Wild Cards Website Debuts

November 29, 2016 at 12:41 pm

Here’s some cool news for all the Wild Cards fans out there: Wild Cards has a new home on the web.

Our brand-new official Wild Cards website debuts today. (There’s been a superb fan site for years at Wild Cards Online, and a great Wild Cards Wikia, and even a Wild Cards Facebook group, but this is the first time in a while that we’ve had a site that was all our own).

Check it out at:

http://www.wildcardsworld.com/

(We are still tweaking the site, so please forgive any errors or omissions).

There’s tons of content there, and we hope to be adding more regularly. Head on over and explore, and mark it down as a place to visit regularly.

And of course we’d love to hear your thoughts. What do you think of the place, and what would you like to see us add in the future? Comments welcome… but ONLY about Wild Cards and the Wild Cards website, please. Stay on topic.

Clear skies and tailwinds….

Tags: wild cards

The Cards Get Wilder

October 26, 2016 at 2:06 pm

Some cool new stuff to announce for you Wild Cards fans out there.

We have a couple of brand new original never-before-published Wild Cards coming up on Tor.com, and available for free. The first of them is “The Thing About Growing Up in Jokertown,” by Carrie Vaughn, a prequel of sorts to FORT FREAK, featuring two of your favorite 5th precinct joker cops as teenagers. John Picacio just sent us the cover art, and as usual it’s wonderful.

Carrie’s story will be uploaded to Tor.com on December 21. Hope you’ll enjoy the read. (I did).

Meanwhile, on other Wild Card-ish fronts… Tor taped hours of interview with myself and a whole legion of my Wild Cards writers in Kansas City, during the big launch event for HIGH STAKES, and will be releasing them in a series of videos. The first came out in late August. The second has just been released. Enjoy.

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More videos will be forthcoming in future months.

HIGH STAKES is available now from your favorite local bookstore and online bookseller. And if you’re an autograph hound, we do have copies at the Jean Cocteau Bookshop with signatures from Melinda Snodgrass, John Jos. Miller, Ian Tregillis, and yours truly. http://www.jeancocteaubooks.com/bookstore/high-stakes-wild-cards/

Tags: signed books, tor, wild cards

Signed Books at the JCC

October 7, 2016 at 12:50 pm

The illustrated anniversary hardcover edition of A GAME OF THRONES is scheduled for release on October 18. They will be available across the nation from your favorite local bookstore or online bookseller.

We also expect to have a couple hundred for sale the Jean Cocteau Cinema Bookstore, and available by mail order. And those will be signed (my manager twisted my arm). ((Sorry, no personalizations or inscriptions, just straight signatures)).

To preorder, go to http://www.jeancocteaubooks.com/bookstore/a-game-of-thrones-the-illustrated-edition-pre-order/?ct=t(061220156_12_2015)&mc_cid=5a7419c5bb&mc_eid=78a442bf0c

We also have on hand RIGHT NOW some autographed hardcovers of the latest Wild Cards book for Tor, HIGH STAKES. These are signed by yours truly, and by John J. Miller, one of the writers.

Of course, ALL the books sold by the JCC are autographed by the authors, so we also have many other titles available signed. Here are a few of them:

To check out the full list, go to http://www.jeancocteaubooks.com/

And happy reading.

Tags: game of thrones, jean cocteau cinema bookstore, wild cards

Rolling on the River

October 1, 2016 at 4:07 pm

The old MAVERICK tv series (one of my childhood favorites) had a great theme song with a line about Maverick “living on jacks and queens.” In the Wild Cards series, we prefer aces and jokers.

And you’ll find plenty of both in MISSISSIPPI ROLL, the latest Wild Cards mosaic novel, which we’ve just completed and delivered to our editors at Tor. This is the first book in what we’re calling our ‘American Triad’ (to be followed, in good time, by LOW CHICAGO and TEXAS HOLD’EM), and the twenty-fourth volume of the overall series… but no, it’s not necessary to have read the first twenty-three to enjoy this one.

The lineup this time out:
Stephen Leigh “In the Shadow of Tall Stacks”
John Jos. Miller “Wingless Angel”
Carrie Vaughn “A Big Break in the Small Time”
Cherie Priest “Death on the Water”
Kevin Andrew Murphy “Find the Lady”
David D. Levine “Under the Arch”

No publication date yet, but you’ll be the first to know as soon as we get the word from Tor.

HIGH STAKES was one of our darkest books, an excursion into Lovecraftian horror. MISSISSIPPI ROLL will have a much lighter tone, but plenty of fun and excitement.

