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| 2011 | |
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Aaron Allston's Weblog
I've finally gotten my act back together sufficient to begin blogging again.
The new blog, imaginatively named Aaron Allston's Weblog, is now online at
community.aaronallston.com. Stop by if you've got a mind to. This week,
I talk about a scattering of subjects, including conventions, upcoming work, and the social phenomenon of writers and readers actually
interacting.
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New E-Book: An Occurrence at Bifrost Bridge
I've released a new e-book via ArcherRat Publishing and other vendors. It's called An
Occurrence at Bifrost Bridge; that's the cover to the right. It's a short story, plus author's commentary, and deals with Norse mythic
characters and themes. You can read more about it at the ArcherRat Publishing page, in particular at its store page..
Update 2011/8/18: The e-book is now also available from Apple's iBookstore; that link is
also on the ArcherRat Publishing store page.
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ArmadilloCon and Dragon*Con Schedules
Toward the end of the month and at the beginning of September, I'll be attending
ArmadilloCon (in Austin, TX) and Dragon*Con (in Atlanta, GA). My schedules are set and you can find them at my
Appearance Schedule page.
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My Origins Schedule Now Available
My schedule of events at the 2011 Origins Game Fair
is now up on my Appearance Schedule page.
As many of you know, for the last couple of years,
Michael A. Stackpole and I have been teaching a comprehensive seminar course on
writing fiction; we've taught at conventions and other events around the country.
I'm very pleased that we'll be doing the series again this year at Origins, and
this time, for the first time, we'll be joined by Timothy Zahn, who will be
teaching three seminars.
Details are posted on my Appearance Schedule page.
I look forward to it.
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My Ad-Astra Appearance Cancelled
For reasons well beyond my control, I'm not going to
be able to attend Ad Astra
in Tororonto, Ontario this weekend.
This pains me, since I really enjoyed the convention
last year. My apologies go to the convention's organizers and attendees. I hope
to catch up with you there some other year.
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Questions For UT Longhorns Football Fans
Although, first, Happy New Year to everyone...
I'm doing some research for a possible upcoming
novel and had some questions concerning the University of Texas at Austin
football program. I suspect that most of these questions could be answered after
a diligent and lengthy examination of relevant web pages, or an extensive
campaign of calling coaches at UT who would much prefer to be doing things other
than answering questions from local writers, but I'm hoping this far more lazy
approach will bear fruit.
The questions:
- What jersey numbers are permitted to wide receivers? (And, more to the point,
what numbers are normally assigned to wide receivers?)
- What numbers normally assigned to wide receivers have been retired by the
program? (I'm under the impression that wide receivers share a number span with
quarterbacks, and that Colt McCoy's number 12 was recently retired.)
- Assuming that it is within the span of numbers assigned to wide receivers, is
the number 13 ever used, or is there a superstition or other tradition
prohibiting its use?
Please reply to
allston@aaronallston.com.
Thanks in advance.
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| 2010 | |
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Wraiths and Cons
Well, obviously, my big news from Celebration
V was that my next Star Wars novel after Fate of the Jedi:
Conviction will be a new Wraith Squadron book. And no, sadly, I can't talk
about it at this point, except to say that I'm very happy to be returning to the
adventures of the Wraiths (in more than cameo roles) after more than a
decade.
Speaking of conventions, my schedule for next week's
ArmadilloCon 32 is now
up on my Appearance Schedule page.
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My Celebration V and Dragon*Con Schedules Are
Up
My event schedules for the
Celebration V
and Dragon*Con conventions
are up on my Appearance Schedule page.
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ePub and Mobipocket, You Are Mine
In ongoing efforts to get my
ArcherRat Publishing web
site and services up, I've been doing more work on mastering the ePub and
Mobipocket e-book formats. This may sound like no particular chore to the
programmers and web site designers among you, but my specific mental abilities
are not really oriented toward coding of any sort, and those two formats are
heavily XML-dependant.
Previously, I've been using various WYSIWYG tools
for the creation of files in these formats, but recently I bowed to the
inevitable and decided that hand-coding from the ground up was what I needed to
do. Accordingly, I (laboriously) built myself a set of XML templates to create
e-books that would look as much as possible the way I wanted them to across a
variety of readers.
This isn't a trivial issue. Especially with ePub
readers, there is a considerable difference in the way one file can be displayed.
Some readers, for instance, compress blank lines no matter what codes you
introduce to persuade them not to. Some will not display horizontal rules
(<hr> codes in HTML). Some will not correctly indent the contents of bullet
lists. XHTML itself is far more persnickety than ordinary HTML. And so on, and so
on.
As of this weekend, I figured out and implemented
the last thing that was eluding me — proper coding of Table of Contents
readable by Mobipocket readers.
With this out of the way, it shouldn't be too much
longer before I'm able to put up e-books for sale directly from the ArcherRat
site.
Here's hoping, anyway.
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Writing Seminar Program at Dragon's Lair
Comics & Fantasy®
Last year, my colleague
Michael A. Stackpole
and I, who had separately been teaching writing seminars for years, joined
forces to present a comprehensive series of writing seminars at the 2009
Dragon*Con.
