TIFF Day Two

The Great Kilapy [Angola, Zézé Gamboa, 2] Handsome player's yen for the good life puts him in the crosshairs of the secret police, both as a student in Lisbon and then in his native Angola. Rookie screenwriting mistakes show the failed struggle to fashion a compelling narrative from a colorful true story.

Note to aspiring screenwriters: if your script has more than one instance of friends hugging, cut out all instances of friends hugging.

The We and the I [US, Michel Gondry, 4] A crosstown bus ride on the last day of classes takes a group of NYC high schoolers from raucousness to melancholy. Energetic, Altmanesque group portrait with occasional flash-cuts to the director's trademark whimsy.

Dead Europe [Australia, Tony Krawitz, 2] A hallucinatory confrontation with dark family secrets ensues when an Australian photographer ignores his Greek parents' pleas not to visit the old country. Heavy-handed exercise in Polanskian paranoia.

Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: Gen Con ‘12

This week’s episode of Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff mines topics galore from the wonder that was Gen Con ‘12.

TIFF Day One

That time of year has rolled around again, and it's time for me to attend my 26th go-round of the dazzling, exhausting, overwhelming Toronto International Film Festival. Every year they seem to make it tougher for the diehards: this time they've squished the slots closer together, making it harder than ever to move between venues. And eating between screenings? Forget about it. This will be an experiment in how long one can survive on hardboiled eggs, trail mix, and hoarded Starbucks sandwiches.

Here’s the standard drill, if you’ve forgotten how it works around the Cinema Hut at TIFF time or are joining the festivities for the first time:

I’ll be writing capsule reviews of everything I see, and then gathering them up in order of preference in the festival’s aftermath. Until then, I’ll be giving provisional ratings to the films, which are bound to change as they settle into memory. Ratings range from 0 to 5, with 0 arousing my active ire and 5 ascending to rarefied heights of masterpiece-dom.

Interspersed between the capsules will be expansions on the reviews, stray observations, and whatever logistical complaining I fail to suppress.

If you’ve heard of a release that’s playing TIFF, chances are that it’s because the film will be coming out shortly and is getting a big PR push. I tend to skip films that have distribution in place in favor of those I might never get another shot at. So I’m not the one to ask about the Oscar-bait movies with the big stars in attendance.

Do you want to see these movies right away? Well, these titles are beginning their long journey through the distribution chain. Many will continue to appear on the film festival circuit over the next year or so. The high profile releases I tend not to schedule at the fest may appear in theaters as early as next week. Indies and foreign titles will score theatrical releases over the next year or so, and DVD releases after that. Some may appear only on DVD, or vanish completely.

While a few of last year’s films still await theatrical release, most have made it through the chain. So if you want to enjoy some fine cinema right away, you could do worse than to check out my recommendations from last year.

And now, let's start the capsule reviews rolling, with the two films I caught on opening night:

After the Battle [Egypt, Yousry Nasrallah, 4] Pro-democracy activist involves herself in the family affairs of a disenfranchised tourism worker who disgraced himself by taking part in a horse and camel attack on Tahrir Square protesters. Written and shot concurrently with the events it portrays, this political drama takes the time to round out its characters.

The director was present to introduce the film and movingly call heed to the recent arrest by the Syrian government and documentarian Orwa Nyrabia, who he described as having been accused of crimes against inhumanity.

Far Out Isn't Far Enough: The Tomi Ungerer Story [US, Brad Bernstein, 4] Documentary profile of groundbreaking illustrator who was blacklisted as a children's author over his scathing political posters and shocking excursions into erotica. Filmmakers take full advantage of their subject's wit and eloquence as he takes them from a childhood under Nazi occupation to his present state of uncomfortable acclaim.

Ungerer was present for the screening and will be signing at the Beguiling on Sat. Attn: local illustrator peeps.

This is the first film I've seen to list Kickstarter in the credits. It sure won't be the last.

Full Bleed

New Tales of the Yellow Sign, my anthology of weird tales conjuring Robert W. Chambers’ classic King in Yellow mythos, is in print as of September from Atomic Overmind Press, and in ebook form from vendors including Amazon/Kindle, Nook, Smashwords, Apple iTunes, and Paizo.

