Guest Post: Steven Saus on What Fates Impose

Steven Saus over at Alliteration Ink recently launched a Kickstarter for a new anthology of speculative fiction stories edited by Nayad A. Monroe. It features a fantastic lineup of storytellers, including Maurice Broaddus, Jennifer Brozek, Cat Rambo, Lucy A. Snyder, Tim Waggoner, and LaShawn M. Wanak, and it leads off with an introduction by Alasdair Stuart. 

These are all writers you should be reading. 

The anthology – What Fates Impose: Tales of Divination – is packed with stories about what happens when people can predict their future. Many of them go wrong, of course, in spectacular and entertaining ways. By way of a taste for the book, Steven sent me this guest post about his visions of the future. 

Read More

The Bundle of Holding +3 Has Launched!

Bundle3
Late on Wednesday, Allen Varney launched the Bundle of Holding +3. You might recall that the first one ran back in February and that you got a copy of Hard Times in Dragon City if you paid more than the average for it. The sequel – Bundle of Holding +2 – ran last month and featured a number of excellent indie roleplaying games.

This time around, the Bundle of Holding returns to its roots, featuring fiction from veterans of the tabletop gaming industry. Pay as little as $1, and you get ebook editions of:

Pay the current average or more, and you get a number of bonus ebooks too.

That’s a lot of reading for not much cash, and better yet, a portion of the proceeds goes to charity. This time around that bit of the bundle goes to two organizations that promote freedom of speech: PEN International and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Ironic bit of trivia: Allen Varney – the man behind the Bundle of Holding – is also a murder victim in Dangerous Games: How to Play. He not only agreed to have his fictional self get killed but then helped revise those bits to make sure I did it right. Here’s what he has to say about the book:

“In How to Play, Matt Forbeck writes a blood-soaked love letter to Gen Con and the roleplaying hobby. If you enjoy seeing famous game designers brutally slaughtered (and who doesn’t?), Dangerous Games is your victory condition.”

– Allen Varney, with the Lead Pipe in the Dealer’s Room

This is a fantastic lineup of books from a team of authors I’m honored to call friends. If you’ve been thinking of picking up Dangerous Games: How to Play, this is a great chance to do that and top it off with a stack of fantastic tales from other folks too.

There are less than 10 days left on this deal, so don’t delay. Get in on it soon, grab some great books, and give a little bit to some fantastic causes too.

The Dangerous Games Gen Con Writer’s Symposium Contest Results

WritersSymposiumColorSimpleThat’s one long title.

Earlier this week, I launched a contest to give away a couple of Gen Con badges that the Gen Con Writer’s Symposium slipped my way with a wink and a nod and a “You know what to do.” I didn’t, really, so I did what I always do when confronted with such riddles: I made something up on the fly. Entrants had to post who they wanted to see at the Gen Con Writer’s Symposium either on Twitter or on that original blog post, and away we went.

In total, we had 57 entries into the contest. Some people mentioned multiple authors, and I went along with that in the enthusiastic spirit of fun I’m sure they were intended. Each person only got one entry into the contest though, no matter how many writers they name-checked.

DG-HTP-3DThe winner of the two badges for Gen Con and two ebook copies of Dangerous Games: How to Play is Kimberly Burke! She said she wanted to meet Maurice Broaddus at the show, and hopefully now she can make that happen.
Read More

Sales on eBay

Now that summer’s here, my eldest son Marty is back to posting things on eBay for me once again. It’s hard to keep track of the steam of things he puts up there for auction, but they’re mostly games and books we don’t need around here anymore. This includes some author’s copies of things I worked on, like The Authority RPG (of which I wrote a chapter), Silent Death: The Next Millennium, and a whole slew of Brave New World RPG stuff.

If you win the auction for one of the items I helped create and would like them autographed or personalized, just let me know. I’d be happy to scribble something on them for you before Marty ships them out.

The Dangerous Games Gen Con Contest Update

DG-HTP-3DSo far, we’ve had a lot of great entries for the The Dangerous Games Gen Con Writer’s Symposium Contest. Once again, to join, all you have to do is write on Twitter something like: “I want to go to Gen Con and meet <insert author name here>. #GenConWriters http://wp.me/ph1fv-1hT”

Your entry needs to include the following bits:

Alternatively, you can leave a comment on that original post. The grand prize is a pair of badges to Gen Con, plus that winner and the next five runners-up get copies of Dangerous Games: How to Play. 

At the moment (10 AM Central Time on June 13), we have 73 entries, and they mention the following authors:

Note that superhuman fantasist Patrick Rothfuss is way in the lead, tied only by me. I have an unfair advantage there, of course, as I’m running the contest on my site, and I’ll let you in on a not-so-secret: I’m already in the Dangerous Games books. Mike Stackpole and Mercedes Lackey are close on Pat’s heels though, and it wouldn’t take much to swing the numbers their way. At the moment, though, it looks like Pat’s going to make an appearance in Dangerous Games: How to Win.

Which reminds me: I need to get back to polishing that book!

The Dangerous Games Gen Con Writer’s Symposium Contest

DG-HTP-3DThe fine folks in charge of my favorite event of the year (Gen Con) have given me two badges to the show to give away in support of the Gen Con Writer’s Symposium. Since Gen Con is the greatest gaming convention in the world, I decided to run a little contest to see who gets them both – one for you and one for a friend. Here’s how this works.