I hope you will enjoy reading it as much as I did editing it.

Tags: editing, wild cards

HIGH STAKES Hits The Stands

September 3, 2016 at 5:41 pm

HIGH STAKES, the latest Wild Cards mosaic novels, was released in hardcover by Tor on August 30, and should now be available at your local bookstore or from your favorite online bookseller.

This is the third and concluding volume in the current Wild Cards triad, which began with FORT FREAK and continued in LOWBALL. It’s a full mosaic, six storylines interwoven to make a single collaborative novel. This time around the featured characters (and their writers) are Infamous Black Tongue (David Anthony Durham), Detective Francis Xavier Black (Melinda M. Snodgrass), the Midnight Angel (John Jos. Miller), the Amazing Bubbles (Caroline Spector), Babel (Stephen Leigh), and Tesseract (Ian Tregillis)… but you’ll be seeing plenty of Hoodoo Mama, Carnifex, Baba Yaga, Lohengrin, and many of your other favorite characters as well. Editing was by yours truly, assisted as ever by Melinda M. Snodgrass.

So far, the reviews for this one have been great:
http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-7653-3562-3
http://www.sfrevu.com/php/Review-id.php?id=16807

Although the official publication date was August 30, we launched HIGH STAKES two weeks early with a mass signing at worldcon in Kansas City, sponsored by Rainy Day Books. And I’m pleased to say the launch was a huge success, probably the largest Wild Cards signing in the entire thirty-year history of the series (yes, I’ve done ICE & FIRE signings that dwarfed it, but that’s not just a different animal, it’s a whole ‘nother genus). Four of the six HIGH STAKES authors were on hand to assist me in defacing the hardcovers (David Anthony Durham and Ian Tregillis were not at the con, alas), along with another dozen odd Wild Carders, and the line went on and on forever. We must have signed four hundred copies of HIGH STAKES, easy, and probably an equal number of older WC titles. And then we signed lots and lots of additional stock as well. So if you couldn’t make it to Kansas City, but would like to snag one of the “five signature” copies of HIGH STAKES, go to http://www.rainydaybooks.com/

Tor also had some video cameras on hand, to take advantage of having so many Wild Carders on hand in the same place at the same time, and interviewed just about everyone. The plan is to release a series of short promo trailers about the series. Here’s the first of them, featuring Melinda Snodgrass, Michael Cassutt, and yours truly. Many more to follow.

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Tags: wild cards

The Wild Cards Are Coming… to Television

August 8, 2016 at 2:03 pm

We have some exciting new for all the Wild Cards fans out there.

Universal Cable Productions (UCP) has acquired the rights to adapt our long-running Wild Cards series of anthologies and mosaic novels for television. Development will begin immediately on what we hope will be the first of several interlocking series. Melinda M. Snodgrass, my assistant editor and right-hand man on Wild Cards since its inception, the creator of Dr. Tachyon, Double Helix, and Franny Black, and a seasoned television writer/ producer whose credits include STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION (“Measure of a Man”), REASONABLE DOUBTS, THE PROFILER, and STAR COMMAND, is attached as an executive producer on the project, together with Gregory Noveck of RED, Slow Learner, and SyFy Films

UCP creates innovative and critically acclaimed television and digital content across various media platforms for domestic and international distribution. Their programming can be seen across numerous networks and channels across the world, and includes the Golden Globe and Peabody award-winning drama MR. ROBOT, the exciting new SF series COLONY, PLAYING HOUSE, ROYAL PAINS, and SUITS on the USA Network; Lev Grossman’s brilliant THE MAGICIANS, 12 MONKEYS, and KILLJOYS on SyFY; GIRLFRIENDS’ GUIDE TO DIVORCE on Bravo; THE ROYALS on E!; and DIFFICULT PEOPLE on Hulu. UCP’s content library includes such fan favorites such as the Emmy-award winning MONK, PYSCH, and BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. Universal Cable Productions is a part of NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment, a division of NBCUniversal, one of the world’s leading media and entertainment companies. (Follow them at @UCPisTV).

The shared world of the Wild Cards diverged from our own on September 15, 1946 when an alien virus was released in the skies over Manhattan, and spread across an unsuspecting Earth. Of those infected, 90% died horribly, drawing the black queen, 9% were twisted and deformed into jokers, while a lucky 1% became blessed with extraordinary and unpredictable powers and became aces. The world was never the same.

