And you know what? It [...]]]> So last night I got to attend the exclusive “Cocktails with the Wild Cards Chic and Luminaries of the New Mexican League of Authors” party, hosted by our representative, SF and fantasy super-agent Kay McCauley, at the Hotel Santa Fe. (Which, it will surprise you to learn, is in Santa Fe.)

And you know what? It was swell. Even if we did get totally thrown out of the hotel for being rowdy.

Gail Gerstner-Miller and That American Tolkien Guy at dinner afterwards.

It does not suck to be me.

But since you get to share in it after the fact, as beloved friends and fans, it doesn’t suck to be you, either.

The guest list was appropriately stellar: George R. R, Martin and his wife Parris, Melinda M. Snodgrass, Ian Tregillis, James S. A. Corey and his lovely wives, Steven Gould and Laura Mixon, Kat and Daniel Abraham, Ty and Jayné Franck, Jayne’s brother-in-law Dan (I hope I got that right; had trouble hearing), Sage Walker and Hank Messinger, John Jos and Gail Gerstner-Miller, Rhea Golden and her friend Tyler, Pati Nagle and Chris Krohn, Jane Lindskold and Jim Moore. And, well, me.

(I apologize for not linking to the above luminaries’s sites. I need to learn to lavish less time on these damn blog posts. Maybe then I’d, you know, write more of them.)

John and Gail kindly drove me up through a lovely evening – it’s a pleasant drive anyway. And thanks to them kindly for hauling my mass up to Santa Fe and back. Not for the last time in this busy week o’ socializing – have I mentioned how much I love the freaking holidays?

The Hotel Santa Fe is a lovely place with an old-timey feel in downtown Santa Fe near the Plaza. Although given Santa Fe isn’t huge, “downtown” and “near the Plaza” are kinda redundant. Also, no matter how self-consciously quaint it is, downtown Santa Fe is darned pretty. Plus some places had Christmas lights up already – which, Grinches notwithstanding, I love. In fact I hope to get to Santa Fe sometime in December to see their Christmas display in full glory. Although not enough to miss Christmas Eve here in Albuquerque, which I love.

So this was the second time I’ve met our hostess Kay in person, and the first since she became my agent and sold The Dinosaur Lords for me. Also the first time she’s seen me since I became … half the man I used to be (and a far better man because of it!) She professed herself favorably impressed with the change. For which I thanked her.

She happened to be hanging with her client Ian when I came in. She bragged on his current novel project, which she termed “brilliant” and unlike anything we’ve seen. I agreed and whined that he hadn’t sent in any more to our writers group. He claimed he would. (And I’m holding you to that, Tregillis, you son of a bearded mountebank*, you!)

She also bragged some on the prospects for The Dinosaur Lords (hint: she thinks highly of them. As do I.) She told me she’s talking to the foreign rights people next week. So please: fingers crossed!

And … a wonderful time was had by all.

Or by me, anyway. And everyone else seemed to be enjoying their danged selves.

I am learning to enjoy as much of my life as possible (short form: I reckon that’s the damned point.) But I enjoyed this fandango as much as I’ve enjoyed anything of late. Including Pat Rogers’ and Scott Denning’s Halloween Party, which is the best thing ever.

The key thing is that, along with being the Science Fiction and Fantasy Capital of the Known Universe, NM boasts a very tight-knit bunch of writers – and not just the Original Wild Cards Mafiosi. For all practical purposes, they, the fans, and a few others constitute my family.

Plus, for some reason, they tend to be … kind of interesting people to talk to.

So we all chatted and drank from the open bar – I hit the ice water and the Diet Coke particularly hard, but then, I wasn’t driving – and the snacks they laid out. Thew few items of which I was able to eat (that low-starch, low-sugar thing) were highly tasty.

So then they had to close up the room. So those of us who remained, which was most of us, wound up gathered in the hallway outside chattering away. Until a hotel functionary politely and firmly threw us out because our rowdiness was disturbing the Native American flute player in the lounge.

At the moment Parris and John were outside chatting. When I came out and gave them the news, Parris triumphantly crowed, “Thirty-five years in fandom and we can still bring it!”

Indeed.

Next, with Parris as our trusty guide – Santa Fe is notoriously difficult to navigate; and since it’s been almost half a century since I lived there, I was no damned help – we went off for dinner, also downtown (hence, near the Plaza.) Our first destination turned out to be closed until March – inconsiderate of them – so we wound up at the San Francisco Street Bar & Grill. Which turned out to be pretty good. Also – which is astonishing for Santa Fe – the prices were reasonable, for pretty substantial portions. While they seemed a bit nonplussed by the sudden onset of a mob of mostly middle-aged SF writers and their friends and significants other, they managed to take us in stride.

