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Hey guys I'm running a game at the moment and a big part of one of my characters is reasearching into ancient texts and delving into living books. I was wondering what every one's thoughts where on that and if you wanted to maybe give me some help with ideas or books you think would be cool and a system to put in play for getting through the book successfully. 

I knew that Evermeet was scheduled for audio book release today, but I was pleasantly surprised to learn that several more are now available.  Tangled Webs and Wildwalker, books 2 and 3 of the Starlight & Shadows trilogy are out today. (Not sure what the story is with book 1, Daughter of the Drow, but I'm looking into it...)  So is my short story collection, The Best of the Realms Book III.

Today's Forgotten Realms releases also include two anthologies to which I've contributed:  Realms of Infamy and Realms of the Arcane.  These anthologies are a great way to sample a variety of writing styles and topics, and well as to revisit recurring characters.  

I'm delighted to see the backlist returning in audio format. ...

It comes quickly to many of us, that horrible realisation, what we do will never get read let alone sell our work. When we look at the founders of our genre, R.E.Howard and Tolkien for instance, (Tolkien didn't write his LOTR intentionally for publication and Howard couldn't get paid) it becomes apparent we do things because we have to, fantasy is part of our soul. Did the lack of appreciation ever make us stop daydreaming and telling stories or, did we ever not play AD&D because we weren't paid? I admit, I dallied with the idea of being a paid ref, a professional author, an enchanting storyteller who made his living through his visionary, fantastical oratory. But what happens when we realise, the world isn't in love with what we love and barely gives it a passing glance?

We can share with...

I thought I would post a list of all the books we've read here so we could see just how far we've come!  Special thanks to all the authors who participated in almost every single Book Club discussion.

1. Downshadow, Erik Scott de Bie
2. City Under the Sand, Jeff Mariotte
3. The God Catcher, Erin Evans
4. The Temple of the Yellow Skulls, Don Bassingthwaite
5. Sword of the Gods, Bruce Cordell
6. Unbroken Chain, Jaleigh Johnson
7. Unbroken Chain: The Darker Road, Jaleigh Johnson
8. The Shard Axe, Marsheila Rockwell
9. Shadowbane, Erik Scott de Bie
10. City of the Dead, Rosemary Jones
11. Circle of Skulls, James P. Davis
12. Brimstone Angels, Erin Evans
13. Mistshore, Jaleigh Johnson
14. Skein of Shadows, Marsheila Rockwell
15. Shadowbane: Eye of Justice, Erik Scott de Bie
16. Brimstone...

You can’t judge a book by its cover. Unless you’re judging a book’s aesthetics, in which case you can totally judge a book by its cover. It’s actually recommended. It's a vital part of the packaging.

Recent article on the front page discussed a couple key parts of a new edition: the title font, the design of the books , and the ampersand. I thought I’d weigh in on the subject.

The Three Designs

I’ll start by quickly reiterating the three types of book design.

There’s Consume, Engage, and Cherish. Consume books are essentially gaming textbooks, they hold the information you need and you wants access as easily and quickly as possible. Engage books grab a hold of your mind and enflame your imagination. Cherish books are collectibles or

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Well Met, All--

I and about twenty other authors (including Paul Kemp, Elaine Cunningham, Ari Marmell, Marcy Rockwell, and more!) are involved in the Crossing the Streams contest--a promotional event where we're giving away our own books, as well as those of the others! You can sign up for my contest and/or any of theirs (linkes at my blog entry below).

February 29 is the last day to enter!

erikscottdebie.com/2012/02/03/crossing-t...

Cheers

4e has been around almost four years. Less than half the lifespan of 3e. And some people already feel the edition has run out of steam.

The edition does feel bloated. The metric ton of crunch from monthly books of pure mechanics certainly didn’t help. It gives the impression of a dense game, because the edition was so front-loaded. There’s so many options, it’s hard to think of new content that isn’t superfluous or threatens to add even more character options to an edition that already has more spells and feats than 3e.

However, much of the edition has only barely been touched. The entire Epic tier hasn’t seen much attention, especially for DMs. And while the crunch aspect of the game has been prematurely exhausted, there are vast areas of the system that

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This is an open call for readers/reviewers. If you are interested in recieving a free book in exchange for posting a review of said book on Amazon, Good Reads, and the like, please message me through this site.  The number of people will be limited, of course, and if you fail to post a review, you'll be out of the running for free books in the future.  If you don't like the book, that's fine. Post a bad review. 

Anyway, send me a message if you're interested and we can discuss specifics.

If you're not already aware, our Community has it's own Wizards Book Club:

community.wizards.com/bookclub

It's moderated by Wizards author extrordinaire Erik Scott de Bie.  One of the special things that goes on in the Book Club is the discussion of Wizards novels with the author being part of the discussion.

We've had authors like Erik, Erin Evans, Don Bassingthwaite, Bruce Cordell, and Jaleigh Johnson so far, who give great insights into the writing process and into the worlds they're writing about.

This year, we're going to try something new, and instead of voting on each and every book we read, we've come up with a schedule for the next six books in order to let all of you plan a little better to participate and let us advertise better.

So, without further ado, here's the

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