For 2010, we've added other conventions and venues
to our seminar tour, and this month we'll be presenting it at the
Dragon's Lair Comics &
Fantasy® store in Austin, TX.
Details are available
here at my web
site and at the Dragon's Lair
Comics & Fantasy® site.
We'll also be teaching the course at this year's
Dragon*Con; please check my Appearance
Schedule page periodically for updates.
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Dead But Hostile Available For iPhone
Dead But Hostile is now avaible for the
iPhone and iPod Touch.
For details, please see the
ArcherRat Publishing web
site.
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Print Edition of Dead But Hostile
Available
The print edition of
Dead But Hostile is now available for
order from Blurb.com, a Print
On Demand service.
You can get to the ordering page from the
Dead But
Hostile sales page at Archerrat.com,
or from this link.
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Who Speaks Latin?
In the tradition of "Caveat emptor," Latin for "Let
the buyer beware," I'm looking for an accurate Latin translation of the phrase
"Let the dreamer beware." Caveat somnium, perhaps? By "dreamer," I'm
referring literally to one who dreams asleep at night, rather than someone with
goals, aspirations, or half-cooked plans.
Any help would be, well, helpful. <g>
You can reach me at
allston@aaronallston.com.
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Dead But Hostile Available For Kindle
Though it took longer than I expected, I've now released the first ArcherRat Publishing e-book.
Dead But Hostile is a collection of three short stories — a mini-anthology — about revenge. It includes two short-shorts (short stories around 1,000 words in length each), Dead Snowmen and Hostile Takeover, which are largely ironic, and Mikey's Coming Home, a longer story with a more serious approach to the theme.
Dead But Hostile will eventually be released in a variety of e-book formats. The first version is now available for the Amazon Kindle device, and the link at the ArcherRat site takes buyers to Amazon.com.
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We Have A Winner!
The "Who is Aaron envisionin when he's writing Admiral Daala?" contest didn't take too long to determine. I posted the contest, went away for a fun weekend at StellarCon, came home, and there was a winner in my in-box — as well as scores of other entries, more than I anticipated.
A lot of fine actress were suggested. The most popular (in terms of numbers) suggestions were Glenn Close, Dana Delany, Marcia Cross, Mary McDonnell, and Michelle Forbes, all of whom would have been fabulous Daalas. However, none of them was the correct guess.
The person first to supply the winning answer was Lisa Schapira from Colorado, who correctly guessed that Lisa Edelstein, the portrayer of Dr. Lisa Cuddy on House, M.D., was my Daala muse. (That's a lot of different Lisas in the same paragraph.) Congratulations to Lisa Schapira; your Backlash will be in the mail shortly.
I offer thanks to everyone who participated, except perhaps Hothie, winner of the Mr. Star Wars competition at Dragon*Con a few years back, who jokingly suggested Vanna White, because that's just so wrong.
Please note that neither Lisa Edelstein nor any of the other actresses mentioned above had anything to do with this contest, nor should any approval, explicit or implicit, on their part be imagined, nor have I suggested any. In fact, it's a distinct possibility that not one of them would care for the notion that I spend any time at all daydreaming about them, even for purely artistic purposes, a notion which has been known to cause some people to file restraining orders.
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Backlash Due Soon; StellarCon Schedule Up Now; Backlash
Contest
Late last week, I received my author's copies of Backlash, Book #4 in the Fate of the Jedi series. The full dust jacket
is reproduced here. That's Ben Skywalker on the front cover, Natasi Daala on the
back. I believe it's due to premiere next Tuesday, March 9, but don't hold me to
that prediction.
Also new: I've updated my Appearance
Schedule page to include my schedule for StellarCon, which takes place
this upcoming weekend.
These two notices do tie together, as I'll have
copies of Backlash to show off at StellarCon.
Speaking of Backlash, who'd like a free copy?
I'm running a contest, and the winner will receive a copy of Backlash,
sent directly from me to him or her, autographed and personalized (if desired).
Foreign entries are welcome, but I may resort to surface mail to deliver the
prize if an overseas entrant wins it. And the contest is void if for some reason
the sending of Star Wars books to your address is illegal.
So, what's the contest? I sometimes imagine a
specific actor or actress when I'm writing a character. It can be useful to see
specific expressions characteristic of that performer, to hear dialogue in the
exact voice of an individual. Such was the case when I was writing the Admiral
Daala character in Outcast and Backlash, especially the former.
Guess who the actress I was envisioning when writing Daala and the copy is
yours.
Some guidelines:
- Only one copy will be awarded — the first correct entry wins the
prize.
- Only one entry per e-mail address per day, please.
- Only one actress suggestion per e-mail, please. Entries with two or more
suggestions will be discarded.
- Send entries to allston@aaronallston.com.
- The contest will continue until March 15 or until someone wins, whichever
comes first.
- The name — at least, the username and city — of the winner will be
announced on this web
site.
Hints: First, the actress appears/appeared in a
regular or recurrent role on a U.S. television series that has had new episodes
broadcast within the last five yeaars. Second, the actress was not used by the
cover artist as an artistic reference — she might not look
anything like the Daala character on the book jacket. Then again, she
might.
