Coming Soon

November 11, 2011 at 3:00 pm

The latest Wild Cards reissue from Tor Books will be out in time for Christmas.

Now available for pre-order via Amazon, B&N, or your favorite local bookstore is volume two in our long-running Wild Cards series, ACES HIGH, scheduled for publication on December 20. No new stories this time around, alas, but the new edition will feature another spectacular cover from Michael Komarck, this time starring Pat Cadigan’s character Water Lily.

ACES HIGH features stories by Roger Zelazny, Melinda M. Snodgrass, Victor Milan, Lewis Shiner, Walton Simons, John J. Miller, Pat Cadigan, Walter Jon Williams, and yours truly. (Actually, it includes two stories by me, a Turtle story and the Jube interstitial). The old gang’s all here, almost — Fortunato, Dr. Tachyon, the Great and Powerful Turtle, Demise, Walter Lily, Yeoman, Modular Man, Cap’n Trips.

Make it a Wild Cards Xmas, and join the fun.

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Tags: tor, wild cards

Wild Cards Optioned for Film

October 28, 2011 at 2:05 pm

Great news for Wild Cards fans! We have just closed a deal with SyFy Films, a brand new joint venture of Universal Pictures and the SyFy Channel, for film and television rights to the Wild Cards series of mosaic novels and shared world anthologies.

You can read all the details in THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, here:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/game-of-thrones-george-rr-martin-wild-cards-254382

The plan is to begin with a Wild Cards feature film, for theatrical release. If that’s successful, more features and a television series may follow.

Melinda Snodgrass will write the screenplay. Part of the series since the very start, Melinda has been my assistant editor on most volumes of Wild Cards, and is the creator of many of the series most popular and iconic characters, including Dr. Tachyon and Double Helix. Snod will also serve as an executive producer on the film, as will I.

Further details will need to wait until we’re a little further along in development, but I think I speak for all the writers in the Wild Cards Consortium, both new and old, when I say that we’re jazzed. We look forward to working with Gregory Noveck and his great team at SyFy Films, and to bringing some of your favorite Wild Cards characters to the screen.

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Tags: films, wild cards

Coming to Comicon

July 19, 2011 at 4:19 pm

I’m off to San Diego tomorrow morning, for comicon.

Tickets have been sold out for months, alas. But for you lucky 150,000 who will be lucky enough to get in, here’s my current schedule of signings, panels, and other public events.

THURSDAY, JULY 21

10:00 am – 12 noon Daniel Abraham and I will be signing copies of the FEVRE DREAM graphic novel at the Avatar booth (#2701),

12 noon – 1:00 pm EPIC FANTASY panel, rm 6A

1:30pm – 2:30 pm The panelists from Epic Fantasy will be signing in autograph area AA1

3:00pm – 4:00 pm The GAME OF THRONES panel, an hour long discussion of the HB0 series with showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss and actors Lena Headey (Cersei), Peter Dinklage (Tyrion), Emilia Clarke (Daenerys), Jason Momoa (Khal Drogo), Kit Harington (Jon Snow), Nicolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime). I’ll be moderating.

4:30pm – 5:45pm The GAME OF THRONES cast and I will be signing posters at the Warner Brothers booth #4545.

FRIDAY JULY 22

10:00 am – 11:00 am I will be signing copies of the DOORWAYS graphic novel at the IDW
booth (#2643)

3:00 pm – 5:00 pm John Picacio and I will be signing copies of the 2012 Ice & Fire calendar in the autograph area, AA 21 I will also be signing A DANCE WITH DRAGONS and my other Ice & Fire books during this appearance.

SATURDAY JULY 23

1:00 pm – 3:00 pm I will be signing A DANCE WITH DRAGONS, the other Ice & Fire books, and anything else you care to bring in the autograph area, AA 18.

5:00pm – 6:00 pm Tor Books will be giving away complimentary copies of INSIDE STRAIGHT at their booth, and I’ll be on hand to sign them, along with Melinda Snodgrass, Daniel Abraham, Carrie Vaughn, and other members of the Wild Cards crew. We’ll also be glad to deface FORT FREAK and any other Wild Cards books you care to present to us.

SUNDAY JULY 24

10:30 am – 11:30 am WILD CARDS panel. Half a dozen of your favorite Wild Cards writers will assemble to talk about the past, present, and future of the long-running shared world series in the field.

