I havent’ followed a Kickstarter since the MHI RPG and Employee Handbook. (Update, the writing is mostly done, I’m proofing it now, and the art is coming in gradually and it is AWESOME, so we’re on schedule).

First off, my friend Howard Tayler of Schlock Mercenary is doing Schlock themed challenge coins. And holy crap, has it gone nuts. In the first day he’s already blown through a ton of stretch goals.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/692211058/schlock-mercenary-challenge-coins?ref=live

This makes me wonder if I should do MHI challenge coins. We’ve got tons of patch art and other stuff we could use. Would that be something you guys would be interested in?

And of course, because I’m a complete dork and addicted to mini painting:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1188790300/hell-dorado-miniature-skirmish-game-inferno-expans?ref=live

Hell Dorado makes some of my favorite sculpts, because I love having an army of conquistadors. I’ve never played the game. I’m just in it for the lead.

I just found out that my novel Spellbound, narrated by Bronson Pinchot, is up for Best Paranormal audio book. We won the Audie last year in this same category for Hard Magic. So fingers crossed for two in a row! 😀

http://www.audiopub.org/press/Audies2013PR.pdf

If you are into audiobooks, you should check these out. Audible did an amazing job on the production and Bronson is an amazing narrator. For whatever reason my work translates well into dramatic presentation. Also the Monster Hunter series narrated by Oliver Wyman kicks butt.

I book bombed this anthology back when it was eBook only. Hard copies are available now.

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=monshuntnati-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=1481178318

I wrote the forward and loved the stories in this. I will be writing a short in the second one.

Valentine and Lorenzo strike again. From the totally awesome Kurt Miller:

Here is the full size. http://www.kmistudio.com/blog/index.php/gallery/image_full/262/  And if you haven’t checked out his page, you should, because he’s got lots of great art on there. Including the ideas for all of the different patches he came up with.

So I painted this character for our next Writer Nerd Game Night. I love how the face came out on my Moto/barbarian/pseudo Mongol. 2 hours from start to finish:

And this is a little more involved project, but it is for my son. He wanted to play a very specific character for an Iron Kingdom’s RPG. An Ogrun bounty hunter/alchemist. Ogruns are sort of gorilla looking ogres, but he was very specific about the fact he wanted armor, a gas mask, a huge mace, and grenades. And he’s named Shon Hutchuck, and I’m not about to argue with an 8 year old about such things.

So out came the diamond saw, the dremel, an exacto knife, some green stuff putty, and a bunch of super glue. This mini is made up of parts from 6 different figures.  I started with a Privateer Press Legion Warmonger, cut off the head, shaved and filed down all the spikes, weapon swaped the spear for a titan cannoneer’s mace, used the bottom of that mace as a stick grenade, attached a spare sword and dagger to his belt, shaved off the skulls, added a left over samurai shoulder pad to the crotch, added a cataphract shoulder pad to balance, and finally added a Kromletz 40k gasmask.

It was a lot of work, but when your 8 year old comes to you with a page of backstory he’s written (Hutchuck’s first love is making bombs, but he turned to bounty hunting to pay for his chemicals and bomb making components) then you do your best to support that sort of imagination. Now I’ve just got to give him a groovy paintjob (based entirely upon the full color illustration presented to me) 🙂