A Little Gift from History

If you've ever tried to write historical fiction, you know how frustrating it can be when history stubbornly refuses to conform to the desired shape of your narrative. Faced with this problem, you can either bend history or bend your story. Usually you do a little bit of both, but I try to keep my historical pieces firmly grounded in existing history unless I've set out to do an alternate history from the beginning.

Thinking about this today because one of the things I'm working on is a novel among whose elements are HG Wells and the Partition of India. So imagine my glee when I discovered that Wells was cremated on the same day as the first large-scale (pre-)Partition riot: August 16, 1946.

I love it when a story comes together.

G4TV Plays Avengers Alliance

Video Game - E3 2012

Mystery Hill, Free on the Kindle Store

Go get it!

Stuff on Comixology

I've been busy getting other people's stuff on Comixology, but here's a list of my stuff you can get there. (Still waiting to see Daredevil Noir and Hellstorm, Son of Satan: Equinox.)

Iron Man: Rapture, in which Tony Stark decides he's going to build himself a new heart...and then doesn't stop there. Covers by Tim Bradstreet, art by Lan Medina.

Dark Sun: Ianto's Tomb, in which a runaway gladiator and the slave hunter sent to find him team up for an exploration of the catacombs beneath the city of Tyr. Covers by Andy Brase, John Watson, Michael Stribling; art by Peter Bergting.

The Murder of King Tut, an adaptation of James Patterson's "nonfiction thriller." Recent developments in forensic science aside, it's a cool story of skullduggery in ancient Egypt. Covers by Darwyn Cooke, art by Chris Mitten and Ron Randall.

Mystery Hill for the Kindle

The Kindle Store experiment continues with the addition of my novella Mystery Hill. Here's a review from the Guardian to whet your appetite:

Everything about this novella is delightful: its breezy telling, the touching relationship between Ken and Fara, the deadpan humour, the casually fatalistic denouement. Wonderful.

How can you resist that?

Also, if you'd rather have the print version, here's the link to its catalog listing at PS Publishing.

A Cool Million

Avengers Alliance hit a million users on Monday, I hear. Salut to the dev team at Playdom! And cue all kinds of thrills on this end...a million people reading stuff I wrote. Agent Irvine is, of course, one of those million. He's Level 24 and kicking ass.

Each and every one of those (now more than a) million people is warmly encouraged to go read something else that Agent Irvine wrote. Set up some long Flight Deck missions and settle in with a good book or comic.

Here's to more millions!

Dream Curator & Others, Free in the Kindle Store

Today through Friday, get my collection The Dream Curator and Other Stories free in the Kindle Store. There's something for everyone in these eleven stories, which are all over the genre map: SF, fantasy, crime, sometimes more than one at the same time. Read and enjoy!

Also, I'm working a story that has cows in it, so Gordon Van Gelder sent me this video. You should watch it.

Theme Song for the Personhood Movement

Because it's Saturday night, and on Saturday nights one must either watch Withnail & I or consider the loony prescience of Monty Python. Today, provoked by a Facebook comment from Jennifer Stevenson, I choose the latter.

Making of Avengers Alliance Video

...part 1 of 4...

Variety on Avengers Alliance

Some interesting stuff here in this article by Marc Glaser. Note especially the bit about the storyline unfolding over "two or three years."

There's been nothing like this on Facebook so far. If you've just started playing it, you're in for a treat.

Send me some SHIELD points!