Matt Forbeck's Blog, page 41

Many More Carpathia Raves

Just because the Shotguns & Sorcery Kickstarter sucked up nearly all my attention last week doesn't mean that everyone else in the world stopped reading. Many of those folks even read Carpathia and were kind enough to say several nice things about it.

At Warpcore SF, Ros Jackson loved the book.

It's not a relentless disaster orgy of fangs, blood, and people leaping to their deaths or drowning in icy water. It's much more civilised, yet during the quieter passages I was on tenterhooks just as much as I was when the stakes came out… However at heart this is a thrilling disaster story and bite carnival, with vampires that sizzle like sausages at the touch of a cross but keep coming back, and it's never too serious for its own good.

On his blog, Tony Lane gives the book high praise.

[T]his could well be Matt's best work to date, and it certainly has the chance to capture the imagination of a wide audience. It is easy to read, has violence and bloodshed that is vital to the story and not just to shock, and most importantly in my eyes it is a very hard book to put down. I loved it start to finish.

Karen Conlin (formerly Karen Boomgaarden of TSR fame) heaps compliments on the book on Amazon.

For sheer creativity and excitement, this book deserves five stars… The pace picks up steam until it hits that breakneck speed at which if you can put the book down, I'll say there's something wrong with you… With just enough levity to break the tension, and tension crafted from word choice, dialog, mood, and more, Carpathia should be at the top of any horror aficionado's "to read" list.

At Goodreads, Chris Bauer (who won an ARC of the book from me through the Crossing the Streams contest), wrote many kind things:

In the spirit of "taking your protagonists from the frying pan into the fire," Forbeck does a fantastic job of creating tension and drama with subtle overtones, rather than ANY bludgeoning "shock-gore" scenes. It's obvious significant research went into this work, and the attention to the little details really pays off… [H]is undead are classic apex predators based on Stoker's Dracula and were strangely refreshing to read about.

Finally, Upstart Projects gives the book a sharp rave too.

Carpathia is cinematic in its scope… It has an intriguing premise, great characters, and is plain well-written.  If you're looking to satiate your bloodlust for vampires,Carpathia is a good diversion from the recent crop that harkens back to the monster's pop culture roots.

Magic Comics Selling Well

On Friday, IDW sent out the press release that confirms what anyone who read Diamond's Previews the previous week already knew. The first Magic: The Gathering comic book miniseries sold well, and we already have a second miniseries in the works. It's called Magic: The Gathering: The Spell Thief, and it follows the continuing adventures of Dack Fayden, the hero from the first miniseries.

Best of all, we're keeping the whole team together, so you'll not only get my writing but also Martin Cóccolo's fantastic artwork and J. Edwin Steven's amazing colors. Many thanks to editor Carlos Guzman for doing such a great job with the series after Denton Tipton handed the reins over to him and John Barber. Getting a licensed book rolling means putting many moving parts in order, and he does a great job of it.

So, how well is the book doing? According to the latest estimates from ICv2.com, Magic: The Gathering #1 and #2 were IDW's bestselling books in February. I call that a win.

Thanks to everyone who went out and bought the comic. Just wait until you see what we have brewing up for you next. For a sample, check out the snazzy cover art from The Spell Thief #1 by Christopher Moeller. (Believe it or not, the alternate cover he did for Magic #1 was the first comic cover he's done since Lucifer, from DC/Vertigo.)

The Shotguns & Sorcery Kickstarter Is Done!

I'm sure I'll have more to say about this soon, but thanks to everyone who lent a hand! I'm absolutely stunned at what a great day this has been.

The Shotguns & Sorcery Kickstarter began the day with $7,644 and 205 backers. When it was all over, we totaled up $12,800 and 332 backers, a gain of $5,216 and 127 backers. That's well over a 50% increase in both numbers.

To put that in perspective, the best day we'd had before this — on both this Kickstarter and the last — only made it to under $2,000. Even though I lowered the stretch goal to unlock the last book from $12k to $10k yesterday, I doubted we'd make that. My wife told me to hold steady, and you all proved her right. Thanks so much!

I'm going to collapse in bed now after such a wonderful day. But I'll be dreaming of writing three more books all night!

Entire Shotguns & Sorcery Trilogy Unlocked!