They didn’t throw us out, anyway. Although we were still adequately raucous. Because that’s how we roll.

(Click the image up top to check out my modest set of photos commemorating the event on Flickr. Or just click here. The reason there are no pictures of the party proper is that I forgot I had a nifty new camera until Gail and Parris started comparing theirs at dinner.)

We announced ourselves to the waiter as SF writers. He asked who the Trekkers among us were. While none of us would cop to that, John and Gail pointed out that I’d written an Original Trek novel. (Wait! It’s available on Kindle? Why wasn’t I told of this? Also, where are my royalties? Dammit!)

And when Parris told him Melinda had written the Next Generation episode “The Measure of a Man,” he almost died of squee (yes, I can write that; I am a professional), and wasted no time shaking her hand.

Even the wandering Cuban trio managed to come to terms with us. They even bravely assayed the Grateful Dead’s “Friend of the Devil,” after Gail, Parris, and I gave them some help by singing the lyrics. If “help” is what you want to call it.

Then … we all came home, and are presumably all living happily ever after!

Most emphatically not The End. Stay tuned for the continuing adventures of me and my madcap friends!

*When I read that on his website – which, seriously, you should visit; it’s breathtaking – I thought he was being facetious. Then he told me he really is the son of a bearded mountebank. Indeed do many things come to pass.

Currently.

Spoiler: now available in ebook form!

And that could be about to change, because our current publisher Tor Books (who also have the extraordinary taste and discernation to be the future [...]]]> Yes, that could be construed as a plug for my solo Wild Cards novel of a suspiciously similar name. Except it’s not available except used.

Currently.

Spoiler: now available in ebook form!

And that could be about to change, because our current publisher Tor Books (who also have the extraordinary taste and discernation to be the future publishers of my own modest tome, The Dinosaur Lords) just made a suave announcement. To celebrate the pending release of Wild Cards: Aces High on December 20th, and in honor of the awesome news that we’ve gone Hollywood, four of our most recent Wild Cards volumes – all of course ably edited by George R. R. Martin and Melinda Snodgrass – are now available in various ebook formats for three bucks!

They are the recent reissue of our premier anthology – now with value added in the form of three brand-new stories by David D. “Hugo Winner” Levine, Michael “Mr. Hollywood’ Cassutt, and Carrie “New York Times Best-Selling” Vaughn, as well as all the great original tales that launched the legend – and all three volumes of the Committee Triad: Inside Straight, Busted Flush, and Suicide Kings.

Please note the above links – including the image of our ultra-suave Book I cover up there – take you to the Kindle edition. Please note, also, that if you buy any of the Kindle books through the above links – to say nothing of buying the swell-looking new Kindle Fire right here, you are helping to support this website (and me!), inasmuch as Amazon will toss me a few cents’ commission.

And extra special thanks to ye few, ye happy few, ye band of brothers who have purchased fine items through my Amazon links in the past! I eagerly await the day your contributions will accrue to the point Ammie actually cuts me a check!

If you prefer another format, I’ll still happily take your money (though less directly, through the mighty power of the Wild Cards Consortium!) Here’s a link to the relevant search for your Barnes & Noble NOOK.

Those are the ones I’ve found – sadly, Tor omitted any links to the new $3 ebook releases, so I don’t know what other formats that even applies to. I suspect EPUB, although I couldn’t turn up any, ahem, legal downloads in that format.

Please, my beloved fans and friends, feel free to help a mammal out here and post links to other versions in the Comments as you find ‘em!

I will add that even if you have the dead-tree editions, these might still be worth consideration. For one thing, your original edition of Book I is likely falling apart at the seams (plus again: new content!). And if you are of a collecting frame of mind, what better way to keep your precious spines intact and the pages blissfully free of dirty, dirty eye-tracks than bagging your treasured hard copies and reading the delicious contents in electronic form? It’s like having your cake and eating it too!

You’re waiting for what? Go buy!

And as always – thanks for reading!

And the answer is yes. Yes, we will.

Would Wild Cards stoop to using sex to sell?

We – that’s all official Wild [...]]]> While linking to yet another rendition of my current favorite story on Facebook, my friend Aaron Birenboim asks the musical question, “Will the other Wild Card contributors be getting a piece of this pie?”

And the answer is yes. Yes, we will.

