The Alliterates » Jeff’s News http://alliterates.com Bent on total word domination Mon, 21 May 2012 14:00:08 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1 In Memory http://grubbstreet.blogspot.com/2012/05/in-memory.html http://grubbstreet.blogspot.com/2012/05/in-memory.html#comments Tue, 15 May 2012 16:08:00 +0000 Jeff_Grubb
Emjar Dwin - Eladrin Warlord/Spiral Tactician/Demigod (4e)
Whappamanga - Wookiee Fringer (Star Wars d20)
Edie "Fast Edie" Romanova  - Charismatic/Fast Hero/Telepath (D20 Modern)
Morris "Moondog" Greenberg - Tough hero (D20 Modern)
Hahn-Keh-Tahnk - Asari Kebenti (Rogue)/Priest (Horus) (3E)
Gomez "Go-go"" Gnozaria  - Gnome Artificer (Eberron)
Rellique - Warforged Paladin/Exorcist/Fighter  (Eberron)
Mog of Magni - Cleric (Magni) (3E)
Wicker of the Pierone People - Mindbreaker/Plant (Gamma World)
Sir Blaine of the Islse, Angelsea  (Pendragon) Shield a white Bend Sinister on red with Narwhale Rampant)
Al-Malik - Dragonborne Sorceror (4e)
Raham - Deva avenger (4e)
Thruggoth - Minotaur Ranger (4e)
Breedeep - Bullywug Monk (4e)
Roland "Rollie" Hempsmith - Dilettante (CoC Gaslight)
Elmer Sanderson - Groundskeeper (CoC Gaslight)
Kelden - Human Duskblade  (3E)
Oliver Weston - Essayist (CoC 20's)
Jimmy Milhouse - Oil Geologist/Team Leader (CoC 20's)
Chauncy Griggs - Professor of Anthropology (CoC 20's)
Jacob Wecht - Private Investigator (CoC 20's)
Archibald "Archie" Grigsby - Cavalry Colonel (ret.) (CoC 20's, Orient Express))
Matthew "Mutt" Nolan - Professional Driver (CoC 20's Coming Full Circle)
Charlie Ho - Sailor (CoC 20's)
 Aḯ - Dwarf (D&D Cyclopedia)
Nathan Chames - Writer/Naturalist (CoC 20's)
Margaret Jones - Activist/Retired Accountant (CoC Modern)
Réja hai Várrga - Njáshte of Ksarul (EPT)
Avarok - Fighter Servant of Réja (EPT)
Guy la Frénaie - Noble (d20 Cthulhu set in Averoigne)
Hugo Maison -Doctor (Trail of Cthulhu).

More later,
]]> http://alliterates.com/2012/05/in-memory/feed/ 0 In Other News http://grubbstreet.blogspot.com/2012/05/in-other-news.html http://grubbstreet.blogspot.com/2012/05/in-other-news.html#comments Mon, 14 May 2012 16:49:00 +0000 Jeff_Grubb Art by Joe CorroneyI'll talk about the illo to my right, but first some other more important things first.

While Scourge has had a great deal of promotion (particularly on these pages), an upcoming release by a fellow Alliterate and former TSR/WotC coworker has been coming in under the radar. Bruce Cordell's Spinner of Lies is a sequel to his Sword of the Gods, wrapped up with the Realms, the planes, and the drow. It is worth taking a look at.

On the subject of old TSR expats, I saw a note that Karen Boomgarden is in the midst of dire financial troubles. Karen was (among many major things in gaming history), the editor of the original greybox Forgotten Realms set, was the product manager of the line for a good long while, and as such has been responsible for curbing the worst of the literary excesses of Ed and myself. She's a lovely woman, a great editor and has proved time and again that she can keep up with Ed step for step. She's currently fighting off losing her house. Fundraising is going on until 9 tonight CDT  - more information here.

