The Home Stretch Saturday, April 18th, 2009 In just six days we’ll be locking in the final layout, including all text and images, for XDM: X-treme Dungeon Mastery. In about ninety minutes Tracy and Curtis Hickman will be coming over to discuss the run-up to final layout with Sandra and I. Hopefully they’re happy with the obligatory bit of self-referential humor I cranked out on Thursday. There is still a lot of work to be done. I have around thirty pictures left to draw, and half of them are fairly complicated technical illustrations. The editor we’ve hired, Stacy Whitman, is only about halfway through the book, and her red pen is a barbarian broadsword carving a bloody swath across the battlefield. And Sandra, bless her heart, still has to get all those pictures and all those bloody edits into the layout. But it’s working. It’s a crushing workload for us all, but we’re pulling it off. I’ve drawn over eighty pictures so far, and there is a very solid-looking draft of the complete book laid out already. It won’t be the same book it would have been if I’d had an extra three months, but I’m not the same person I would have been if I hadn’t had to work this hard and this fast to get the project complete. And it WILL be complete on time. Filed under Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

More XDM: Prestidigitation Thursday, April 16th, 2009 My thrill at working with Tracy Hickman has probably resulted in me understating his son Curtis’ contributions to XDM: X-treme Dungeon Mastery. Recently I’ve started drawing the technical illustrations for contact juggling (one of which was posted over at Tall Tales Radio) and for neat tricks like this one: Yes, Curtis and I are going to teach you how to levitate dice. Yes, there is “string” involved. And we’re going to teach you how to make it. What possible purpose can this serve in a game setting, you ask? Well, an Extreme Dungeon Master (an “XDM”) will also ask that question, and then will begin to snicker as the ideas unfold. Yes, yes… I can hear your evil laughter from here. SHHH! You’re scaring your co-workers. Filed under Books, Games | 14 Comments »

Hitting The Stacks Sunday, April 12th, 2009 I don’t get much opportunity to read these days. Especially not this particular April, with XDM eating my free time for lunch (and dinner, and bedtime snacks, and breakfast, and second breakfast…) But I am trying. For instance, I’m listening to The Wheel of Time on audiobook while doing inking, coloring, or other image prep. After over forty hours of that (2.5 books in) I’m hooked, and Michael Kramer and Kate Reading’s voices are now writ deep across my brain. Sometimes I hear them when I’m drawing, even though the iPod is playing music. (You two need to cut that out, okay?) Brandon Sanderson, the author who will be finishing Robert Jordan’s epic, is a friend of mine. He and I podcast with Dan Wells over at Writing Excuses, and we hit the gym together a few times each week. And during all this time he has NOT told me how the epic ends (I haven’t asked, he’s not allowed to, and he’s honest to a fault.) He did warn me last year that it was going to be significantly longer than the 250,000 words he originally contracted for. Tom Doherty’s decision to split that last volume into three volumes was definitely the right one. Brandon has talked to me about it at length, and blogged about it in what I feel is a must-read for the hard core Robert Jordan fan. But I digress… I have books I’m trying to read, rather than listen to. Today I’m picking up Contact With Chaos by Mike Williamson. I’ve liked Mike’s previous books (the six of them I’ve read, anyway) and this one is proving fun, too. Also on the stack: Walter H. Hunt’s A Song In Stone. If you dig historical fiction, or anything Dan Brown-ish, this book should be perfect. Oh, and it’s still in print in spite of the fact that the Wizards Of The Coast imprint under which it was printed was canceled. The whole line is just “Tango Uniform” to quote Walter. Fortunately you can find the book pretty easily through Amazon, and your local bookstore should still be able to order it. I’m halfway through The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, and I’m not sure I’ll finish it. The concepts are brilliant (though the book is not nearly so groundbreaking as it claims to be) and have already changed the way I think about my career path. This one was a gift (not sure from whom, but thank you!) and I’m glad I got as far through it as I did. I’d tell you more about the stack of books on my nightstand, but I’d rather be reading than blogging. Blogging feels too much like work, and it’s Sunday after all. Filed under Uncategorized, Books, Podcasts | 30 Comments »

Howard Interviewed at Tall Tales Radio Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 Okay, podcast junkies… here’s another audio interview, this time with Tom Racine of Tall Tales Radio. Tom has interviewed me before, and I like talking with him. I think the interview went well, but to be quite honest I can’t remember what I said. But I had fun! I’m downloading this to my iPod now, and will listen to it later today while I work. Yes, this is a symptom of me loving the sound of my own voice… UPDATE! I’ve listened to it, and I said lots of clever and important things. The sound of my voice is not soothing, though. It’s more like talking to me on the cell-phone, which isn’t surprising since that’s how Tom was talking to me. Also, there’s a new piece of XDM artwork over there for you to admire. Go look! Filed under Interviews, Podcasts | 9 Comments »

No Time For Blogging. What’s THIS, Then? Saturday, April 4th, 2009 The XDM: X-treme Dungeon Mastery project has devoured my schedule. It has not, however, devoured every last scrap of thought I have. I remain a man possessed of wild ideas, flights of fancy, and the desire to publicly comment on stuff from all over. I just don’t have the time to actually sit down and articulate those ideas clearly. I feel a little bit like this guy… A haughtier, more self-obsessed artist might pout and complain that the world is somehow being impoverished for the absence of his bloated ramblings on this or that. Me, I think that I’m the one being impoverished, because I don’t really know what I think about something until I’ve seen what I’m able to say about it. I tweet in order to let people know that I’m still alive, but I don’t bother putting opinions of any weight in the 140-character format. They come across as indefensible, unsupported statements of fact, and would then get debated in 140-character rebuttals and counter-arguments. Pointless. But I am having deep thoughts on stuff. The state of newspapers and editorial cartooning takes the fore, but lesser matters like the splitting of the final volume of The Wheel of Time into three books also vie for cycles. Religion, politics, home-life, diet, a zillion little business things I’ve been meaning to blog about, the fact that I split the front of my face open on my son’s head… and as I mention these I find I’m just scratching the surface. There’s more, much more down deeper. Like the epic fantasy I want to write, and my secret dreams of ruling the world. I’ve now said too much while saying too little. I’m just not a very good blogger, I guess. Fortunately, blogging is not what you folks pay me to do. On that note, I think I shall get back to work. Filed under Uncategorized, Site News, Cartooning, Home & Family | 19 Comments »