Would Wild Cards stoop to using sex to sell?

We – that’s all official Wild Carders – get paid for this according to our contribution to the project.

And that’s one major reason Wild Cards has hung on – against all odds – for a quarter of century.

I may be telling tales out of school, here, but I’m about to tell you how and why that works. After the jump….

I attribute Wild Cards surviving for twenty-five years – and not just surviving, but as of yesterday attaining palpably greater success than ever – to three main factors:

1. Awesome writers.
2. Love.
3. The Consortium.

Now I would call the first of those – the talent – the least significant reason. I mean, sure – it doesn’t hurt that the original members of your superhero team include perennial award-winners like George R. R. Martin or Ed Bryant, to say nothing of the late Roger Zelazny – arguably, with all regard to the multi-talented Rachel Bloom, the greatest SF writer ever. Nor is it bad to have onboard the likes of (then) young up-and-comers Melinda Snodgrass, Walter Jon Williams, Stephen Leigh, Lew Shiner, and, uh, me. (And, fair warning, you’re gonna hear way more from that there John Jos. Miller pup when he finishes his damn vampire novel.)

Then again, it’s not as if the other original science fiction and fantasy shared-world projects that surfaced in the Eighties – the likes of Thieves’ World, Heroes in Hell, or Merovingen Nights – were written by random schools of fish netted out of some harbor, either. They had their mighty sharks too. Yet we’ve pretty much out-swum the lot. (And … gratefully following the Catch and Release Metaphor Program here….)

The second factor – shared passion – is to me easily the most significant component in our success. It’s also the most straightforward: all of us, from the Original Mafiosi who played the game that spawned it all, to the confounded (and confoundingly capable, as well as good-looking) new kids George has asked in – like Danny Abraham, Carrie Vaughn, Cherie Priest, and David D. Levine, to name but a few – write for Wild Cards because we totally freakin’ love it. We love the world, love the conceits, love the characters. Love the stories that arise from same. And I believe there is no end of the stories we can spin from that Wild Cards stuff.

It originated with a shared obsession – namely, The George’s Superworld campaign. But it’s stayed a shared obsession. For all of us who have stuck with it, Wild Cards is a labor of love.

Which brings us, long last, to the answer to Aaron’s question that set this thing off: The Wild Cards Consortium. And yes, it’s a biggie too.

Speaking of Thieves’ World, I honestly don’t think we’ve ever approached that series’ sales at its peak of popularity. Yet it self-destructed, largely due to a conflict of egos in which writers competed to see what horrors and indignities they could visit upon one anothers’ characters short of actually killing them – which was forbidden.

And the reason we avoided that fate is largely thanks to the kind and generous advice of the very founders and proprietors of Thieves’ World, Bob Asprin and Lynn Abbey. During the formative stages, when Wild Cards was transitioning from a role-playing game we all spent way too much time and energy on to a shared-world series (i.e., something we could get paid to do) they sat down in the bar at some con with George and Melinda and shared with them all the mistakes they’d made as pioneers.

And GRRM and Weeds were wise enough to listen closely to the voice of experience. And drawing upon Melinda’s lawyerly training they created the Consortium.Which has basically kept going – and kept us going – ever since.

Here’s how it works: if you write for Wild Cards, or even just create a character in the Official Canon – we have several non-writer members – you become part of the Consortium. And for writing stories, and crucially, for permitting your important characters to be used in other peoples’ stories, you get Consortium shares. Which accrete over time.

And the income which the Consortium receives for Wild Cards properties is disbursed according to how many shares you have. Which finally answers poor Aaron’s question.

And here’s why it keeps us alive as a project: first off, to use a character in any significant way in your Wild Cards yarn, you must obtain the creator’s consent. Now, the first two factors play heavily here too: we have splendid writers, who know good story, and love the project. So we’re likely to sign off on anything up to and including killing a beloved character if it serves the story.

But also – you get paid for letting someone off your beloved character.

To be real: that’s a factor.

And that’s why and how the Wild Cards Consortium contributes to the unlikely survival of the series: it’s basically the mechanism by which everything runs. Well and smoothly for the most part.

Nothing’s perfect. But, oh, yeah – did I mention we just sold the freaking movie rights?

===

On a more personal (and, trust me, brief) note, to celebrate last night I took some good friends – Roslee Orndorff, Steve and Kathy Kubica, and Michelle Foley – out to dinner at India Palace, a favored haunt of ours. Then, after Michelle ditched us to pursue her heedless young-person social whirl, we repaired back to Casa Kubica to watch the Blu-Ray of X-Men: First Class, which I had not seen.

