Matt Forbeck's Blog, page 66
October 28, 2010
Amortals for Free at World Fantasy Convention
I'm heading out to the World Fantasy Convention in the morning. While I'm there, anyone at the show who asks me about Amortals gets a free copy of the ebook edition, days before it's available to the rest the world. Just stop me and say hi, and it's all yours, courtesy of my fine publishers at Angry Robot.
The easiest places to find me will be at my two scheduled events:
Friday, October 29, 8 PM: Mass autograph signing. Come chat with me in between getting autographs from the giants in the industry!
Saturday, October 30, 3:30 PM: Author reading. I'll have something from Amortals and maybe Vegas Knights to share.
Otherwise, just track me down in the hall, the Big Bar on 2, or anywhere else in the area. Or you can ping me on Twitter if you want to find me to say hi. I hope to see you there!
Guest of 3Con
This year, the World Fantasy Convention (which starts tomorrow!) marks the end of the 2010 convention season for me. After that, I'm going to burrow into my den and write, write, write for months on end. I'm already making plans for when spring comes back around though.
For instance, the fine folks at the brand-spanking-new new Three Rivers Game Convention — better known as 3Con — have made me a guest of honor at their inaugural show. That puts me in excellent company with Marc Miller, Skip Williams, Jeff Siadek, Andy Hopp, and Dan the Bard.
If you'll be anywhere near Fort Wayne, Indiana, on April 1–2, 2011, be sure to join us!
October 27, 2010
Amortals at MEEEchigan
Michigan Today, the magazine dedicated to the University of Michigan, has a section in which it lists books written by Michigan alumni. At the moment, Amortals sits at the top of the list. It won't be up there long, of course, but it's cool to see one of my novels displayed on the website of the place where I picked up my creative writing degree. Scroll down the list a bit, and you'll see Alex Irvine's Buyout, Brad Meltzer's Book of Lies, and Tom Grace's The Secret Cardinal too. The only real question is where's Paul Kemp?
TimeOut Diversions
My pal Tony Lee just launched a new gaming company, TimeOut Diversions. Just in time for Halloween, he has Killer Thriller!, a short RPG about B-movie horror flicks. Also, to celebrate the upcoming World Series, Tony's written "Hu's the Monk," a fantasy roleplaying riff on the classic "Who's on First?" routine by Abbot & Costello. Check it out.
October 25, 2010
Amortals: Packed with Extras
Last week, my first copy of the UK print run of Amortals showed up on my doorstep, courtesy of Marco and Lee at Angry Robot. It's a thing of rare beauty (okay, I'm more than a little biased), and I had to share it with you. It's a bit larger than your traditional mass-market paperback, about the size of my copy of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo — or just a bit shorter than the massive Die Geister von Ascalon. It clocks in at just over 350 pages of story-packed goodness.
Of that, about 310 pages comprises the main story of Amortals, and the rest features some special treats for readers, much like the kind of extras you might find on a collector's edition DVD. This includes:
A note from me about how Amortals came to be.
The pitch I used to sell Amortals to Angry Robot.
The original synopsis for the book from when I first tried to sell it in 1994.
The original first chapter that went with that synopsis.
A preview of Vegas Knights, including the first two chapters of the book.
The book hits stores in the UK and ebook stores worldwide on November 4, a week from this Thursday. Tell your friends and neighbors! I can't wait for you to read it.
Die Geister von Ascalon, Super-Sized!
Last week, Ed Schlesinger, my editor at Simon & Shuster, sent over a copy of Guild Wars: Die Geister von Ascalon, the German edition of Ghosts of Ascalon. It looks amazing.
I don't know if all German novels are printed this way, but Marco Lupoi and his team at Panini Books knocked this one out of the park. As you can see from the photo, it towers over the English edition. It also comes with a classy spot varnish on the text on the front cover and spine, and the cover has huge endflaps that fold into the book.
It's also bit pricier. It retails for €12.95, which comes out to just over $18 at the current exchange rate. That's more than double the $7.99 cost for the US version. Still, it's gorgeous, and by all accounts Cora Hartwig did an excellent job with the translation, something that can't be easy when you're dealing with a fantasy world in which so much of what's there has been made up from whole cloth.
If you'd like to see a sample of the German book, check out its publishers' page. Scroll down, and you can download a sample of the first 36 pages of the book for free.
Green Kobold? Open Design for Freeport
I have a lot of friends in the gaming industry, and two groups of them just teamed up to develop something very cool: Dark Deeds in Freeport. This is a Pathfinder (essentially D&D 3.75) adventure for Green Ronin's Freeport: The City of Adventure, designed as one of Wolfgang Baur's Open Design projects.
I co-wrote the original Freeport hardcover with Chris Pramas way back in 2002. It's Chris's brilliant fantasy pirate setting in which he set one of the first-ever adventures for D&D 3.0. It's a great, fun city that you can plunk down into just about any fantasy RPG, filled with cutthroats, cults, and intrigue.
People sometimes ask me if they should self-publish their RPGs or adventures. I usually tell them they need to do a whole lot of research first so they don't lose their shirt making the same mistakes we all commit when we start out. A great way to do this is to sign up for one of Wolf's Open Design projects, which applies the concept of patronage to RPG development. If you pre-pay for the adventure, you get to watch it being written, and the more money you pay, the more influence you have over it.
Wolf and Open Design won the Diana Jones Award in 2008 not only because he's a great designer who came up with an innovative business model. It's because, as it says on the DJA site, "each project becomes a master-level class on roleplaying game adventure or supplement design for those privileged to be a part of it."
If you're interested in learning more about RPG adventure design and publishing, you can check out any of the Open Design projects. Dark Deeds in Freeport, however, promises to be among the best.
October 22, 2010
The World Fantasy Convention
Just yesterday I finally made the decision to attend the World Fantasy Convention in Columbus, Ohio, this year. The plan is to arrive on Friday and leave early Sunday so I can get back in time to trick-or-treat with my kids. I have two events scheduled for the show:
Friday, October 29, 8 PM: Mass autograph signing. Come chat with me in between getting autographs from the giants in the industry!
Saturday, October 30, 3:30 PM: Author reading. I'll have something from Amortals to share.
Beyond all that, I'll be wandering around the show, having meetings with editors and agents, catching up with old friends, and making new ones. It's bound to be a bit of a strange show for me, and not just because I don't normally make it to the World Fantasy Conventions. The show travels about, and this year it's in the Hyatt Regency in Columbus, the main hotel for the Origins Game Fair, to which I've been countless times. I fully expect a feeling of vuja dé to set in about halfway through the show, probably while I'm chatting with someone at the Big Bar on 2.
I hope to see you there!
Listen to Amortals
At the suggestion of my overlords publishers at Angry Robot, I sat down the other day, taught myself how to use Garageband, and read the first chapter of Amortals to my laptop. Give it a listen, and tell all your friends and neighbors! I hope you enjoy what you hear.
Matt Forbeck's Amortals: Chapter One
As I find myself saying a lot these days, you can pre-order the book right now. Just click on one of the links in the sidebar. Thanks!
October 21, 2010
Free Amortals Sample!
Here's a free sample of the first 50 pages of Amortals. Tell your friends and neighbors! I hope you enjoy it!
Remember, you can pre-order the book right now. Just click on one of the links in the sidebar. Thanks!
