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The new Spider-Man film starring Andrew Garfield is attracting a lot of attention lately. Be it the new suit, or the awkward pictures of said suit, everyone is talking about it. One thing that hasn’t been mentioned as of yet is what will the new film be called? Well now, thanks to the Hollywood Reporter, it can be told. The title for the Spidey franchise reboot is officially, Drum roll please!! 
The Amazing Spider-Man. Which is a great title, it was rumored to be the original working title for Spider-Man 2, and It's great they decided to use it. It still says “Spider-Man” without having the same name as the first Raimi movie. Also included is a new image of the full suit. UPDATE: Now with ultra hi-res picture.

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This article was written by Philip Athans. I found it very compelling and wanted to share it with all our DCR listeners.

If you’ve been even dimly aware of the world around you for at least the last decade or so, you’ve probably heard the term “intellectual property” bandied about. If you haven’t, or aren’t sure what it means, an intellectual property, as defined by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) “relates to items of information or knowledge, which can be incorporated in tangible objects at the same time in an unlimited number of copies at different locations anywhere in the world. The property is not in those copies but in the information or knowledge reflected in them. Intellectual property rights are also characterized by certain limitations, such as limited duration in the case of copyright and patents.”

Think of it this way: Star Wars was a really cool movie released in 1977. Add to that five more movies, Clone Wars, Force Unleashed, all those books for kids and adults, comic books, action figures, and so on, and Star Wars is an intellectual property—and what some corporations would refer to as a “global brand.”

In more and more instances as everyone from filmmakers to video game studios look to the success of brands like Star Wars or Harry Potter, there’s a sense that everything is more than the limits of its initial incarnation. Every movie, book, or game is at least a potential intellectual property.

For about the last decade and a half I was tasked with helping to maintain and develop a number of successful, long-running intellectual properties. Part of my job was to look far beyond each individual book or game product and both back over the existing canon and forward toward the lasting implications of every decision. Two of the most successful properties in the Wizards of the Coast (via TSR) portfolio are the Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance settings. To me these have been, for years, two sides of the same coin.

Both are long-lived, successful properties, sub-brands of the Dungeons & Dragons game, that have been brought to life in a number of media from pencil-and-paper role-playing games through best-selling novel series, and on to video games, animated films, comic books, etc. But what separated them, at least in my mind, is the initial approaches from which they were born.

For me, Faerûn (the Forgotten Realms setting) was a world created first, and characters and stories were added later. Krynn, meanwhile, was a setting created for the original Dragonlance Chronicles novel and D&D adventure module trilogy, and was further developed only in the service of a continuing series of sequels and prequels.

I’ve seen other properties take both approaches. The larger Star Trek IP grew out of the original TV series, so is similar to Dragonlance. World of Warcraft is a setting created to house your MMO character, and is open to a continuous stream of new content to keep you paying your subscription fee. In that way at least it’s like the Forgotten Realms, right?

If for nothing else but affirmation, I went to the fonts of all (or at least most—if I don’t qualify that at least a little, Jeff Grubb and Margaret Weis will kill me!) FR and DL wisdom: Ed Greenwood, creator of the Forgotten Realms setting; and Tracy Hickman, co-creator of Dragonlance.


“I agree with this assumption,” Ed Greenwood told me. “I know that the Realms was created with this intent, because I’m its creator and deliberately took this approach.”

But Tracy wasn’t as willing to let me off that easy. He told me he wasn’t sure my assumption, “is entirely accurate in the case of Dragonlance. It is true that the story was the foundation of Dragonlance and came out of the personal desire of both my wife [Laura Hickman] and myself to use role playing games as a medium of storytelling. You have to remember that at the time adventure games were largely of the ‘kill the monster, take its treasure, buy more weapons to kill bigger monsters’ variety. We wanted to introduce meaning into gaming through story.

“In practice, however, it became a ‘chicken and egg’ sort of issue. The game was being developed ahead of the story—which actually adversely affected the story itself. It wasn’t until we started writing story ahead of game . . . during the break between Dragons of Autumn Twilight and Dragons of Winter Night . . . that things actually smoothed out.”

Still, I think when you look at the relative timelines at work, my basic assumption bears out.”

Ed Greenwood elaborated: “[The Forgotten Realms world] began as a ‘shared setting’ for individual fantasy short stories I was writing (at the age of six, so none of the tales are, ahem, ‘classics’) in the same way as Fritz Leiber’s later Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser stories were then being published in (the Ted White era) Fantastic magazine, which I was then reading as issues appeared: Episodes centered on recurring characters (in my case, the fat, aging, wheezing swindler of a merchant, Mirt the Moneylender) that happened to all be set in the same world. [The world itself] was ‘in the background’ to the reader of just one story, but someone who read them all would over time learn more and more about the setting, and hopefully begin to enjoy and anticipate based on what they ‘knew’ about the imaginary setting.”