Wow! What a day! The Shotguns & Sorcery Kickstarter began the day at $7,644, and I wasn't sure we were going to make it by the end of the night. I'm thrilled to report that we smashed through the $10,000 barrier at 4:36 PM, despite losing an hour to the Daylight Savings Time switch!

That unlocks all three of the books in the Shotguns & Sorcery trilogy. It also means that anyone who pledges $50 or more gets a free unsigned set of the Brave New World ebooks from the first Kickstarter.

Not to push too hard on people I'm already grateful too, but I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that this makes the omnibus levels more attractive than ever. Rather than getting one autographed book in whichever format you were looking at, you can now get all three.

Also, the drive has only six hours or so left. Once it's over, the doors close on this one. If you or a friend has been sitting on the fence about joining, it's time to make the call.

Thanks so much to everyone who helped out with this. In particular, boosts from John Rogers, Scott Sigler, John Kovalic, and Neil Gaiman really primed the pump over the past day and a half, as did this morning's article on Wired.com by Michael Harrison.

On top of that, though, I'm grateful to every one of you who Tweeted, blogged, shared, and/or harangued their friends and family and complete strangers about this project. The hardest part with any Kickstarter — well, any creative endeavor like this — is not always doing it. It's getting people to know it's happening, and for lending a hand with that, I'm truly grateful.

I'm even more grateful to those of you who were able to back the project at whatever level made sense to you. It's truly humbling, and I'm determined to deliver the best stories I can to make it worth your while.

Thanks for encouraging my mad plan!

Book 2 Unlocked! Drive for Book 3 Ends Tonight!

Early this morning, we unlocked Book 2 in the Shotguns & Sorcery trilogy. Woo-hoot! Thanks to every one of the backers for making that happen. It's been a wild ride to this point, and it's all down to them.

From here, it's a flat-out sprint for Book 3, as the drive ends tonight at just before midnight Central Time. Last night, I lowered the stretch goal for that from $12k to $10k, so it's a much shorter distance to roll. At the moment, that's only $1738 $1713 $1708 away and closing fast.

Spread the word far and wide! Michael Harrison helped out with that with an article this morning at Wired.com's Geek Dad blog. You may already know the details, of course, but it's a great place to point your friends for a quick recap or to get a summary for yourself.

Only 12 hours left!

Last Day! Lower the Goal!

As we roll toward the last day of the Shotguns & Sorcery Kickstarter drive, it seems clear that I set the final goal too high again. I think there may be a lot of reasons for this, and I hope to write a post-mortem about it all once this drive is over. Kickstarter is such a new thing — and writing 12 novels in a year is so insane — that I don't have much history to base decisions on. In short — and in the best tradition of Indiana Jones — I'm making this up as I go.

Which I don't think shocks any of you, right?

Anyhow, I really want to write these books — all three of them. So I'm going to do what I did last time to help ensure that.

I'm lowering the stretch goal for Book 3 — this time to $10k! 

So, help me out here, folks! I'm reaching in your direction. Reach out in mine. Tell anyone you know who might be interested. Consider jumping in if you're on the fence, or jumping in farther if you're already there. Remember, one of the things I cannot change about this drive is the end date, and that's tomorrow, March 11, at just before midnight. It all blazes across the finish line then, ready or not.

Thanks to each and every one of you for your support. Here's to a fantastic race to the finish!

Two Days Left!

The Shotguns & Sorcery Kickstarter is winding down to its final moments. As I write this, we have jut 56 hours to go, and the total stands at just under $7,000. HUGE thanks to everyone who chipped in and helped out.

I'm pretty confident we can crack the $8k barrier, which unlocks Book 2. I don't know if we'll make the $12k to unlock Book 3 as well, but that's all part of the way a Kickstarter ratchets up the tension at the end, I suppose.

With so little time left, it's vital to get the message out to everyone who might be interested. If you can help out with that in any way, I'd truly appreciate it. Meanwhile, I'll sit here and refresh my web browser and check my email constantly until the very end!

Shotguns & Sorcery Interview

Over on his Have Dice, Will Travel blog, my pal Keith Baker interviews me about Shotguns & Sorcery. Among his many accomplishments, Keith is the man who created the Eberron setting for Dungeons & Dragons. As he writes in the interview, "When I pitched Eberron, I described it as The Lord of the Rings meets Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Maltese Falcon."

