* Imagine my surprise when the Chicago Public Library actually had Cherie Priest's two monster novels, Fathom and Those Who Went Remain There Still, sitting on the shelves like they belonged there. When they so clearly belonged on my shelf, but in lieu of that I checked them both out and read each one in one sitting. Those Who Went Remained There Still took about two and a half hours, or just about the time it took to roast a 7-lb. pork shoulder, and it is a pure and beautiful Kentucky bug hunt of a novel flashing between Daniel Boone vs. the World's Worst Harpy and the feuding descendants of one of his men vs. Well That Would Be Telling. Priest had me at "Daniel Boone," but even those who fancy themselves immune to his frontier charm will likely fall for her "Manly Wade Wellman, Only Scarier, And With Better Narrative Control" tale, a veritable crick-and-holler Beowulf.

Fathom, meanwhile, felt like Tim Powers. There are some writers, Powers towering among them, who can deploy actual history and make it sound like the finest spun fantasy fiction. Despite knowing nothing of Bok Tower Gardens or indeed Edward H. Bok, when he entered the story I somehow immediately knew that Priest hadn't made anything up. Possibly including the earth elemental. That's hard-core fantasy writing, there. The rest of the book becomes a mounting proxy war between said earth elemental and the "water witch" Arahab, who wants to awaken Leviathan. You heard me. The monsters are their proxies: the (fictional?) pirate Jose Gaspar and two cousins captured in Thirties Florida. Priest's hand with setting, meanwhile, is almost as good as her hand with history. Wellman and Powers is a hard enough mix to handle without her stirring Lovecraft into the mix.

Somebody please tell me that her Eden Moore novels aren't quite that good.

* Speaking of elemental proxy wars, my Nobilis campaign is officially off the ground. It's based around the concept supplement I pitched to James Wallis Way Back When, called "American Dreaming." (In my mind, the cover is the same as the Nobilis Big White Book, except the half-face statue is the Statue of Liberty.) The players are the Powers of Entropy (no relation), Hope, Apocalypse, Secret Knowledge, and Texas, under the Imperator Croatoan. Their Chancel? Warehouse 23, of course, just where John Dee and Walter Raleigh built it, on Roanoke Island. It should be fun; if anyone has any really good Nobilis resource Web pages to point me at, I'm happy to look.

* For robin_d_laws and any other interested parties: My Cthulhu 101 chat is finally up at vocalo.org. Forty minutes of excellent talk with Luis, on Cthulhu, iconic modern horrors, and scary movies.

* I also checked out a swath of early Eric Ambler novels, having finally read A Coffin For Dimitrios this summer only to discover the missing link between E. Phillips Oppenheim and John Le Carre.

* Upcoming posts will dissect the new and unsatisfactory Prisoner series, the works of spy novelist Alan Furst (which I'm one book short of finishing), recipes for pork-shoulder-bone-enabled rice and beans and for harissa-enabled North African eggs-in-purgatory (if successful), and the process behind (and lessons ahead of) Tehran: Nest of Spies, my new release for The Day After Ragnarok. So watch this space!

* Surely, you've all been listening to the H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast, right? Two Santa Monica film guys bust each other up and talk Lovecraft, story by story, in an engaging and often illuminating fashion. Plus, their narrative and incidental instincts are knife-keen, as befits film guys. If you haven't made a habit of listening, may I recommend the perfect jumping-on place? As those who know me may have suspected by now, it's the one featuring me as a guest: Episode 18, on the prose poems "Nyarlathotep" and "The Crawling Chaos." They've promised to have me back on, and I am eager to return. Plus, they regularly cite Tour de Lovecraft: the Tales during their show (though not during this episode), and they gave me a very nice plug for Cthulhu 101. So listen up!

* In other, non-meta-plug news, mollpeartree and I watched The Ruins tonight, part of my "flood the Netflix zone" plan to make sure there were plenty of horror movie options for Halloween. It's a pretty terrific horror movie, which (like many great horror movies) makes the characters wreak at least as much horror on themselves as the horrors do. Like Lovecraft, it values verisimilitude (even moreso, given the aforementioned character-driven realism), and presents a horror of the Outside come up from Below. But interestingly, the swarthy natives who live Where Horror Dwells are the ones staunchly committed to fighting it; it's the white Americans (and German) who are decadent enough to let the Outside come In.¹ Add a nice eco-noia monster-thing and some excellent sound design and atmospherics (I'd like to see the same production team try and tackle "The Willows," come to think of it) and you got yourself a fine 21st-century weird tale.

