Aaaand...We're Back!

Which is to say I'm back, hopefully with some semi-regular posts here and over at Seattle Under Siege!

Been a lot going on around here. I've recently gotten a promotion to lead world designer at Flying Lab Software, where my focus is on Pirates of the Burning Sea (on sale wherever fine MMOs are sold (and online, too, which is probably redundant). The second Lorwyn Cycle novel I wrote with the talented and steel-livered Scott McGough is on sale now--it's called Morningtide and you should buy several copies for yourself, our friends, and your family, once they all stop fighting each other for the copy of Lorwyn (Book 1) you bought. See how it pays to buy in bulk? And don't forget to keep your eye out for Eventide, the last book in the set (also written with McGough). And somewhere in there is an anthology I can't seem to find on Amazon that will contain a novella Scott and I wrote--it'll connects the two 'tides.

I also got married to my girlfriend of some 15 years. We figured it was time to end the "will they or won't they?" speculation when it was least expected--long after anyone was asking. We're very happy and so are the cats, who no longer have to deal with the psychological torture of being from a broken home. Good kitties.

All shilling and wedlock-boasting aside, I turned 36 today and will soon be sleeping the sleep of the just, so I think that's all I got for now--but if you are actually interested in what I'm doing, check back soon. I'm tanned, rested, and ready--I don't intend to let another six months lapse before posting again.

Lorwyn Book I On Sale Now, Fat Pack On Sale Soon

I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that my first co-written novel (co-written with my supremely talented friend Scott McGough) is now on sale at finer book sellers everywhere. That probably includes your comic, card, and hobby shops, and wherever else Magic: the Gathering-related items are sold. Lorwyn should also soon be available (in October, if I don't miss my guess) as part of the Fat Pack if you reckon you'll want some delicious cards and strategy to go with your fiction.

Don't forget to place your pre-order for Morningtide (Lorwyn Book II) while you're at it--my cat told me you should, and it's best not to disagree with him. I once saw him cut a man's jugular just for snorin' too loud.

And the Winner is...McGough!

Crossed the finish line with a few minutes to spare. Mr. McGough finished a few hours ahead and actually got a good night's sleep, but that's just how I roll. If I'm not wrapping it up and mailing it off at 7 AM on a workday, during which I will then zombie my way through until I can return home and slip into sleep's warm embracing warming embrace, then I ain't writin'.

But I don't have to tell you that. And I certainly don't need to tell Bill. Since we ventured into the ancient past for our last Shatneriffic video, it only seems appropriate to venture into the slightly less ancient past for the big finish. Note the shiny new "computer graphics" in the opening titles and especially note that Hooker has moved from a pair of car hoods and an airplane wing to jumping from a helicopter and onto a speeding speedboat!

EDIT: This was originally entitled "And the Winner is...Me!" because, in the exhilaration of hitting the deadline, I felt as if I had "won" a "race" of some "kind." But then I actually looked at what I wrote and realized by any estimation, McGough "won" in terms of both word count--which I'll endeavor to make up for in the second draft, by gum--and in terms of crossing this so-called Finnish Line, which I assume is somewhere in the vicinity of Espoo. Not that it's a contest, except it is.

Big Crunch Weekend

This is it. Last possible weekend to work on this deadline. Got enough cigarettes to get through tomorrow, at least. Got a shiny new French press and a little bit of the birthday bourbon left for when the coffee doesn't keep them words a-flowin'. Got the D. Got a good chair, and a solid re-re-re-revised outline.

Just need a little something to kick things off right. Bill? Got anything for me?

Lorwyn Book I Cover

Amazon has a cover image up for book 1 in the Lorwyn cyle, the first entry in the new set Scott McGough and I are writing (currently we're hard at work on the book 2). Note that the image on Amazon is an early version. I expect it's not the final version, especially the byline.

Here's a home-made corrected version I made for kicks. My apologies to the cover artist, I could not find a name to credit.

The Ravnica Trailer

Facing a Lorwyn deadline, so it must be time for a delicious and (for me) ego-boosting video post lest the sheer awesome of S.P. Miskowski's Daughters of Catastrophe completely overwhelm the blog, if not the world.

I wrote the narration and scene descriptions for this trailer Wizards used to help introduce the Ravnica cycle a year or so back. It's narrated by Michael Dorn, meaning I've pretty much peaked and am coasting from here on out.

No idea how it got onto YouTube.

S.P. Miskowski Writes Plays Full of Yelling Women

What can I say, I'm a fan.

S.P. also posts excerpts from her fiction on her blog, Daughters of Catastrophe (that's the title of her upcoming play) and links to some of her short stories online.

She's been posting sequential pieces from a new, scary (and scary-good) story about a woman named Darcy who encounters trouble on a lonely forest road. Go read 'em.

God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut

So it goes.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

1922-2007

Photo by Peter Yang

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.

World War Z: Not to be Confused with the Child Doctor of the Same Name

S.P. convinced me to try out the Blogger upgrade deal, and I went a little nuts with the automatic news article generator. On the other hand, Corythosaurus is now number 24,328 in news concerning Bigfoot, Godzilla, ninjas, pirates, robots, zombies, and of course all the news that's fit to shat with the dramatic return of Shatnews featuring popular recording artist and Emmy Award-winning actor William Shatner, not pictured here.