This post is first in a series looking at the individual stories.

In “Repairer of Reputations”, Robert Chambers writes one of the canon’s earliest tales from the point of view of an unreliable narrator. The reading experience trains us to accept the words presented to us by the author—without that trust, we are unmoored, disoriented. What device could be more appropriate to a cycle of stories about a book—a collection of untrustworthy words—that spreads madness and perhaps even reshapes reality itself?

“Full Bleed” plays with both ideas by siting them in the present day, through the action report of an agent determined to stamp out new eruptions of the Yellow Sign in print—in this case, by tracking the activities of an indie comics artist.

In his introduction to New Tales of the Yellow Sign, Kenneth Hite says of “Full Bleed”:

“Full Bleed” riffs off “The Repairer of Reputations,” through a procedural tenor recalling both Dashiell Hammett’s hard-boiled fictions and the first-person “fantasy of competence” that fearful 21^st-century readers crave from their security romances.

Secret hint: downloading the free sample on the Kindle page and elsewhere gets you all of “Full Bleed,” and Ken’s intro in its entirety.

The Birds: Thread

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Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: Purely Medicinal

Kenneth Hite and I talk worldbuilding, creating interesting female pregens for con games and freeforms, Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan and time-traveling health care in a brand new episode of Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff.

And the Winner of the 2012 Gen Con Buzzword Contest Is…

Since the inception of the Gen Con Buzzword Contest in 2008, with the infamous wheelhouse, one contestant, despite his hard-charging efforts and intense training, has seemed perpetually relegated to second place. He has been the Susan Lucci, the 2002 Oakland A’s, of Gen Con buzzwordery. Consistently he’s come out hard from the gates, earned an early first place, only to be passed in the stretch by such thoroughbreds as Kenneth Hite and Great Cthulhu himself.

This year, then, with pride and a not inconsiderable sense of relief, the judges declare that Kevin Kulp, the Artist Formerly Known As Pirate Cat, has finally outpaced all comers to win the 2012 event. They salute his determination, his heart, and his cavalier willingness to despoil the trust placed in him as moderator of the Gen Con Keynote address on the future of D&D. He achieved his grim victory by slipping the dread word incubate into his concluding question, before the innocent ears of a packed ballroom and the pixelated eyes of a worldwide streaming audience. Kevin’s brazen act of linguistic vandalism can be heard on YouTube or in the Tome Show podcast’s recording of the event.

Congratulations, Kevin. May your victory lap be as sweet as it was long in coming.

Treasure of Far Thallai Concludes

Because August has turned into the Robin D. Laws Fiction Explosion (RDLFE for short) I have failed to point out that with the sixth and final installment in Paizo’s Skull and Shackles Adventure Path comes the swashbuckling conclusion to “The Treasure of Far Thallai.” In “Claw Cove”, a classic ship-to-ship showdown unfolds as Challys Argent sends her ship, the Aspidochelone to intercept the Slicer, captained by the insane Kered Firsk. With final battle comes a strange decision for one of Challys’ reluctant sidekicks. Sail your galleon to the Paizo store, or to your discerning local purveyor of fine gaming products. And while you’re there, keep the plundering to a minimum, willya?

Part Two of “In the Event of My Untimely Demise”

When in doubt, have a dwarf come through the door carrying a grudge. Part Two of “In the Event of My Untimely Demise” is now up at the Paizo blog.

The Birds: Rename

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Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: The Audacity of Cupcakes

Yellow signs, Kickstarter, idea wrangling and mysticism take center stage in this week’s episode of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff podcast.

Prequeling a Dramatic Hero

The first installment of my web fiction serial “In the Event of My Untimely Demise” is now up at Paizo’s Pathfinder Tales blog. It features Luma, hero of my new Pathfinder novel, Blood of the City. A cobblestone druid attuned to the magic of the marble metropolis of Magnimar, she’s the odd sibling out in a team of urban adventurers for hire. In part one, “The Dead Client”, Luma, having been barred from a prestigious assignment, receives an unusual commission—to perform an investigation purchased in advance by a now-deceased customer.

