I posted two items this week at Tor.com.
1) “So You Wanna Be an RPG Superstar”: All about the upcoming 4th annual RPG Superstar competition Paizo runs.
2) “Playing Tabletop Dungeons & Dragons Online”: A quick look at the upcoming Virtual Table software for D&D and an overview of the services like this that already exist.
Check ’em out!
I ran into John DeNardo of the excellent SF Signal at the World Fantasy Convention over Halloween weekend. I’ve been following the site for a while, and we hit it off while chatting at the Tor party. They do a fantastic job of covering all the news for genre lit.
Yesterday, I saw they had a new “Mind Meld” post up that posited the question “What are your favorite SF/F games?” to a number of writers, including Tobias Buckell, Ari Marmell, John Scalzi, John Joseph Adams, and Tim Akers. I shot them a direct message on Twitter saying how much I liked it and how I would have been happy to contribute myself. Within minutes, I had an apologetic note saying that they’d actually meant to ping me for it, and would I be interested in answering the question in a make-up post.
Of course, I said yes. It doesn’t take much to get me to prattle on about one of my favorite topics. Apologies in advance to my friends whose games slipped my mind at that exact moment but which no doubt would be at the top of such a list on any other day.
Just a few minutes ago, my first post for Tor.com went live. It’s called “Dungeons & Dragons Returns to Comics,” and it talks a bit about the history of D&D and its publishers with comics. Then it riffs into a quick rave about the new D&D comic from IDW, written by my friend John Rogers, who also runs the TV show Leverage. (Those with decent short-term memories may remember I wrote part of the just-released Leverage RPG too. It’s all so circular.)
Tor.com is a great website, and I’ve been following it for a while. It started out dedicated to things published by Tor, one of the greatest science fiction and fantasy publishers in the world, but it’s steadily spreading out to cover more and more aspects of geek culture.
While at the World Fantasy Convention a couple weeks back, Tobias Buckell introduced me to a number of people in the Big Bar on 2. One of them was Irene Gallo, the art director for Tor, Forge, and Starscape Books. She noticed the fantastic cover Richard Anderson created for the copy of Guild Wars: Ghosts of Ascalon I was carrying around. We got to chatting, and she mentioned that Tor.com wanted a blogger to help out with gaming.
And so here we are. I should be posting regularly to Tor.com from here on out, as time permits. I hope you enjoy coming along with me on this new ride.
Ros Jackson over at Warpcore SF gives Amortals a glowing review.
“The story comes together as a great multi-stranded thriller, peppered with some good red herrings. It’s high-octane, with plenty of hovercars and crazed factions out for Agent Dooley’s high-profile blood. Add this to his recklessness and determination to get to the bottom of the mystery and you have the recipe for an all-action, high-tech scrap and a half.”
The book gets a four-star rating too!
By the way, if you like Amortals, please tell people about it. Word-of-mouth recommendations matter more than just about anything else I could do to get people to read the book. So, if you can, please post a review. You can do it on your blog, Amazon, GoodReads, or wherever else you like. Just don’t be shy! Thanks!
The Leverage Roleplaying Game just released today as a PDF! You can pick it up immediately through DriveThruRPG.com, or you can wait to get your hands on the hardcover when it comes back from the printer, likely in late November/early December. If you want both, order it directly from Margaret Weis Productions or one of its Preferred Retailers. You get the PDF within 24 hours and the hardcover shipped out to you when it arrives.
I wrote a bit under two chapters of this book, and I enjoyed every bit of it. Not only am I a huge fan of the show, but Cam Banks, Margaret Weis, and Christi Cardenas at MWP were a joy to work with. A top-flight list of co-writers and designers made the entire project shine. They included Rob Donoghue, Clark Valentine, Tiara Lynn Agresta, Stephanie Ford, Laura Anne Gilman, Fred Hicks, and Ryan Macklin.
Now, I just gotta figure out when I can play it. Let’s go steal us some time for a game.
The other day, my pal Sean Preston over at Reality Blurs asked me about how I moved from writing roleplaying games to writing novels. It’s not the most obvious career path in the world, although I’ve had lots of friends and mentors manage it, and it makes for a fine story. He asked if he could post my answer on his blog as a means of helping promote the release of Amortals, and I happily agreed.
That’s the kind of friends you want, folks. The ones that you not only enjoy hanging out with but who are also bold enough to suggest a way in which you can help each other out. (Speaking of which, if anyone else out there would like me to write a guest post for your blog or website or whatever – or would enjoy interviewing me for the same – I am open to entertaining all request/offers.) It also doesn’t hurt that I can unreservedly recommend Reality Blur’s RPG books as some of the best being produced today. Realms of Cthulhu, for instance, is fantastic pulpy horror wrapped around the excellent Savage Worlds rules.