Speaking of zombies, I just finished Max Brooks's World War Z and can't recommend it highly enough. It's an after-the-fact oral history of a worldwide battle (natch) against the zombie hordes. And since the book is written Studs Terkel-style, it's clear the humans win the war--but it's the How that's really interesting. Brooks--Son of Mel--is quite good at leaving lingering questions about the How and keeping you turning the pages until it's 7 in the morning and you have to go to work but you just have to get to the end of the chapter and maybe your boss will believe you really do have the flu this time and--



I digress. Some reviews I've read claim "nothing unusual" happens, or that it's just a "typical zombie story" told from multiple perspectives. And that's just silly. Mind you, it does seem like one of those things that immediately makes you wish you'd thought of it, one of those things you'll kick yourself for not thinking of before Brooks did. And sure, there are some awkward bits of dialogue--though they are surprisingly few. And at times the way Brooks describes real people in his book without ever naming names (including, but not limited to: Howard Dean, Colin Powell, Paris Hilton, and either Nelson Mandela or Desmond Tutu, if I'm guessing right) gets a little overdone. Especially odd considering that at one point a veteran soldier of Brooks's zombie war recollects finding himself in the line of battle beside Michael Stipe. But those are minor annoyances in what's probably the most comprehensively considered analysis of a "real-world" zombie apocalypse I've ever read. This isn't just a band of people holed up in a mall, house, or even a tower. There are individual stories that hit upon those old chestnuts in creative new ways, but what emerges is a lot more than that. It's got a little Ender's Game going on--the war planning and strategy, the threat of certain annihilation--and at times the apocalyptic angle really called to mind Battlestar Galactica as well. If you haven't read it, pick up a copy. In hardback. If you don't, you won't be able to be a big, fat know-it-all when the movie comes out. So many things no one in the movies ever thinks about: how do you retake a place the size of the U.S. away from millions upon millions of zombies? Can islands or water really protect you from things that don't need to breathe? Whither toilet paper and donuts? How long does it take a zombie to walk from China to Japan across the ocean floor?

The audiobook is also a wonder: the cast includes Mark Hamill, Henry Rollins, Alan Alda, both of the Reiners, and the proverbial "a lot more." Unfortunately, it covers maybe half of the actual printed book, so I say get 'em both. You don't want to miss Rollins as the private security contractor at home of the Last Celebrities On Earth, but you don't want to miss Siberian zombie wars or fighting the armies of undead in the foul sewers of Paris.

Finally, while I haven't dug into it just yet, it's worth nothing that World War Z is a sequel of sorts to the Zombie Survival Guide, which is played very straight as a non-fiction "civilian safety manual." Personally, I'd read Z first and the manual second--more surprises that way.

Thanks, Max Brooks, you magnificent bastard. As a writer I do wish I'd thought of it first, but as a reader I'm much happier that you did.

Deadline Met II: The Transformed Man

So Scott McG and I just finished, more or less, the second draft of the first book in our first co-written set of Magic novels. This is the same unnamed book I was working on before, but now it's got a name. I can't say much else about it (wait, did I say anything?) except that it's named after the card set upon which it was based.

The first book is always the hardest to get through. It changes you, you learn from the experience. I guess you could say I feel somewhat . . . transformed.

A Transformed Man, if you will. And I will.

Deadline Met

And very nearly on the deadline, too. I'm beat, but this oft-seen and -imitated number exemplifies how good it feels to be done within fudge range (i.e., it was due on the 20th, but our editor, the gracious and saintly Susan J. Morris, granted us the Thanksgiving weekend, and it all worked out).
Take it away, Bill.

Deadlines

They make me cry and drink and cry in my drink.

But then again, better than not having them at all, better by far. The first major iron in the fire is a first draft of my first attempt at outright collaborative writing with Mr. Scott McGough. We're both used to charging for the finish line with a first draft, but now we're charging out of sequence and its requiring staggering feats of frequent electronic communication.

Second big iron is Pirates of the Burning Sea. Jess Lebow and I and the rest of the Pirates content department were joined by Chris Pramas. Chris rules. The department, hereafter known as ConCo, is furiously generating the words and storylines that will make up the life of a seafaring captain. Been spending a lot of time peering at maps of Bermuda and concocting (hopefully) nifty naval encounters.

I don't know if anyone's reading this blog but my mom (hi, Mom), but just in case, that explains the dearth of posts lately.

MTGCast Interview is Live

Hey, all y'all (my friend from Alabama says that's the appropriate way to refer to more than one person, y'all being singular) Dom has got the interview up on the newly revamped MTGCast site. It's an hour and a half of pure Cory goodness. Enjoy, won't you?

And if you dig the Magic cards, check out the rest of the MTGCast podcasts, which feature charming people who are much better at playing Magic than I am.

MTGCast Interview

Dom over at MTGCast interviewed me this morning about the Ravnica books, writing, deadlines, and keeping cinemas open on Christmas, among other things. He said it should be up on or around Tuesday, September 12.

Hit the MTGCast link over on the right to see what Dom and his gang of scrappy, troubled loners get up to.