Writing this serial posed a challenge I didn’t have to deal with when coming up with its equivalent for The Worldwound Gambit. Unlike Gad, the heisting hero of that novel, Luma is not presented as an iconic hero, who does not change in the course of the story but instead changes the world around her by remaining true to her essential problem-solving ethos. Instead she’s a dramatic hero, who undergoes a personal journey that profoundly alters her sense of self and relationship to the world.

Iconic heroes, like Batman, Sherlock Holmes or James T. Kirk, are built for recurring appearances. Dramatic heroes are tougher. I can see Luma becoming an iconic hero, maybe, after the events portrayed in Blood of the City. But going back in time, to a moment prior to the opening scenes introducing her dramatic dilemma, required some head-scratching.

Without giving too much away, the story prefigures her arc and echoes a key theme of the novel, without putting her on the path toward her transformation. It’s both free-standing story and prelude.

Head on over and check it out.

New Tales of the Yellow Sign Now Available For Kindle

New Tales of the Yellow Sign, my book of weird short fiction based on Robert W. Chambers’ King in Yellow Mythos, is now available from Amazon’s Kindle store.

You can also grab it from Smashwords, in the ebook format of your choice. Over the next weeks and days, it will propagate through them to other vendors including Apple, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble. As the book appears in these venues, I’ll announce them on my Twitter feed.

A last few copies of the limited hardcover run can be acquired at DragonCon from my eldritch pals at Adventure Retail. Atomic Overmind releases the softcover in September.

My FanExpo Panels

I’ll be doing the guest thing this weekend at Toronto’s FanExpo, appearing at two panels, both on Friday the 24th.

At 2pm I’ll be in room 707 for Robin’s Laws of Gaming, a solo version of the classic GM troubleshooting panel. If your questions wander off that topic, I won’t call security.

5pm will see me on the Crowdfunding panel, in room 717.

I’d hoped to participate in events on Saturday as well, but alas a scheduling conflict says otherwise.

Hope to see you there, GTA-area gamers!

Gen Con Wrap

As usual the day after Gen Con, my brain is mushy and my creative spirits lifted. Thanks to everyone who attended a seminar, asked for a signature, posed questions, or shared responses to my many and various projects. Without an audience this work would not exist. This show serves as a joyous and emotionally overwhelming confrontation with that fact.

Or to put it another way, my current ear worm is the chorus to "Dream Weaver." And I think I like it.

On Sunday, the Pelgrane booth sold out of its pre-release copies of The New Hero and Shotguns v. Cthulhu.

The New Tales of the Yellow Sign sold most of its limited hardcover print run. Remaining copies will go to DragonCon courtesy of Adventure Retail, or to Atomic Overmind world headquarters, where they may be made available via mail order. The main softcover run releases next month.

Now I get to go home and decompress. Oh wait, no, tomorrow's TIFF program book day and the weekend's FanExpo. Belay that. Pass the espresso drum, nurse!

Telegraphic Snippets of a Whirlwind Gen Con Saturday

[Image is accurate rendition of author's breakfast-deprived state.]

The Pelgrane booth sold out of Ashen Stars late in the afternoon. To bask in its silver-ENnie winning setting you will now have to head to your discerning game retailer or the Pelgrane web store. Or to your bookshelf, for those of you with the taste and forethought to have acquired it already.

Supplies of New Tales of the Yellow Sign ought to hold for the last day. Find it either in its native environment in the Atomic Overmind section of the Green Ronin booth, or at the Pelgrane booth or Adventure Retail’s Cthulhuiana Corner.

The investigative roleplaying seminar went well, with lots of great questions. This year most attendees new GUMSHOE already, with a more advanced discussion resulting. It turned into a bit of a Night’s Black Agents master class, though we also covered the game’s genesis and the various future projects we’re mulling—and what to do when you have two forensic scientists in your group and they don’t agree on what tests their characters might be performing in the 1930s. I may or may not have captured usable audio of the talk on my magic phone; if so, we’ll slip some highlights into future Ken and Robin podcasts.