If you know how I've pitched Shotguns & Sorcery, that might sound familiar. I actually came up with Shotguns & Sorcery back in 2001, the year before the world setting search that unearthed Eberron, so it seems that was just the kind of idea in the air back then. I brought those sensibilities with me when I wrote The Lost Mark trilogy of novels for Eberron, which were the first books for the setting after Keith's own trilogy.

I'd tell you about the differences between them, but Keith asked me that question himself. So hustle on over there, and give it a read. Then — if you haven't already — grab a copy of the still-free "Goblintown Justice" to try it out for yourself.

Then check out the Shotguns & Sorcery Kickstarter. It ends in 63 hours, so don't wait!

Three Days Left!

At the moment, we have just over 80 hours left until the end of the Shotguns & Sorcery Kickstarter. We crossed the halfway mark — $6,000! — to unlocking all three of the books yesterday, which means 200% of the initial goal!

However, that leaves us with $2k to go to unlock Book 2 and $4k after that for Book 3. It's a long way, sure, but most Kickstarters have a big surge in the last few days. Here's hoping we can pull that off here, just like we did the last time around.

If you want to chip in but haven't yet, don't be shy. Go grab a free copy of "Goblintown Justice" for a sample of Shotguns & Sorcery goodness, and then head over to Kickstarter to check out the backer rewards.

Come Sunday night, the drive's over. Remember, you can pledge now, and no one gets charged for it until sometime Monday.

If you have any way to get the word out, don't hesitate to let me know. I'm happy to help out with interviews, blog posts, tweets, and whatever else might grab some more attention for us. This all sucks up time, but it's now or never!

Meanwhile, I'm already starting to plan for the third trilogy. I've decided to write a set of thrillers set at game/comic conventions. They say write what you know, and I've pretty much grown up at such events over many, many years. Combine that with the fact that there are so many ex-military gamers running around such events, and you have a recipe for a great action yarn or three.

That's for the future though. For the moment, let's not take our eyes off the Shotguns & Sorcery ball!

Interview with Chuck Wendig

Back when I ran my first Kickstarter, Chuck Wendig was kind enough to interview me for his blog. Since he's running his own Kickstarter now — and I'm running another one myself — I figured it was time to return the favor. 

Much like myself, Chuck started out working in the tabletop gaming industry — he was a developer for White Wolf, among other things — but he's since become one hell of a fiction writer too. He may be best known these days for his blog, on which he dispenses inspiring writing advice shot through with creative profanity, but his novels prove that he knows a lot more about writing fiction than just how to talk about it. I had the chance to read his upcoming Blackbirds , which is being published by Angry Robot in April, and it's fantastic. 

Your blog is named Terribleminds. What's that about?

The name, or the blog?

Doesn't matter; I can answer both in a single answer. Like Superman.

I procured the URL over a decade ago and my initial thought was to do this online zine bullshit writer's community hoo-hah, but somewhere along the way I decided, "That's going to be a lot of work." Then I took a nap. When I awoke I decided it would be better instead to just keep the site as my own personal babble-space.

So, the name terribleminds comes out of that notion where the site would allow an unholy host of terrible-minded writer-types to gather. Which, in a sense, it has become over these many glacial epochs. Prophecy, fulfilled!

How many years did it take for you to become the overnight success you are today?

Let's see. I'm just about to turn 36. And I had my first short story published when I was 18 (a story called "Bourbon Street Lullaby" in a magazine called Not One of Us). So, it took me eighteen years. Provided my meager math skills are functioning correctly.

In other news: hey, holy crap, I'm getting older. Whee!

You publish your own stuff, write original books, and write tie-ins too, as well as write for games and film. How do all these fit into your genius plans to dominate the storytelling world?

Thing is, I have no genius plan. I mostly just rove drunkenly between whatever opportunity I can conjure up – it goes well with a phrase I use semi-often: "Painting with shotguns." That's basically what I'm doing. The key is – as you well know, as a many-headed penmonkey yourself – diversity of work. Tell as many stories across as many platforms as possible. Try not to fall down and die in the process.

As a sidenote, I just read a study that said most writers earn an average of $9000 a year. Which is, to me, insane. I can't even imagine living on that. I hope some data is missing, there. [My suspicion is that counts part-timers, which spikes the average down.]

You recently launched a Kickstarter drive for your readers to encourage you to write a number of novels based on your Atlanta Burns character from your Shotgun Gravy novella. Tell us about Atlanta and why you chose her for this.