1] There's elements of that formula in "Shadow Over Innsmouth," of course -- the Pacific Islanders slaughtered the Deep Ones, while white Obed Marsh married them -- and in "Haunter of the Dark," in which the non-WASP Italians and Poles keep the Haunter at bay while white-bread Robert Blake communes with it. But these stand out as exceptions, and "Shadow" is plenty racially fraught, for all that.

I'll be at Third Coast Comics (6234 N. Broadway, Chicago) at 6 p.m. next Wednesday, October 28th, signing Cthulhu 101 and getting up to R'lyeh knows what kind of fun. Be there or be consumed in terrible agony when the stars come right!

And just before that, at 4 p.m. Central Time, I'll be talking Lovecraft and Cthulhu on my old haunt WBEW-FM, with my pal Luis! Streaming live, as always, at vocalo.org.

Speaking of which, Luis' and my Civil War discussion (our last Complete Idiot's Guide to U.S. History, Graphic Illustrated talk -- so far) is up -- I come in at 62:20 or thereabouts. I briefly confuse Winfield Scott with Winfield Scott Hancock, and (less forgivably, but also only briefly) the battles of Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg, and I think I get Meade and Hooker out of order, but otherwise it's pretty sound. Again, I do these without notes, people!

More of me on WBEW-FM! Hour four! This week, my stint co-incided with a Vocalo-wide "How-to-a-Thon," so after I come in at 64:00 or thereabouts, we get the Mexican War and then two guests who, shock of shocks, don't want to talk U.S. history, graphic illustrations be damned. Rich Logan talks enlightenment and good-humored balderdash in equal measure, and then Mike from The Expired Meter shows up to talk Chicago parking, which was actually a lot of interesting fun. Then we get Luis' regular 6:00 caller Dave, who sets Luis up to ask about alternate history of all things, so we briefly talk about "What if the Revolution had failed?"

Then, just because, we talk about the superb Jerry Seinfeld documentary The Comedian.

Finally, Luis tacks 20 or so more minutes onto my segment, taking us from 1846 to 1860, through my all-too-brief Tribute to Zachary Taylor, with the Civil War looming on the horizon at last! I'm back again this Friday, WBEW-FM, 5:00 Central, streaming on vocalo.org.

Errata and Clarifications -- I'm sure there's more than this, but I'm a bit rushed:

The Dred Scott decision was 1856, not 1850 (contrary to the impression I leave).

We paid $15 million for California, not $20 million.

My third appearance on WBEW-FM is up now. I come in at 45:00 and we spend a little while talking about history and Ken Burns until the hour mark hits, when we get back into U.S. history. This time, we get from 1812 to 1846, with a few detours into the history and nature of American slavery, the "three-fifths clause," and even a brief alternate history moment!

I think I got all my facts straight this time, so no errata.

I'm scheduled for one more appearance, this Friday at 5:00 Central, as always on WBEW-FM or vocalo.org. This one may be the big Civil War show, unless we spend a lot more time on the Mexican War than I think we will.

Seriously, I do intend to post something other than radio-show updates in this LJ -- I've got some Sherlockian lists I'll want your input on, for example -- but I'm cranking hard on Book-Hounds of London and fighting off some kind of approaching crud, so I don't have much spare energy for, say, defending my appreciation of Jennifer's Body.

(But seriously, I like Mamet, Lovecraft, and Shakespeare -- Diablo Cody's highly stylized writing holds no terrors for me.)

My second hour of talking American history on WBEW is up now. I come in a little after 65:00, and we get from 1787 to 1812.

Errata and Clarifications:

Andrew Jackson was the seventh President, not the eighth.

As a clarification, Washington was inaugurated in April of 1789 (which means I'm correct when I say Inauguration Day was initially set in April), but the date was moved to March 4 for his second term, and remained in March thereafter until 1933.

William Eaton, who led the march into Tripolitania, was not technically the consul in Alexandria, but what we would today call a "naval attache."

The Louisiana Purchase cost $15 million, not $20 million; 3 cents an acre, not 8. And $15 million in 1803 would, per Wikipedia, be worth $213 million now, not the $2 billion I speculated on air. We put $3 million down in gold, and the rest was, as I said, on credit. (Credit extended to us to enrich Napoleon, hilariously, by Baring's Bank in London.) And, of course, the Purchase predated Jefferson's embargo by four years, which I didn't get wrong, but I did perhaps confuse matters on the topic by covering the Purchase out of order.