Or, as I put it – see how the competition’s doing. Heh, heh.

Darned well, I must admit. Unlike Kathy I don’t call it Iron Man good. But that’s one of my favorite movies, period – a pretty high standard. The newest X-Movie is very good indeed.

And it’s still sinking in that Universal Pictures now has its long-craved superhero franchise to compete with the likes of X-Men – and, HOLY SHIT, IT’S US!

So first thing I see on Facebook this morning is this tidbit Friend Martin Stankard threw onto my Wall.

Go check it out. I’ll wait. Believe me, you want to.

Now coming to a silver screen near you!

So I guess that cat’s out of the bag, huh?

Yep. Thanks to That American Tolkien [...]]]> Okay, now. This is big.

So first thing I see on Facebook this morning is this tidbit Friend Martin Stankard threw onto my Wall.

Go check it out. I’ll wait. Believe me, you want to.

Now coming to a silver screen near you!

So I guess that cat’s out of the bag, huh?

Yep. Thanks to That American Tolkien Guy, George RR Martin, and the indefatigable efforts (over freaking decades) of Melinda Snodgrass, Wild Cards is making the trip to Hollywood.

No sudden but inevitable betrayal here; this thing’s pretty nailed-down, meaning the contracts are signed. We Wild Carders’ve known about it since July. But for various reasons it could not be revealed.

Until now, I guess.

Oh, and – you can breathe now. You know the SyFy Channel, that we all love to hate? This is a different entity. It’s (I’m told) a new division devoted to big-screen productions – not your standard SyFy Original (to use the term loosely) fare.

The key words here are Universal Pictures. They’ve been the only one of the Big Three studios to lack a superhero franchise of their own, and have been looking on in jealousy as their rivals coined money from Marvel and DC properties.

(And no, I’m not gonna take the trouble to link to any of them. And if they’re unfamiliar to you, I hope you enjoy your recently-begun visit to our planet!)

Also key words: Melinda and George. They’re co-producing. And Weeds is writing the screenplay. They’re the people who originally turned our obsessive-compulsive Superworld RPG campaign (and yes, it’s mentioned in the linked Wikipedia article) into the longest-running shared-world franchise. They’ve edited every Wild Cards volume to hit print. Plus, oh, yeah, minor note, written some of the most beloved characters and stories in the wacky world of aces and jokers.

There aren’t better hands, friends. You know that. I know that.

Sure, lots can go awry. But – this is big.

Indeed, now that it’s out in the open I can let myself – OH HOLY GOD THEY’RE MAKING A WILD CARDS MOVIE!!1!

Yeah. It’s hard to process. Been so long. And this has been a few weeks for me, personally, of big news piled on big news. Fortunately, it’s good news.

(And yes, I shamelessly class being able to breathe with both The Dinosaur Lords and Wild Cards Goes to Hollywood at last becoming really real. Because – hel-lo, it’s breathing.)

So. Whoa. Got things to do today – writing, rewriting (yes, that), and finally getting a damn map done for DinoLords. So – breathe deep, concentrate. Go.

And – ho-lee shit! WE’RE GONNA BE A MOVIE!

Unusual Suspects

It doesn’t hurt that the reviewer says things like, “Milan’s segment is bittersweet, echoing story elements from the very beginning, as he explores who the Radical is and why.” Or like, “This is one story [...]]]> SFRevu already has a review up of the as-yet-unreleased Wild Cards mosaic novel, Suicide Kings. And it’s, um, nice.

Unusual Suspects

It doesn’t hurt that the reviewer says things like, “Milan’s segment is bittersweet, echoing story elements from the very beginning, as he explores who the Radical is and why.” Or like, “This is one story that Wild Cards fans have been waiting for years to see told, and it is brilliant.”

But it’s a good review not just because it says nice things about me, but because the reviewer says nice things about the whole book. It’s a good book. And he gets it, which is far from a given.

Check it out.

Meanwhile it’s cold and windy here. We’ve lost the cloud cover, which means that on the one hand we probably won’t get snow and the streets all frozen, and on the other likely means it’ll be nasty-cold again tonight. Although not as brutal as it was Friday.

Meanwhile I continue to thump along with the rewrite of The Dinosaur Lords. Also writing on my next action/adventure series yarn. Plus there’s a new Seekrit Projekt on the horizon. about which I may be able to tell you more soon. Or not.

And yes: I will get around to more BattleTech fiction soon!