New Website

Please visit my new website at www.bydavegross.com for all the latest posts.

Reddit AMA Right Now

With only 43 hours to go on the Kickstarter for A Knight in the Silk Purse, a few of us are gathering at Reddit where you can Ask Us Anything. 

Please do.

A Knight in the Silk Purse: Final Week of the Kickstarter Campaign

Don't take my word for it. Take a look at these raves, and click over to the Kickstarter (currently linked on the right) to fund the sequel to this beautifully illustrated anthology.

Gen Con 2013 Writers' Symposium Schedule

Here's my Writers' Symposium schedule for Gen Con 2013. I'll add additional events as they're confirmed, but you can expect to see me signing at the Paizo and Privateer exhibits. 

The rest of the time you can probably find me schmoozing or trying out games in the Exhibit Hall, or else hanging out at the Omni lounge, assuming the good bartender is on duty.

Thursday

08:00                                       Writing 101 (Room 1)

13:00                                       Ancient & Medieval Combat (Room 2)

Friday

12:00                                       Government & the Rule of Law (Room 2)

14:00                                       Pitches, Proposals, and Promises (Room 1)

Saturday

08:00                                       Sharing Worlds (M) (Room 1)

12:00                                       Reading (M) (Room 3)

16:00                                       Hard Fantasy (Room 1)

Sunday

09:00                                       VIP Panel: Plot Mastery (Room 3)

10:00                                       VIP Panel: Selling Your Novel (Room 3)

15:00                                       Pathfinder Tales Panel

A Knight in the Silk Purse

I could tell you how Scott Taylor enticed me to join his star-studded anthology of intriguing fantasy stories and gorgeous artwork, but all you really need is to look at this Kickstarter page.

Art by Janet Aulisio, Jeff Laubenstein, and Todd Lockwood.

Stories by Elaine Cunningham, Julie Czerneda, Lynn Flewelling, Dave Gross, Todd Lockwood, Robert Mancebo, Juliet McKenna, Howard Tayler, R. Scott Taylor, Michael Tousignant, Dan Wells, and Martha Wells.

Go now! Give this project a good first shove this weekend, and let's see how many successive volumes we can line up. And, as always, please spread the word.

Commence the Inquisition!

Larry, Miles, Clint, and I are taking questions at Reddit/fantasy all day. Come add your question to the thread. Here's the direct link.

Reddit Fantasy AMA: Larry Correia, Dave Gross, Miles Holmes, and C.L. Werner

The first four Skull Island eXpeditions authors, including yrs truly, will field questions over at Reddit's fantasy subreddit tomorrow. Questions will start going up mid-day, and we'll swoop in to start answering them--and follow-ups--early in the evening.

Hope to see you there.

Crossing the Streams

If you've enjoyed my Pathfinder stories, you'll probably also like my Iron Kingdoms stories, and vice versa. Give me a birthday thrill and pick up one of the ones you haven't seen before.

For example, if you enjoyed Prince of Wolves, may I suggest you try The Devil's Pay? Both involve a mystery with travel through a spooky environment and an unexpected discovery near the end.

And if you enjoyed Dark Convergence, you might dig Queen of Thorns, both of which conclude with a large-scale battle with strange and powerful foes.

In all of my Pathfinder Tales and Skull Island eXpeditions stories, you'll get a heavy shot of humor along with mystery, uncertain alliances, and of course plenty of action. Plus, those who enjoy Varian Jeggare may well sympathize with Sebastian Nemo, and fans of Radovan will get a kick out of Mags Jernigan and pretty much all of Dog Company.

If you check out something new this week and like it, give me a thrill by posting a review on Amazon.

Words Fail Me

Writers seldom create words, and only a few do it well. Lewis Carroll makes it work, as does Shakespeare. Larry Niven gave us a gift with “tasp.” Those guys made excellent words. The rest of us generally work with what we’ve got stashed in the dictionary. Callooh, callay!