There, wasn't that helpful?
Ladies and gentlemen, start your guessters.
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Appearance Updates
I've made a couple of updates to my
Appearance Schedule page.
The bad news: I won't be able to attend
ConDFW this upcoming weekend.
The good news: I will be able to attend
StellarCon next month. (This appearance has been in the works for some
time, but I've been too distracted by work to update my web site to reflect the
fact.) Timothy Zahn, Michael A. Stackpole, and I will be co-Writer Guests of
Honor at this convention.
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| 2009 | |
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AaronAllston.com Redesigned
As you can see, I've done a visual and
organizational redesign of AaronAllston.com. I do this every two or three
years to brush the dust off neglected pages and as a relief to anyone who's
gotten tired of the previous design. The new organization is simpler than
the old, putting the four or five most often-visited pages on the menu bar
at top and moving the less-visited pages to a subdirectory.
On the menu bar, you'll see a "Store" link.
My new web store, which is to be located at ArcherRat.com, is not yet live;
there's only a placeholder page there now. When it goes live, in a few
weeks, it will sell e-books, starting with a collection of revenge-oriented
short stories.
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Outcast Release and Tour
March 24 is the street release date of
Outcast, first book in the Fate of the Jedi series, which I'm
co-writing with Christie Golden and Troy Denning.
I'll be doing a booksigning tour to promote the
release; see my Appearance Schedule page for
details.
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| 2008 | |
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Get Betrayal For Free
Starting yesterday and ending on May 13, folk
can download Star Wars: Legacy of the Force #1: Betrayal from
LegacyOfTheForce.com in three e-book formats and one
audiobook format. If you haven't tried the series, here's a very economical
way to do so.
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Twentieth Anniversary
Sometime in March 1988, my first novel,
Web of Danger, was published. Spin-off fiction from the
Top Secret/S.I. role-playing game produced by TSR, Inc., it and
the other entries in the Double Agent series made very little
splash. But it was my foot in the door.
So here's to anniversaries, and to trying not
to feel old.
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| 2007 | |
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Fury Premieres; Texas Monthly
Previews
Fury, #7 in the Star Wars: Legacy
of the Force series and my final contribution to the series, will
arrive on bookstands in three days, on November 27. I hope everyone enjoys
it. I've certainly enjoyed working on the series.
In anticipation of Fury's release,
Texas Monthly has interviewed me for a sidebar to their reglar book
column. The interview appears in the December 2007 issue, which went on
sale on November 22 — look for the very Texan "Steak" cover (pictured
to right). The short form of the interview appears on page 74, and the long
form appears on the Texas Monthly web site, at
www.texasmonthly.com/2007-12-01/webextra3.php.
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| 2006 | |
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Exile Cover Online
The cover for my next Star Wars book,
Exile (#4 in the Legacy of the Force series), was announced
yesterday at the
starwars.com web site. The accompanying article also
provides the most up-to-date release schedule for the novels of the
series.
Speaking of which, the second novel in the
series, Karen Traviss' Bloodlines, officially hits the bookstores
today. Congratulations to Karen!
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.PDF Cavalry Comes to the Rescue
One of the sadder things about having been
out of the game-writing business for so long is the process of watching
the games and supplements I've written fade away. Most went out of print
years (if not decades) ago and have become harder and harder to acquire
since then. I occasionally get e-mail from gamers who, after years of
looking, still haven't been able to find some of them on eBay.
But within the last few months, three sets of
my game supplements and articles have found new life as .PDF files offered
for sale over the Web. These are two of my GURPS supplements,
offered by SJ Games' e23 service, my contributions to Autoduel
Quarterly magazine, also offered by e23, and my Mystara-based
Dungeons & Dragons supplements (excepting Karameikos: Kingdom of
Adventure, which was branded for 2nd Edition AD&D, and Wrath
of the Immortals, for reasons I don't yet know), offered by Paizo.
These newly raised-from-the-dead titles
include:
- GURPS Fantasy: Harkwood
- GURPS Supers: School of Hard Knocks
- Autoduel Quarterly Volume 1, Number 1 PDF (including my North
American Road Atlas and Survival Guide article on Midville, OH)
- Autoduel Quarterly Volume 1, Number 2 PDF (including my North
American Road Atlas and Survival Guide article on Austin, TX)
- Autoduel Quarterly Volume 1, Number 3 PDF (including my designer's
notes on Autoduel Champions)
- Autoduel Quarterly Volume 1, Number 4 PDF (including my article on
anti-cycle gang tactics)
- Dungeons & Dragons: Hollow World Boxed Set PDF
- Dungeons & Dragons: Poor Wizard's Almanac & Book of Facts PDF
- Dungeons & Dragons: Rules Cyclopedia PDF
- Dungeons & Dragons GAZ1: The Grand Duchy of Karameikos PDF
- Dungeons & Dragons GAZ6: The Dwarves of Rockhome PDF
- Dungeons & Dragons Gazetteer: Dawn of the Emperors — Thyatis and
Alphatia PDF
- Dungeons & Dragons X12: Skarda's Mirror PDF
Thanks go to both SJ Games and Paizo.