And finally, the art piece attached here (see, I told you I'd get to it) is by Joe Corroney and is one of three pieces that go with "Hunting the Gorach", a short story starring Parella the Hutt that I wrote for Star Wars Insider #135. The other pieces of art from that story, along with a whole bunch of Joe's work, can be found here,

More later
]]> http://alliterates.com/2012/05/in-other-news/feed/ 0 Play: The Clybourne Identity http://grubbstreet.blogspot.com/2012/05/play-clybourne-identity.html http://grubbstreet.blogspot.com/2012/05/play-clybourne-identity.html#comments Sat, 12 May 2012 18:22:00 +0000 Jeff_Grubb Clybourne Park, by Bruce Norris, Directed by Braden Abraham, Seattle Rep, through May 13.

The conceit of Clybourne Park is that it takes place backstage from the Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. In the Hansberry play, the African-American Younger family makes the decision to move from Chicago's slums into an all-white community. Clybourne Park tells the flipside, the story of the house and neighborhood they move into.

The play is broken down in two smaller plays, sharing the same cast. The first act takes place simultaneously with Raisin, set in the house that the Younger family is planning to move into, and works off the question of why such a house would be available at an affordable price in the first place. The second act takes place in the same house, fifty years later, where a white couple is moving into the neighborhood with intentions of making the property a tear-down.

And race hangs over the proceedings, showing how far and how little we have come in 50 years, moving from the hard racism of the 50s to a softer, more casual but equally toxic modern  form. The two halves echo and rhyme against each other, as each builds to the same punchline (the hidden history of the house itself).

However, the characters that carry that plot are shallow and the dialogue tedious. Both halves feel like sitcoms of their respective ages trying to grapple with issues they are not equipped to deal with (racism, yes, but also sexism and suicide). The 50s incarnation is wincible in its repression, while the the post-millennial act is more risible, but too carries that uneasy laughter of discomfort.

I've hit this before plays like God of Carnage or some of the Albee plays - so much would be solved if someone just left the room, but the conventions of the play keep the characters contained in a pressure cooker until the inevitable explosion. Therefore every line either moves you towards that explosion, or denies it temporarily. The plot as a computer program would look as follows:

10         Someone says X
20         If X=stupid, insulting, or racist thing to say, then 40
30         Go to 10
40         Anger +1
50         Go to 10

Foreshadowing in this case consists of someone starting to say something, then getting interrupted, so it sits there like the gun on the mantlepiece to come back at the worst possible time. The bulk of the play itself is the banal talk of daily life, which frustrates but does not illuminate us as to the nature of the characters.

Now, I am bashing on the characters, but the actors are excellent. One of the great gems of a Rep operation is getting to see familiar actors in new roles. Susan Bouchard is excellent as the 50s housewife trying to maintain, then downshifting into the real estate lawyer in the modern age. Peter Crook is the 50s husband pulling in on himself and the worker finding the house's secret in the backyard. Darragh Kennan takes on Karl Linder, the only character from Raisin to show up, and his struggling modern equivalent. All of them are good, but their lines just fail to measure up.

What I am increasingly coming away from in this is the feeling that "Pulitzer Prize Winning Play" is a warning flag for me - I have often come away from such plays confused, frustrated or angry. I Am My Own Wife, Top Dog/Underdog, and Three Tall Women were all winners of the award and all problematic for me. On the other hand, I thoroughly enjoyed Doubt, Angels in America, and Glengary Glen Ross, which also took the prize, so your mileage may very.

For Clybourne Park, I think the best way is to judge it as an item apart as opposed to a gloss on Raisin. As that, it frustrates and, like most of the discussions in the play, is frequently interrupted and fails to come to a point.

More  later,
]]> http://alliterates.com/2012/05/play-the-clybourne-identity/feed/ 0 Ebookery http://grubbstreet.blogspot.com/2012/05/ebookery.html http://grubbstreet.blogspot.com/2012/05/ebookery.html#comments Thu, 10 May 2012 17:32:00 +0000 Jeff_Grubb
Actually, that paragraph is totally wrong. In most of what I do, people come to me and say, can you give me a story on this particular subject of these particular dimensions? Often the limits as to length and general subject matter are exact, in others they are relatively lax. But in the end, they are looking for a comic book story (twenty-some pages, illustrated), or a short story (5-6k words for me) or a novel (anywhere from 70k to heavy 120k words). In addition, there may be content limitations as far as license and audience. In this way I am closer to a illustrator asked to customize my creative impulses down a particular channel than the archetypical artist facing a blank canvas.