Fortunately, writing isn’t a job of creating words but of choosing them. Still, even with a decent vocabulary and a little experience leveraging the thesaurus, choosing is often harder than it looks. Every writer must choose the right words based on character, setting, tone, and a dozen other factors. For instance, there are plenty of words I’ll put in the mouth of a pretentious scholar that just don’t sound right coming from his street-raised bodyguard. But there are also words I’m more or less likely to use when writing a sad story, an action story, a western story, and so on.

Your genre influences your word pool—I get to choose “squamous,” “ineffable,” and “eldritch” more often than, say, a writer of Regency romances—but shared-world and tie-in settings can also determine your choices. Obviously, proper names like “Golarion,” “Tattooine,” and “Immoren” are part and parcel of writing for Pathfinder, Star Wars, or the Iron Kingdoms, but so are more common terms like “starknife,” “lightsaber,” and “storm glaive.”

Where it can really start to bake your noodle are the little differences in spelling or usage. In the world of Pathfinder, for instance, “devil” and “demon” are never synonyms. Republic ambassadors never heard of coffee but enjoy a hot cup of caffa (well, until they did, but that’s a whole other blog on continuity). And in the Iron Kingdoms you need to know the difference between “mechanical” and “mechanikal,” because you’re going to need them both.

Then there’s the problem of perfectly common words that you simply need to use much more often in a particular setting. English is arguably the greatest human language because of its enormous size, which provides many synonyms. However, even “electrical,” “galvanic,” and “voltaic” will soon seem insufficient when you’re describing a long battle involving the Cygnaran forces of Warmachine.

What are some of your favorite problem words from a tie-in setting? Do they work differently outside that setting? Or are they unique to it? What are some words you think didn’t need to be created for a setting? Which ones added something that couldn’t have existed without them? 

Skull Island eXpeditions

Others have posted better introductions to Privateer Press's new fiction line, so I'll keep this one brief.

Skull Island eXpeditions launched today with three new novellas set in the world of the Iron Kingdoms, which encompasses the eponymous roleplaying game as well as the Hordes and Warmachine miniatures games.

My contribution is a tale called "The Devil's Pay," featuring a down-on-their-luck mercenary company on an unusual commission into a dangerous swamp full of unexpected foes and rivals. The cool thing about this story is that it contains the first fiction reveal of the new faction for the Warmachine game. A full novel, also by yours truly, follows next month.

You can buy the novellas straight from the SIX website in PDF, .mobi, or .epub format, as well as from Amazon's Kindle store.

If you enjoy my Pathfinder Tales novels, there's a darned good chance you'll enjoy "The Devil's Pay." I hope you check it out along with "Instruments of War," by Larry Correia, and "Moving Targets," by C.L. Werner.

Some of the folks that let me hang with them at Gen Con are press-release cool.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Author List Released for 2013 Gen Con Writer’s Symposium

INDIANAPOLIS (April 2^nd, 2013) – The Gen Con Writer’s Symposium recently released the list of participating authors for 2013, and it includes some of the greatest science fiction, fantasy, and media tie-in writers working today. More than fifty talented authors and experts will participate in the panels planned for this year’s Writer’s Symposium, including Guests of Honor Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon.

Participating authors include: Saladin Ahmed, Lou Anders, Brad Beaulieu, Donald J. Bingle, Dylan Birtolo, Maurice Broaddus, Jennifer Brozek, Richard Lee Byers, Wesley Chu, Lawrence C. Connolly, Larry Correia, Larry Dixon, Maxwell Alexander Drake, Erin M. Evans, Dave Farland, Matt Forbeck, Jaym Gates, Paul Genesse, Geoffrey Girard, Jerry Gordon, Dave Gross, Sarah Hans, John Helfers, Jim C. Hines, William H. Horner III, Kerrie L. Hughes, Howard Andrew Jones, Gary Kloster, Mary Robinette Kowal, Jay Kristoff, Mercedes Lackey, James Lowder, Scott Lynch, Ari Marmell, Robert Mosher, Daniel Myers, Chris Pierson, Patrick Rothfuss, Jason Sanford, Ken Scholes, Erik Scott de Bie, Lucy A. Snyder, Mike Stackpole, George Strayton, James L. Sutter, Kelly Swails, Marc Tassin, Howard Tayler, Monica Valentinelli, Elizabeth Vaughan, Gregory A. Wilson

This collection of talented writers includes New York Times bestsellers, USA Today bestsellers, and winners of numerous prestigious literary awards. This year alone, Writer’s Symposium panelists received eight nominations for the coveted Hugo and Nebula awards.

