It's almost that time again, folks - National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo for short) is right around the corner. Starting November 1st, 2009, I will be joing hundreds of thousands of other participants in writing a 50,000 word novel in the course of one month. I've done it twice in the past, failed it once, and didn't even try last year, but I'm ready and rarin' to go this time around.

I urge any and all of you out there to join in! If you've ever fancied yourself a writer, this is a chance to give yourself a reason to write. You don't even have to finish (although, trust me, once you start, you'll want to finish) just give it the old college try. If you write just one sentence to be proud of, it'll all be worth it.

I'll be starting my daily sprints (5 minutes of writing based on a randomly generated word) tonight and posting them here for all of you to see. Some of them might end up in the novel, some of them might end up being used in a comic or short story, and some of them will live only for the brief, shining moment that the appear on this page but I'd love to hear back from anyone about what they think. And hopefully I can inspire even one other person to start writing their own stories.

Well, it's finally happened.

PLANETARY is finally done. And what an ending it was. You know what I love most about Mr. Warren "I'm A Cranky, Scary Old Bastard" Ellis? His ridiculously soft underbelly, which is fully on display in this epilogue story.

Also, I love that we've finally figured out, as a culture, that our serialized fiction doesn't have to have a hard-edged ending. Our fictional worlds can go on after we leave them. And that is just fine by me.

The Drummer, Jakita, Doc Brass, Anna Hark, even Dowling and his evil cronies, and especially Elijah "I'm A Cranky, Scary Old Bastard But Not An Avatar Of My Author, Oh No, Not At All" Snow - thanks for all the years of reminding me what a strange world it really is.

Guess who isn't real good at east-to-west time change mathematics? Yep, that's right, little old me. Here I thought that getting up at 4:30am Columbus-time (i.e. EST) on Monday morning to catch my flight back to Chicago so I could be at work at 8:30am Chicago-time (i.e. CST) was no big deal because it was just a little bit earlier than my usual wake-up time of 6:00am back home, since, I figured, 4:30am Columbus-time is 5:30am Chicago-time.

As all of you with even the most basic math skills realize, I was wrong - I actually got up at 3:30am Chicago-time, meaning I had been up for 5 hours already when I first got to work. I made it through the day, however, and even spent a good chunk of the evening helping my friend edit his Chicago Sketchfest Application Video, so things weren't all bad.

The convention was a blast. I heard tell that it was a bit under-attended this year in comparison to the past but I had a good time, regardless. We sold some books, I wrote some stories, and we met a bunch of really great people including the super-talented artist/writer (and friend of the Afghan Whigs, apparently, which, in my book, makes him stupid-cool) WJ Grapes (www.fyredragon.com).

Brett and I pimped The Silver Bullet pretty hard and people were also interested in Once Upon A Time and The Redeemers Preview (now with a brand-new cover!). On Sunday I got the chance to eat at Schmidt's Sausagehaus und Restaurant. I mean, this was a pretty boss trip!

If you bought one of books, had me write you a story, or even if you just stopped by to say, "Hi," please leave a comment on the page and let me know you're out there!

"After three decades of shared days, he knew his wife's breathing, even over wires, even at great distance."

Guess who's going to have a table at Mid-Ohio Con 2009? If you guessed Michael Golden, Bernie Wrightson, James Kyson Lee, or Ray Park, you would be correct but would have missed the point entirely. If you guessed me, Eric Rampson, then you would be both correct and fully capable of utilizing context clues. Yay you!

Mid-Ohio Con is on Saturday, October 3rd and Sunday, October 4th at the Greater Columbus Convention Center in beautiful, scenic Columbus, Ohio, which is smack dab in the middle of the state. Those of you who correctly guessed Eric Rampson earlier should be able to see why Columbus's location in the state is important.

I'll be at a table with artist extraordinaire Brett Wood (The Venger: Sins & Secrets). The first issue of our new book, The Silver Bullet, will be available at the show. I will also have a new printing of The Redeemers #0 with a brand-new cover by series artist Wil Brendel. We didn't make our fundraising goal but we're pushing ahead anyway. Neither of us may be able to afford to eat when all is said is done but The Redeemers will see the light of day.

I will, of course, be doing Stories For A Buck as well.

If you're going to be at the con, please stop by and say, "Hello."