And at risk of making the eternally youthful Ed Greenwood feel old, I should point out that that was quite some time ago, especially in relation to Dragonlance’s comparatively brief bout with growing pains.

“By 1967 . . . I had hit upon the name and concept of ‘The Forgotten Realms,’ ” Ed went on, “and could see more of the setting. I was also following other characters besides Mirt. The results are in print, as the short story ‘One Comes, Unheralded, to Zirta.’ (printed in the collection The Best of the Realms, Book II: The Stories of Ed Greenwood, Wizards of the Coast, 2005)

Both FR and DL have lived a very, very long time and feature major best-sellers, so I won’t bother trying to choose sides, and make the case that one strategy is inherently better than the other, but still I felt compelled to ask both Ed and Tracy which approach they thought made for a better, more interesting property from the point of view of an author spending decades in the same world.

Ed Greenwood was “heading towards something I think is a major flaw, from the point of longevity, for a world that’s being used for games or collaborative and shared-setting novels, over time, as opposed to being the private playground of just one author: If the world is built around a single big epic, it can be too ‘narrow’ in scope to comfortably tell other satisfying tales. Or to put it another way: If the root tale of the setting is too ‘big,’ involving heroes who save the world, what do you do for an encore? Save it again?”

That got me thinking about my previous comparison of Dragonlance to Star Trek, and I’m finding myself questioning the validity of that comparison. Though the “world” of the Federation was created as a back-drop for the adventures of Captain Kirk and his intrepid crew of space explorers, the episodic format of the series required that that future universe grow with each new adventure, and to guarantee that there was something worth watching next week, the universe—the IP—of Star Trek had to remain open to new conflicts and challenges.

But it was still mostly about Kirk and crew, like Dragonlance is still mostly about the Heroes of the Lance. But it’s not entirely that simple, as Tracy Hickman points out:

“Story is the universal conveyor of meaning. Properly deployed story in game settings extends the game experience beyond the rules and the setting into the realm of change, growth and life application. I think it is a mistake to fixate on the specific and more tangible elements of the setting; one needs to have a grasp of the overall tone and message that a ‘property’—whatever that is—conveys to the reader. Dragonlance isn’t meaningful to readers because it has dragons and lances. It’s meaningful because it conveys a certain attitude, viewpoint, promise and meaning. The same is true with Forgotten Realms. I don’t think it is a question of approach . . . I think it is a question of deep content that is found beyond the words and the rules.”

Leave it to Tracy Hickman to hit the intellectual property nail firmly on the head with those eleven words: “deep content that is found beyond the words and the rules.”

And a successful property requires care and feeding. I always described myself, in my roll for some years as the Forgotten Realms line editor at Wizards of the Coast, as a “shepherd.” FR was only partially and only temporarily under my care. Like a doctor, my first responsibility was to do no harm.

Ed Greenwood feels that “it’s important to emphasize that the success of either approach is in how they’re handled, not the inevitable result of flaws and strengths in one approach versus the other.

“It’s certainly easier,” he went on, “if multiple creators are at work in [a shared setting], to tell different stories centered around different characters—and because writers are all individuals who tell stories in different ways, the collective result will inevitably be richer than the work of one writer. However, there may well be (and usually is) a cost in coherency and consistency.”

To me, this is where a good, responsible, creative IP management team comes in, with or without a strong central manager in the form of an editor, an empowered creator, or what TV producers call a “show runner.” Somewhere, that coherency and consistency that Ed spoke of has to be contained in some kind of document. If the secrets of what makes the property the property exist only in one person’s head, or in any other form that cannot be readily shared, disaster is the only possible result. The nature of the Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance D&D campaign setting game products—detailed encyclopedias for each world, in multiple volumes—were extraordinarily helpful, but other properties will only have those “bibles” in the background, available to writers, producers, editors, etc. And woe, and I mean woe, to anyone who tries to manage even the least complex IP without them.

“A property gets too big for any one person the moment they haven’t time to enjoy doing a good job on published works associated with that property, or products are licensed that they can’t themselves create with the same skill,” Ed Greenwood said. “I can draw, but not well enough to produce the gorgeous painted covers I want on Realms novels. Nor can I create lunch boxes well enough to produce a line of Realms lunch boxes without holding up all Realms products while I learn how. The moment that happens, the ‘too big’ moment has been reached.

“Before that moment happens, a team should have been developed in which trust is paramount (regardless of the inevitable creative tensions), and a shared vision (and creators’ rules, such as who has the ultimate decisions and so on) settled upon, so the fights can be about creative details (i.e. benefiting the setting) and not about turf, power, office politics, personal enrichment, or anything else.”