Today at 11am Stone Skin authors present at the show gather at the Pelgrane booth to celebrate the success of the prelaunch, and to personalize your copies of The New Hero 1 and 2 and Shotguns v. Cthulhu. Swing on by.

But now I must deal with an immediate crisis, the absence of any discernable protein at the hotel’s breakfast buffet. A desperate Plan B must now be activated. Pray for me, Gen Con. Pray for me.

In Which My Humility is Variously Assaulted

Anglo/Canadian diffidence took a thundering body blow last night as Pelgrane saw four of its eleven ENnie nominations turn into silver and gold. I’d like to again thank ENnie judges and voters for their silver nods to Lorefinder for best rules and Ashen Stars for best setting. The first constitutes greatly satisfying recognition to a book that seemed to fly under the radar when first released. In raiding GUMSHOE’s stuff and turning it into Pathfinder treasure, Gareth Hanrahan performed feats of mighty battle, and it was lovely to see him hit the awards podium at his first Gen Con in years. The setting nod for Ashen Stars was an unexpected jolt of approbation and gave me the chance to thank the art team (Jerome Huguenin and Chris Huth) as well as cupcake magnate Beth Lewis and gentleman adventurer Simon Rogers for their indispensable contributions.

For pure delight it was impossible to beat Paula Dempsey’s reaction to her gold award for Best Writing the Occult Investigator’s Guide to London, which is her first book. Contributor Steve Dempsey once again uncorked his freestyle chops to deliver his portion of the acceptance speech in rap form. I was proud to be namechecked in this profound expression of the hip-hop arts. In accepting the gold award for best electronic product for Cthulhu Apocalypse, Simon praised the fecund womb of author Graham Walmsley, veering towards and then away from an invocation of the dread buzzword.

Earlier in the day I was happy to appear alongside Paizo fiction majordomo James Sutter and fellow scribes Richard Lee Byers and Dave Gross for a panel on the Pathfinder Tales novels. Ed Greenwood popped in for a cameo appearance to announce his upcoming book for the line. To what must surely be his eternal chagrin, he missed the later discussion of the supposed chasteness of the series, which turned into a list of all the naughty passages in past or forthcoming books. I think James might have been blushing. Along the way we mulled the inextricable relationship between plot and character and maybe even found a few fresh ways to talk about the balance between respecting and obscuring game rules when writing RPG-inspired fiction.

I also had a fine time doing the guest thing on the Tome Show podcast. You can listen to it when it drops, so I needn’t recap. The D&D focus of the ‘cast provided me with a welcome topic shift. Thanks to Tracy and Jeff for inviting me and for their incisive questions and smooth direction of the Q&A segment.

Today I’m at the IPR booth at noon for a Don’t Read This Book group signing, and doing a GUMSHOE seminar with Ken and Simon at 3. Other than that I’ll be chatting and signing at Pelgrane temporary global HQ, booth 1427.

Fast Times at the Pelgrane Booth

Thursday is always my favorite day to man a booth at Gen Con. That’s when your most devoted readers and gamers show up to say hi and grab the new stuff. Pelgrane had a record Thursday this year, with an early rush followed by a slow and steady diminishment of its stacks of books. Thanks to all the Pelgraniacs who reported for duty.

The star item this time is unquestionably Kenneth Hite’s Night’s Black Agents. Its “Bourne if Treadstone were vampires” elevator pitch makes for an easy sell. So much so that the booth may well run out of them before show’s end. If you’re planning to grab one, don’t put that off for the last minute.

I was unsure how the Stone Skin Press books would do at a gaming convention—our adventure into fiction is not directly related to the main Pelgrane mission after all. Once more the taste and sagacity of Gen Con attendees dispels my reflexive Canadian pessimism. We will probably run out of these as well. (That’s The New Hero 1 and 2, and especially Shotguns v. Cthulhu, for those joining us already in progress.) There will be a signing with many of the Stone Skin authors here at the show on Sunday at 11am, for which we’ll be holding a quantity of the books back.

