Monte Cook's Blog, page 139

Malhavoc Books Back In Print

Malhavoc Books Back In Print

With the exception of the Collected Book of Experimental Might, all Malhavoc Press books have been out of print for a while now. But, thanks to the help of OneBookShelf, the cool guys behind DriveThru.com and RPGNow.com, we're working on changing all of that.  As of right now, you can once again get Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved, Book of Hallowed Might, Book of Hallowed Might II, and the Complete Book of Eldritch Might all in print as well as in ebook format. There's even a special deal for those who want both formats, or have purchased the pdf already.

And there's more to come! In just a short time, look for Book of Iron Might, Legacy of the Dragons, and Secrets of the Delver's Guild all in print at either DriveThruRPG.com or RPGNow.com. Secrets of the Delver's Guild has never been in print, so that's particularly exciting.

Holiday Traditions

Holiday Traditions

It's one of those conversations you can have with just about anyone you meet. You can ask most Americans, "Did you open your Christmas gifts on Christmas Eve or Christmas Morning?" and you'll get an answer--often with some interesting embellishments. If you're talking to someone who's not Christian, "What did your family do on Thanksgiving?" works just as well. Just about anyone probably has an interesting answer to the question, "What special foods did you eat on the holidays?"

Holiday traditions of some kind or another exist in pretty much every household, in every culture. (The holidays may not always the same, but the concept of tradition is pretty much pervasive throughout the race.) I've had great conversations with people from all over the world on the subject.

This time of year, of course, makes me think about my own family's traditions. For example, my family celebrated Christmas and opened gifts on Christmas Eve. I have three sisters and a brother, all older than me. Long before I came along, my family realized that the kids just didn't have the patience to wait through a big dinner (and the ensuing cleanup) before getting to the presents, so my mom starting making a big buffet of so-called "finger foods." These could be eating in little bits all evening long, while gifts were exchanged and enjoyed.

My mom is of Norwegian descent, and so had a few traditions from her childhood based on that. Specifically, these involved foods. Oyster stew on Christmas Eve was one such tradition, apparently, although she never convinced Dad or any of us kids to join in. Another was lutefisk, which is fish cooked with lye. Yeah. And it isn't quite as good as it sounds. On the other hand, she also introduced us to lefse, which I love (it's kind of like a potato tortilla, but even thinner and lighter).

My dad's Christmas food tradition was a chocolate candy that he called haystacks. These are kind of a cream-filled bon bon sort of thing. We always made sure to have them on hand for my dad. It wasn't until many years later that we realized that he didn't really like them. It was just tradition.

As for gift opening, as I already stated, we opened them on Christmas Eve. However, when we kids were little, there was always one present that was saved for Christmas Morning. We didn't have stockings. We would instead set out a chair, usually with our name pinned on it. This gift was supposedly from Santa. The thing is, while I remember this tradition, even as a very little kid, I don't remember ever believing in Santa. Even at the age of four or so, I knew that "Santa" was really my parents.

We didn't have much in the way of New Year's traditions. We'd often get together with family friends, and I remember being allowed to stay up until Midnight, which was a big deal. But that's about it. I know some people have special food traditions, or resolutions, or what have you. I knew someone once who opened the door at midnight to let the new year in, for example. I've heard of people displaying a broom prominently on New Year's Eve because you "swept away the old year." Others enjoy fireworks or even fire off guns.

I'm sad to say that what holiday traditions my family did have, I don't really carry on myself. No oyster stew or haystacks for me. No setting out chairs. Maybe I'd feel differently if I had children. Maybe I'd want them to pass those traditions along. As it is, those traditions are just happy memories for me. And maybe that's enough. Maybe that's what traditions are really all about.

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! This season, I hope you get that thing you wanted and/or get to be with that person you like.

A Pink Christmas

A Pink Christmas

So I'm watching A Pink Christmas, and I wondering... isn't the pink covering the Pink Panther  his skin and fur? Because twice this cartoon makes it seem like it's a costume.

And why's it all Victorian? Doesn't the Pink Panther usually live in (relatively) modern times?

Still, it's pretty well done. I always liked the dialog-less adventures of the Pink Panther. He was always a favorite of mine as a kid.

Speaking of Which...

Speaking of Which...

