Thursday, February 15, 2007

Guild Wars New Year Festival

Hey, just a short update today about something cool that happens this weekend. Guild Wars, the MMO I work on at ArenaNet, is having a New Year's Festival this weekend in its asian-themed campaign, Factions.

The Canthan New Year coincides with the Chinese New Year and is celebrated with a huge festival and feast. As usual, with Guild Wars festivals, there will be goodies for players to get (lots of fireworks) as well as hats to earn during the festival's finale on Sunday.

I got to write quite a bit of dialog for this event, including my first two quests. In addition, I wrote the text for our website that promotes the event, along with a set of festival-themed haiku.

It's been a lot of fun. One of the many things I think we do really well at ArenaNet is providing players with new content beyond what they got with the basic game. And this festival, I think, will blow the players away.

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Lasgun Wedding Sample Chapter

Hey, I just found out that Black Library has a sample chapter up on their site for Lasgun Wedding. Check out the Lasgun Wedding page and then click on the link to go read the sample chapter.

I'm Back

So, after a protracted battle with the transition from old blogger to new blogger, I have finally gained access to my blog again.

Just a few updates right now, but I hope to post more regularly in the future.

First of all, I am working on a new short story for my friend Eric Reynolds. My story, "On the Off-Ramp of the Intergalactic Super-Highway" appeared in Eric's anthology Golden Age SF: Tales of a Bygone Future. This was a collection of pulpy short stories written as if the authors still lived in the golden age of SF (the 1930s through 1950s).

Eric is working on a new anthology, and this time he's getting the rights from some great artists to illustrate each story. Again, the idea is pulpy science fiction in the manner of the grand masters. Each author gets a painting and writes a story around it. I chose Resurrection Man from an up-and-coming artist named Frank Wu, whom I met a while back at some East Coast convention or another. This is a cool piece of art that immediately sparked an idea in my head.

I don't want to say anything more about it right now, but it will have zombies.

If you want to see Frank's image, take a look at his website: www.frankwu.com.