Both the names "Atlanta Burns" and "Shotgun Gravy" were kicking around my head for a couple of years. I had no idea what to do with them and, for some reason, refused to think that somehow they went together.

Then came a time when my head started orbiting the sadly real-life problem of bullies and gay suicide and the "It Gets Better" online phenomenon and a story started bubbling to the surface. I started to think: "Well, sure, those videos are great, but teens have a hard time seeing past the day in which they're living. That's why they drive fast and act stupid, because they don't see the potential in the future. So, telling them it gets better is only so useful – you have to imagine that at some point a teenager is going to decide to try to make it better now.

But, of course, my brain is twisted, so "making it better now" suddenly became this story of a teen going up against bullies with a shotgun and making a right mess of things.

Somehow, the names "Atlanta Burns" and "Shotgun Gravy" just clicked with that concept, and here we are.

The original plan was admittedly to do a series of novellas, but the story for the next in the series, Bait Dog, got bigger and bigger in my head to the point where it seemed to deserve more room on the page. So now it's novel-shaped, instead!

How do you like Kickstarter? Do you see yourself doing more projects using it?

Man, I love Kickstarter. It energizes your fans, it bolsters your work, it allows for a system that is equal parts "pre-order" and "artist patronage." I totally intend to use it again.

You became a new father last year. How's that affected your writing?

Ha ha ha ha! Hah! Hee. Hah. Haw.

*slams another glass of Basil Hayden's*

It has been wondrous and maddening all in the same space. On the one hand, it gives me further impetus to do what I do. Now I've a kid with a mouth to feed and a head to cram full of crazy stories. On the other hand, as it turns out, you can't just put a baby in a terrarium.

I mean, you can, but you probably shouldn't.

They require attention! And writing requires concentration. Babies, I've posited, are the opposite of writers: chaos to the writer's need for order.

So, it's awesome in the truest sense of that word.

We both write novels for Angry Robot, and your first — Blackbirds — comes out this spring. It's the first in a series of stories about Miriam Black. Tell us what's special about her and why that speaks to you so much you decided to devote so many excellent words to tell her story.

Miriam Black knows how you're going to die. She touches you and that's it. She sees your death play out in her mind like a little mini-movie. Miriam's story speaks to a very old theme of fate versus free will, but in an… erm, classically Wendigo-style. (Violence and profanity with a core of sweetness and sadness buried within.)

Her story comes out of my own life, in dealing with the deaths of many family members — and, further, suddenly realizing that uh-oh, I'm also going to die someday.

How did your work as a game developer train you to become the writer you are today?

I learned a lot about writing from doing game design, RPG scenarios, game-related fiction. I had some great developers in the game world. And some pretty shitty ones. Both taught me a lot about writing in terms of positive and negative lessons to takeaway.

With games, I mostly learned how important it is to appease an audience and to give them something they don't expect. A lot of fiction is rote. I don't want to write rote fiction.

You're editing an anthology based on the Don't Rest Your Head RPG? How does that editor's cap fit you?

I've done development before (I developed the entire Hunter: The Vigil gameline, for instance). I love to do it. Love to foster writers. Love to teach inside the fabric of a draft.

But it's tricky because editing and development time takes away from writing time, and more and more that's becoming a no-no. I've devoted 2012 to being more generative as a writer, and so that means in the future I'm unlikely to take editorial work unless it's something really special.

Now, that being said, the DRYH anthology is something special, and has some stories that made my jaw drop. (Including yours, if I may say.) We've got great writers on-board. LA Gilman, Harry Connolly, Stephen Blackmoore, Rich Dansky. And some unexpected stuff, too. Both Will Hindmarch and Josh Roby turned in stories that sucker-punched me outta nowhere.

You hand out a lot of writing advice on your blog, and you've collected much of that into three ebooks with 1,250 tips in total. Which are your three favorite bits?

It's like asking me to choose my favorite children. Out of 1,250 children.

Which is how many children you have, I've heard!

Anyway.

If anything, three lessons pop up again and again:

First, finish your shit. Completo el poopo.

Second, we do not "have" time, but rather, we make it.

Third, read your work aloud.

If anybody takes anything away from the constant barrage of nonsense I barf up at terribleminds, those three are probably good ones.