A “Few” Announcements

Hi everyone,

I have a few announcements to share with you today!

1) It has just been announced that I’m the new Marketing Director for Steve Jackson Games. You can read the announcement on the Steve Jackson Games website. Coupled with the work I’m doing with John Kovalic, I now have a sane “day job” schedule that allows me to pursue my storytelling and game design goals. I’m very grateful for the opportunity and wish Paul Chapman, the former Marketing Director, best wishes on his new pursuit.

2) The Queen of Crows is being laid out in full color and black-and-white for print in a 6 x 9 format. The layout is being done by Brian Glass, the same artist who worked on Exalted. I have decided to go with the original cover, which gives a more Native American-feel, than the alternate one. This was a conscious choice on my part; I’ve gotten some feedback that many people who downloaded the PDF with the original cover wanted a print version.

3) A new Munchkin card game has been revealed! Munchkin Apocalypse!! Drawn by John Kovalic and published by Steve Jackson Games. I feel like the luckiest geek in the world, just because I got to see the cover art from start to finish. I love learning about the artistic process, because it’s different for every artist. I’ve always been drawn to quality line art, simply because something that *looks* easy to draw really isn’t.

4) New website on the horizon! One of the things I’ve been working on (or should I say, my programmer has been working on) is tweaking a new theme to better reflect my fiction and games. I talked about this in a recent article entitled What Impression Does Your Website Give? at the How To Write Shop. While I will blog about my day job a little bit, the website design will be focused on my books and games. This new layout will give me more flexibility and freedom to blog on my own time; it will also be very clear what my new releases are for readers to check out.

5) Redwing’s Gambit, a science-fiction novella for Bulldogs!, is done! Yay! Brennan just commissioned the cover art, so (I’m assuming) when that’s done you’ll be hearing more about the publication date. He’s also working on character designs, too, so you can drop Marrl, Cass Leary, Talus, Oogle and any of the other characters into your game. I’m really happy with how this turned out and Brennan was *great* to work with. With such a large cast and several alien races in the setting, I opted for a investigative-style plot with splashes of action, to help you get to know the characters.

Jim Butcher on Motivation

A very heartfelt post came across my feeds today and I want to share this with you. What Jim Butcher says here? Matters. It totally and completely is relevant to any writer who struggles with fame, fortune, and the reasons why we’ve decided to take the hard road.

In particular, this stood out to me:

In fact, the vast majority of aspiring authors (somewhere over 99 percent) self-terminate their dream. They quit. Think about this for a minute, because it’s important: THEY KILL THEIR OWN DREAM. And a lot of you who read this are going to do it too. Doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. It’s just human nature. It takes a lot of motivation to make yourself keep going when it feels like no one wants to read your stuff, no one will ever want to read your stuff, and you’ve wasted your time creating all this stuff. That feeling of hopelessness is part of the process. Practically everyone gets it at one time or another. Most can’t handle it. But here’s the secret: YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE IN THE WORLD WHO CAN KILL YOUR DREAM. — Jim Butcher at LiveJournal.com

And he’s right. The reason why I like this part of his article, is because Jim flat out states what I think is so difficult for others to grasp. If you want to be a writer, I feel you have to have some amount of personal responsibility. That short story didn’t get done? No one’s taking your keyboard out of your hand. That novel didn’t get outlined? Who’s fault is that? And before you say: But I have full-time job, kids, medical problems, etc. I will point out authors like Matt Forbeck who has not one, but five kids. Jay Lake, who has cancer but still pens novels. And full-time job? Shoot. Most authors have some other means of making money like a full-time job or multiple freelance contracts.

In other words: If you want to write novels, then write ’em. You have to tell the rest of the world to take a flying leap and prioritize based on your end game. Is it that simple? Yes, because in the end? Being a writer isn’t about making excuses. It’s about telling a damn, good story.

Thank You Bunches!

I don’t know about you, but I had a fantastic Halloween! So, my day started off by giving a “treat” to interested readers. A free copy of The Queen of Crows from DriveThruFiction.com. Sending out those e-mails today; I hope those of you who signed up for a copy enjoy it!

Later that night, we had our first reading of HAUNTED: 11 Tales of Ghostly Horror at a library. First? Librarians are awesome. They put out a bunch of treats for the reading and made up a huge poster of the event. So, combined with my bags o’ goodies, there was a lot of sugar to be had.

When I got home? A five star review!

The editing is sharp and the flow of stories is good throughout. I like to be able to digest a story after reading it but found myself turning to read the next story, so whether you like the genre or if you fancy a break from the latest glut of average books then I can highly recommend this one. — HAUNTED Review on GoodReads

I’m happy that readers are really digging this one. So thank you a whole bunch for contributing to a very memorable Halloween!

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