Read the full 8-page preview issue of The Redeemers FOR FREE:

http://www.wheretheresawil.com/redeemers0/

Redeemers TEE-SHIRTS:

http://www.wheretheresawil.com/store/ (Scroll down a bit)

Only 14 days left to get your little slice of The Redeemers pie!

There are only 15 days left to help fund The Redeemers. Response was overwhelmingly positive at Chicago Comic-Con this year (a lot of the people who bought the book early in the weekend stopped by the table to say how much they liked the preview) and we'd love to get this story out in front of people. Please stop by http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ericrampson/the-redeemers-issues-1-4 to get more information.

My hope for The Redeemers is that we can form a community around the book, its characters, and its world - something akin to the kind of community that builds up around genre TV shows like Buffy/Angel/Firefly, Lost, or BSG. I am planning on recording more and more Redeemers music and releasing it as issues come out. I want there to be more than just the comic (although the comic is the focal point, where the story is being told), I want a whole world created. Trust me, I have plans within plans within plans...

From GenCon, that is.

The best four days in gaming (tm) really lived up to the hype this year - great games, great friends, and great ham purchased from CostCo leading to great ham'n'cheese sammiches at lunch everyday...

It was heaven.

I picked up 13 new board/card games (14 if you count the new 2-player Starter Pack for The Spoils that I got):


Kingsburg: To Forge a Realm Expansion – Kingsburg was the hit of the con with our group of gamers. I’ve loved the game since I first played it last Christmas. My girlfriend is less enamored of it, though, so it has been off the table for some time. I recently introduced it to some of our newer gaming friends (who are actually our old friends that we have been slowly indoctrinating as gamers) and they loved it, which made picking up this expansion a no-brainer. The expansion comes with 5 modules that each adds some new mechanic/quirk to the game. I’ve only played with one of them so far (the expanded building sheet) and found it to really add new depth to the game. I can’t wait to try the other modules, especially the Characters that give you special abilities throughout the game.


Arcana – A small-box card game from AEG, Arcana is like Dominion (get cards to build your deck so you can get better cards) mixed with, I don’t know, Hearts, maybe? It is a type of trick-taking game with some neat mechanics and jaw-dropping art. Turns out I missed a tiny rule in our first play (if no player’s Agents have sufficient Arcana to take a Stake card, those Agents remain at the Stake card for the next turn) that made the game run a bit long but I am very much looking forward to playing it again.


Endeavor – Z-Man Games’ lite civ-game is awesome. I only got one play of it in over the weekend but it was a killer one. Tight and quick game play, strong art, and high-quality bits really made this one stand out. Definitely a distillation of mechanics from several earlier games (Puerto Rico, Caylus, etc.) but with enough of its own goodness to stand apart, Endeavor has a good shot at becoming a Top Ten game for me. I particularly love that there are Slavery cards that you can benefit from until the end game where they actually cost you points.


Bridge Troll – Another Z-Man Games release, Bridge Troll is a neat little game in which the players are trolls trying to build the best troll bridge in the kingdom. You do that by getting tolls from travelers. Unfortunately, improving your bridge also requires you to eat to keep up your strength and haul boulders to make improvements. Therefore, each traveler you claim from the row of available cards each round has to either be banked as coin or food. You turn in both coin and food to make improvements. There’s a nice little bidding mechanic used for turn order and a neat-o weather die that determines how many traveler cards are available each round. Some travelers have additional special powers and other travelers are hazardous to your bridge (Knights free some of your food, Bandits steal some of your coin, and Billy Goats Gruff stomp on your bridge with their hooves, lowering your bridge value). All-in-all, it’s impressive not just for it’s fun, quick game play but also for how well all of its elements stick to the theme.


Revolution! – Another bidding game, this one from Steve Jackson Games. Revolution! sets each player up as a person trying to come out on top after helping to foment a, you guessed it, revolution. You bid different types of currency (Force, Blackmail, and Gold) to coerce or bribe different city officials and notables to support you and provide influence over the people of certain city buildings (for instance, bribing the Priest gets you a bit of influence on the Cathedral). At game’s end, each player scores bonus points for any buildings that they have majority influence of (shown by placing colored cubes in the building). This game seems very random at first but if you have a core game group, I think that repeated plays allow for more genuine strategy as players’ bidding tendencies are revealed. It’s also happens to be super-pretty looking.


