Choice of the Deathless: a XYZZY Award finalist! And Fan Art! And things!
I’m in the middle of a, um, let’s call it moderately insane work cycle—writing one book at the same time as editing another, which should be possible in theory but involves a lot of gear-grinding and clutchless shifting in practice. Both the next two books will be really good if I can bring the writing in line with my vision, though. Y’all are in for a treat.
Interesting corollary: I seem to have become a better writer since mid-March, which was the last time I edited the next Craft book. Or I’ve become a more exacting editor, one or the other. What this means line by line is, I spend hours pacing and grumbling about a thorny issue of rhythm or rhyme; not the most pleasant experience, but the only way to get work done to spec and to standard. Fortunately I have rewards in store once I hand in this manuscript: Felix Gilman’s The Revolutions, Hannu Rajaniemi’s Causal Angel (which comes out around my birthday!), and Jo Walton’s new book. I’d include Elizabeth Bear’s The Steles of the Sky on that list but I’ve already read it, HA HA HA—which is no excuse for you, if you haven’t. GO FORTH AND READ.
Anyway! All of that was a lead-up to saying that I lack brainspace for deep criticism this week. Roll Cool Stuff Reel instead!
Choice of the Deathless Nominated for XYZZY Awards!
The annual XYZZY Interactive Fiction Awards were held at the beginning of the month, and Choice of the Deathless, my Craft Sequence choose-your-own-undead-legal-career-and-try-not-to-get-murdered game, was nominated for best setting and best NPCs! It was an honor to be nominated, especially as someone coming from pretty far outside the modern IF community. I didn’t win—I know it’s sort of funny to be announcing my nomination after the awards are in, but unlike the Hugo Awards, it doesn’t cost anything to vote in the XYZZYs which means vote mongering is a huge risk and I wanted to avoid any appearance of that—but I had an excellent time, and damn is there good writing in the IF scene. It’s wild to discover work like Tom McHenry’s Dick-esque Horse Master, Porpentine’s game of abuse-survival-and-angel-fighting Their angelical understanding, and her equally insane subversive gut-punch ULTRA BUSINESS TYCOON III (If you’re going to play UBTIII, by the way, and you should, there’s one puzzle for which you’ll need this file). I haven’t had enough time to play all this year’s XYZZY finalists, but I will, and you can bet I’ll have a close eye on the nomination list next year. The full list is here.
Fan Art!
Deviantart user Piarelle hooked me up with some more fan art based on Choice of the Deathless—here’s a picture of R’ok, looking awfully polite for a demon mantis, and here we have a mild (but super cute) spoiler for a couple romantic endings of the series.
After all, just because you’re a skeleton doesn’t mean romance is out of the question.
And no, I’m not going to link to the relevant Oglaf comic. 
Board Game Updates!
I played my first game with the Eclipse expansion packs (Rise of the Ancients and Ship Pack One) this Sunday; the Alien Homeworlds make sub-six player games much more interesting, and the new player races are warped in cool ways. Right now the Syndicate seem powerful—but some of that may have just been chance. Also, if you’re interested in spaceship fighting but can’t afford a three hour playtime, permit me to suggest Quantum, a sorta-4X that’s massively customizable, replayable, and portable, and evokes the spirit of a Vorkosigan Saga-esque space opera story better than anything I’ve ever seen.
What do I mean by that? Quantum is a game of moving dice-ships (a very cool mechanic—d6s stand in for spaceships, with higher-number dice moving further while lower numbers pack more of a punch in combat) around the map, trying to muster the right combination of ships to orbit and conquer planets before your friends do. Each of the six types of ship has its own special ability—and critically you don’t get to control what ships you deploy. Each time you build a ship, you roll a die and decide where to place the resulting “spaceship” on the map! On your turn, you’ll find yourself surveying a tiny and dispersed fleet composed of ships you never would have chosen, desperate to stop your fellow players from winning—or to conquer a new planet of your own somehow. Whatever solution you find, it’s likely to be some insane combination of special abilities, luck, and lateral thinking, the kind of mad edge-case victory I love in the Vorkosigan books but rarely see captured in 4X gameplay. Somehow Quantum gets you there 90% of the time, in explosive and kinetic fashion. And all this in 45 minutes a game! (Though they’re like french fries—you can’t have just one…) If this sounds like your kind of thing, I strongly suggest you check it out.
And that’s all I have for you this week! Be well, and if you’re in Mass. dress warm these next couple days. April’s taking that whole “cruelest month” reputation to heart.