12:00 noon – 1:00 pm The Wild Card panelists will adjourn to AA1 to sign your books.

Later that afternoon, I will heading over to Mysterious Galaxy for my signing there, but that’s offsite, and not an official part of the SDCC schedule.

A couple of notes about the signings:
1) as on my tour, I will be autographing your books, but I won’t be able to inscribe or personalize them (unless by some chance you catch me at a slow time when there’s no line),
2) many of these signings are keyed to particular books and projects. At Avatar, I’ll be signing FEVRE DREAM, at IDW it will be DOORWAYS, for Tor WILD CARDS. The place to get your DANCE WITH DRAGONS signed is at the big general signings on Friday and Saturday. We’ve scheduled me for four hours of signing between those two days… so please, respect my other publishers and DO NOT ask me to sign your Ice & Fire books at the booth signings. Those are meant to promote my other projects.

[[AFTER THE CUT IS NSFW. ]]

<lj-cut>

Of course, there are certain things I am always willing to sign.

<lj-cut>

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Tags: a dance with dragons, appearances, avatar, calendar, conventions, game of thrones, hbo, idw, signings, tor, wild cards

Signing Tomorrow!

July 8, 2011 at 6:36 pm

For the New Mexicans out there… I will be signing copies of the new Wild Cards mosaic novel, FORT FREAK, tomorrow at Page One Bookstore. The signing starts at 2:30 pm and will run till about 5:00 pm, depending…

Also on hand to deface your copies of FORT FREAK will be my assistant editor Melinda M. Snodgrass (Franny Black), John Jos. Miller (Father Squid), and Victor Milan (Ratboy and Flipper). Other Wild Cards contributors may also drop by… and if they do, Page One will have copies of the earlier books in the series for them to scrawl in.

There will also be a brief presentation about Wild Cards, and a Q&A session.

For more details about the signing, check out the Page One website at
http://www.page1book.com/

I should stress that this is a Wild Cards signing. NO COPIES OF DANCE WITH DRAGONS WILL BE ON SALE! I may be able to autograph some of your Ice & Fire books, if time permits, but probably not more than one, and only with a purchase of FORT FREAK. And in the talk and the Q&A session, we’ll be talking about Wild Cards, not the new Ice & Fire book or the HBO show. Sorry, but to let GAME OF THRONES take over the session would not be fair to the other writers.

So drop on in to Page One, and pay a visit to Fort Freak.

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Tags: signings, tor, wild cards

Wild Cards Times Two

June 30, 2011 at 1:15 pm

FORT FREAK is here!

The latest volume in the Wild Cards series was released on June 21, while I was touring and signing in Poland. You can pick up a copy now from your favorite local bookstore, or order one from your favorite online retailer.

After the wide-ranging global storylines of the Committee triad, FORT FREAK returns to New York City, the epicenter of the Wild Cards universe, to tell the stories of the cops and crooks of the historic 5th precinct of the NYPD !” the Jokertown precinct.

The lineup this time around includes stories by Wild Cards veterans Melinda Snodgrass, Stephen Leigh, John Jos. Miller, Kevin Andrew Murphy, and Victor Milan, and introduces newcomers (new to Wild Cards, at least) Cherie Priest, David Anthony Durham, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Ty Franck, and Paul Cornell. You can check out a sample of Cherie’s interstitial, the literary mortar that holds all the bricks together, on my website… and read Melinda’s story, “The Rook,” on Tor.com at http://www.tor.com/stories/2011/06/the-rook

So come meet Ramshead, the Rook, Tabby, SlimJim, Abigail the understudy, Sgt. Squinch, Ratboy and Flipper, Tinkerbill, the Infamous Black Tongue, Natya, Maggie Graves, Puff, Beastie, Dr. Dildo, and the other colorful denizens of Fort Freak and environs. Old-timers like Father Squid, the Sleeper, and the Oddity also turn up to enliven the proceedings.

Also… some more good news for the Wild Cards fans out there. The seventeenth volume in the series, John Jos. Miller’s novel DEATH DRAWS FIVE, was released in hardcover just a week before its publisher (iBooks) went bankrupt, and very few copies ever made it to market. As a result, this volume of the series has been near impossible to find, commanding huge prices from dealers on the secondary market.

