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!
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!
posted by Jeff LaSala at 9:35 AM
6 Comments:
Thank you, my friend.
Thank you very, very much.
-Ed
So... wait. Did he win that competition?
Heh...sort of. He entered a more exclusive competition. Explain it, Ed.
Well, after MoP I was put into a pool of writers who would be contacted with future opportunities. Because of that I won a spot in Realms of the Dragons II. The authors from that and a few others were later invited to submit proposals for this Citadels series. I was lucky enough to win one of those four spots in that series.
-Ed
Well, that's friggin DOPE.
Did they announce the winner of the other Open Call yet? The Eberron or something thing? Is that right?
Yeah, the big open call for Eberron. That was announced some time ago. The winner was a longtime Wizards/TSR-based game designer. Heh. What remains are future Eberron closed calls...
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