Other than that -- and my foolishness in almost forgetting the Louisiana Purchase in the first place -- it's all pretty solid. And in my defense, I do these shows without notes; without even a copy of The Complete Idiot's Guide to U.S. History, Graphic Illustrated. You, at least, can avoid such a fate.

I'm scheduled to do two more appearances, this Friday and next Friday, same bat-time (5 p.m. Central), same bat-channel (WBEW-FM or vocalo.org), should you care to lay a gentleman's bet on my chances of getting to the Civil War before the leaves fall.

For the curious and the doomed, I've got two long-form audio links to share:

* My WBEW interview is up here. I come in right around 61:00, and host Luis Perez and I talk about The Complete Idiot's Guide to U.S. History, Graphic Illustrated and about American history from 1754 to 1787 for an hour. Hopefully, they'll have me back and we can get to the 19th century next time.

I should mention that I had a brief blackout on Henry Knox's first name -- I think I called him "Benjamin" for some reason. So, it's
"Henry." Luis also let me plug some games, too, so that was neat.

* macklinr also let me plug some games on our traditional "wrap-up" final podcast at GenCon, this time incarnated as the last episode of This Just In ... From GenCon 2009, guest-starring podcaster emeritus ptevis. In my pre-emptive defense, it was 1 a.m. on GenCon Monday, and we were all drinking.

Everyone's Gen Con experience is different and the same. Fan or pro, there's the moment of reorientation into ritual space -- the Indianapolis Outside Time, where it's always mid-August, and you can't quite remember where you left the Omni. There's the joy of seeing friends you see once a year, and the pain of knowing there's more you didn't get to see this time because of your cowardly need for sleep. There's the contact high off new games you anticipated, and off the ones you didn't know you anticipated, and even off the ones you didn't care about but you're just so glad to see everyone else caring about because they're your tribe and they're happy. There's games you couldn't afford, and games you wound up with anyway. There's meals you shouldn't have eaten, and meals you should have lingered over. There's the possibility of hooking up -- with a new friend, with a new partner, with a new contract, whatever -- and the thrill of making it happen, and the esprit d'escalier of the one that got away. There's the way that the Best Four Days in Gaming subtly expands into six -- the induction the day before, the benediction on the return trip.

So what made my Gen Con special, specific, this Gen Con? At random, ten things out of a hundred:

* Being the guest on Inside the Game Designer's Studio. I do hope that macklinr can defeat the gremlins in his recorder, because the last forty minutes was even better than the first twenty. Perhaps it was the Scotch. Those of you who attended in person know I speak the truth. Until then, enjoy my appearance on This Just In ... From Gen Con!

* Triumphant success in the task simonjrogers assigned: find another good seafood place for the Pelgrane dinner. I can recommend the Oceanaire, as can the Pelgranistas. (Also, in getting Rough Magicks done in time to see it move briskly off the tables at the show.)

* Lunch with jachilli, and the discovery that drinking Jägermeister with a shot of au jus improves the taste of Jäger considerably. Which is to say, masks it.

* Dinner at St. Elmo's steakhouse with Owen. St. Elmo's is the reason to go to Indianapolis, even if you're not there for Gen Con, and the New York strip was, if anything, better than their normal this time around.

* Learning that Nathan Paoletta (designer of Carry and Annalise) is now a Chicagoan.

* Forcing robin_d_laws to stay up way past his bedtime on Saturday -- only his fatigue-spawned admission that he was actually trying to make me miss the White Wolf party got me to call shenanigans and let him go to bed. I only got to hear part of the last hour of Justin's set, but once more there was no AC worth mentioning at the White Wolf party venue, so I find it very hard to consider Robin the bad guy in all this.

* Lunch with roninevil, this time not on our familiar theme of "Our Employers And Their Darling Little Faults ... Not Even Faults, Really, More Like Cute Offhand Mannerisms ... That Only Make Us Love Them All The More," but mostly on the theme of "Horror Movies You Should Have Seen And Why."

* Seeing The Antarctic Express and Cthulhu 101 piled up -- and then considerably less piled up -- at the Adventure Retail booth. And signing them for all who asked.

* A surprise appearance by spookyfruit, late of my Monday game, there to have a meeting and (as it happened) to buy me lobster.

* Breakfast with jtidball on Sunday. People kept asking me "Why?" I would explain, "It's penitential." And they would only look confused.