As a result of this, I'm thinking about ebooks, and what happens when you say, "I'm going to write an ebook". What is different in that statement that is different than "I'm going to write a book"? What are the limitations of form and word count that come out of reading a bunch of pixels on a screen as opposed to dark chemicals on mashed and dried vegetative matter?

Previously, I've always thought of electronic publishing as another format, like a foreign translation. The words are all there, as are the ideas, and sending it to the Kindle or Nook is the same as, in computer game terms, a direct port. As much of the original is there, within the limitations of the new media, but precious little is added. The limitations of the new form are particularly noticeable when you see things in print that do not transfer over to the new media. I once picked up a copy of Richard Dawkin's Greatest Show on Earth for the Kindle, and discovered that not only the color plates were a hash in a B/W can, the interior diagrams, suitable for print, were unreadable in the electronic format.

So, OK, some graphic elements change are right out. What changes itself in the text. I mean, a book is a book, right?

Well, how about chapter length? In most books, I want to have a maximum of 30 chapters, which works out to about 3000 words per chapter (actually, I tend to range between 3-4k, so we're looking at fewer chapters). There is often an intro and/or a denouement that occupy a thousand words. If I get over the 4k limit on a chapter, I look to see if there are section breaks in that chapter.When I am reading, I flip ahead a few pages to see where that break is, particularly if it is late at night. I'd rather stop at a break than in the middle of a scene.

But with my primitive first-gen Kindle, I don't know where that break is. And scrolling ahead means I either have to bookmark or count the clicks as I move forward or just search to find where I've stopped reading in order to regain my chain of thought. So should chapters, an artifact of physical media, be a necessary part of electronic media? Should we see a steady stream of text, or more section breaks? How does that affect the rhythm of the story?

As another example, with dead-tree media, I know roughly where I am in a book by the weight in my right hand as opposed to the left. My Kindle has a progress bar along the bottom, but that doesn't always work, in particular for books with extensive footnotes and/or backmatter (like the Dawkins book I mentioned), and I run out of book before I anticipate it.

And anticipation is part of reading a print book. I know I'm coming to the end of the book as clearly as I know I am getting to the end of a play or a movie, for no other reason that I start regretting that big gulp diet soda I drank before sitting down. Here comes the resolution!

Those are two real differences, and I am wondering if there are others. And yes, this is what I think about late at night.

More later,
]]> http://alliterates.com/2012/05/ebookery/feed/ 0 Best Seller List http://grubbstreet.blogspot.com/2012/05/best-seller-list.html http://grubbstreet.blogspot.com/2012/05/best-seller-list.html#comments Wed, 09 May 2012 21:00:00 +0000 Jeff_Grubb New York Times bestseller list for this coming Sunday. Star Wars: Scourge is listed among the "Also Selling" category at #33. That's darn good.

Now, that does not make Scourge a New York Times Bestseller (you should be in the top twenty before you start adding that to your byline), but it is a big deal for me, and I am very, very pleased by this turn of events. This represents the initial "push" of the book, and indicates that a lot of copies reached fans who were looking forward to it, and as such is not just a nice thing for the writer (which it is) but a commendation for both the marketing and, ultimately, a testament to the devotion of Star Wars fans who enjoy the novels. Thank you all.

And in celebration, everybody dance now.



More later,
]]> http://alliterates.com/2012/05/best-seller-list/feed/ 0 May the Fourth … http://grubbstreet.blogspot.com/2012/05/may-fourth.html http://grubbstreet.blogspot.com/2012/05/may-fourth.html#comments Fri, 04 May 2012 17:33:00 +0000 Jeff_Grubb ... Be with you, always (what, I'm going to pass this opportunity up?).