(Follow-up, 2009: At the request of
Wizards of the Coast, owner of the rights to the D&D titles above,
Paizo has ceased distributioin of those .PDF products.)
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"You like me, you really like me!"
Unlike Sally Field, picking up her Oscar for
Norma Rae, I wasn't on hand to accept a statue and make a memorably
mockable acceptance speech. But I suspect my giddiness matches hers.
Because at the 2006 Origins convention, held
last weekend, I was inducted into the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts &
Design Hall of Fame.
Though I'm still writing the occasional
role-playing game supplement, it's been about a decade since gaming was my
main occupation, so it's very gratifying that I've been remembered this
way.
A full list of Origins award winners appears
at GamingReport.com. I'd like to extend congratulations to
all this year's winners, particularly my fellow HoF inductees: Jolly R.
Blackburn, Rodger MacGowan, Dennis Mize, and Mike Pondsmith.
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The Resurrection of Lands of
Mystery
This will chiefly be of interest to people
who are familiar with my work for Hero Games and the Hero System
role-playing game. In late 2007, Hero Games will release a new, vastly
updated version of Lands of Mystery, a supplement I wrote more than
twenty years ago — it was originally released in 1985.
The original Lands of Mystery, a
supplement for the Justice, Inc. hero-pulp role-playing game,
explained how to create and run campaigns in the style of the "lost world
romances" of Edgar Rice Burroughs, H. Rider Haggard, and other writers. In
addition to the how-to material, the supplement described a campaign
setting, Zorandar, populated by Stone Age tribesmen, Roman legionnaires,
dinosaurs, intelligent lizard-men, and courageous adventurers from the
"modern" Earth of the 1920s and 1930s. When I was writing it, I knew I
wanted to do a good job with it, but its critical reception at the time of
its release and for years afterward suggested to me that it was one of the
best gaming works I'd written, and it has a good reputation even
today.
The new version will retain and update the
how-to material. It will vastly expand the Zorandar setting, incorporating
much of the material added to the original campaign in the twenty years of
intermittent playing that occurred in that setting. In addition, the
bestiary of prehistoric animals and monsters appearing in the setting will
be expanded and brought up to Hero System Fifth Edition
standards.
I'll be the chief writer on the project, with
game-mechanics material and additional writing being provided by Hero Games
guiding light Steven S. Long.
Preliminary product details appear on, and
presumably will be updated on, the Hero Games web site page for the 2007
release schedule.
(Follow-up, 2009: Sales of the Hero
System Fifth Edition supplement Pulp Hero ended up not warranting
supplements of its own, so the Lands of Mystery revival ended up
being canelled. But it is moribund rather than dead, and several parties
are still interested in seeing it happen. Perhaps some day...)
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Legacy of the Force: Book 4 Has a
Name
As announced yesterday on StarWars.com, my
next book in the LotF series now has a name — Exile. And, as
with Betrayal, the word is deeply intertwined with the story's
theme and characters. It will be released in paperback form in February
2007.
Karen Traviss' follow-up, Book 5, the
centerpoint of the series, also had its name announced: Sacrifice.
It's scheduled for release in hardback in June 2007.
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Interview Up on Requiem of the
Outcast
At Stellarcon last month, Michael Stackpole,
Timothy Zahn and I sat down for a podcast interview with the good folk
over at Requiem of the Outcast. The result is up at the
RotO Episode 29 page; click the link labeled "LISTEN"
for an mp3 download. The mp3 file is about 10.5 meg and runs for an hour.
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Deadbacks Web Site Online
Last year, I produced and directed a
low-budget horror film from my own script. It's currently in
post-production. While it was being shot, I put up a preliminary web site;
more recently, I've updated and upgraded that site from "skeleton" to
"skeleton with some skin and bones" status. You can find it at
deadbacks.com.
An accompanying LiveJournal blog, in place but not really begun yet, is at
deadbacks.livejournal.com.
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| 2005 | |
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Terminator Hunt Paperback Released
I just received a boxful of the paperback
edition of Terminator Hunt, which was
published in hardback a year ago.
The paperback is ISBN 0-765-35093-9 and
retails for $6.99 US ($9.99 Canadian).
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Betrayal Cover Revealed
To the right is the cover for my upcoming
Star Wars novel, Betrayal. Due for release in summer 2006,
it's the first novel in a nine-book series titled Legacy of the
Force. Three writers — myself, Troy Denning, and Karen Traviss
— are each writing three novels within the series, and trading off
(I'm first, Karen is second, Troy is third, and so on).
The cover for Betrayal was revealed on
starwars.com in
articles titled "An Early Look at Betrayal" and "A Closer Look at
Betrayal".
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| 2004 | |
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Terminator Hunt Cover
To the right is the cover for Terminator
Hunt; I've had it for a few days but preparations for this unusually
busy convention attendance season kept me from putting it up for all to
see.
The novel is still scheduled for a December
2004 release, meaning that it will be on the shelves in the last week of
November. The paperback edition of Terminator Dreams, which was
released in hardback last December, will be issued at the same time.