Should I count ptevis coming up two days early, for Hot Doug's and wargames? Should I have put all the meals in the same bullet point, so I could mention new discoveries like Venus 2141 and Blackmoor 4e and Emily Care Boss' Sign in Stranger and Joe McDonald's Ribbon Drive and ... Should I have mentioned drunken discussions of old-school comics art with White Wolf art staff at a cigar bar I didn't even know existed last year? The Diana Jones Awards party, and a long good talk with Monica V. of Flames Rising? How about stuff I somehow didn't learn at the show, like that Catalyst Games has released their new RPG Eclipse Phase under a Creative Commons license?

Too much for one post. Too much for four days. I'm glad I saw all of you. I'm sorry I didn't get to see as much of you as I would have liked.

If you are of my tribe, you have felt the primordial stirrings within that call you, like the swallows to Capistrano or the eels to the Sargasso, saying that to GenCon you must away, though not (unlike the eels) to breed and/or die.

I shall, of course, be in attendance, as will fresh-from-the-bakery copies of The Antarctic Express, Cthulhu 101, Rough Magicks, Day After Ragnarok: HERO 6e Edition, Grim War, and who knows what else?

Should you wish to hunt me up at the show, I am scheduled as by the Norns to be at the following two events:

I'll be a guest on macklinr's "This Just In From GenCon" podcast on Saturday at 11 a.m.

I'll be this year's guest on memento_mori's show "Inside the Game Designer's Studio" on Saturday at 3 p.m.

Both, I believe, will be in the podcasting room at the Westin. Both will also involve podcaster emeritus ptevis, for those of you who followed his storied career with appreciation and delight, as I did. I especially recommend Tev-heads attend the second event, if only to see Paul channel James Lipton.

Otherwise, it shall be the standard GenCon whirl: the Indie RPG Awards (Friday 3 pm), the ENnie Awards (Friday night), a wedding, a movie premiere -- the works. During show hours, I shall be flitting about the hall like the proverbial starling, but a good word at the Pelgrane booth will likely find me. After show hours, follow the sound of tinkling ice cubes and fizzing tonic water, and you shall find me there, like Tom Joad's ghost, but unlike an eel.

Just a quickie to post up two more interviews, or rather an interview and a half:

* Here's an interview I did at the convention in Paris, with the Scifi Universe website. The questions (from Nicolas Lamberti of SFU) are in French, my answers are in English, and then the doughty gbsteve renders them in la belle langue. It's a video interview, so you can amuse yourself during the French parts watching me twitch and squirm like a Treasury Department official -- I think I may have watched too much Firing Line at an impressionable age. Also, before you ask: no, I don't know what the deal is with my hair. Even for my hair, it's looking remarkably bad.

* This one, thank God, is just audio; better yet, it's audio with me, chrishanrahan, foxbat, and Brian Isikoff. It's the second half of that very long 2d6 Feet in a Random Direction podcast we did at DunDraCon way back in the day. So enjoy!

If you're interested in The Day After Ragnarok, my upcoming "Conan the Barbarian: 1948" meets "Quatermass and the Giant Snake" setting for Savage Worlds, I answer a number of fan questions on that very topic at the Atomic Overmind blog site, here. (There's more previews throughout the blog, too.)

Just think! Answers about Ragnarok, and you don't even have to trade your eye to Mimir for them!

* Plus, as a special added bonus, 45 minutes or so of me rambling on -- with Brian Isikoff, foxbat, and chrishanrahan -- about DunDraCon, large-format gaming, and the wonderfulness that is Kevin Allen, Jr's Sweet Agatha, is available for your listening pleasure, as the latest 2d6 Feet in a Random Direction has been up for a while now. I've just been delinquent in plugging it. Shockin', I know.

* With the Oscar nominations providing their annual Tribute to Back-Patting Timidity, I suppose it's up to me to run down the Ten Best Films I Saw In 2008. Oscars aside, this year may not be as much of a washout as it appears at first blush -- it's just that 2007 was a fricking epochal year for good film. (That said, 2008 was the year that Doug Liman and Baz Luhrman both demonstrated that "Thou too ... or rather, they two ... art mortal." If I were Zack Snyder, I'd be keeping my fingers crossed.)