The anthology coming out next year that I have a story in, mentioned obliquely in my last journal entry, is entitled The New Hero. I can tell you that because it is announced here. And you can read a bit more about it here. I'm excited and honored to be in this book, launched by a new fiction imprint, Stone Skin Press. It's edited by Robin Laws, who was great to work with. My story, Sundown in Sorrow's Hollow, is a steampunk-western-fantasy mashup with a hero, Iona, who uses her six-shooters with martial artistry alongside her soulbound companion, Duncan, a very special dog. I hope you'll check it out.

Also, I was recently interviewed by Ed Healy for episode 2 of the Iron GM podcast. You can listen to it here.

What I'm Up To

What I'm Up To

2011 is looking to be a good year for me. Thanks to lots of hard work this year, I'm going to have two different serialized fiction series come out, one in a magazine and one on-line. I've got a story coming out in an anthology, and at least one in a magazine. I'll have at least two different new rpg products come out, and hopefully one, and just possibly two novels come out (fingers crossed).

Specific details, of course, are still forthcoming.

Of course, I'll be continuing my column in Kobold Quarterly, and my work on dungeonaday.com as well.

Here I Am, In the Future

Here I Am, In the Future

Beware. This post is going to sound like an advertisement for Apple.

A couple weeks ago, I got an iPhone4. I'd been drooling other people's iPhones for a very long time, and the fact that my old cell phone (not a smartphone) began to show some weirdness seemed like a good excuse to buy one. I've had it only a few weeks and I'm already willing to say it's one of the best purchases I've made in a long, long time.

Just about every day, some new capability or application of the phone makes me just amazed at how great it is. Today's was the SoundHound app, which allows you to sing or hum a song (or just your phone listen while a song plays) and then it will tell you the name of the song, give you the lyrics, and a link to buy it on iTunes. Yesterday was Google's new app that allows you to take a photo of something and then search the Internet for that thing. I don't think I've even fully let the implications of that one sink in yet. I haven't yet delved into my newest app, called Star Walk, which allows you to hold the phone up to any position in the night sky to learn the names of the stars and constellations (and it appears to do so much more than just that amazing thing).

Of course, just having constant access to Google to get at information is wonderful too. No more, "I'm going to have to remember to look that up when I get home tonight."

And that's not even getting into the games. The fact that if I'm sitting waiting for my food to come in a restaurant, or I'm in a long line at the bank, or just sitting around and find myself with 3 minutes of downtime, I can pull my phone out of my pocket and play a fun little game, well, that's incredible. And the games are surprisingly good. One game I'm enjoying is Words with Friends that allows me to play Scrabble (basically) with any friend I have with an iPhone. And we take turns whenever we have a spare moment. Sure, the game ends up lasting weeks, but it's still very fun.

Similarly, with the Kindle reader, I basically have a stack of books with me at all times, ready to pull out and read if I've got a few minutes. Like many others, I find myself reading more with such a device, not less. But then, most of you probably don't need to be reminded that I've long been a proponent of e-books. Frankly, I think e-readers and e-books are going to save reading. But that's another blog post.

It's amazing to me what a leap into the future I made by purchasing the smartphone. It's amazing how quickly I've become reliant upon it.

It even makes phone calls, apparently.

A Three Hour Tour...

A Three Hour Tour...

I'm visiting old friends and old haunts in Seattle. Yesterday, I met my friend Stan! for lunch at a place just three miles from where I was staying. As we are wont to do, the already late lunch went even later, and so around 3:30 we decided to head out because the snow (yes, snow in Seattle) was really coming down. I bid Stan! a farewell and we got into our individual cars. I really needed to fill up with gas, and headed for a station I knew, and saw that there was a lot of traffic. Now, normally in Seattle, noticing something like that would be like noticing that there are a lot of Starbucks here. It's just a truth you learn to accept and live with. But this was more than I would have expected for the time of day, even for the Seattle area and even for the slowdown the snow created. I debated whether or not to get gas or just get out of the traffic snarl. I got gas.

I tried to figure out the best route to get to my friend Bruce's house, where I was staying, and it worked pretty well. Obviously, the heart of rush hour had moved up. Everyone was leaving work early because the weather was going to turn worse. At this point, however, there was little I could do other than be patient and not think about how I really needed to use the restroom.