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The Post-NJO Series
At Comic-Con just a few days ago, Lucasfilm's
Sue Rostoni announced my participation in a post-NJO Star Wars
novel series. I'm now getting some questions from fans who weren't at the
Star Wars Continuity panel where the announcement was made, and as
news spreads concerning the series, the "grapevine effect" is causing
misinformation and confusion to be distributed as well.
This is a nine-book series set after the
events of the New Jedi Order series and after the upcoming trilogy
from Troy Denning.
The series will be written by three authors
— Troy Denning, myself, and a writer to be named soon. Our respective
contributions will not be trilogies; we'll be trading off, each doing one
novel at a time, as the series progresses.
There's no point in asking questions such as
exactly when it will take place, exactly which characters will have
prominent roles, and so forth -- those details have not yet been
established. We're glad you're interested and curious, but we have no
answers for you at this time.
Here's hoping you enjoy the series.
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Zahn/Allston Interview Online
At last March's StellarCon, Timothy Zahn and
I did an interview for the Requiem of the Outcast internet radio show.
It's now online at their web site.
The download is a 16-megabyte .zip archive
containing an only-slightly-compressed .mp3.
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Next Up, Terminator Hunt and Deus
Ex
My next novel will be Terminator Hunt,
the follow-up to Terminator Dreams, and it will be followed by a
trilogy of novels set in the world of the Deus Ex computer game
series.
(Follow-up, 2009: For various reasons,
I ended up not being the writer on the Deus Ex novel series.)
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League of Spies Now In Print
My subscription copy of Star Wars
Insider #73 arrived the other day, and in its pages is my new Clone
Wars-era short story, League of Spies.
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| 2003 | |
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Terminator Dreams Now Available
Friends and colleagues have reported to me
that Terminator Dreams has been sighted in their local bookstores
and is shipping from on-line bookstores.
So do consider putting it on your Christmas
list, or picking up a copy or six when buying Christmas presents for
others...
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Terminator Dreams
Two items about my next novel:
I received advance copies of the book last
Friday, so it looks to be on schedule for street release within the next
couple of weeks.
And it has been reviewed in Publisher's
Weekly (my first review in that magazine, I think). The review appears
in the November 10, 2003 issue, on page 47. It's basically a positive
review, concluding, "Arnold's adventure fans, rejoice; this is the stuff
that role-playing dreams are made of."
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League of Spies
I'll have a short story in Star Wars
Insider #73, which arrives on magazine stands around January 13. The
story, League of Spies, is a follow-up to The Pengalan
Tradeoff, and features Joram Kithe in another situation not suited to
a competent Intelligence operative... or an incompetent one.
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Terminator Dreams
My next novel to see print will be
Terminator Dreams, a spin-off from the Terminator 3: Rise of the
Machines movie. I can't say too much about the project at this time,
except that I should point out that this is not the
Terminator 3 movie novelization (Amazon.com's listing for the book
currently has information relating to the novelization rather than to
Terminator Dreams).
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Pengalan Tradeoff In Print
My subscriber's copy of Star Wars
Insider magazine #65, which includes my Clone Wars-era short story,
The Pengalan Tradeoff, arrived in my mailbox this afternoon; I hope
everyone who sees it enjoys it.
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| 2002 | |
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Star Wars Fiction and Humor
I have two Star Wars pieces just out
or coming soon.
The first of these, a humor piece entitled
Spam From A Galaxy Far, Far Away, was just published in Bantha
Tracks #1. Bantha Tracks is the newsletter of the official
Star Wars Fan Club, and is included with issues of Star Wars
Insider sent to fan club members.
In a couple of months, my short story The
Pengalan Tradeoff will appear in Star Wars Insider #65. The
Pengalan Tradeoff is set during the early weeks of the Clone Wars and
has an all-new cast of characters.
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Gen Con, ArmadilloCon, and Champions
News
I'm just back from back-to-back conventions
— Gen Con in early August and ArmadilloCon the next weekend —
and have bits and pieces of news to report.
The new Champions supplement did debut
at Gen Con, selling out of the initial shipment before the first day of
sales was done and going through most of another double-sized shipment
over the next two days. The response of Hero System fans was quite
positive, I'm glad to say.
I was also very happy to receive a present
from Star Wars fan LissyB, aka Hobbie's Girl — this X-wing
pilot teddy bear. It was the envy of my companions during the convention
and now occupies a place of favor in my Star Wars collection.
Thanks much, Lissy.
The weekend after Gen Con, I attended
ArmadilloCon, a local (Austin, TX) literary SF&F convention, where I had a
good time. After an invitation extended to me a couple of weeks before the
event, it was announced at the convention that I'll be the toastmaster at
next year's ArmadilloCon. So now I have an entire year to figure out what
dismay to inflict on the convention's guests and patrons...
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Champions Supplement
The long-awaited Hero System 5th
Edition role-playing game will be released later this year, and I'll
be writing Champions, its superhero genre book. Here's the press
release from the Hero Games web
site:
PRESS RELEASE For Immediate Distribution
January 11, 2002
AARON ALLSTON TO WRITE CHAMPIONS
SAN FRANCISCO, California — Hero Games, creators of the popular
HERO System roleplaying game rules and game lines, announced today
that New York Times best-selling writer Aaron Allston, author of novels
such as X-Wing: Wraith Squadron, will write the new edition of
Champions.