For example, my Ten Best Films of 2008 That I Saw In 2008 are: Let The Right One In, Timecrimes, The Dark Knight, WALL•E, Iron Man, Mamma Mia!, My Winnipeg, Burn After Reading, The Strangers, and Sukiyaki Western Django, and only the last is even an A-. My Next Ten are pretty good ones, too although they get down into the Bs pretty fast: Cloverfield, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, In Bruges, Hamlet 2, The Earl, Gomorrah, Quantum of Solace, Chronicles of Narnia 2: Prince Caspian, Incredible Hulk, and Race, a giddy Bollywood noir-action-romance. With line dancing.

The Ten Best Films of 2008 I Haven't Yet Seen are all pretty great-sounding, too: Antarctica, Gran Torino, The Wrestler, Slumdog Millionaire, Redbelt, Kung Fu Panda, Baghead, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, and Mother of Tears. Look at that list -- Herzog, Eastwood, Aronofsky, Boyle, Mamet, Argento. One or two of them might even take the #3 spot on my Top Ten list once all is seen and done. And that list doesn't have room for either Mongol conqueror epic (Mongol or Jodhaa Akbar), or Robert Downey Jr.'s other great 2008 performance (Tropic Thunder), so it's incomplete as it stands, too.

* Would you rather listen to me rattle on about something I know more about than film? How about Cthulhu? He's the centerpiece of a really good interview with me done by Rich Rogers for Canon Puncture, and it's available here.

* Sadly, no, I haven't yet managed to see Tori Spelling's tribute to "Shadow Over Innsmouth," Cthulhu, although I've heard from a number of people (in tones of appropriately Lovecraftian shock and denial) that it's not as godawful as you might think. Once I do, I'll report back here.

It seems like an awful waste of an LJ post just to point you good people to an interview with me on technoir's podcast, The Basics of the Game, but not a lot else is going on.

Snow covers my city, the New Capital of the World, as is good and right, but it makes getting out and doing things inconvenient. And cold. Which is good for GURPS Horror 4E, at which I'm plugging along. Next up: re-read all of GURPS Powers to see what else dr_kromm has done that I don't need to. I did have the pretty great brain wave of doing up Powers for all the various Fears from the monster section. That should be good.

In response to ratmmjess' challenge of a few weeks ago, I've started re-reading the Smiley novels, which is also good ground-work for the ongoing vampire espionage thriller game. I read them eons ago, and I'd forgotten just how good a writer LeCarre was back in the day, so that's been fun. It's also instilled in me a burning desire to read Declare for the dozenth time, but maybe I'll read that godawful brick by Robert Littell, or my Alan Furst book instead. Once I can get out and do some last-minute shopping, I'll see if there's more Alan Furst lying around used.

No movies to speak of; TiVoed and watched the Will Smith I Am Legend, which is another red-hot brick Akiva Goldsman will be carrying in Hell. You will likely hear my anguished response to The Spirit once I see it in a week or so, although I can bet it will be a threnody on the theme: "Frank Miller has no sense of humor. Will Eisner's The Spirit is good-humored. Discuss." Hopefully, I will be able to ignore Will Eisner at least as much as Frank Miller looks to have done, which may make the movie enjoyable. Cross fingers.

I made French onion soup last night, along with roast potatoes (in olive oil, with kosher salt, pepper, and herbes de Provence) and Craig Claiborne's recommended mushroom accompaniment to venison steaks, which his_regard brought over, along with a bottle of very upscale Chianti. I swapped a glug of that for the dry white that Claiborne recommended, and on Claiborne's suggestion used beef gravy in a jar (!) instead of sauce espagnole, which I didn't make as I don't happen to have five pounds of veal bones lying around. The mushrooms came out better than fine, so there. I swapped about three recipes around for the French onion soup to approach a non-psychotic version, so if you care: ( The Final Version? )

Tonight, I may use up the rest of the baguette on ham-and-Brie sandwiches, or I may make chili, or I may make venison goulash with the leftover steak. More importantly, right about 11:30, Darlene Love sings "Christmas Baby Please Come Home" on Letterman, and it's officially Christmas. Have a merry one, everybody.

* The Principality's loyal ally Atomic Overmind Press has a product page up for The Day After Ragnarok. Check out that awesome "Lancer Paperback I found at a garage sale" cover look. The book wound up being somewhat larger than I had initially thought it would, but I fondly hope it also wound up being somewhat better, too.

* Speaking of wonderful covers, Jerome's lobby-card cover to robin_d_laws' and my Trail of Cthulhu adventure collection, Shadows Over Filmland, is visible here. You can smell the popcorn! For a look inside, specifically at my "Double Feature" essay on the connections between Lovecraftian and Universal Horror tropes, check out this PDF excerpt.

