My Holiday Sale

Since we’re stampeding toward the year’s grand finale,  I want to do something to thank all of you for your support in 2013. In the spirit of the season, I just put the #1 books in each of my three trilogies on sale for 80% off. Until the end of the year–or whenever I recover from New Year’s Eve–you can grab each of them for only 99¢!

To get that price, you can buy them direct from me here, at DriveThruFiction.com, or at Amazon (click on the covers below). Each of these books stands alone and make for a satisfying read on its own, although if you like them, be sure to check out the others in the series too. Thanks!

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Happy holidays to you all! And here’s to a fantastic 2014!

Monster Academy 1 Finished!

This week, I put the finishing touches on the first Monster Academy novel, I Will Not Eat People. This is for the last of the four 12 for ’12 Kickstarters I ran, and I’m finally getting around to shoving it out the door. (See the previous two posts for some of the reasons why.) My backers should start getting ebooks this week, and hard copies should arrive in their hands before the end of January if all goes well with the proofs and the printer.

After that, I’ll release the book for the rest of the world to read. I’m planning on that happening in February, and you should be able to get it through all your favorite ebook retailers, with print copies available through DriveThruFiction.com soon after too. To whet your appetite, here’s the wraparound cover.

MA1-Perfect

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My-My-My-My-My-My Glaucoma

As I’ve mentioned, I was diagnosed with glaucoma back on October 30 of this year. I get a lot of questions about it, so I want to try to answer some of them here. Glaucoma.org is a fine place to dig a little deeper if you’re curious about it.

Glaucoma is a disease of the eye that usually involves an increase of the intraocular pressure. This pressure builds up over time and can damage the optic nerve. It happens slowly enough–and creeps in from the edges of your field of vision–that most people don’t notice it until it’s too late. By that time, you’ve already lost a good chunk of your vision. This is why the disease is called “the silent thief.”

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Rest in Peace, Pat Kolinsky

Just yesterday, I finally sent out the files for Monster Academy: I Will Not Eat People, the first book in the trilogy. I’m running late on the series, of course, but my backers have been kind and patient about it. A good chunk of the delays came down to me having an overwhelming amount of work on my plate this year, including the new edition of the Marvel Encyclopedia coming out from DK on St. Patrick’s Day of 2014, as well as a pair of trips to Shanghai to work on a couple of iOS games for Ubisoft.

Some more personal issues cropped up. Notably I was diagnosed with glaucoma, and my father-in-law died. I haven’t written about these yet because I’ve been too busy dealing with the fallout, but now it’s time.

Let me take those in order of greatest importance.

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Crossover Day!

As you may recall from last year, my pals at Zombie Orpheus ran a huge Kickstarter for their fantastic film The Gamers: Hands of Fate, which is mostly set at Gen Con, my favorite event of the year. As part of that, they asked me if I’d be interested setting up a crossover between the movie and my then-upcoming Gen Con thriller, Dangerous Games: How to Play. 

Right after I was through doing my happy dance, I said yes.

Since then, the film has been released to backers and has racked up the rave reviews. The Zombie Orpheus folks have also started to release the extended edition for free on YouTube, one bit at a time. Today, they released the episode in which Leo Lamb walks out of the film and into Dangerous Games: How to Play.

Better yet, Scott C. Brown, the actor who plays Leo, reads aloud the piece in which Leo appears in the book–and makes a horrifying discovery.

How cool is that? Better yet, you can watch the whole film online for only $10. And! You can still grab Dangerous Games: How to Play for only 99¢ for the Kindle. For now.

Many thanks to Scott Brown, Ben Dobyns, Matt Vancil, and the rest of the crew at Zombie Orpheus for making this happen.

Go, watch, listen, read, enjoy. 🙂

November Appearances

Writers Series Flier-Panel 11-13I have three appearances scheduled for next month, one in South Dakota, one in Milwaukee, and one right here in Beloit.

First up, I’ll be at Nanocon at Dakota State University from November 8—10, along with luminaries like Richard Dansky, Geoffrey Long, and Ken Rolston. In particular, I have a keynote speech at 10 AM on November 9 about how intriguing choices are the common glue that makes both great games and stories stick together.

The following Tuesday, November 12, at 6:30 PM, I’m speaking at Mount Mary University with Patrick Tomlinson about world and language building. This is free and open to the public, so join us if you can.

The Thursday after that, November 14, I’ve been asked to join a local author fair at the Beloit Public Library, the place that taught me more about the love of reading than anywhere outside my home. That runs from 4—6 PM and, again, it’s free and open to the public.

Hope to see you out there!

Two Kickstarters for You

You can tell I’m busy when I don’t get around to updating the blog for, um– Wow, has it been five weeks?

It was a crazy five weeks. We started our eldest at high school and the quads at middle school. I spent a week in China working on a couple upcoming iOS games for Ubisoft Shanghai. And just last night I sent off the last chunk of the new edition of the Marvel Encyclopedia, which is due out in March of 2014–or tomorrow, in publishing terms.

Meanwhile, other things keep happening. Case in point, I’m involved in two Kickstarters at the moment. The first is Cthulhu Haiku II and More Mythos Madness, an anthology from my fellow Alliterate and longtime pal Lester Smith. This is becoming an annual tradition with Les, and the first book was a hoot. I’m honored to be chipping in a short tale for this one. It’s already funded–the goal was $13, after all–so you’re guaranteed to get a book if you join in. As I write this, you only have about 48 hours to join in.