But at long last Brick Tower Press, who acquired many of the assets of iBooks in the bankruptcy proceedings, has released a paperback edition. It’s available on Amazon at

http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Cards-Death-Draws-Five/dp/187696345X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1309200578&sr=1-1

and may also be turning up at some local bookstores.

DEATH DRAWS FIVE is a tale of fists, faith, and armageddon in America’s heartland, the novel features John’s asskicker ace Billy Ray (aka Carnifex), the long-time fan favorite Fortunato and his son John Fortune, and the shape-shifting private dick Mr. Nobody, along with John Nighthawk, the Midnight Angel, and a host of other new characters. In many ways it is the last of the “original series” of Wild Cards, before the introduction of the “next generation” cast featured in INSIDE STRAIGHT and subsequent volumes.

So for all those readers who have been looking to fill the hole in your Wild Cards collection, here’s your chance to complete your sets.

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Tags: wild cards

Carrie Vaughn Writes Wraith

June 28, 2011 at 8:31 am

Wild Cards fans take note… Tor.com is now offering a free read of Carrie Vaughn’s “Ghost Girl Takes Manhattan,” one of the three brand-new originals in the new edition of WILD CARDS (volume one). You can find it here:

http://www.tor.com/stories/2011/06/ghost-girl-takes-manhattan

Wraith AND the Sleeper… what more could you want? So what are you waiting for?

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Tags: tor, wild cards

Meet The Rook

June 10, 2011 at 5:44 pm

For all you Wild Card fans waiting for the newest volume — FORT FREAK, the twenty-first installment in our field’s longest running shared world — check out Tor.com, where they have just put up a sample from that volume: Melinda Snodgrass’s story, “The Rook,” introducing Francis Xavier Black, rookie cop, beginning his first tour at the infamous Jokertown precinct.

http://www.tor.com/stories/2011/06/the-rook

And if that’s not enough to whet your appetite, there’s also a sample from Cherie Priest’s interstitial story, “Rat Race,” available on my own website at:

http://www.georgerrmartin.com/wc-s.html

Check ’em out, and reserve your copy of FORT FREAK at your favorite local bookstore.

FORT FREAK will be published on June 21.

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Tags: tor, wild cards

Come Visit FORT FREAK

May 25, 2011 at 12:26 am

Good news for all my Wild Cards readers. FORT FREAK, volume twenty-one in the series, will be out in hardcover on June 21, Tor tells me.

The cover is once again by the amazing Michael Komarck, who just keeps getting better and better. You really should nominate him for a Hugo some year, he’s way overdue.

So mark June 21 on your calendars, and place your preorder now with Amazon or your favorite local bookstore. Come meet Ramshead, the Rook, Tabby, SlimJim, Abigail the understudy, Sgt. Squinch, Ratboy and Flipper, Tinkerbill, the Infamous Black Tongue, Natya, Maggie Graves, Puff, Beastie, Dr. Dildo, and the other colorful denizens of Fort Freak and environs. Old-timers like Father Squid, the Sleeper, and the Oddity are also expected to turn up to enliven the proceedings.

And while you’re reading, we’ll be working on LOWBALL.

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Tags: tor, wild cards

22 and Counting

May 14, 2011 at 1:25 pm

No, not me. (I wish). Wild Cards.

I’m pleased to announce that I’ve just signed contracts with Tor Books for another volume in our long-running Wild Cards series of shared world anthologies and mosaic novels.

This will be the twenty-second volume in the overall series, which debuted in 1987. Wild Cards has outlasted all of the other shared world series of the 80s and 90s, and given rise to games, comics, television and film options, and other spinoffs. Over the years, our contributors have included such stars of SF, fantasy, comics, and television as Roger Zelazny, Melinda M. Snodgrass, Walter Jon Williams, Howard Waldrop, Chris Claremont, Paul Cornell, Cherie Priest, Carrie Vaughn, Daniel Abraham, Stephen Leigh, S.L. Farrell, and many many more.

Our working title for this one is LOWBALL. It will be a direct sequel to volume twenty-one, FORT FREAK (due out next month), chronicling the further adventures of the cops and criminals of New York City’s historic Jokertown precinct, Fort Freak.