The contest runs on Twitter from now until noon Central Time on Friday, June 14. To join, all you have to do is write on Twitter something like: “I want to go to Gen Con and meet <insert author name here>. #GenConWriters http://wp.me/ph1fv-1hT”

To be clear, your entry needs to include the following bits:

  • #GenConWriters
  • The name (or Twitter handle) of a writer who is part of the Gen Con Writer’s Symposium.
  • A link to this post. Use your own, if you like, or the one provided above.

For your convenience, the Gen Con Writer’s Symposium website has a full list of the writers who will be helping out with the seminars this year. You can name anyone on that list that you like. I’m taking part in the symposium, but you get no extra points for naming me.

At the end of the contest, I’ll randomly select a qualifying entry to win – probably by rolling a lot of dice – and I’ll announce the winner here on my site. The grand prize is a pair of 4-day badges for Gen Con. Marc Tassin, who does a fantastic job running the Writer’s Symposium, will mail the badges out to the winner. If that’s you, I’ll need your mailing address at that point.

The badges do not come with hotel, travel, event tickets, and so on. That’s all up to you to cover on your own. The badges are $70 each right now or $80 each after June 29, so it’s a nice prize as-is. To top it off, I’ll toss in free copies of Dangerous Games: How to Play ebooks for both you and your friend.

I’ll also randomly select another five runners-up, and I’ll give each of them an ebook copy of Dangerous Games: How to Play too.

In addition to that, I’ll keep a rough tally of the number of people who request each writer. I’m in the middle of revising Dangerous Games: How to Win – the third book in the series – right now, and I’ll give the writer with the most mentions a cameo in the book.

Spread the word, and have some fun with your entry if you like. Embellish all you want. Tell me what you want to learn from that writer, what you’d say to him or her, or even what game you’d play together. All that’s not necessary, of course, but it’s better, as in “more fun.”

Now, I realize some people don’t truck with Twitter. If you’re one of them, you can enter the contest by leaving a comment on this post instead. You don’t have to bother with a link or the #GenConWriters hashtag here, but make sure you include a writer’s name either way.

Thanks for taking part, and good luck!

Kickstarter: Figuring Your Costs

2228832-2203520_kickstarter_badge_fundedOne of the first things you need to do if you’re running a Kickstarter is figure out what you want to produce and how much it’s going to cost. For my 12 for ’12 Kickstarters, this turned out to be pretty simple. The things you need to think about include:

  • Production of the files for both the ebook edition and print edition.
  • Editing
  • Cover
  • ISBNs
  • Shipping (Mailers and Labels)
  • Printing

There’s one huge thing I’m skipping over there, but I’ll get to it in a moment. First, let me tackle these things in order.Read More

Happy Birthday to My Quadruplets!

965138_10151446536611022_2105836327_oEleven years ago today, my wife Ann gave birth to four of the most wonderful people in my life: Pat, Nick, Ken, and Helen Forbeck. The quadruplets were born within two minutes of each other, eleven weeks premature. They weighed between 2.75 and 1.5 pounds.

Ann spent sixteen weeks on full or partial bedrest at home and another ten in the hospital, drugged up past her eyeballs on muscle relaxants meant to keep those kids in her as long as they could manage. She’s my hero in so many ways, but that’s the most amazing and dedicated act I’ve ever seen anyone perform. And she did all that and much more for those kids.

Those beautiful babies spent eight to eleven weeks in the hospital before they could come home. We had a platoon of doctors and nurses taking care of them down at Rockford Memorial, and we came home to an army of volunteers, including my mother, who moved back from DC and lived in our unfinished basement for six months.

During that first year, I sent out weekly email updates to our family and friends, complete with stories and pictures about the kids. At one point, I thought I’d make a book about it, and I prepared a pitch package for it, complete with a couple sample chapters. I never got far with it, perhaps because many other things demanded my attention in those days.

However, lots of people ask me about my kids and what their birth was like. On this, their eleventh birthday, I’d like to share that with you. I’ve taken the pages from that forgotten book pitch and trimmed them down into an 11-page PDF packed with dozens of photos from the most amazing day in my life. It’s free for you to enjoy. 

Dangerous Games: How to Play Books on Sale

DG-HTP-3DThe print edition of Dangerous Games: How to Play – the first in my trilogy of thrillers set at Gen Con, the largest tabletop gaming convention in America – just went on sale to the public for the first time ever. It’s available in both hardcover ($15) and softcover ($10) through DriveThruFiction.com.

One of the great things about selling the printed book through DriveThruFiction is that I can toss in the ebook version of the book for free. You can get it in the binding you like and grab it in three different ebook formats too. Read it however you damn well please!

In a happy coincidence, Abhinav Jain of the Founding Fields reviewed the book yesterday. He said many kind things about it, including:

How To Play is definitely one of the geekiest books I’ve ever read and it is certainly among my most favourite novels of all time, alongside a number of other Matt Forbeck novels. With this one, he has once again proven his incredible consistency in writing good fiction that is fun, adventurous and everything in between.

With a Matt Forbeck novel, there’s never a dull moment.

Rating: 9/10

Make sure to order your copy soon, and if you’re lucky enough to make it to Gen Con too, be sure to track me down and make me sign it!

Dangerous Games: How to Play in Print on Tuesday!

IMG_3802

If you like your books on paper, here’s something good for you. I have the print proofs for Dangerous Games: How to Play in hand, as you can see in the photo above. I’ll make them available for sale on Tuesday, June 4, 2013, over at DriveThruFiction.com.

The paperbacks will be $10, and the hardcovers will be $15. Both come bundled with the ebook edition in ePub, Kindle, and PDF formats, which are regularly $4.99 alone.

If you just want the ebook version, of course, you can grab it right now. The weekend’s coming, after all, and you deserve a good read.