“We’re extremely excited,” said Marc Tassin, the Gen Con Literary Coordinator and the Symposium organizer. “The list of authors that have signed on to participate this year is quite incredible. This year’s Symposium is an unprecedented opportunity for both experienced and beginning writers to learn from some of the greatest writing talents out there today.”

"Having participated in numerous writing seminars both in and out of genre over the years, I am stunned by both the caliber of the participants and sheer size of the Gen Con Writer’s Symposium," said Lou Anders, Hugo award-winning Editorial Director of Pyr books. "I'm not sure anyone quite realizes that this symposium has quietly built itself into one of the largest and most impressive writing symposiums in the field. Anyone with an interest in writing science fiction and fantasy literature, whether media tie-in or not, should definitely have this on their radar."

A full event list for the Symposium is scheduled for release later this month. Tickets to Gen Con are available at www.gencon.com .

For more information, please contact Marc Tassin ( contact@genconwriters.com ).

About the Writer’s Symposium: The Gen Con Writer’s Symposium is one of the largest writing conferences in the world. Established in 1995, it offers more than 110 hours of events for both new and experienced authors. The Symposium features more than fifty authors and has served as a springboard for the careers of many accomplished writers. The Symposium will be held August 15^th to 18^th, 2013, in Indianapolis, Indiana as part of the annual Gen Con gaming convention. For more information on the Symposium, visit www.genconwriters.com .

About Gen Con: Gen Con, LLC produces the largest consumer hobby, fantasy, sci-fi and adventure game convention in North America. It was acquired in 2002 by former CEO and founder of Wizards of the Coast Peter Adkison, who owns the company headquartered in Seattle, Washington. Gen Con is a consumer and trade experience dedicated to gaming culture and community. www.gencon.com

Skull Island eXpeditions

Something very cool begins next week.

Privateer Press will release the first three novellas in their Skull Island eXpress fiction line. These are stories taking place in the land of Immoren, the setting for the tabletop miniatures games Warmachine and Hordes, as well as the Iron Kingdom roleplaying game.

In a nutshell, it's the classic fantasy world +  big fighting robots of various denominations, from steampunk to H.G. Wells to something resembling anime mechs--yet somehow it all holds together in a rich and cohesive universe.

Veteran authors C.L. Werner and Larry Correia have written two of the first three novellas featuring iconic characters from the Warmachine and Hordes games, "Moving Targets" and "Instruments of War."

I've written the third, featuring the Devil Dogs mercenary company led by Captain Samantha "Sam" MacHorne. While she's the most famous Devil Dog, the story is about the entire company, especially Sam "the boys." "The Devil's Pay" falls somewhere between Aliens and Firefly in its combination of horror, mayhem, and dysfunctional family dynamics.

The novella also serves as a prelude to Dark Convergence, a novel introducing the setting's latest faction, a group of art-deco clockwork fanatics. That should be a pretty big deal, as it'll be the first substantial look players will have at the faction before its models are available later this spring.

I hope you'll check 'em out.

Here's where they're teasing new information. Go like the page, and you'll see all the new updates.

The stories will be available directly from Privateer and also from Amazon. I'll post direct links as soon as they're available.

Euro-centric Fantasy

Elaine Cunningham posts about the unbearable whiteness of most fantasy fiction.

Researching Flattery

A few months ago, Mordicai Knode wrote a flattering overview of the Radovan & Jeggare novels at tor.com. One line that stuck out for me was, "Part witty banter and part brothers-in-arms, Varian and Radovan read like a cross between Gilmore Girls and Reservoir Dogs, smack dab in the middle of a sword and sorcery world."

