I just learned that James Perham died on May 31 of heart failure. I first met James many years ago when he was working for Cliff “Gideon” Van Meter at Starchilde Publications (publishers of Justifiers and Guardians) and back in the late ’80s/early ’90s. He later spent time working in comics with Valiant and Acclaim and had the singular honor …
Social (Worker) Games
Last week, my wife Ann participated in a “poverty simulation exercise” for people who work with the impoverished. Ann is a school social worker who concentrates on helping out homeless students, so she sees a lot of this in her job. The Janesville Gazette ran an article about the exercise and how it worked. The paper ran a photo of …
Free Battlestar Galactica Novel
Tor has been making e-books versions of some of their novels free for a week at a time over the past few months. This week, they actually have a tie-in novel available for free: Battlestar Galactica by Jeffrey A. Carver. Just go to Tor.com to register and get your copy. Each novel is only made available for a week at …
A New Look
I’m playing around with a new theme for the site. I like this one a lot, although I’ll likely tweak it as I go. I’ll add a new header graphic for one. In the meantime, if you see anything missing here (like something you enjoyed from the old theme), let me know. One cool thing about the new theme is …
Storytelling and Comics
My latest post is up at Storytellers Unplugged. This month, I discuss a bit how I went about scripting the Blood Bowl: Killer Contract comic book miniseries.
Free RPG Day
In case it’s slipped past you (and it nearly did me), tomorrow is Free RPG Day! If you have a friendly local games store, be sure to head down and check out this year’s free offerings sometime on Saturday. The official site has a list of participating stores and the kinds of goodies you can expect to see. Some publishers …
Erick Wujick Dies
As I mentioned back in December, Erick Wujick was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and not given long to live. According to his good friend Kevin Siembieda at Palladium Books, Erick lost his ongoing battle yesterday, having turned those six weeks into more than six months. Although I didn’t know Erick well–we’d talked a few times over the years–I always respected …
Hard Times on the Tabletop
The tabletop games industry seems to be contracting again. The last couple weeks have seen more layoffs from Upper Deck, the closing of Tenacious Games, and the ending of games at Press Pass. This put a number of good, talented friends out of work, including Ed Bolme, Sean K. Reynolds, and Hyrum Savage. (If you can hire them, do.) Traditionally, …
Good-Bye, Bob
Late last night I learned that Robert Lynn Asprin had died early that day. I didn’t know him all that well, but I loved his work. In high school, I devoured both the hilarious Myth Adventures books and the gritty Thieves’ World anthologies. When I went to college at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, I knew that Bob …
If You Can’t Go to the Con…
have the con come to you. Because I skipped GTS this year (for the first time in memory), I missed out on seeing a lot of friends that I often only get to see at that show. Some of them, I’ll run into at Gen Con, of course, but that’s a bigger show with so much going on that it’s …