* Would you rather listen to me talk about Lovecraft? Wildclaw Theatre, whose production of The Dreams in the Witch-House I was privileged to introduce on its opening night, has loaded up a holiday-themed podcast on all things Lovecraftian. It includes a brief interview with your humble correspondent; we did a longer one a couple weeks back, but the files were "corrupted." Hmmmm.... If you'd rather read than listen, you can see a transcript of my interview in all my semi-grammatical glory here. And no, I don't know why I blanked on the name "Lankhmar." I must have been "corrupted."

* Did you enjoy MIT Press' Second Person anthology of game design discussions? Then buckle in for Third Person: Authoring and Exploring Vast Narratives. Robert M. Price snaked the essay I wanted to write ("H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos as One Vast Narrative") out from under me, but I rallied back with an attempt to discuss "Multi-Campaign Setting Design For Roleplaying Games." Plus gems from Scott Glancy, Dave Sim, Robin Laws, Greg Stafford, Monte Cook, Ken Rolston, and many, many more. Check out that Table of Contents, eh?

* And as is traditional, a link that has nothing to do with me: EagleSpeak, a blog about modern piracy. Currently, it's all Somalia, all the time, as might be expected, but it's handy. (Warning to the timorous: its author is of the hawkish persuasion.)

* Or, rather, one of the podcasts I did at GenCon is up; Have Master, Will Plan 2, hosted by the effulgent macklinr and beloved podcaster emeritus ptevis. This is the traditional "GenCon roundup" podcast, and may have a certain value for the nostalgic or the curious.

* And now part two of our headline: Presenting the most awesome geological formation you are ever likely to come across; the Richat Structure, or the Eye of the Earth. When the KJV says "there were giants in the earth in those days," who knew they meant exactly that, hmmm?

* I'm back from Omaha, where I drove for my niece's wedding. Hence the dissociation, no doubt; a man doesn't just come out of an Omaha wedding the same kind of man he was going into it. Sure, we've all heard the words, seen the movies, read the comics, until "Omaha wedding" has become just another cliched genre trope, like "alien invasion" or "giant robot." Well, the real thing puts all that in the shade.

* So what cheer? (The name of a town in Iowa. No kidding.) Well, first off, my Tour de Lovecraft: The Tales is now available for purchase direct from Atomic Overmind in either PDF or printed copy form! Far be it from me to urge anyone to go the spendier route, but seriously, righteousfist has produced a fricking gorgeous book.

* And as if an occult hand had orchestrated it, rdansky graciously interviews me on the topic of Lovecraft and the book in the latest Five For Writing segment on his blog.

* While you read me plugging my work, you can also listen to me plug my work, on the latest episode of Brian Isikoff's 2d6 Feet in a Random Direction podcast. This one blasts straight outta ConQuest (aka Pacificon), with special guest star Sean Nittner, who just kills with his description of "My Life With Joker," a My Life With Master event he ran at said con. Plus, I was drinking just a wee bit of absinthe.

* I've recently read two sequels to books I've reviewed in this space: Red Seas Under Red Skies, the sequel to The Lies of Locke Lamora by scott_lynch, and Ha'penny, the sequel to Farthing, by papersky. Rapidly, then:

* Scott Lynch's book is even Ocean's 11-ier than his first "Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, only confidence men" novel, since Red Sails Under Red Skies involves a casino heist. And oceans, come to think of it. The voice I loved last time is still there; as is the sense of place and the salutary willingness to push the "plot" handle firmly. That said, the novel is a little more concerned with the relationship between Locke and Jean than it needs to be -- dialing things down to the Leiber level may never happen, but for example, Patrick O'Brian (speaking of oceans) managed to crank out a nice long series featuring two realistic characters without banging them off each other's psyches every five chapters -- and the prologue is just a big cheaty cheaterson. But I'm liking Lynch's world better and better, and speaking of that plot handle, there are some really nice touches in this caper flick considered as a pirate story or vice versa.

