Today marks the debut of Exalted: Circle of Protection, a brand-new original novel set in the world of the third edition of the Exalted tabletop roleplaying game. It’s the tale of a young woman named Palym, who leaves her village to travel to the big city – and promptly wanders into a magical disaster that nearly gets her killed. She finds herself in Heaven as a newly minted Exalted (hero) of Mercury, charged with investigating the death of the hero who saved her life.

I wrote this novel for the backers of the Kickstarter for the Exalted RPG. It’s the sequel to the short story “The Circle Will Be Broken,” which appeared in the anthology Exalted: Tales from the Age of Sorrows. 

You might notice that I have a co-author on this book, something that’s relatively rare for me. The last time was when I wrote Guild Wars: Ghosts of Ascalon with my pal Jeff Grubb, and the reasons for this are almost identical.

The latest edition of the Exalted roleplaying game was being developed as I wrote the book, which made for a bit of a challenge, as things in the setting evolved separately while I was writing my story. Because of that, one of the developers of the game – James Huggins – offered to come in and make sure that the novel matched up well with what he was helping create for the game. In the end, he contributed so much that I asked the publisher to credit James as my co-author on the book.

The plot and characters in the story are mostly mine, but James did phenomenal work to make sure that it wasn’t just a great story but a great Exalted story. For that, he deserves cover credit for sure.

Anyhow, I hope you enjoy the story. It’s full of twists and turns and deals with things like family and friendship and love – and magically gifted heroes battling gigantic, brain-bending monsters capable of leveling entire cities. Just the way we like it.

Death on the Pitch, an anthology that collects a series of recently published Blood Bowl stories, debuts today in both paperback and ebook formats. This collection features my short story “The Hack Attack,” which centers on a sort of “Where Are They Now” show about the characters in my Blood Bowl novels, many years later. It also features stories by Josh Reynolds, Robbie MacNiven, Andy Hall, Graeme Lyon, Alec Worley, David Annandale, Gav Thorpe, David Guymer, and Guy Haley. 

Each of the stories normally costs something like $4.99 each as an ebook, so getting them packed together like this offers a comparatively amazing deal. On top of that, this is the first time they’ve been in print, to my knowledge, so if you prefer your reading in dead-tree-based formats, now’s your chance. 

Over at the newly refurbished IAMTW (International Association of Media Tie-In Writers) blog, my friend – bestselling author and the recently appointed president of the IAMTW – Jonathan Maberry interviewed me about being a tie-in writer. The conversation rolls all over the place, dipping back and forth throughout my career, but it’s a fun read. If you want to learn more about what it’s like to write books based in someone else’s setting, go check it out. Then check out the rest of the series of interviews, with luminaries like Max Allan Collins, Lee Goldberg, Tim Waggoner, Cavan Scott, Delilah S. Dawson, Christa Faust, and Gary Philips.

I had a bit of a writer’s nightmare happen this week. I received a call from one of my editors.

That alone is enough to give a veteran writer pause. I work almost exclusively via email with my editors and other clients. The only time we need to talk on the phone is when something has gone horribly wrong.

There are exceptions. Some editors like to chat, but they’re the exceptions these days. Busy people often don’t have the time to schedule a time to talk much less actually block off the time to jaw for a bit.

In this case, I’ve been working for this editor for at least two years, and we’d never spoken before. When I got her call, I knew something terrible had happened.

Turns out that she’d been trying to email me for about a month, about some books I was working on under a tight deadline.

Whoops.

I went straight to my spam folder, and sure enough, the emails from her had wound up stacked up there.

So, now my deadline has now gone from tight to ridiculous, but at least now I know why I haven’t heard from her for a while. I’d foolishly assumed she was busy or that something else in the project was snagged. I was busy with other things (like I usually am) and didn’t follow up with her. Fortunately, she followed up with me.

The moral of the story? Don’t be too busy to check in with your editors when they go quiet. And when it happens, check your spam filter!

I’m hard at work writing more Endless Quest books at the moment, but the ones that came out in September are still getting all sorts of attention. This morning, for instance, my pal John Kovalic (of Apples to Apples, Munchkin, and Dork Tower fame) posted a new Dork Tower comic about his experiences with the Endless Quest books. It’s both hilarious and painfully true. Read it.

If you like the comic, you should also check out the Kickstarter that John’s running for his first Dork Tower collection in 10 years. I’ve been reading Dork Tower since before I even met John (a.k.a. the Nicest Guy in Gaming), and much like him, it’s only improved with age.

Meanwhile, I also chatted with the folks at the Great Big Beautiful Podcast about the Endless Quest books. We jawed for about an hour about all sorts of things, including my work on the Rogue One junior novel, and hopefully you’ll find it a fun listen.