Also garnering a gratifying response is the Tartarus/Terra Nova adventure double-header for Ashen Stars, combined in the Ace Double style of old. I didn’t even know this would be here, but that’s Simon and Beth for you. Turn your back on them for a minute, and they’ll print up your new product and have it out for Gen Con.

For which, see also the appearance of the Dying Earth Revivification Folio, which I also didn’t expect to see here in its tastefully arcane finished state. Since the Dying Earth RPG started it all for Pelgrane, it tugs at the heartstrings a little to see this refurbished, streamlined version to the game being exchanged for the richly-deserved terces of a discriminating clientele.

I tend to forget last year’s big thing, but Ashen Stars itself continues to sell well at the stand as well. If you’ve been thinking of picking it up, now’s the time, as the first print run dwindles as we speak. The tricky economics of reprints may force Simon to go turn the glorious color of the current run into black and white, so get it while you can.

In other news, my first but hopefully not last Writer’s Symposium event, the advanced plotting workshop, gave John Helfers, Matt Forbeck and I much to talk about. We represented a continuum of authorial pre-planning, with Matt on the mellow end and me as the obsessive who diagrams every major beat using Campaign Cartographer and the Hamlet’s Hit Points system before going to written outline. We managed to stop talking soon enough to give specific notes to writers currently grappling with their own works in progress.

Today (Friday) I will don my Pathfinder Tales author’s hat (disclaimer: not actually a hat) for a panel at noon and a signing at 1:30, where I will gladly deface copies of my new release, Blood of the City, and last year’s controversial demonic heist novel, The Worldwound Gambit.

I’m also the interviewee at a live recording of the Tome Show podcast, at 6pm, right before the ENnies.

With all these festivities planned, this had to be the day for the wonder of the Utamaro shirt. Prepare to be awed.

Nords Triumph at Diana Jones Awards

Defying the Vegas oddsmakers, who had crowdfunding as a heavy favorite, authors Jaakko Stenros and Markus Montola last night earned the 2012 Diana Jones Award for their book Nordic LARP. As a document of an inherently ephemeral movement in narrative art, the book is an achievement in itself, while also allowing the DJA committee to recognize the importance of that movement as a whole.  (Were one to foolishly attempt to divine their motives of this mysterious collective entity, which is, of course, the sheerest folly.) Though the authors were still ensconced in deepest Scandinavia, Emily Care Boss was on hand to read their heartfelt and inspiring acceptance statement. Apparently she’s even hand-delivering the award to its year-long stay in the high latitudes. Congratulations again, Jaakko and Markus.

At the Diana Jones party, where the cream of the industry gathers to get their schmoozing heads back on, Atomic Overmind honcho Hal Mangold had in his capacious pocket copy zero of New Tales of the Yellow Sign, which has safely arrived at the show in all its horrible splendor. After posting this I’ll be off to the hall for some signing and numbering. It will be at the Green Ronin booth; we’ll also work out a complex Traveller-style triangular trade agreement to get copies in place at the Pelgrane stand.

Prior to the DJA party, I took the chance to network with colleagues in the fiction world, at a meet-up for participants in the Writers’ Symposium. This series of events offers a full track of seminars and workshops to aspiring fiction writers. People can, and do, come to Gen Con strictly for that. I’m dipping my toe into this pool to as one of the gurus at a sold-out workshop on advanced plotting. Although I’ve written a great deal of fiction over the years my networking circle has always been on the gaming side, so it was great to indulge in a related but different line of shop talk. Maurice Broaddus and Dave Gross were on hand to assist with introductions, and I made sure to talk up their contributions to the Stone Skin Press line. (Maurice is in The New Hero; Dave’s stories appear in Shotguns v. Cthulhu and The Lion and the Aardvark.)

Likewise gratifying is the chance to hear positive feedback on the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff podcast, which, if you hadn’t heard, is now available through iTunes.

And now it’s time to head down to the exhibit hall, attempt to plot the shortest route between decent coffee and the exhibit hall, and hope that a certain distinguished publisher remembers to text me his prepaid cell number so I can claim my badge…

The Birds: Super Happy

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