Slated for release in August, 2002, Champions is a comprehensive
guide to creating and playing characters and campaigns in the superhero
genre using the HERO System 5th Edition rules. The book also
includes extensive sections on gaming in the superhero genre,
gamemastering superhero games, and related topics, making it of use to all
gamers who enjoy the genre, not just those who play the HERO
System.
"We're extremely pleased that Aaron's writing Champions for us,"
said Steve Long, HERO System Line Developer. "He's a superb writer,
with an unparalleled ability to analyze a genre, describe its elements,
and explain how to translate those elements into gaming terms. It's great
to have him working for Hero again after so many years."
"The year 2002 marks the twentieth anniversary of my first game supplement,
so, with the Champions genre book, I can celebrate the opportunity
to inflict my sensibilities on a whole new generation of gamers!" said
Allston. After calming down, he continued, "I'm very pleased to be working
with Hero Games again. It's been more than ten years since Ninja
Hero, my last Hero System supplement, was released, and I've sorely
missed working with the system. It'll be good to work with both the new
rules and the new company."
For further information, contact:
Steven S. Long, SteveL@herogames.com
Darren Watts, Darren@herogames.com
Aaron Allston, Allston@AaronAllston.com
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| 2001 | |
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Rebel Stand Cover Is Also Online
Once again, the official Star Wars web
site comes through; the synopsis and cover for Rebel Stand are now
online. Thanks to Kenny H. for sending me the heads-up.
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Rebel Dream Cover Is Also On Artist's
Site
Dave Seeley, the artist who did the cover for
Rebel Dream, has put up an online version of the cover without the
various book and publisher logos; find it at
http://www.daveseeley.com/Pages/sciencefiction_pages/RebelDream.html.
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Rebel Dream Cover Is Online
I thought I had posted about this when it
first appeared (around September 4), but apparently I hadn't: The cover
and a synopsis for my upcoming Star Wars book, Rebel Dream,
are online at the official
Star Wars web site.
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Sidhe-Devil Appearing On Bookstore
Shelves
I'm now receiving e-mail alerts that
copies of Sidhe-Devil have been sighted in bookstores.
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AaronAllston.com Is Online
I've bowed to the demands of the modern
Web era and set up
AaronAllston.com as my new and
(I hope) permanent domain. Though my io.com web address wasn't
long or difficult to remember,
AaronAllston.com should be even
easier.
I'll be maintaining the
www.io.com/~allston/ web address for some considerable time —
it appeared on "About the Author" pages in several of my novels and I'll
be using it to forward people here.
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| 2000 | |
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Sidhe-Devil Scheduled
Sidhe-Devil has been scheduled for
release in June of 2001, according to the "Forthcoming Books" column in
December's Locus magazine.
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Can't Attend WorldCon
Owing to unexpected demands on my time, I
will be unable to attend the WorldCon this year. I regret any
inconvenience this causes anyone who intended to see me at the
convention.
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Sidhe-Devil Is Done
This Monday, May 1, I finished work on
Sidhe-Devil, the sequel to Doc Sidhe. It came in at a
trifle under 140,000 words, making it just a bit longer than Wraith
Squadron.
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| 1999 | |
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Tracking Starfighters of Adumar On the
Bestseller Lists
(Updated September 18, 1999)
Starfighters of Adumar has begun
appearing on bestseller lists; I'll track its progress on the chart
below.
| New York
Times |
| Week Of: | Placement: |
| 1999/08/22 | #18 |
| 1999/08/29 | #17 |
| 1999/09/05 | #30 |
| 1999/09/12 | #29 |
| 1999/09/19 | #34 |
| Publishers
Weekly |
| Week Of: | Placement: |
| 1999/08/16 | #12 |
| 1999/08/23 | #13 |
| USA
Today |
| Week Of: | Placement: |
| 1999/08/11 | #29 |
| 1999/08/18 | #27 |
| 1999/08/25 | #40 |
| 1999/09/01 | #68 |
| 1999/09/08 | #102 |
| 1999/09/15 | #120 |
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Starfighters of Adumar Is In Print
Today I received two advance author's copies
of Starfighters of Adumar. This suggests pretty persuasively that
the book will make its August 3 release date.
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Revised Thinking About Strike
Force
In the Good News/Bad News department:
As many of you know, I've been working on
an update and expansion to the Strike Force supplement for a
couple of years. The idea was to do a series of supplements (a lot
of them) covering the Strike Force world and campaigns comprehensively,
and my plan was to start out with The Circle — the first
Strike Force Update supplement being an update of the first Hero Games
supplement I wrote. Since the project began, I've written and assembled
three and a half megabytes of text for the series, but without managing to
complete the first supplement.