So, more Scourge news. Last time out I posted a Hutt piece from my talented co-content team member Kim Kirch. This time we have a scene from the novel by Jeff Carlisle, which will appear in Pablo Hidalgo's Star Wars: The Essential Reader's Companion, which comes out in October.

I had no idea that this piece existed until it showed up on the Star Wars Books Facebook page. Color me surprised (and kinda giddy).

In addition, Star Wars Insider has released Issue 133, which includes my short story, "Hunting the Gorach", which stars my favorite big game hunters, Parella the Hutt, in a prequel story to Scourge.


AND, I have an interview with Linda at Fan Girl Blog. And to celebrate the day, Big Shiny Robot is giving away books. Coolness!


There are a couple more interviews floating out there right now, and this station will update as they show up. In the meantime, May the Fourth ...


Oh, you know. More later.
]]> http://alliterates.com/2012/05/may-the-fourth/feed/ 0 Good Grief, More Hutts! http://grubbstreet.blogspot.com/2012/05/good-grief-more-hutts.html http://grubbstreet.blogspot.com/2012/05/good-grief-more-hutts.html#comments Tue, 01 May 2012 20:28:00 +0000 Jeff_Grubb Star Wars: Scourge, is out, and getting nice responses.

I did a live podcast with the folks at the Star Wars Report, where we talked about Scourge, RPGs, the greater canon, Attacktix, and Uncle George's minivan.

I also went on at length for Big Shiny Robot, talking about the writing process and having a story make the jump from an RPG audience to a full book.

And speaking of RPGs, here's a review for the book from Roleplayer's Chronicle. And one from Geek-Life (complete with Jedi Mind Trick).

And finally, fellow content designer at ArenaNet Kim Kirch loved the book, and did some Hutt artwork, which I'm including here if you guys are tired of seeing the cover so much.

More later,
]]> http://alliterates.com/2012/05/good-grief-more-hutts/feed/ 0 The Rise of the Beta http://grubbstreet.blogspot.com/2012/04/rise-of-beta.html http://grubbstreet.blogspot.com/2012/04/rise-of-beta.html#comments Sat, 28 Apr 2012 20:11:00 +0000 Jeff_Grubb Star Wars: Scourge to instead promote Guild Wars 2.

As you know, I talk about my day job rarely, and usually only when we've made a big announcement. Well, we are in the throes of our first Beta Weekend, which means that everyone who pre-purchased the game (either online or through particular shops) are being allowed in to sample our wares. And by sample I mean the three of the five races, all of the professions, and the first 30 levels. No small sample, that, but only for the weekend.

Of course, our own selfish reason for this magnificence is we really need to test out how the game works with MASSIVE numbers of MULTIPLAYERS. Test out not only the story flow and the server load but portals and the overflows and all manner of large technical details that may not be a problem if you're playing with only a few hundreds of people but suddenly loom large when huge hoards come streaming through the gates.

And we've had a lot of press in to play the game and show things off. And the results have been amazing. Here's a few of them (which feature me):

Eurogamer came to visit, took a lot of pictures of our new digs, and interviewed a slew of us. I tell my "Tibetian Temple on an Iceberg with Sails" story for what should be the last time (I have other examples - this is just the coolest one). The iceberg ship story also shows up in my talk with Becky at RPGamer.

Forbes (Forbes!) has a great interview with Mike O'Brien, our head honcho. I get a quotable in this follow-up.

I've been doing a lot of work with the Dungeon Team, and our own Will Fairfield gets a chance to show off the instanced adventures over on Gamespy. One cool thing about ArenaNet is that we have a very deep bench of competent people to talk about the game, and no fear about letting them talk about their favorite parts.

And then there's this:

This is what happens when you throw me into an interview cold. More later,
]]> http://alliterates.com/2012/04/the-rise-of-the-beta/feed/ 0 Hutts Hit the Street http://grubbstreet.blogspot.com/2012/04/hutts-hit-street.html http://grubbstreet.blogspot.com/2012/04/hutts-hit-street.html#comments Tue, 24 Apr 2012 17:39:00 +0000 Jeff_Grubb Scourge streets today. That's publishing lingo to say that it is now available in physical form at your better bookstores and in digital form for your electronic mojo platforms. I've been busy talking to a lot of people about the book, and a lot of people have been busy reviewing the book. Here's a big summary for this, launch day.

