Myth, the Universe, and Everything

If Neil Gaiman asks it, how can I, as a semi-regular blogger who admires the truly regular bloggers who still manage to write published materials, refuse?

http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2007/02/and-in-time-it-took-to-say-that-neil.html

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Also, since I roughly announced this in a comment on eyezofwolf's blog, Regaining Home is scheduled for release at GenCon.

Also on the Ramlar front, Allies and Adversaries, to which I contributed, will be released sometime this month. It also features work by Lydia Laurenson, one of the authors of the Scroll of the Monk supplement for White Wolf's Exalted and an old friend of mine.

(Lydia, if you're reading this--I'm going back to Greece and Turkey! I shall think of you in sunny plazas with warmly flowing fountains, as I remember your being fond of one in particular, but don't remember where it was.)

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Pop quiz for the readership (limited though I'm sure it still is): shall I make an effort to post the Greece and Turkey adventures when I'm abroad this May/June? They'll likely have nothing to do with writing (as the study tour for which I'm serving as a TA is a mythology tour rather than a creative writing tour). As I recall, internet cafes were rather scarce, but if people are interested, I'll make the effort.

One of my publishers has just been nominated for several Ennie awards, sort of the gaming industry's equivalent of the Emmys. Alas, none of their nominations were for my title, Gallia, but I am glad to see them noticed, as hopefully it will drive more sales in my general direction.

The nominated title is Baba Yaga, a Russianfolk lore setting for playing d20 fantasy. (Mine is the equivalent book set in France.) It's a neat e-book with some great ideas on magic items that really fit in with Russian folklore.

If you haven't voted at the Ennies before but are interested in doing so, you can vote for your favorite RPGs here. Some great games are up for awards this year, including Mark Smylie's Artesia and Margaret Weis Productions' Serenity. White Wolf and Green Ronin also have nominees. Kenzer and Company's Aces and Eights: Showdown, which has some pretty fantastic concepts on making combat more realistic (from what I remember when I played a preview at Origins 2004) is a nominee in the best rules category. All in all, there are a lot of good folks on the list this year, and if you play RPGs at all, I'd encourage you to vote for your favorites.

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On a completely different note, it looks like the final writing for Steampunk Musha RPG is finished! Creator Rick Hershey and I just touched up a sample adventure for the book yesterday. It's still listed as "Coming Soon" from Politically Incorrect Games, but hopefully I'll have a pub date to pass along soon. This one will be in both print and electronically, so hopefully it will find its way onto the shelves of gaming stores near you.

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With all of this going on, and a distinct lack of air conditioning in my apartment, I'm finding it extremely hard to get any work done on novel number two (Departure). My friend Arielle, who is always one of my first readers, is off to Comic Con San Diego this week, so I hope to have quite a bit done by the time she gets back next Monday.

If you're at Comic Con, keep an eye out for the new flyers for Into the Reach, Chronicles of Ramlar, and Verto Syzol's Legendaria Geographica. If the White Silver artists find Arielle at the San Francisco Browncoats booth, there should be some there. Otherwise, Larry Elmore will almost certainly have them, and I understand he's making an appearance.

But now, back to work.

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Currently Reading: Tales of the Last War, and Eberron short story collection edited by Mark Sehestedt, and Trevis Powell's No Hero, which he kindly sent me in an early draft format. (It debuts at DragonCon.)

Currently Playing: Knights of the Old Republic II: Sith Lords.