If you’d like to know more about the Wild Cards series, check out these to excellent fan sites:

http://www.wildcardsonline.com/

http://captaincomics.ning.com/group/wildcards#

You can also begin at the beginning by picking up Tor’s trade paperback reprint of the very first volume in the series, WILD CARDS, available on Amazon or at your favorite local bookshop.

And remember — we can;t die yet, we haven’t seen THE JOLSON STORY.

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Tags: wild cards

For Wild Cards Fans

December 19, 2010 at 12:40 am

The Wild Cards series has been around since 1987, and to date we have published twenty books, with a twenty-first in the pipeline (FORT FREAK) and scheduled for June. Over that span, we have been with four different publishers, the latest being Tor Books. Tor’s “next generation” Wild Card books have done very nicely, thank you, and have brought in a lot of new readers, many of whom are now looking for copies of the earlier books.

Which is where things get complicated. With that long a history, some of the volumes are naturally much harder to find than others. The original twelve-volume run from Bantam can usually be found via ABE.books or ebay at reasonable prices, but the three volume “Card Shark” series that followed, published by Baen Books, is considerably more challenging, especially the third and concluding volume of the triad, BLACK TRUMP. If you do find it, it will likely cost you a lot more than it originally sold for.

That being said, even BLACK TRUMP is easy to find compared to the two hardcover originals published by iBooks when they brought the series back after a seven-year hiatus — DEUCES DOWN, a typical Wild Cards book with stories by various hands, and DEATH DRAWS FIVE, John Jos. Miller’s solo WC novel. DD5 was published only one week before iBooks went bankrupt and closed up shop. As result, to the best of our knowledge, only 600 or so copies ever got into the bookstores. (Was that the total print run, or are there more sitting somewhere in a warehouse? No one seems to know, and there’s no one left at iBooks to ask). In the years since, and especially after Tor and INSIDE STRAIGHT kicked off the second coming, demand for the book has steadily risen, along with its price. It has become the Holy Grail of Wild Cards collectors.

Well, I can’t help those of you who want a copy for your collection — but now at last there is an answer for fans who simply want to READ John’s novel. Brick Tower Publishing acquired many of the assets of iBooks in the bankruptcy, including the rights to both DEUCES DOWN and DEATH DRAWS FIVE, and they have released an ebook version of DD5 for Kindle. You can buy it here http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Cards-Death-Draws-ebook/dp/B003HNNIBA from Amazon… and most likely it can also be found from other Kindle retailers.

(The Kindle release did have some initial problems, as you can see from the Amazon reviews. Defective copies were distributed, which did not open. However, I am reliably informed that these problems have been fixed, so you Kindle folks out there will get a readable copy).

So… those of you who would like to fill in the last gap in your Wild Cards reading, ask Santa for a Kindle this Xmas. Or else wait another decade or so till we get around to reprinting this one. It was volume seventeen in the series, after all, and Tor has just released its reissue of volume one.

And as long I am talking about John Jos. Miller (who used to be John J. Miller in the early days of Wild Cards, but had to change his name so people would stop confusing him with John J. Miller of NATIONAL REVIEW, and John Jackson Miller the comic book writer), I should also plug ACES & JOKERS, the latest supplement for the Wild Cards RPG, which John authored with Steve Kenson for Green Ronin.

ACES & JOKERS is now on sale at your favorite game store, and is also available direct from Green Ronin at their online store: http://www.greenronin.com/store/ A perfect Xmas gift for any gamer / superhero fan.

Oh, and for all John’s fans out there, I should also mention that he’s got a new gig, blogging about bad movies (and occasionally a good one) for a new film blog called Cheese Magnets, where he is part of rotating cast of crazed and masochistic cinefiles. JJM and his fellow Cheese Magnets are brave people. They watch this crap so we don’t have to! But the blogs are a lot of fun, and will tell more than you ever wanted to know about some flicks that truly have to be seen to be believed (but not by me, John knew the job was dangerous when he took it).

You can find Cheese Magnets at http://www.cheese-magnet.com

Have fun.

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Tags: gaming, wild cards

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Coming Soon

Wild Cards Optioned for Film

Coming to Comicon

Signing Tomorrow!

Wild Cards Times Two

Carrie Vaughn Writes Wraith

Meet The Rook

Come Visit FORT FREAK

22 and Counting

For Wild Cards Fans

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