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Being creeped out is not my usual state, in fact, should there be anything fitting the description of creepy in my vicinity one will find me moving steadily in its direction to get a better look. Honestly, I would be the most boring ghosthunter in television history with my own show, walking into the dark, eager to stand face to face with the ghost that I just found out was a dumb ol' shadow. But occasionally I'll see a movie or read a book that sticks in my head, a few examples are here tiny.cc/LnbV6 in the latest Author Roundtable with the Forgotten Realms writin' crew.

Mostly though, when watching a movie or reading a book, when something really creepy happens and my wife covers her eyes...I cheer. When the little kid in The Ring freaks out because his mom helped Samara and you find out

To expand upon my answer in the latest Author Roundtable (found here: community.wizards.com/wotc_vetanda/blog/... ), I have given in to the pleas for a recount from all the other monsters in every Monster Manual I own. So I decided upon a top ten, all with a combination of features I enjoy in the game and in fiction...and maybe even a couple to appear sometime soon, hmmm...

10-- The Wraith: all purpose, need a creepy, incorporeal, freaky undead to make the unsuspecting players realize they have no special weapons capable of touching a ghost? Done. Add a few class levels and weapons and you might even make a PC cry :)

9-- Mimic: wanna' have the PC's view every object they encounter in the game as a possible new scar? Done. Not to mention the long-running jokes about how a random PC got attacked

So what does your mighty Passive Insight score of 10 tell you about your favorite WotC authors? Well . . .

community.wizards.com/wotc_vetanda/blog/...

Cheers

Answered that with one word.

community.wizards.com/wotc_vetanda/blog/...

Cheers

I love to read, and as I was recently surprised to find out, I love to read ebooks on my phone; the fit is just right. Which means, I love ebooks. As an author of a few novels, with hopefully many more on the horizon, I'm interested in seeing my novels come out in this format. However, all is not rosy in the world of ebook publishing.

It seems that Amazon, in its bid to sew up the industry, may be doing things that harm the author's ability to get paid a reasonable sum for writing (and an author's publisher, too). My being an author aside, this also means that in the medium- and long-term, these activities could impact the number and quality of books I get to read.

An excerpt from Charles Stross's recent blog on the topic:

Last Friday, Amazon.com unilaterally pulled most or all of Macmillan's

I just thought I'd take this opportunity to give a shout-out to my hard-working and heavy-weight-to-bear editor, Susan Morris, also known on these boards as Vetanda.

Susan is the editor of the recent Realms of the Dead anthology (which includes a story by yours truly), as well as numerous other Realms pieces of the last five or so years (most of the anthologies such as Realms of War and Best of Ed, for instance, as well as the entirety of the Eddie Presents Waterdeep series, my previous Realms novels, and at least half of all Realms novels that show up on the shelf). Hard-working, like I said.

She also makes time for her own work, including the various practical guides, the most recent of which is--I believe--A Practical Guide to Wizardry.

She's also putting together an ongoing "WWYFFRAD?"

People often ask me how to go about naming their characters, whether in writing, in gaming, or whatever.

My favorite and most effective method of naming a character (other than sudden insight/inspiration, which you can't control) is three easy steps as follows:

1) Write down the type of character.

2) Think of a word that you associate with the character. Basically, a word that defines the character--either their role in the story, or something that is extremely significant to them.

- If it's a passive sort of character, use a noun.

- If it's active, use a verb.

- If it's a particularly striking character (i.e., one particular physical or mental characteristic), use an adjective.

3) Then just start tweaking the word. Reverse orders, replace a few letters, etc.

Here's an example:

1) Fire genasi

I have a few blogs where I primarily write about writing, cinema, and filmmaking. You can access some of them here:

• My homepage
• Blogger
• Twitter

I also write about music, but primarily it's about writing and the things I'm writing.

Enjoy!

So this is mostly an instruction about how to write bad guys, but it goes for lots of things: DMing effective evil NPCs, directing bad guys in movies, trying to take over the world yourself in your spare time, etc.

The first rule about writing bad guys is that they *aren't all bad*.

If you make a villain who is all-evil, all-the-time, that's boring.

If you make a villain who has absolutely no redeeming qualities, that's boring.

If you make a villain who does evil just because it's evil, that's boring.

(There are, of course, exceptions to this, but generally speaking, an evil-for-evil's-sake, completely-utterly-psychopathic monster is only really usable as a parody of itself [see Xykon, Order of the Stick].)

The more your audience relates to the villain, the more effective the villain is,