* Jo Walton's Ha'penny changes out the roman a clef Cliveden Set of her first book for an even more transparent fictionalization of the infamous Mitford sisters. The novel, a capable Frederick Forsyth-style thriller about an attempt to bomb Hitler at a performance of Hamlet in increasingly-fascist London, moves along at a steady clip, and Walton manages to vary her narrator's voice believably and interestingly: Viola Larkin is not Lucy Kahn from Farthing. (She's not Nancy Mitford, either, which is kind of a relief, actually.) Sadly, this is the installment in which poor, long-suffering Inspector Carmichael (who returns from the first novel) gets his solid gold Idiot Plot with Oak Leaf Cluster moment. It doesn't particularly help that he realizes that he was an idiot; the end result is a rather catastrophic loss of sympathy for Carmichael and of belief in Walton's world. The first is no great wound, but Walton's excellent AH worldbuilding chops deserve better.

... before I can write anything else, including the many projects I brainstormed with various publishers at GenCon. Among them, my first Savage Worlds setting book, another Trail of Cthulhu sourcebook, two more GUMSHOE games, a third "Mini Mythos" book to follow the already-written second "Mini Mythos" book to follow Where the Deep Ones Are, and maybe a Traveller supplement if the licensing issues work out. Plus Casey Jones Is Dead, which I have now described to enough fellow game designers that I kind of have to finish it this fall. Plus other stuff, To Be Named Later.

* So, GenCon. Trail of Cthulhu won two Silver ENnies! Hobby Games: The 100 Best won one Silver ENnie! And it's all thanks to you good people! All those map links must have worked, eh?

* In other grand news, I'm going to be a guest at Dragonmeet in London on the Saturday right after Thanksgiving (Saturday, November 29 to non-Americans). I shall hope to see everyone there!

* Or, if you can't make that, how about GenCon France? I'll be GoH-ing it up in Paris in spring 2009; more details when I know them.

* Moving down the Excitement List, Where the Deep Ones Are sold over 200 copies at the show, emptying the tables at Atlas Games! This pretty much ensures that my next one is greenlit; details when I'm allowed to announce titles.

* Also, Tour de Lovecraft: the Tales dropped in print at the show! I knew it would look fabulous, as righteousfist had kept me apprised of things via PDF, but holding it in my hand was a thrill all its own. It looks so good, and so professional. (Our design document: "Make it look like a real book by grownups.") Toren Atkinson's spot art is perfect, too. One only hopes the words don't let the team down.

* And "Out of the Box" is (imminently) back! Sooner than any of us can believe it, my much-beloved review column will return in the virtual pages of Indie Press Revolution, in an Exciting New Format. I can hardly wait.

* I got interviewed for three podcasts and was a guest on the Friday 5pm installment of This Just In From GenCon, hosted by Master Plan podcaster macklinr and podcaster emeritus ptevis. I'll post links to the other podcasts when I get them, but you can hear breaking news from the floor of GenCon as if it were last Friday today.

* Speaking of ptevis, he and I were the fortunate beneficiaries of Jim Cambias' wrath at the pathetic restaurant offerings in downtown Indianapolis. Insisting that he could, and more importantly, would eat "an exquisite meal" in Indianapolis, he took the lead in finding, and driving the hellangone out to, Huachinango, a Mexican seafood place. We had the whole red snapper stuffed with shrimp, octopus, peppers, cheese, and maybe achiote among other things; the orange roughy "al ajillo," meaning in a reduction of guajillo chiles, garlic, orange juice, and brandy; and three ceviche tostadas. And bottomless glasses of sangria, all for a ludicrously small $27 each, including tax and tip. Some would call it exquisite.

* The rest of the show is a haze of walking the floor when I could, talking with friends and colleagues and friendly colleagues, parties and bars (including Ike & Jonesey's, the gayest straight bar in Indiana), and just glorying in perfect summer weather and full-immersion game fun with 40,000 members of My Tribe.

* I also talked with Diana-Jones-Award-winner the_monkey_king and Greg Stolze about alternative ways to finance game design (though sadly, my plan to be a fly on the wall during a convo with both of them failed of execution, just like half of all GenCon schedule plans do). Maybe we'll all talk about that question here in a bit.

Tomorrow I ride down to Indianapolis with the delightful and talented Greg Stolze, to be hurled once more into the maelstrom that is GenCon.

I've got nothing scheduled except two dinners (Wednesday and Sunday), the Diana Jones Awards party on Wednesday night, and the ENnies whenever they are. Otherwise, I shall be flitting about like the proverbial starling, with the Pelgrane booth the best place to look for me if you're looking.

But you should also look for Where the Deep Ones Are, my H.P. Lovecraft-Maurice Sendak mashup, available at the Atlas Games booth! I've gotten my author's copies, and boy does it look great. (I say this, of course, because the artist, Andy Hopp, is a mad genius.)