Roqoo Station has been incredibly busy, with a full-fledged Hutt Week to celebrate the book. I have an interview here and a review here (spoilers - they liked it). And speaking of spoilers, they did a mildly spoilerish and neatly illustrated reader's guide to the book, which is really cool.

Eric Geller interviewed me, and the results are split between Suvudu and TheForce.net. In addition, I was engaging with this young-folks new-media stuff and did a Facebook chat on the Star Wars Books page. The discussion is more neatly summarized in a couple places, include on TheForce.net and Roqoo (and let it be known that, despite the photos - I have more than one Hawai'ian shirt - that's just my favorite).

I talked about the book (and about Hutts, of course), with Erin over at EUCantina. Plus there is another review there (spoilers - they liked it). Linda over at Fan Girl Blog has a nice review (spoilers - OK, I'll stop now). Plus I have an interview with her later in the week. And one more review from Lightsaber Rattling.

The folks at Guild Wars Insider have a mention of the book. And I have to reassure everyone that no deadlines on the game died to make this book happen.

And if all this isn't enough, here are the first FIFTY PAGES of the book for your consideration. There is more to come, and I will update going forward. In the meantime, go enjoy the book, already.

More later,
]]> http://alliterates.com/2012/04/hutts-hit-the-street/feed/ 0 Giant Green Carnivorous Bunnies http://grubbstreet.blogspot.com/2012/04/giant-green-carnivorous-bunnies.html http://grubbstreet.blogspot.com/2012/04/giant-green-carnivorous-bunnies.html#comments Mon, 23 Apr 2012 17:52:00 +0000 Jeff_Grubb Star Wars memories.

The time when the original Star Wars movie came out was a nascent time for marketing and cross-promotion. I'll admit, it had almost a quaint innocence compared to the media-overload today. One of the things that was really, really cool was the fact that Star Wars had an ongoing comic book.

Because eight is better than seven
Movie adaptations had been done before - 2001: a Space Odyssey and Planet of the Apes, both from Marvel. For Star Wars they rolled out a big tabloid and the first few issues of the book were the original movie. And in the wake of the original movie adaptation, the question was - what to do next? There was a larger universe out there, and at the same time, you could not radically change that universe since more movies were coming. Since the original film was a paean to the old serials, similarly the series continued with a riff on the Seven Samurai, or as most western fans had encountered the story, The Magnificent Seven.

So Han and Chewy found themselves on a distant planet, teamed up with a bundle of individuals called the Star Hoppers. They included a porcupine man named Hedji, an old guy pseudo-Jedia named Don-Wan Kihotay, a woman named Amaiza Foxtrain, a kid named Jimm Doshun ("The Starkiller Kid"), and a droid named FE-9Q ("Effie"). And a giant green carnivorous rabbit.

The rabbit's named was Jaxxon (he was a "Jaxx-rabbit", keeping with the punning), and he was large, green, and ate meat. The story itself involved the motley band protecting a small village on Aduba-3 for a bandit names Sergi-X Arrogantus, taking the Italian Western vibe of the entire project to its ultimate level.

It was a silly story, taken very seriously, and it was the FIRST comic story out of the box after those initial movies. But what I remember was the giant green rabbit, and how cool that would be to have more stories about him. And while he showed up a couple times at the edge of continuity, he and his species, the Lepi (of course), never got the respect that they deserved. I know, I'm talking about respect for a giant green bunny.

And here's where it turns personal - I read comics as a kid, then stopped in Junior High, and picked it up again when I was in college, primarily because of books like Star Wars and Howard the Duck (but that's another matter). I used to buy these books, then MAIL them to the future Lovely Bride so she could read them. And they became the start of the collection (now more of accumulation) of comics in the basement.

More later,
]]> http://alliterates.com/2012/04/giant-green-carnivorous-bunnies/feed/ 0