So, if you’re curious about how I made the jump from writing games to writing full-on fiction, jump on over to Sean’s blog and get reading.
A few years back, Playmates Toys hired me to come up with a complete storyline for its upcoming line of morphable cars. These were toys that were a cross between Transformers and Tinkertoys. They looked like cars at first, but you could unfold them into large robots and then swap out pluggable parts to customize them or even build bigger conglomerated robots out of several of them.
When we started, Playmates had no idea for a story behind the robots or even what to call them. They hired me to provide that. After a bit of back and forth and many tries of getting bits approved by trademark attorneys, I came up up R.E.V.s, Radically Engineered Vehicles, complete with a list of names for the good robots and their robot foes, plus a story that gave them all a good reason to fight a lot and knock pieces off of each other.
Playmates also wanted a comic book, so I hired Max Bertolini to handle the artwork, while I managed the writing and production. Once that was ready, they asked me if I could add animation and voiceovers to it. For that, I hired James Farr (creator of Xombie) to chop up the artwork and manipulate it in Flash. Tim Brown’s bandmate AJ had a sound studio, so I grabbed a bunch of friends and directed the voice recordings too.
Playmates has long since cancelled the line, but they gave me permission to post the PDF of the comic online. I never got around to finding the Flash files for the motion comic and posting them – until today. While going through my office, I stumbled across an old CD with some R.E.V.s files on it, and the Flash file for the comic was on it. I’ve posted the R.E.V.s motion comic now. I hope you have as much fun watching it as I did helping make it happen.
My latest book, Amortals, hits shelves in the UK and Australia today, and it’s also been released worldwide as an ebook! You can now purchase it at stores throughout the UK and Australia, including Amazon UK, and you should be able to get it anywhere you are for the Kindle (US) and the Nook. You can also pick up the ebook directly through my publisher, Angry Robot. If you’re in the US or Canada, the print edition is coming soon, on December 28!
Amortals is an action-packed science-fiction thriller in which the world’s oldest man – Secret Service Agent Ronan Dooley – wakes up in his latest clone body to discover that he’s been brutally murdered, and a recording of his killing has become a huge hit on the internet. Worse yet, because he hadn’t bothered to check in for a backup for a while, he can’t remember anything that he did for the past three months – and now he must hunt down his killer and bring him to justice.
Lots of people have already read and loved the book. Check out Amortal‘s reviews and blurbs page for ringing endorsements from Jim Lee, John Rogers, Jordan Weisman, Dan Abnett, Mike Stackpole, Ben Templesmith, Monte Cook, Richard Dansky, Jack Emmert, and Richard Knaak, plus a number of excellent and kind reviewers.
In my wholly biased opinion, this is the best thing I’ve ever written. Give it a try, and I hope you’ll agree. Be sure to read the free 50-page sample or listen to me read the first chapter. If you like it, please go buy it, and then tell your friends and neighbors! Thanks for your support!
While I was at the World Fantasy Convention, Jeff Conner let me know that I could finally tell people about the novella I wrote for him for a tie-in anthology. A little poking around this week showed that Diamond Book Distributors had already solicited the book, so I can share the cover with you too.
The name of the book is G.I. Joe: Tales from the Cobra Wars. Max Brooks (World War Z) edited it, and it features novellas from Max, Chuck Dixon, Jon McGoran, Jonathan Maberry, John Skipp & Cody Goodfellow, DuaneSwierczynski, Dennis Tafoya, and me. Look for it in stores on March 2, 2011, from IDW Publishing.
I loved the G.I. Joe series from Marvel Comics, and IDW has been busy blowing the doors off that for the past couple years. I’m honored to be part of such an excellent lineup of talent wrapped up in that stunning cover by Gabrielle Dell’Otto. I had a great time concocting my tale for this anthology, and I can’t wait to read the rest of them alongside you.
You can now buy Amortals in at least two different flavors, depending on where you are. Amazon UK started shipping the book on November 1, and as of this morning at least you can now purchase the ebook at the Angry Robot Bookstore. If you have a Kindle, you can buy the book now, and it will be delivered to your device tomorrow. Same should be true for the Nook.
If you’d like to try before you buy, you can hear me read the first chapter of the book or read the first 50 pages of the book. It’s absolutely free.
Don’t be shy when it’s time to buy. Put your money down, and please tell your friends and neighbors! This is the best book I’ve ever written, and I’d like to have as many people read it as possible. Not just because I like feeding my kids this way, but also because I want to bring you something I hope you’ll enjoy.
Thanks for your support!