Die Gladiatoren Von

This showed up in the mail today, sent from GRRM. I wasn't sure what it was, but I could tell it was in German.

Oh, I see. It's LOWBALL, a Wild Cards novel that I wrote for. Don't know that I knew this would be published in Germany, but... yay!

Blog Post

There's a new blog post I wrote up at Wild Cards World.

This one is about doing horrible things to another person's character.

Wild Cards Heading to TV!

Here, at long last, is the announcement of a supercool thing I've known was in the works for quite awhile now: Wild Cards series is a go on Hulu!

This is rather exciting. Like, really exciting. Among other things, the first show is going to begin with Fort Freak, the first book I wrote for!

Wild Cards World

The Wild Cards Series has a shiny new website. It's lovely, and going to be growing and active and (hopefully) full of awesome news about great things to come. (Things are in the works.) If you click over to it you'll see - among others - one of my characters featured on the covers displayed on the main page! The snaky dude. (At this point I'm obligated to mention that my son was my co-creator of this character, as he always reminds me.) Anyway, check it out!

High Stakes Delivered

Very pleased to have sent my portion of the next Wild Cards novel, HIGH STAKES, in to George RR Martin last night. It's been a long process this time around, with some serious delays. But yesterday I got what I needed to finish, I went to work and 4,167 words later I pressed SEND. (My sections are 43,000 in total.) So. Done.

Until I have to do rewrites.

Now back to packing and teaching and all the other things of life!

Two Wild Cards related things...

One is that after a long time sitting on it, I think I can finally display the cover art for the forthcoming Wild Card novel, Lowball. What gives me particular pleasure is that my character, Marcus Morgan (aka The Infamous Black Tongue), is featured on the cover! The kid owns it.

Check it out:

It sill needs all the covery-bits added, but that's the image. Love it. You know what's even better? My son Sage was instrumental in creating this character. To hear him tell it, he did create the character. Don't believe it for a minute. ;)

The artist is Michael Kormack. Check out his work HERE.

The reason I think it's okay to show this now is that George RR Martin has it up on his website. He's using it to illustrate the page with an excerpt from Lowball. And you know what's even better than that? The excerpt is from my multi-part story, "Those About to Die..." Awesome. In all likelihood it'll be on GRRM's site for ages, since the next book - the last in this trilogy - won't be out for a while yet. I'm going to be in that one too. Actually, I'm working like crazy to deliver my contribution by the end of this month. Wish me luck on that, please.

Anyway, should you want to check out the excerpt, it's available HERE.

GRRM's Freaky Monkey

A few days ago I got an email from George RR Martin. He was announcing to his Wild Cards authors that the latest book, Fort Freak, was done and dusted, and about to get sent off to Tor to go into production. This made me very, very happy.

You see, I've written a three part story for the book. I went back and forth with George a few times as I developed the character and then wrote the story, and geez there were a ton of things to consider! Quite an experience to be one of several authors writing in an established world with stories about different characters that had to be contained within a unifying plot line with as many arms, legs and eyes as some of its mutant characters...

But, like I said, it's done! My character, a young African-American guy dubbed the Infamous Black Tongue, sees a lot of action. It was, despite the challenges, a lot of fun to write. For me, it was novel to write in a contemporary, urban setting. I hope that when the book comes out some of you give it a try! (That will happen sometime in 2011, by the way.)

And, yes, this would work as a place to enter the Wild Cards world if you're giving it a try for the first time. It's the start of what will, hopefully, be a new cycle of books. Lots of new characters. A return to a gritty, urban setting, with a strong police-procedural element to it...

You can see George's post on it HERE: Freaky Monkey Bites the Dust.