–strikes me as condescending. It’s one of those clichés along the lines of “kids these days” that’s grated on my nerves ever since I was a kid myself. It’s right up there with walking uphill to school–both ways.
I’ve seen all sorts of misquotes and inaccuracies, though, in just about every article I’ve been close to. The speed at which local news is reported means the papers rarely have a chance to go back and check facts. The mistakes are rarely worth getting bothered about, so most of the time people just let them slide. Normally, I do too. As long as there’s no malice intended on the part of the paper or the reporter, it’s usually harmless.
I’ve done a bit of journalism myself, after all. I used to write for InQuest, and I still write an article for each Games Quarterly Magazine. Accuracy doesn’t come easy. It’s a goal you must continually strive for if you care to achieve it.
Happy New Year!
I launched this blog/website just over two years ago, and it’s been a wild and wooly time since. I’ll leave the analysis of the past year and predictions for the next to others (or for a later time, at least). For now, let me wish all of you and yours the very best 2006.
Dead Ball Hits America
According to the listing on Amazon.com, Blood Bowl: Dead Ball hit store shelves in the United States on December 27. This is the second volume in my Blood Bowl trilogy. If you’re in the area, be sure to go out and grab your copy right away!
Road to Death Sample
The Road to Death hits stores in January, and Wizards of the Coast has posted the first chapter of the book for free. This is the second in my Eberron trilogy, The Lost Mark. My editor, Mark Sehestedt, tells me this is a much better book than the first, and I agree. It’s amazing how much I’ve learned about writing novels in the past couple years, and I think it shows here.
History via Google
One of the best things about living in the Information Age is the ability to stumble upon websites built by people you haven’t seen in years. Case in point: Tim Pollard.
Back when I worked in the Games Workshop Design Studio, Tim and his pal Russ had desks in the same room with me and Bill King for a while. The four of us–and anyone who wandered through–kept each other in stitches most of the day. Which is why management moved Bill and I to a different office soon after.
In January of 1990, I joined a large crew to watch the Super Bowl at Tim’s house in Nottingham. I left England a month later and haven’t seen or heard of Tim since. But now he has his own site, complete with a blog, detailing his adventures as none other than Robin Hood. Too cool.