The first volume of the Wild Cards series was published in 1986, and was a finalist for that year’s Hugo Award, ultimately losing to Alan Moore’s WATCHMEN. Twenty-two volumes have been published to date, with a twenty-third (HIGH STAKES) scheduled for hardcover release later this month, and three more in the works. Translations and reprints of many of the Wild Cards books and stories have been published around the globe, in France, Germany, Brazil, Spain, Mexico, Russia, Japan, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Comic books, graphic novels, and role-playing games have also chronicled the adventures of the aces and jokers of the WC universe.

Generations of writers, from bold new voices to visionary grand masters, have contributed to the Wild Cards universe over the past three decades. Our roster of writers and creators includes Howard Waldrop, Walter Jon Williams, Stephen Leigh, Victor Milan, John Jos. Miller, Gail Gerstner Miller, Edward Bryant, Leanne C. Harper, Arthur Byron Cover, Chris Claremont, Lewis Shiner, Walton (Bud) Simons, Steve Perrin, Royce Wideman, Pat Cadigan, Sage Walker, Laura J. Mixon, Parris, William F. Wu, Michael Cassutt, Kevin Andrew Murphy, Daniel Abraham, Ty Franck, Bob Wayne, S.L. Farrell, Carrie Vaughn, Caroline Spector, Christopher Rowe, Ian Tregillis, David D. Levine, David Anthony Durham, Cherie Priest, Paul Cornell, Craig Chrissinger, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Max Gladstone, Marko Kloos, Diana Rowland, Bradley Denton, Saladin Ahmed, the late great Roger Zelazny, and of course Melinda Snodgrass and yours truly.

Wild Cards is a series of books, graphic novels, games… but most of all it is a universe, as large and diverse and exciting as the comic book universes of Marvel and DC (though somewhat grittier, and considerably more realistic and more consistent), with an enormous cast of characters both major and minor. There are thousands of stories to be told in the world of the Wild Cards, and Gregory and Melinda and UPC hope to be able to tell many of them.

Which stories will be adapted? Which characters will be featured? Hard to say at this early stage. Let’s see… we have Jetboy, the Four Aces, Dr. Tachyon, the Great and Powerful Turtle, Modular Man, Yeoman, Wraith, Cap’n Trips, Fortunato, Puppetman, Chrysalis, Popinjay, the Oddity, Father Squid, Water Lily, Sewer Jack, Bagabond, Peregrine, Carnifex, Infamous Black Tongue, Bugsy, Curveball, Earth Witch, Cameo, Elephant Girl, Demise, Ramshead, Mackie Messer, Mr. Nobody, Double Helix, the Amazing Bubbles, Stuntman, Rustbelt, Lohengrin, Hoodoo Mama, Drummer Boy, Abigail the Understudy, the Midnight Angel, and many many MANY more. Which ones will you see? I don’t know. Which ones do you want to see? Tell us below, in the comments. I am sure that Melinda and Gregory and UPC will be listening.

Only one thing I can say for (almost) sure. You will be seeing Croyd Crenson, no matter shape the eventual show or shows ends up taking. It wouldn’t be Wild Cards without the Sleeper.

So there it is. I hope you’re as excited as I am. Of course, Hollywood is Hollywood, and nothing is ever certain in development… but I think I hope I cross my fingers that the Wild Cards will be coming to your home screens in the next year or two.

I won’t be working on the series myself… my own development deal is exclusive to HBO, and I am writing THE WINDS OF WINTER, as I believe most of you will recall… but I have every confidence in Melinda Snodgrass and Gregory Noveck. They know and love the Wild Cards universe almost as well as I do, and I think they will do a terrific job. Wish them luck.

((And be sure to come to the Wild Cards Cage Matchs at worldcon, and snap up HIGH STAKES when it hits the stands later this month)).

Clear skies and tailwinds, as Jetboy would say.

((Please stay on topic in your comments. ANY comment not related to Wild Cards will be screened and deleted unread)).

Tags: television, wild cards

Coming in August

July 25, 2016 at 2:58 pm

We had an amazing, goofy, fun event at the Jean Cocteau Cinema yesterday, when more than a dozen Wild Cards authors got together and donned the personae of their characters, while my assistant editor Melinda Snodgrass (in the person of Noel Matthews, aka Double Helix) interviewed them. The whole thing was taped, so we hope to be able to upload it here soon.

Meanwhile, Tor has just sent us the final cover for the next original volume in the series: HIGH STAKES, scheduled for release on August 23 (though we will be launching it a little earlier in Kansas City at a special group signing event).

Cover art, as always, by the amazing Michael Komarck.

