Wilderness of Mirrors

It’s all about interconnectivity. Here’s how it went down, in short:

Sometime in the winter or spring of 2003, Wizards of the Coast announced a big contest, the open call for the Maiden of Pain novel. I joined the 500 people vying for this honor, and while I already knew the setting pretty well, I found every scrap of research I could and even began to haunt the now-extinct Forgotten Realms Novels message boards over at the Wizards site to see what other people were saying.

There a small community was forming of fellow Maiden of Pain submitters (aka MoPers). I mostly listened but would add my two cents now and again. One day I came across some posts by a guy who had a Rush lyric (Double Agent) in his signature. I called him on it, and then he and I started to share emails.

Eventually, we shared our MoP submissions and gave critiques. Then we shared unrelated thoughts...then we became friends. That guy turned out to be Ed Gentry. See, Ed made the “short list” for Maiden of Pain and eventually went on to get a short story published in The Realms of the Dragons 2. Now, officially announced today, Ed is slated for a Forgotten Realms novel in 2008. And I couldn’t be happier for him.

Ed came to my wedding, and in a few weeks I’ll be staying with him in Indiana during GenCon. And he’s recently gotten engaged, too, to Lara. Things have been seriously going on for the last couple years!

Interconnectivity. I love how it works. I’ve got the same unexpected friendship with Harley, another excellent writer whose own writing credentials are climbing a fast and furious hill. Harley seems to be working on a half-dozen writing projects at once.

Anyway...congratulations, Ed!

In Brief...

Not enough freakin' hours in the day.

• My weekend trip to see my family was great. Except the part where John, Marisa and myself were scolded, vehemently, for not wearing proper "corporate attire" for the plane ride up. People are amazing. But at least we gave the air martial something to do that day.
• Escapee episode 14 is up.
• Marcy Rockwell did a poem for The Sword Review. I did some artwork to accompany it. You can find both here.
• I have a big project going on. It feels great. But let me reiterate:

Not enough freakin' hours in the day!

Push Through That Band of Rain

Tomorrow morning I'll be getting on a tiny company jet (my dad's company, Corning) to fly upstate NY to visit my parents. This'll be only the third time I've visited them at their own house since they've lived there (at least a few years now).

I'm a little nervous about the plane. I'm not wild about air travel, and doubly not-wild since 9/11. There's something about hearing the impact of a crashing plane in real time with your own ears that forever places something inside you akin to real fear.

Anyway, I intend to have fun with it, if I can. It'll be a tiny jet. I'll be the only person, I suspect, in the airways of New York to have Mike Oldfield's "Five Miles Out" playing in my head:

You're a prisoner of the dark sky, the propeller blades are still
The evil eye of the hurricane's coming in now for the kill

Escapee episode 13 is up.

Life Is a Chimera

It’s big, it’s unpredictable, and it’s got three heads—depending on your source. The Greeks would have you believe that it’s got a goat’s body, a lion’s head, and a serpent-tail. I submit a more TSR-like configuration that it, like life, has three heads.

The leonine head is majestic, but also pretty terrifying. Like life.

The goat head, hollow-horned and oft-bearded, will eat anything. Like the goats in Gregory the Terrible Eater, a book I really loved as a kid. How like life that is.

Then there's the dragon head. Be careful with this one. It comes in five different colors, and each can spew a different substances or energy generally not conducive to your health. Again, as in life.

We've got to be Bellerophon when it comes to life. Arm yourself with a lump of lead bound to a spear, and get yourself a winged horse if you can. It helps.

Also...mythic beasts have been on my mind of late—for reasons I may go into more at some point, and then there's the fact that I'm drawing a chimera for Marcy (yes, Marcy....it's still pending, and not forgotten).

Escapee episode 12 is up. Or...should I say, down?

Past A Mortal As Me

4:30 a.m. on July 4th. At work. The graveyard shift. That's where it's at, folks.

So I'm completely alone in the office, listening to the All Yes station on AOL radio, writing this entry, waiting for 8 o'clock so I can home, nap, and enjoy the holiday.

For those of you Order of the Stick fans, you might find this amusing. Rich Burlew does crayon OotS-style drawings for people at his convention appearances. My friends Ruth and Jess, the very talented ladies of the Five Wits, have befriended him (and will in fact will be helping him run his booth at GenCon) and recently gottem him to illustrate the player characters from my D&D campaign.

You can see them all here. On the off-off-off-chance that Rich ever find this page: Thanks, Rich! I've been hanging out at his site, Giant In the Playground, since nearly its beginning. As part of that crazy connectivity I keep finding throughout this world, my friend Richie Procopio (who helped me get my current job) was a former player and DM with Rich Burlew. Ruth: I think I will take one of those OotS books off your hands now!

And by the way: Those of you who have been sending me links to possible artwork gigs (small or large), please, send them along to Ruth. Her drawings kick the crap out of mine, and her work is way better than half of the illustrations you find in most gaming books. If you don't believe me, check out her Elfwood site. And that's the older stuff!