The Stars Are Right – I love the Cthulhu mythos. Love. It. I have all sorts of games with a mythos theme (Arkham Horror, The Call of Cthulhu RPG and the trading card game, etc.). Now I have probably the most brilliant one of all, The Stars Are Right. Why did it take this long for someone to take that important bit of the mythos (the part about the stars needing to be right in order for R’yleh to rise) and make an awesome game about it? I don’t know but it’s here now. In the game, you play cards from your hand to alter the layout of a 5x5 grid of tiles representing the night sky. You can push whole rows of tiles one space, you can swap the position of adjacent tiles, and/or you can flip tiles to expose the other side. You do this in order to create constellation depicted on cards other than the one you played in order to summon the creature on that card. Summoned creatures allow you to change one type of move to another (or sometimes several other moves). Some creatures also give you “discounts” on calling down the Great Old One they serve. And, of course, almost every creature gives you points. First player to ten points of summoned creatures win, but you can only have 6 creatures summoned at a time, so You’re going to need to summon some of the more difficult ones in order to win. Couple the awesomely awesome thematic gameplay with the just as awesomely awesome artwork by François "Goomi" Launet (The Unspeakable Vault of Doom webcomic) and this is, by far, my favorite mythos game.


Monkey Lab – Probably pretty close to a kids’ game, Monkey Lab casts the players as former lab-imprisoned monkeys staging a break-in to rescue their former lab-mates. You’d think the game would be cooperative but the designers wisely chose to focus on the fact that monkeys aren’t good at sharing, so while you all want to free your friends, you want to be the best at doing it. The game is simple and light (mixing action management with set collection mechanics – move into various rooms, check which combination of two or three objects are need to bust it open, get those objects into the room, and free the monkey then rinse and repeat) but it can get tense in the end since, if you bust out a monkey while one of the other players’ monkey is in the same or an adjacent room, they get points, too.


Tales of the Arabian Nights – This is a game I can’t wait to play. Some of my GenCon group got to play my brand-new copy while I was playing Endeavor with another part of the group on the other side of the room and a couple of them reported that it was their favorite game so far (they’re relatively new gamers). Even the gaming vets really liked, it though. The game seems pretty free-form, which interests me. However, I am afraid that it may be too free-form, not allowing for any real meaningful decisions. However, if I go purely by the amount of laughing and clapping going on while my friends played, I’d have to guess that I’m going to love it.


The Island of Doctor Necreaux – A cool-looking little cooperative card game with a Saturday morning serial theme, this game will be a big hit with my various gaming groups, I think. The evil Dr. Necreaux has kidnapped a bunch of scientists and forced them to construct a doomsday device. You and the other players are special agents sent to rescue the scientists before a bomb set by a previous (and now missing) team of operatives. Find the scientists and the Escape Shuttle before the bomb goes off and you win. Each player gets three Character cards that give them abilities throughout the game. Then, as a team, you choose a speed at which you are going to move through Dr. Necreaux’s lair this turn. You turn over that many cards, one at a time, and resolve them (fight monsters, encounter traps, explore rooms, and find items). Once you turn over a number of cards equal to your chosen speed, the turn is over and the bomb’s Countdown Clock moves one step closer to zero. The scientists are in the middle third of the deck, the shuttle in the bottom third. Find both cards before the bomb goes off and you win. I’m interested in the game’s “press your luck” style mechanics and the theme is right up my alley.


Ad Astra – The members of my GenCon group who got to play this while I taught Agricola across the room said it’s like Settlers crossed with Race for the Galaxy. Um, yes please. I’ve read through the rules twice now and I cannot wait to play this bad boy. Preprogrammed actions, trading, group-based scoring that could backfire on you…this has elements of a classic. And it was co-designed by Bruno Fadutti, he of Citadels and Red November fame, so how can it help but be good (the other designer, Serge Leget helped create Shadows Over Camelot, so, you know, he’s no slouch himself.)