While I have your attention, be sure to check out another amazing D&D book that came out this week: Dungeons & Dragons: Art and Arcana. It’s a gorgeous book, looking at the history of D&D using its artwork as the lens, and it’s worth every damn penny.

I’ve known two of the authors for years: Jon Peterson (author of the incredible gaming history, Playing at the World) and Mike Witwer (author of the fantastic biography of Gary Gygax, Empire of Imagination), and you couldn’t ask for better writers with a bigger passion for their subject. I also met their co-authors this summer: Sam Witwer (Mike’s brother, the actor responsible for the voice of Darth Maul, among many other things) and Kyle Newman (director of Fanboys and several other fun and fine films). As a team, they’re absolutely stellar folks whose love for the subject shines through on every page.

If you love D&D, grab the book and leave it out on your gaming/coffee table for your friends to ooh and ah over it.

My latest book – Life Is Strange: Welcome to Blackwell Academy – comes out today in the USA. (The UK has to wait until October 30 instead.) It’s based on the hit video game series, Life Is Strange, developed by Dontnod and (in the case of the prequel, Life is Strange: Before the Storm) Deck Nine.

As it says in the official description:

An atmospheric and characterful look at the world of the hugely successful video game Life is Strange, through the eyes of Max and Chloe.

Welcome to Blackwell Academy is an in-universe book from the Life is Strange video game franchise from Dontnod Entertainment and Square Enix. This detailed book takes the form of a student guide to Blackwell Academy and the town of Arcadia Bay. Overlaid onto the pages is graffiti: notes, doodles, sketches and photographs from the Blackwell students themselves, including contributions from the beloved protagonists Max and Chloe.

Welcome to Blackwell Academy includes information on the staff and facilities of Blackwell Academy, the people and locations of Arcadia Bay, overlaid with funny, irreverent and poignant comments from the students.

I had played a little bit of Life Is Strange before Matt Ralphs at Titan Books approached me about working on it, but my kids – particular Marty and Pat – are huge fans of the series. I mean, they LOVE the games, and their passion for the series inspired me to dive deep into it for the book. They coached me through playing through every bit of both Life Is Strange and Before the Storm and debated all sorts of contentious bits about the games with me, helping me clarify things in my mind as I tried to figure out what it would be like to live inside the world of the games.

Pat even took dozens of screenshots from the games for the book, earning him his first publishing credit at the age of 16. He saved me countless hours and did a much better job at it than I could have managed.

It’s an unusual book in many ways.

1. It’s an in-game artifact, something that’s supposedly plucked from the game’s universe just before the climactic moments at the end of the final episode of Life Is Strange.
2. It’s a flip book. You read it Welcome to Blackwell Academy about three quarters through and then flip it over to read Welcome to Arcadia Bay.
3. The original parts of the book are authentic replicas of a standard prep-school guide book and small-town guidebook.
4. But then the characters from the book got a hold of it and scribbled all over the damn thing.
5. Max and Chloe (the main characters from Life Is Strange) do most of the scribbling and doodling, bantering with each other with their pens, but a bunch of other characters chip in too.
6. There’s a lot of swearing in the book. Like on every page and at maximum volume. You’ve been warned. (Or amused. Either way, go with it.)
7. It’s a thick hardcover book that comes shrink-wrapped with a white band of paper around it, which you can see in the picture above. You remove the band, and it’s like you’re carrying around the actual artifact – although a little less worn, perhaps.

I had a ball working on this book, and not just because I got to play video games for days on end and call it research. My editor, Matt Ralphs, was fantastic fun to work with. He and I riffed up so many incredible ideas that made their way into the book, and he provided a strong guiding hand through it all.

The folks at Amazing15 provided the book’s stunning graphic design. That’s complicated as hell in a book like this – one with several layers, plus notes from me like “turn these bits of trivia into infographics” – and they made it look seamlessly easy.

So, huge thanks to them, plus also to the teams at Dontnod and Deck Nine. Particularly Jean-Luc Cano, Raoul Barbet, Michel Koch, Christian Devine, Webb Pickersgill, Chris Floyd, and Zak Garriss, who led the creative charge. Without them, we wouldn’t have a Life Is Strange world to set the book in at all.

I hope you enjoy this fun tome we came up with. It was borne of a wonderful game about friendships, family, and love – with a bit of supernatural drama thrown in – and inspired everyone who worked on it to love that world just as much as Chloe and Max love each other. With luck, that shines through.

I encourage you to ding your copy around. To tote it around in a backpack, drop it, scuff it, and maybe even write in it yourself. And swear in it as much as you like.

For authenticity.