HIGH STAKES is the third and concluding volume in the triad that began with FORT FREAK and continued with LOWBALL. It’s the twenty-third volume in the overall series, but don’t let that intimidate you, boys and girls. It is NOT necessary to have read all of the preceding twenty-two volumes to make sense of this one… though it would help to have read the aforementioned LOWBALL and FORT FREAK.

This one is a “full mosaic,” like many of the other climactic volumes of our triads; there are no individual stories per se, but rather six storylines featuring six different viewpoint characters, interwoven so as to create a full on collaborative novel. Which is a lot of work for all concerned, yes, but our fans and readers seem to think it’s well worth it.

In HIGH STAKES, the participating writers (and their featured characters) are John Jos. Miller (the Midnight Angel), Caroline Spector (the Amazing Bubbles), Ian Tregillis (Tesseract), Melinda M. Snodgrass (Franny Black), Stephen Leigh (Babel), and David Anthony Durham (the Infamous Black Tongue). Editing by yours truly, assisted by Melinda Snodgrass.

Fair warning, this one is not for the faint of heart. HIGH STAKES is our Lovecraftian horror volume, and things get pretty dark. But it’s when things are darkest that heroes are most needed…

FYI, while we won’t have any copies of HIGH STAKES for another month, the Jean Cocteau Bookstore can now offer both hardcovers and paperbacks of many earlier Wild Cards books with lots of signatures from the authors. Me, yes, but not just me. We have WILD CARDS, ACES HIGH, JOKERS WILD, ACES ABROAD, INSIDE STRAIGHT, BUSTED FLUSH, SUICIDE KINGS, FORT FREAK, LOWBALL… and even the very scarce and hard to find volumes sixteen and seventeen, DEUCES DOWN and DEATH DRAWS FIVE. Email the JCC for details and prices.

Tags: jean cocteau cinema bookstore, signed books, signings, wild cards

Next Sunday at the Jean Cocteau

July 16, 2016 at 7:36 pm

If you’re going to be in Santa Fe a week from tomorrow — or anywhere in the Land of Enchantment, really — do swing by the Jean Cocteau Cinema.

We’ve got not one but two very special events planned for Sunday, July 24.

First up, at 2:00 in the afternoon, will be a Wild Cards Author Event, followed by a signing. Yes, most of the Usual Suspects will be on hand, the motley crew of New Mexico writers who started the series some thirty years ago, but they’ll be joined by some Wild Carders, new and old, who are coming in from afar to join us. Right now we have some nineteen (yes, I said 19!) writers scheduled to take part… from Chicago, from Denver, from New Hampshire, from Texas, from California, from Kentucky. Come by and meet them all! And get your books signed… not only your Wild Cards books (though we expect to have all the volumes presently in print on offer), but also some of the other great novels by the participating writers.

The format of this one should be fun. Melinda Snodgrass will be hosting, interviewing each of our guests in turn. But we’ll be doing this “in universe,” so she won’t be interviewing the writers, she’ll be interviewing their characters. And Weeds knows where all the bodies are buried, so I expect this to be a hoot and a half.

And that’s just the afternoon event.

Come evening, we’ll be putting Melinda to work again, with a very special screening of CHAOS ON THE BRIDGE, William Shatner’s tell-all documentary about the rocky beginnings of STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION. <lj-embed id=”748″/>

Melinda knows where the bodies are buried on the Enterprise as well; she was there, and she was one of the insiders that Shatner interviewed for the documentary. She will be hosting the screening, and answering questions afterwards… and if that was not enough, she’s arranged for DAVID GERROLD to join us as well, via the wonders of Skype.

It should be quite a Sunday. Be there. I will.

Tags: jean cocteau cinema, signed books, signings, television, wild cards, writing

Wild Cards in Kansas City

July 14, 2016 at 12:32 am

As this year’s worldcon in Kansas City moves ever closer, schedules are starting to firm up, and there are going to be some exciting things in the works… especially for fans of Wild Cards.

HIGH STAKES, the concluding volume in the current Wild Cards triad and the twenty-third in the overall series, is actually scheduled for hardcover release on August 23, after worldcon is over. However (fingers crossed), Tor is doing all it can to get some advance copies to Kansas City ahead of time, so we can launch the book at worldcon. (This one is our Lovecraftian horror outing. For a taste, check the sample chapter on my website).