In recent months, my work slowed and I
eventually realized that the problem was that I just didn't think that
The Circle was the way to kick off the series... or that a series
of dozens of reasonable-sized supplements would ever be completed. So I've
restructured things. The series will now be organized as a smaller number
of much larger supplements, and the first one will be Strike Force and
the Shadow Warriors — four Strike Force teams, two Shadow
Warriors teams, associates, civilian staffers, gadgets, vehicles,
headquarters, personal enemies, histories and campaigning advice, the
whole kit and kaboodle. Subsequent releases will cover topics such as
The United States (the greatest concentration of super-powered
weirdness), Magic and the Supernatural (that's where The Circle
will end up), The World (super-activity in the rest of the world),
The Multiverse (related dimensions), The Superhero Era (pulp
heroes and supers from the world's history, from the 1930s to the early
1980s), and Known Space (near and outer space, alien races,
etc.).
It's possible that the first manuscript
will be ready in late 1999, but I'm not making any promises. However,
I'm encouraged by the fact that, since I did this mental reorganization,
I've been working productively on the series once again. So keep your
fingers crossed. (Because I can't. It screws up my typing.)
(This announcement originally appeared on
my Current Projects page.)
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Solo Command Is In Print
A couple of author's copies of Solo
Command, my third Star Wars: X-Wing novel, are now in my
hands, so it is at last in print. This means it should be showing up in
bookstores Real Soon Now.
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| 1998 | |
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Iron Fist To Be Released Tomorrow
The official release date for Iron
Fist, my second Star Wars: X-Wing novel, is tomorrow —
July 7, 1998. I've also seen preview copies of the audiobook version,
which should be out soon.
In addition, I was recently forwarded an
advance copy of the cover of my third X-Wing novel, Solo
Command. As painted by series artist Paul Youll, it shows a
familiar-looking Corellian YT-1300 transported being escorted above an
incredibly dense cityscape by an equally familiar-looking X-Wing.
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Wraith Squadron Now On New York Times'
Bestseller List
Wraith Squadron appears on the
NY Times listing for February 22, debuting at #15. Until March 1 or
so, you can see the web version of the listing at
http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/02/22/bsp/bestpaperfiction.html.
Need I say that I'm thrilled?
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Wraith Squadron Is On USA Today's Bestseller
List
The USA Today bestseller list that
appeared yesterday listed Wraith Squadron as debuting at #20, and I
hear encouraging rumors about another bestseller list to come.
This is my first appearance on any such
bestseller list, and I am very pleased.
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Wraith Squadron Is On the Shelves
I was informed yesterday that Wraith
Squadron is on the shelves of at least one Austin-area bookseller.
In other news, I went to the movies Sunday to
see Deep Rising, an unabashedly traditional monster movie, and only
after I returned home did it occur to me that the actor playing Carlton,
owner of the luxury liner, is Anthony Heald, who performed the audiobook
version of Wraith Squadron.
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Wraith Squadron Audio Book Is
In Print
Yesterday I received a package of the
audiobook version of Wraith Squadron. This is the first time a work
of mine has been adapted to audio; it's an interesting experience to
listen to it. Actor Anthony Heald, in what is essentially a one-man show,
has done an admirable job of making each character distinctive.
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Wraith Squadron Is In Print
A couple of early
copies of Wraith Squadron came to me by mail today. They look
great, and since they're in hand in mid-January, I can only guess that
they'll be in stores on or around the target date of February 2nd.
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Christmas Crash
A crash of my computer system between
Christmas and New Year's caused me to reinstall Windows 95 from the ground
up. This cost me a lot of time and a fair number of files —
including most of the e-mail correspondence I received during Christmas
week. So if you sent me e-mail at that time and I haven't responded,
please send it again — especially the fellow whose name and address
are now lost to me who asked about a photograph.
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Psion's Fiction/Psion's Fact
Courtesy of the Christmas season, I'm now the
owner of a Psion Series 5 palmtop computer. It's close to the same size as
Windows CE machines, but runs its own proprietary operating system and has
a slide-out keyboard that is touch-typable (at least for me; my fingers
are fairly small). It coordinates extremely well with my desktop and I
think it's a marvelously well-engineered machine. I heartily recommend it.
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| 1997 | |
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Upgrade Fever
I have just upgraded my computer. I was using
a Zeos 486/33; I now have a Gateway 200-MHz Pentium with 32 megs of RAM, a
4-gig hard drive, a 17-inch monitor, an internal Zip drive, a Scanjet
scanner... it should give me some growing room.
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Wrath of the Princes Is In Print
In today's mail I received my author's copies
of Wrath of the Princes, the sequel to Thunder of the
Captains. It should begin appearing in the bookstores in the immediate
future.
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Doc Sidhe Subject of Local Reading
Group
The Austin, TX Borders bookstore (Research
Boulevard at Great Hills Trail, 795-9553) hosts several reading groups,
including one for science fiction and fantasy novels. On February 19,
their topic will be Doc Sidhe, and I'll be on hand to provide
commentary (or suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous criticism,
depending on how it's received). The activity begins at 7:30 p.m.; please
call Borders for additional information.
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| 1996 | |
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Sidhe-Devil Greenlighted
The day after Christmas, I received a happy
holiday present: Contracts for Sidhe-Devil, the Doc Sidhe
sequel. So that project is finally an official "go."