For those who've never been here, the roads in Seattle and the surrounding suburbs just aren't designed to handle the amount of traffic that exists. You can get on a street that feeds into another street with streetlights that ensure that the cars on your street will never feed into that other street, because the cars on that street aren't moving because there's no room for them to feed into a street that that one feeds into. And so on. Worse, there are only occasionally alternate routes that will help, because space is at such a premium. This kind of thing probably would have driven me (no pun intended) a lot crazier when I lived here but for the fact that I spent most of that time working at home and knew when to never leave the house.

It took me an hour to move about a half mile at this point. I called Bruce to tell him that I was still about two and a half miles away and would probably be another forty five minutes at least (I figured that traffic would have to lessen at some point). An hour later, and I was right. Traffic did lessen. Unfortunately, in the two hours I'd been trapped in traffic, barely moving, the snow on the ground turned to ice. The hill that lay ahead of me on a major road was slight, but very icy. Cars ahead of me couldn't get up. I joined a roving band of people who were helping push these cars up the hill. Then, they in turn helped push mine up. I thought I would be OK at this point, but near the top of a slight incline the car in front of me stopped, so I had to stop. And of course, once they could move, I tried to move forward again. But with no momentum, I was stuck. A friendly passer-by knocked on my window as my tires spun. I rolled it down.

"You're screwed, Dude," he said, and then walked off. Thanks, friend.

Another couple of guys helped me out with a push. At that point, all I wanted to do was round the corner and get off this major thoroughfare. You see, I had tire chains in my car. This isn't at all typical of me, but this same storm had already made my life really difficult when I was trying to reach Seattle and had to cross a high mountain pass on an icy interstate. I hadn't put the chains on before I left the restaurant because it wasn't slippery then. That was three hours earlier at that point. The  treacherous hill that required two teams of strangers  pushing my car had offered no place to pull over to put the chains on without me, you know, dying. Cars had been slipping and sliding all over the place and I'd been sure that one would slam right into me as I chained up.

Once on the less traveled street, however, and I could put the chains on and get to where I was going slowly but surely. The three mile trip took about three and a half hours or so.

I don't think I'll get in my car again until spring.

My Poor Memory

My Poor Memory

Last weekend I was at a signing and someone asked me about a recent project I'd worked on. And I couldn't remember the name of the book! The book that I wrote. How embarrassing is that?

Here's the thing, though. What I could remember was the name I'd originally intended for the book. I couldn't remember the name it was changed to, however. (For the record, it was Curse of the Riven Sky, the original title of which was Revenge of the Storm Queen.) This actually happens to me a lot in this context, however. See, in publishing, and in particular game design, things change a lot before a product is ever published. And so my faulty memory gets confused with prior versions.

For example, when someone asks me a rules question about D&D 3rd edition, I can often remember the three different options we came up with to handle a certain situation. I can remember which one Skip liked, and why, and which one Jonathan favored. I can even often remember the meeting room at Wizards of the Coast where we discussed the rule. I just can't remember which version of the rule ended up in the actual book! So I have to look up rules as much or more than anyone, if that level of detail is really needed.

Still, it's embarrassing.

Still Less of Me

Still Less of Me

As of today, I am hovering just around my recommended weight based on my height--just a couple of pounds over. That's the closest I've been to my "ideal" weight in my adult life. I've lost 60 pounds in the last three years or so. And there's little doubt in my mind that I'll reach that ideal range very soon. (And even if I never did, I'm still pretty happy with where I am right now.)

The odd thing is, when I was at my heaviest, I never thought of myself as being as heavy as I was. I didn't clearly see myself when I looked in the mirror. When I thought of myself, I thought of a moderately overweight guy--an average American, basically. Now, however, I'm on the opposite side of that. I don't see myself as thin as I am. A friend recently had to tell me that my XBox 360 avatar was too fat to really look like me. That's a good problem to have, but I would have never noticed it on my own.

After losing so much weight, people frequently ask me if I feel different. The answer, I guess, is no. When I go hiking, I can go a lot farther, a lot faster, but that's only something I notice if I really pay attention. I guess because I lost the weight gradually, there was never a dramatic shift.

I can say, however, that when I do think about it all, I'm pretty happy about it.