Batt’l Kha’os – Take Carcassone, add Orcs and Knights fighting, stir in awesome special ability tiles and tokens, and you have Batt’l Kha’os. I picked it up to have another straight up two-player game in the house for me and the special ladyfriend. You play tiles with knights or orcs on the corners. When four tiles have been put together to make a square, whoever has more units in the center, knights or orcs, wins the corner. When the four corners around a tower (scoring tile) have been decided, the player who has control of more corners wins the tower. Special tiles and power tokens can alter the number or strength of your or your opponents’ units on the tile. Basically, it’s just an awesome concept for a tile laying game.


Tomb: Cryptmaster Expansion – Tomb is an underappreciated gem of a game (if you’re into crazy fun dungeon crawling action). It’s underappreciated mostly because the rulebook is fairly unclear about a number of wacky situations that can come up with certain combinations of the numerous cards in the game (okay, honestly, the rule book is unclear about some very basic situations, not just the wacky ones). The Cryptmaster aims to fix all that IN ADDITION to providing a bunch of new options for the game. The rulebook has been completely rewritten, not only adding rules for the new material in the expansion, but clarifying and explaining most of the problematic issues from the original game. The pieces are of the same ridiculously high quality. You get 84 more characters to add to the 84 you got with the base game. It adds new Spells, Prayers, Items, Tactics, and Tomb cards. But it’s really the rewritten rules that make this puppy the wonderful package that it is. Personally, I have no problem coming up with rulings for things on the fly as we have for the past year, but now I have a rulebook to back me up. Hurrah!


Battlestar Galactica: Pegasus Expansion – This was the must-buy of GenCon for me. More Battlestar Galactica goodness MAY NOT be passed up. The base game was the surprise hit of last GenCon for me (who’da thunk a licensed game could be so good) and I expected the expansion to be no less awesome. Then I realized that I was at GenCon with a majority of people who had yet to experience BSG (the show OR the game). So, while I did manage to grab a copy before they sold out, I have yet to play it. Hopefully this weekend I’ll be able to rectify that oversight.

Hey everyone that I met at Chicago Comic-Con. Please comment on this entry and say, "Hi!" If you bought a book from me at the show then first off, thank you. Second off (is that even a saying?), please let me know what you thought of the book you bought.

I had a great time at the show and it was definitely because of all the wonderful people that stopped by the booth and gave us a minute of their time!

THIS ENTRY WILL REMAIN AT THE TOP OF THE PAGE UNTIL MONDAY, AUGUST 17TH
NEW ENTRIES BELOW

I'll be in booth #4418 all weekend selling Once Upon A Time #1-3, The Redeemers #0, and of course my signature One Page Story For A Buck. I will be joined by a couple of artists over the weekend - Wil Brendel (The Redeemers) and Brett Wood (super-awesome project we're working on that is so super-awesome it's still secret but I can tell you that the name is The Silver Bullet). I am sure they will be happy to do sketches to go with the story for cheap, too.

I will also have a number of other fine Ronin Studios books for sale:

3rd System Preview
Adam Zero #1
Adam Zero #2
The Edge #1
Lightning Squirrel #1
Lightning Squirrel #2
Mayden #1
The Ministry #1
Razor Kid #1
Ronin Illustrated #1
Ronin Illustrated #2
Ronin Illustrated #3
Tales of Lucidity
The Venger #1
Wyliman #1
Wyliman #2

You can find out about many of these books at forums.ronin-studios.com.

Last week, WizardWorld.com ran a front page story about The Redeemers #0:

http://www.wizardworld.com/re0tastexatc.html

So, you know, that's pretty cool.

I will be at this year's Chicago Comic-Con (formerly Wizard World Chicago, itself formerly Chicago Comic-Con) at the Ronin Studios table in Artists' Alley. I haven't gotten a space assignment yet, but when I do, I will post that information here. I will have four or five books for sale: Once Upon A Time issues #1, 2, and 3; The Redeemers #0 (a Chicago-Comic-Con exclusive); and possibly the Miss Mighty ashcan (it may not make the print date at this point). The Ronin Studios anthology Hope: The Hero Initiative (featuring THE LAST PERFECTOR STORY written by yours truly) may also be at the show. In addition to all that goodness I will be writing one-page stories for a dollar again all show long, so come by and get your very own exclusive Eric Rampson story written to your specifications. Hopefully there will be some artists stopping by the table on and off all weekend so you can get an accompanying sketch, too.

This is going to be a good year, I can feel it.