And also, Tour de Lovecraft: The Tales will debut *in print* at GenCon! (Should you be a fan of press releases, the press release to this effect is here.) Expanded and tidied up from the virtual pages of this very blog, with a Foreword by John Tynes, some all-new stuff by yours truly, and an astonishingly good look by righteousfist, it's available for a mere $14.95 at the "Cthuliana Corner" section of the Adventure Retail (SJG/Atlas/Etc.) booth, and at the Green Ronin booth. And not to toot my own horn or anything, check out that top cover blurb.

But Ken, I hear you cry, how can we survive the wait until we get to GenCon to see you and buy your products? Well, feel free to listen to me in the car on the way down: my interview by Don Dehm of The Pulp Gamer podcast is posted now!

* Which is a spectacularly inane way of saying it's the last day for ENnie Awards voting! I know you good people have all voted, but what about your buddy at the next desk over, or your pal at the coffee shop, or your mom? What are you saying, your mom isn't good enough to vote for Trail of Cthulhu for Best Writing and Best Rules, or for Hobby Games: The 100 Best for "Best Regalia"? Man, that's cold. The woman gave you life, after all ... the least you could do is let her vote for me.

* But not just filial piety is available online! You can also get the Full Kenneth Hite Audio experience through the magic of clicking on things like the episode of The Game's The Thing podcast featuring not just an interview with my humble self, but a review by the estimable podcasters of Last Night on Earth: The Zombie Game by Jason Hill.

* And in my tradition of offering Awesome Maps as sweet lagniappes to such disgusting exercises in self-promotion, I offer this 1882 map of Transylvania. Perfect for the vampire-hunting Victorian tourist! Or, for the vampire-hunting Elizabethan tourist, this 1566 map of Transylvania. Remember ... we all have a stake in this.

Just a quick post to limn the highlights of my Origins Game Fair experience, an experience made possible in so many ways (not the least of which including a bed) by dwatts that I even broke actual sweat while helping him set up and take down the Hero Games booth.

This year, I had but one goal: find and purchase a copy of Randall Reed and Vance von Borries' classic wargame Air Assault on Crete, which Avalon Hill published along with a bonus map and counter-set for an invasion of Malta AH scenario. I accomplished it on Thursday; ptevis converted my victory from Tactical to Overwhelming by good-naturedly playing the aforesaid Malta scenario with me on Saturday. Thanks to a lucky choice of invasion beaches, fascism was victorious. A robust, if not extraordinarily impressive or elegant, wargame of its era; the 6.1 rating from Boardgame Geek is about right if you add a point or so for people who like a) hex-and-counter wargames and/or b) invading Malta.

Other accomplishments included:

* Along with yukon_jack, attending Columbus' storied Comfest, featuring (in reverse order of satisfying-ness): squelchy horrid mud, an interminable version of "Rockin' the Bronx" from Black 47, two songs by fine college-rock band Sun, the rest of Black 47's set, the country cover of "I Want You to Want Me" by Megan Palmer and the Hopefuls, and the legendary fishboat.

* Three pint mojitos at the Bodega, immediately following.

* An assortment of business-themed chats, which may result in one or two logjams blowing open.

* Responding with all due modesty to the gratifying news that Trail of Cthulhu sold very briskly indeed, and to three requests for autographs of the same.

* Eating both kinds of meat banh mi from North Market. I want to see, or rather taste, a top-shelf ice cream throwdown between Jeni's Ice Cream of Columbus and Oberweis of Chicago. Jeni's Belgian Milk Chocolate (with Ashland County honey) is better than any Oberweis chocolate I've had, but Oberweis' Black Cherry is better than Jeni's Pear and Riesling Sorbet (which was delicious, but far heavier on the pear than the Riesling) or her Goat Cheese and Cherry Compote (in which the tartness of the goat cheese tended to over-amplify the tartness of the cherries).

* Winning 0.0099 of an Origins Award for Hobby Games: the 100 Best, which won for Best Nonfiction Book. This raises my lifetime total to 0.65206586, by my count.

* Being interviewed for two podcasts: The Pulp Gamer by Don Dehm, and The Game's the Thing by ronblessing and his lovely wife Veronica. Specific links to come when I know them.

* A nice haul of half-price Osprey books. Oh, how I loves Osprey books.

* Not killing myself before doing it all over again, with more parties, more movies, and more seminars, next weekend at CONvergence in Minneapolis. Hope to see you all there!