Done and Done

The WoD book is finished. Thank you guys for all your support these last few months. Still don't know if it will sell, but right here, right now, I'm happy with how it came out. And anyone who is an old friend or a writer knows how rare that is.

Spoke with the honcho up at White Wolf. We can expect an answer by GenCon. Should be a busy month.

That and copies of Revenge, Wilds, and the first DCC hardcover, The Adventure Begins, showed up last night. They all look great.

Right now I'm the most fortunate man alive, but a lot of that's due to the company I keep, or more accurately, the company that keeps me.

Edit: I even found a title. Whoot. ;)

Now available in stores and back alleys near you!

Two modules hit the street this week, both written what seems like ages ago. Copies should be coming in the mail today or tomorrow, and I can't wait to see how the maps and art came out. Wilds has a bit of topographical variance, with elevation gain and loss, so the maps are more complex than usual. That, and I'm looking forward to seeing Jeremy Simmon's rendering of Wildsgate, my tribute to the Keep of yore.

BTW, for all the Fort Collins kids: I wrote Marshak into the Wilds. Need to make sure he gets a copy.


Love Your Rewrites...
I do. It shouldn't take a writer 90k words to figure out what his book is really about, but sometimes that's how it shakes down.

Just so you know that I know, this has got to be one of the top 10 warning signs that you might be a n00b. Of the 10 warning signs, I have 9.

Coming in future posts here at Choose Death: Top 5 Things NOT to Schedule When Writing Your First Novel. But until then, why not try to figure out what is going on here.

Blackmoor Open Call
Previous Blackmoor open calls were for volunteer work. This is one is paid, though I haven't heard the rates yet.

Zeitgeist Games is putting forward an open call for writers for work on the Dave Arneson's Blackmoor line. We are in immediate need of several such individuals familiar with the world of Dave Arneson’s Blackmoor. Knowledge of Dave Arneson’s Blackmoor MMRPG will also prove helpful.

Interested parties should send a resume to (christopher.reed at zeitgeistgames dot com) with the subject line of "Blackmoor Open Call for Writers" for consideration.

The work in question is immediate in nature, so if you are locked in current efforts, please recognize this fact before submitting your resume for consideration. We will be taking submissions until the end of Monday, May 29, 2006.

Feel free to post or forward this message to interested parties.

Thanks,
Christopher Reed
Line Developer - Dave Arneson's Blackmoor
Zeitgeist Games, Inc.

Harley who?
Sorry for the lack of updates lately. Work has been busy and my night job is busier than ever. Both are good, but it doesn't leave much time for posting. Some brief news items, then it's back to the vampires. I love my life, I really do.

The Rat King

New art galleries are up for both Rat King and Into the Wilds. This particular piece has to be one of my favorites, to date. Suffice it to say, both projects have been blessed by spectacular artists, and if you end up liking any of the art I think most of it can be purchased as prints/originals from the artists.

Still savage after all these years.
Kublacon, the Khan of Cons will be running both DCC 17 & 17.5, May 26 – 29 in Burlingame, CA. Don’t know if there is still space available, but it should be a good time.

Destroyer of Worlds
In addition to putting in my time on re-writes, I’m also sketching the last remaining bits of the d20 World Project. Breaking out the ink and colored pencils one last time to add the final touches here and there, providing inspiration for future d20 writers. Hope to post rough world maps soon, publisher permitting.

It’s old school, it takes up three color maps, and it comes in a box.

And that, my friend, might just be the high point of my d20 career.

Hope all is well!

/JK
Gose and Gentry!
One of the benefits of freelancing for Wizards of the Coast is getting to peek into the binder labeled “Master Plan for World Domination.”

For instance, did you know Hasbro was one of the chief underwriters of the Genome Project? Corporate altruism, you might answer, but read on.

Chief among Wizards’ plots is to their plan to create the writer of the future, an unholy fusion of author and editor, whose perfect manuscripts will need absolutely no editing whatsoever. With the cyber-writer project on hold, they’ve been forced to proceed with their backup plan: selective breeding.

This weekend, Ed Gentry and Lara Gose were united in marriage. Ed is the author of an upcoming FR novel, and Lara is a freelance editor working for WoTC and a fine writer in her own right.

Children, while not announced, were rumored to be a part of Ed’s most recent contract.

You heard it here first.

/JK

Collect all … two.
So May is going to be big on the d20 front, with 2 adventures and one hardback anthology coming out. Even more fun/silly is the news that there will be alternate covers of Revenge of the Rat King. Not quite the gold-foil level, but fun regardless to Harley’s geek soul.

Version I:

Version II:

Now here’s hoping folks don’t hate the adventure. ;)

Sweet
Got the okay for extra words. Now to make them good ones.

Still haven't mailed in that damn contract. Guess I haven't been burned enough.

====

Whoops. Also accidentally deleted the last post. Sorry about that guys.

But yes, my agent is still sleeping with my wife.

Update? We don't need no stinking update.
Novel coming along strong, and am headed into re-writes. (Woke up this morning and started writing in bed. God bless laptops and naked writers.)

Here's a question for all you published novel types out there. I know this varies from publisher to publisher, but what's a "safe" excessive word count for a 90k book? 100? 110?

Despite my best efforts, I'm going to go over, at least a little. The novel will be better for the cutting, but I'll leave that up for the editors to decide.

Hope you all are well, especially the soon-to-be weds. Miss you, love you, H.

====

BTW, three decades on this earth and I still make stupid mistakes every day. About every three weeks I look back and think, "Wow, I sure was stupid, way back then ... three weeks ago." So you'd think I be making vast strides towards intelligence, but when you're making up for this much lost ground, it can take a while.

Ego Check
Too funny to not be true.

Fear of Girls:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7521044027821122670"

Introducing the designers that will kill your character...
A friend sent me a screen shot of the Goodman Games GenCon lineup. Of the 17 DCC events being hosted by the dedicated Goodman Gamers, all but two were written by either Alex Anderegg, Jeff LaSala, or myself.

Apart from being terrified at the thought of our games failing to entertain, I'm also a little proud. Three years ago, none of us had published a word of RPG/d20 material. Now my old friends are the designers responsible for Goodman Games' showing at the biggest freakin' convention in town.

Not to pull a cheesy, Broadway moment, but not that long ago Alex and I were roommates, living off free bread from my job at the bakery, and subsidized rent from our third roommate, Matt. I have a clear memory of sitting at the kitchen table with Alex, fantasizing about writing something for a gaming company.

The distance between those two points – daydreaming and coming home with a check - can seem insurmountable, but like any great undertaking, it is smaller than it appears. In this case, the distance was a one page query letter. I’ve worn out this blog saying it, but if I can do it, you can, too.

Now Alex is writing d20 adventures and running games. Jeff has a [NDA censored] just around the corner.

My friends. I couldn’t be prouder. And I’m going to celebrate with them all in Indy, come August.

Event Full

Registration for GenCon began half an hour ago, and already people are getting bumped. It turns out I'm running 4 games, not 2, but even that's not enough to satisfy demand.

Definitely need to run some underground games, late in the night. After all, D&D is the game they play in storm sewers, right?

That said, I'm getting together maps and props for the games I will be running. Should be a quality game, if you can get in. If you can't, leave a post here and I'll see what I can do about setting up more sessions. I can't make any promises until I know what the rest of my schedule is looks like.

Even after seeing GenCon last year, I didn't have an appreciation for just how BIG an event it was. All afternoon the website has been lagged. The last time I ran into lag, I was playing a mud on a server in Finland. This is just silly. :)