I’m also involved in Help Fund My Robot Army and Other Improbable Kickstarters, edited by anthology superstar John Joseph Adams. As you might guess from the title, this is an anthology of stories told in the form of Kickstarter drives, being funded on Kickstarter. It’s so meta, I couldn’t resist it. I suggest you don’t even try.

My tale will be about time travel, which is going to make for a bit of a twisted Kickstarter page. You’ll see. This one’s already funded too, and we have around 68 hours to go, so don’t wait long. Go back it.

Now that I’m done with the Marvel book, it’s back to finishing the Monster Academy books for me, plus knocking out a few short stories I’ve promised people for other things. Then it’s on to Loot Drop (the original novel I sold to Tor earlier this year), and after that I’ll tackle the Exalted novel for my pals over at the Onyx Path.

So, the year doesn’t promise to get any less crazy, but it’s guaranteed to be fun. Thanks for reading!

 

It’s a Dangerous Games Fiasco

image-327486-fullAs part of the Kickstarter I ran for my Dangerous Games novels, I promised to create a playset for Fiasco based on the novels. For those who don’t know, Fiasco is a fantastic tabletop roleplaying game created by Jason Morningstar, which won the Diana Jones Award a few years back. It’s a fantastic game, although very different from your standard “kick down the door, kill the monsters, take their loot” RPG, mostly because instead of trying to beat the bad guys, you spend the game trying to make the story as interesting as possible. Which usually involves making things harder on the characters by consensus.

It’s great. Trust me.

I wrote the playset up in early August and then played it at Gen Con, the largest tabletop games convention in this hemisphere. As always, I had a great time at Gen Con, talking to people about games, although it was a little eerie spotting out all the places where horrible things happen in the Dangerous Games novels, especially when wandering past them in the middle of the night. (All three of the books are out and available for the public now, so be sure to tell your pals.) While I was there, I had a chance to playtest the Dangerous Games playset for Fiasco with an all-star crew.

Keith Baker (creator of Eberron and Gloom) and his wife Jenn hosted the game session in their suite. Jason Morningstar – the designer of Fiasco himself – joined us and bore with me as I confessed that while I loved the game I’d not actually played it until that day. He taught me everything with a smile and coached us all along with fantastic class. Wil Wheaton and Peter Adkison had been slated to join us, but they had to pull out due to scheduling conflicts. The fantastic Kristin Firth stepped in to fill their shoes.

We had as amazing a time as you can pack into a game in two short hours. I incorporated their suggestions into the text, gave it a quick polish with the feedback from the other playtesters, and finished it up. Jason posted the results over at the Bully Pulpit Games site earlier this week. You can go grab it now for free. 

I hope you enjoy it and have just as much fun as we did playing ordinary gamers with powerful ambitions and poor impulse control. To celebrate the playset’s release, I’m keeping Dangerous Games: How to Play on sale for just 99¢ until Monday. Be sure to get it fast.

Thanks for all your support!

My Southeast Wisconsin Festival of Books Schedule

TSafariScreenSnapz001his weekend, I’ll be zipping up to Waukesha to take part in the Southeast Wisconsin Festival of Books for the first time. I’ve heard lots of great things about it over the years, and this time around the ever-kind John Klima (of Electric Velocipede fame) invited me to take part in the Science Fiction Writers of America‘s slate of programming. I should be there on Friday night for the keynote, and I’ll be around most of Saturday as well. My official schedule is as follows:

September 21

  • 9:30 AM: Graphic Novels Panel, with Mike Norton and Bill Willingham. (Room N130)
  • 10:45 AM: Science Fiction Gaming, with Gary Kloster and Bob Love (Room N130)
  • 1:30 PM: Glitter and Mayhem/Crowdfunding, with John Klima, Lynne M.Thomas, and Michael D.Thomas (Room N130)
  • 3 PM: Signing (Commons Student Lounge)

If you’re in the area, come on out and say hi and join in the fun.

 

Battle Isle: Threshold Run Kickstarter Launched

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As you might recall, I’ve been writing an online comic for an upcoming video game from Stratotainment called Battle Isle: Threshold Run. (Start here and take a quick read. We have four episodes up so far with more on the way soon.)

Yesterday, Stratotainment launched a Kickstarter for the game. It’s a turn-based strategy game that fans of the strategy genre, board gamers, and war gamers should all enjoy. The drive is for the iOS version of the game, and from the development bits I’ve seen, it’s looking great.

The pitch video for the Kickstarter is hilarious. Watch it for that. And for the shout-out Thomas Hertzler gives me at 2:42.

Battle Isle: Threshold Run takes place in 1946 Germany, soon after the end of WWII. An alien invasion forces the people of Earth to band together against this common foe, even as the wounds from their last conflict are still healing.

The Kickstarter has a slew of great rewards, ranging from a copy of the game all the way up to getting your likeness into the game as a commander. You can even get limited edition models of some of the tanks in the game, sculpted by my old pal Tim Prow.

Anyhow, check out the video, take a look at the drive, and pledge what you can. And please spread the word. Thanks!