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Thunder of the Captains Signing At
ACS
I'll be signing Thunder of the
Captains on Saturday, July 27, from 6 to 8 p.m., at Adventures in
Crime and Space (609-A W. Sixth St., Austin, 4SF-BOOK).
I'll be in very good company, too. Also at
ACS that night will be Martha Wells, signing the paperback version of
City of Bones, and Susan Wade, signing her newly-released first
novel, Walking Rain.
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I'll Be Co-Guest of Honor at Gamicon
Eta
I'm pleased to announce that Lester Smith and
I will be the Guests of Honor at Gamicon Eta, February 21-23, Iowa City,
IA. Gamicon is a gaming convention run by SFLIS, the Science Fiction
League of Iowa Students, the fine folks who also run Icon.
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Thunder of the Captains Is In Print
Today I received author's copies of
Thunder of the Captains, my fantasy collaboration with Holly Lisle.
It should become available in the stores in the near future.
For publishing information and a synopsis,
please see my fiction credits page.
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I'll Be Toastmaster At NOSF3
1996
At last year's New Orleans Science Fiction
and Fantasy Festival, the convention committee asked me to be Toastmaster
at the 1996 event. I held off making any announcement about this until
official notice was issued, which now has happened.
I've been the Gaming Guest of Honor at other
conventions, but the role of Toastmaster gives me a much greater
opportunity to inflict myself on a large crowd. I'm looking forward to it
with glee.
For those who are interested in NOSF3 but
can't find information on it elsewhere, here are the pertinent facts
(drawn from a flyer appearing at CoastCon 19):
The ACME Science Fiction Corporation of Louisiana presents the
ninth annual
New Orleans Science Fiction and Fantasy
Festival
June 28th-30th, 1996
At the Radisson Hotel (Vets near Williams in Kenner, LA)
- Guest of Honor
Elizabeth Moon
Author, Hunting Party & Winning Colors
- Artist Guest of Honor
David Lee Anderson
- Fan Guest of Honor
Adm. Hiawatha L. Niagara
- Toastmaster
Aaron Allston
- More Guests: George Alec Effinger, Barbara Hambly, Edward Bryant,
Peggy Ranson, Bradley Denton, and many more to come.
General Info: Call at 504-347-3880 or at 504-887-3197 (no collect
calls!).
Rooms at the Radisson: $70 per night, double occupancy. For
reservations, call 504-467-3111 or 800-333-3333.
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I'll update the above details as I receive
new information.
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| 1995 | |
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New Cat on the Block
In late July, my roommate Luray heard the
frantic cries of a kitten outside. The kitten turned out to be a Siamese
mix, probably from a colony of feral cats that live in the storm drains
down the street, and in spite of bite injuries he healed up fine and
without any associated illness. To make a long story short, after a futile
effort to give him away to a friend who'd recently lost his cats, we did
decide to keep him. Here's a look at him.
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Windows '95
I've installed Windows '95 on my home
computer. This was mostly painless, and I've enjoyed the results, but it
wasn't entirely trouble-free. I'll share some of the results in case
anyone reading this runs into similar problems.
I did buy the CD-ROM version, and highly
recommend CD-ROM installation of any large software package.
The basic file-transfer portion of the
installation went well, but I ran into a hangup during the initial boot. I
got an error message saying that Win '95 disabled direct disk access
(meaning that programs able to make direct accesses to the disk, as many
utilities do, just won't work any more); the system invited me to reboot.
I did so, only to run into the same message again and again.
This suggested to me that there was a call to
such a utility in my old AUTOEXEC.BAT or CONFIG.SYS setup, so I used a
bootable floppy disk to get my system up in DOS mode and looked at those
files. One of the AUTOEXEC.BAT lines was a call to the Norton utility DS
(Directory Sort), an innocuous program that simply re-sorted the contents
of directories, but it seemed to be just the sort of util that would have
direct disk access. I REMmed out that line and rebooted... and Win '95
came up just fine.
I mention this for people even less
proficient with operating systems than I am -- it might not occur to a
complete newbie to look in those two files for the culprit.
A later problem arose in that I couldn't get
on-line to the World Wide Web. I'd been using Netscape Navigator 1.1N
through Trumpet Winsock. After Win '95 was installed, Netscape would
launch without difficulty, but Trumpet Winsock wouldn't come up. My guess
was that something in the built-in TCP/IP support promised for Windows '95
was interfering with Trumpet. So I spent a fruitless 45 seconds scratching
my head and called the tech support at Illuminati Online, my internet
server.
And they had an instant solution. In the ftp
directory at io.com, in the io-ppp subdir, are a utility called RoboDUN
and a set of text files. The text files explain in step-by-step detail how
to set up Win '95's TCP/IP support for direct dialing to internet servers;
RoboDUN is a shareware scripting utility that works with the Win '95 dial-up
networking functions in order to automate PPP log-ons.
So, if any other Trumpet Winsock users are
going through the same trouble when upgrading to Win '95 -- and yet
somehow reading this page — I recommend finding those files.
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