Back to the Grindstone

Would that it were the Grindhouse, but nope. I'm talking about words what need the smithing.

Scott McGough and I have a deadline rapidly approaching that's coinciding with one at the day job, so my furious spate of blogging is likely to slow for a bit. We're deep into Book 2 of the Lorwyn block and things are cooking right along -- things I can't talk about, naturally, but Things all the same.

I can talk a little more about Pirates of the Burning Sea, however. We're hitting that -- and pardon the starry-eyed nature of the following -- magical point at which the game is becoming a Game. I get to play it every day, and the changes that have been wrought on things that I fortunately have nothing to do with are nothing short of beautiful. Little things that didn't quite work right when I came on a year ago are not smooth and functional, big things that could have been improved a bit were instead overhauled, redesigned, and made spectacular. I've never worked with a harder-working group of people. And yet we still can spend lunch arguing the strategies for zombie warfare, concocting gastronomic military euphemisms involving General Tso/Tsao/Gau and his infamous Safeway chicken recipe, pasting a convention photo of the community guy's head onto any unlucky meme that hits the office email (and FLS has no shortage of meme-mail, most of it both funny and disturbing), and the usual debates concerning the Sopranos, Star Wars, Deadwood, Rome, Trek, BSG or Street Fighter.


Seriously, only lunch. We're busy there in ConCo.

Back to Lorwyn Book 2. This is both the most exhilerating and terrifying stage of co-writing, I'm finding. The ideas are coming fast and furious, but when you have two people writing simultaneously, the seams really show in that first draft. Fortunately, it's just the first draft. At the same time, we finished our final edits on book 1 and sent it off to the editors at Wizards. If all goes according to plan, you will see Lorwyn Book 1 at the end of August 2007. It helped a bit to go over book 1 one more time, especially to see how smooth the transitions from my writing to Scott's writing turned out. And really, but the end all of the text is the result of combined efforts since we edit and revise each other's stuff quite a bit. I had trouble remembering who had written exactly what, and I figure that must be a good thing.


Until Lorwyn Book 1 hits the shelves, may I recommend Scott McGough's Time Spiral cycle? They're some great reads. And the more of his books you buy, the less Scott has to sleep on my doorstep. I know the nights are getting warmer, but he lost three toes over the winter. Have a heart. It's Easter.