Reservoir Dogs I knew and adored, but I'd only heard good things about Gilmore Girls. When I saw the first season DVD set was on sale, I snapped it up and watched the first episode a few nights ago.

Now I'm doubly flattered by the comparison and delighted to discover this gem of a TV series, which reminds me in the best possible way of Buffy the Vampire Slayer without the supernatural element. 

I love finding something like this when the complete series has become affordable. I sense a binge coming on in April once deadlines relax their grip on my life.

So thanks twice, Mordicai.

Bite Me! Kickstarter

Christina Stiles kindly (?) added a $5 pledge level to receive just the short story I'll write for Bite Me! The Gaming Guide to Lycanthropes. I don't recommend you pledge at that level, however, because for $10 you can have the whole book, including my story, in PDF format. That's a pretty great deal.

Take a peek at their Kickstarter and consider throwing a sawbuck their way. I'm a part of it if they hit their minimum goal, but at $7,000 they'll include interior illustrations by my former TSR compatriot Jennell Jaquays. I'm also super excited at the prospect of miniatures when they hit the $11,700 stretch goal.

Go check it out.

My Werewolf Problem

Several months ago I put my foot down and said I'd accept no new work until I'd cleared my desk, which now looks like it'll happen in May. Twice I've failed in my resolve, both times for short projects that I don't have to start until I'm clear of my big deadlines.  One of those projects made me cave because it was short and included one of my magic words: werewolf.

My first "fandom" was Universal Horror monsters. At the time, Larry Talbot was my anti-hero, and even after I realized that The Bride of Frankenstein was by far the best film of that era, werewolves remained my favorite classic monster. They've worked their way into a number of my novels, most recently Prince of Wolves (2010). So Christina Stiles got a "Hell, yes" rather than the "No, I couldn't possibly" that I'd intended.

Christina and Dawson Kriska are Kickstarting Bite Me!, a Pathfinder RPG Guide to Lycanthropes. Along with some of my fellow TSR survivors Sean Reynolds, Wolfgang Baur, and Jennell Jaquays, I'll make a contribution to the book. Mine will be a story. It might involve werewolves. There might be biting.

Launched at midnight, the project has already hit 1/6 of its goal and has another 29 days to go. I'd love to see them hit the 50% mark today and start announcing their stretch goals early next week. The miniatures stretch goal is the one I'm most excited to see them hit.

Please help Christina and Dawson make that happen.

Signing in Seattle 25 January

If you're in or near Seattle, I hope you'll join me at the University Bookstore on Friday, 25 January at 7:00 pm. I'll read a bit, perhaps including a preview of something coming later this year, and then sign Prince of Wolves, Master of Devils, Queen of Thorns, and Winter Witch. You can have Elaine's autograph on that one, too, thanks to the miracle of bookplates and international post. (Hi, Elaine!)

If you're on Facebook, join the open event. You might spot a few Paizo celebrities in attendance. Even if you can't make it, please spread the word to any current or nascent Pathfinder Tales readers.

I'm Number 2!

For the second stretch goal of the instantly successful Kickstarter for Danny O'Neill's Grande Temple of Jing, I will write a story to accompany the giant old-school dungeon crawl when the pledges cross the $20k line. Considering that contributors already include Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook, and Skip Williams, I feel like icing. Or gravy. I always forget which one.

And there's more gravy-icing: Take a peek down the page to see how Hero Labs and Jim Ward contribute to this second stretch goal as well.

While you're there, check out the nice array of add-ons. It's the kind of Kickstarter that's worth browsing.

Playing Favorites

Have I mentioned lately how much I love the Pathfinder Tales readers? Not only are they enthusiastic, but they come up with much cleverer ways to express the game versions of my novel character than I ever could.

To wit, we had a little contest. Picking three "favorites" was impossible, because everyone who entered immediately jumped onto Dave's List of Favorite People, if they weren't there already. But I chose three entries that surprised and delighted me the most. The announcement went up today.

Everyone will received a signed book, but the top three entries also receive a Radovan miniature and the Hero Labs character creation package, courtesy of the mad geniuses at Lone Wolf.