To celebrate the release of the new one… and hell, all the old ones too… we are planning to have a huge WILD CARDS MASS SIGNING at the con. It seemed only fitting; there will be more Wild Cards authors (old and new) present in Kansas City than at any other convention ever (yes, even more than at Nolacon in 1988, where Wild Cards lost a Hugo to Watchmen). At last count, the list includes Walter Jon Williams, John Jos. Miller, Gail Gerstner-Miller, Carrie Vaughn, Caroline Spector, Diana Rowland, Walton (Bud) Simons, Bob Wayne, Kevin Andrew Murphy, Stephen Leigh, S.L. Farrell, David D. Levine, Michael Cassutt, Marko Kloos, Saladin Ahmed, Pat Cadigan, Laura J. Mixon, Paul Cornell, Mary Anne Mohanraj… and of course Melinda M. Snodgrass and yours truly. So if you have a large collection of Wild Cards books you’d like defaced… or would like to start a large collection of Wild Cards books… MidAmericon II is the place to do it.

The signing will be sponsored by Rainy Day Books, and will be a ticketed event. It will take place in the Marriott Muhlebach (room tba) on Friday August 19, from 5:00 pm to 8:00 pm. Rainy Day Books should have all of the volumes currently in print for sale there, in addition to HIGH STAKES… and also a good selection of other titles by all of the participating writers, for those who would like to sample their non-wild card books. (However, I won’t be signing any Ice & Fire events at this event, I have two other general signings in the dealer’s room, three hours total, so there will be ample opportunity for readers to get their GAME OF THRONES books signed there).

The signing will not be the only Wild Cards activity at Big MAC II. With so many writers on hand, doing your traditional panel discussion would have been impossible. By the time all the panelists finished introducing themselves, the hour would have been up. Instead we’ve decided to offer WILD CARDS DEATH MATCHES. Kind of like Thunderdome with writers (and their characters). Sixteen writers enter (well, maybe only twelve, the count keeps jumping around as plans change), and one will emerge. The audience will pick the winners and losers of the fights. That one is scheduled for Saturday afternoon, August 20, 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm. Should be a hoot and a half… or a bloodbath. Who the hell knows? We’ve never done this sort of thing before.

Put the times and dates down in your worldcon calendar, and come join the fun.

(And hey, for all those who can’t be in Kansas City for the mass signing, autographed copies of all the books pictured above are available from the Jean Cocteau Cinema Bookstore, though admittedly they don’t have as many signatures as the ones bought in KC are like to have. And yes, we are now taking international orders).

Tags: jean cocteau cinema bookstore, signed books, signings, wild cards, worldcon

MAC Nattering

July 13, 2016 at 11:48 am

Worldcon is coming up soon… MidAmericon II in Kansas City, Missouri, the long awaited successor to the original 1976 MidAmericon, which some of us old pharts still consider to be the Greatest Worldcon Evah. (It was certainly the most innovative, a true game-changer, for both good and ill).

I will be there, along with hundreds of other writers, artists, and editors, and thousands of fans. If you have never been to a con before, this is the one to go to… assuming you’re a reader. Worldcon has always had a strong literary slant, and while costuming, television, films, comics, and games are all included as well, it is the written word that occupies center ring here.

If that interests you, you can join here: http://midamericon2.org/

Join now, and you’ll be able to vote for the Hugo Awards (and to nominate next year).

For readers who would like to meet and talk with their favorite writers (including me), a worldcon is a MUCH better place to do so than a booksigning.

For what it’s worth, however, there are also booksignings AT worldcon, so you’ll have plenty of opportunity to get your books scrawled in, be they rare limited editions or battered paperbacks. I have committed to four (count ’em, 4) booksignings at MAC myself:

— I’ll be doing two ninety-minute signings in the convention autograph area, signing whatever you want me to sign, be it books, comics, swords, games, Funko Pop dolls, t-shirts, or body parts, (but only one item per person, please, and no personalizations or inscriptions, sorry),

— I will also be doing a one-hour signing in the dealer’s room at Gary Gianni’s booth, but at that one Gary and I will be signing ONLY copies of A KNIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS, and the new Gianni sketchbook that GG will be debuting at MAC,

— and in conjunction with Tor Books and a local bookstore, I’ll be part of a huge WILD CARDS signing, joined by more than a dozen other Wild Cards authors new and old. My “no personal inscription” rule will still hold for that one, alas, though many of the other writers will inscribe. However, I am suspending my “only one book per person” rule for this event. I’ll sign as many books as you want here… so long as they are all Wild Cards books.

Dates, times, and locations will all be forthcoming, so watch this space.

And yes, of course, I’ll be doing other stuff in Kansas City as well. A couple of panels, a reading, maybe some other stuff.

See you at Big MAC! And save me some burnt ends!!!

Tags: signed books, signings, wild cards, worldcon

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