Tracy Hickman: “I believe it comes down to respect and trust. No single person can write and control every single aspect of a project this large. In the 1970s or even early 80s a single person could sit down and write the code for a computer game. Now, it requires a huge staff and a budget equivalent to a movie to produce a computer or console game. The same is true of any large gaming IP.

“But I believe it comes down to how you control the product. I believe that management of continuity should be like holding a bunch of marbles in your hand. If you squeeze too tightly—try to control every aspect of the continuity or generate it yourself—then the marbles start flying out between your fingers and you lose your marbles. If you open your hand and let everyone working on the property do whatever they want then you lose any structure, direction, or focus as everyone does their own thing. Again, no marbles.

“But if you give a product a vision, a direction and a structure within which everyone can explore their own ideas . . . then you don’t have to sweat the individual details because everyone being on the same page and within the same structural parameters of the unified vision.”

I’ll boil it down to what I’ll call Phil’s First Rule of Intellectual Property Management: Write everything down. Which then leads to Phil’s Second Rule: Read what you just wrote, and read it again and again, especially when you don’t think you have to.

Ed Greenwood has rules of his own:

“Good property development looks down the road and anticipates.

“Always apply my base design principles for the Realms:

“1. Don’t blow up the moon (this is Jeff Grubb’s wording, but I already had that same idea; ‘don’t break the toys you find when you arrive’ was the way I put it). This stops one creative project or person from wrecking the entire show, however unintentionally or for ‘good’ reasons.

“2. For every possibility you close off, put three in its place (so if you tell the reader where the lost princess went and what happened to her, you also need to subtly put three new mysteries for them to chase into the Realms). This avoids bleeding the setting of life and ‘ending the story.’

“3. Entertain all ideas brought to the table, but make sure you turn them all on their heads to see if they work better twisted in an unintended or unforeseen way. This is where new blood and energy comes from.”

When I asked Ed what he might do differently if he had an opportunity to go back in time to the very inception of the Forgotten Realms world, he went back to the subject of who is in control, and to what degree any one person can be in complete creative control of a bigger, more complex property: “I would have kept some measure of creative control over the world, however short-lived, by accepting that offer to become a TSR staffer ‘in charge of’ the Realms. Not to stop the various designers going wild with the stories they wanted to tell, or ‘stay on top’ so the best selling novels were mine, but to avoid inconsistencies and misunderstandings.”

Tracy Hickman had a similar, if a bit more philosophical answer:

“I suppose it is tempting to think I could have insisted on having more control over the setting and its continuity but that would not be right. Dragonlance, whatever it became, was more than just my vision—for good or ill it became what it was because of the influence of countless designers, writers, and production artists of all kinds down through the years. I may be the father of Dragonlance but children always grow up and never in the ways their parents expect of them.”

So here we have two similar settings, indelibly linked, if not at first, to the Dungeons & Dragons game, that started in very different ways and have both been around longer than some of the younger authors—and at least two editors I know—have been alive. I had to ask, then, how did they live this long?

Tracy Hickman blames you: “Every day I acknowledge the fact that longevity in a product is not something that I do, but is measured entirely by the actions of our audience. We provide them with our best efforts—longevity is a measure of their reading our words or playing our games. That is action on the part of the audience.”

Ed Greenwood has a similar feeling in terms of the fans’ desire to keep exploring the Realms. “Some gamers decry the endless stream of Realms products or the masses of background detail,” Ed told me, “but the point is that for decades, far more gamers have lapped it all up, cried for more, and are still crying for more. Anything we’ve explained in detail has been discussed, argued over, and analyzed in depth. Anything we haven’t explained has been speculated over and demanded, repeatedly. Anything, from small details of passing fashion to the fates or mysterious pasts of minor supporting characters.”

And both IPs are still going strong, so what of the future? Successful intellectual properties have a way of outliving their creators, and certainly outlive the occasional editor or two.

According to Tracy Hickman: “Whenever new people coming into something like Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance, the first thing they want to do is ‘fix it’, ‘change it’ or ‘make it better.’ It’s natural for new people to want to make their mark on something like this and, in truth, I wish they would. Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms both have to be living, breathing and changing things, evolving if they are going to survive.

“The problem is that too often new people coming into something like this have no real understanding of the history of a property like this or its evolution over time. They don’t have a grasp of the foundations on which it was all built in the first place and only an obscure notion of what the IP is ‘about.’ We were pioneers in our day trying to figure out how to merge story with games. We made a lot of mistakes and we learned from them. We certainly learned more from the mistakes than from our successes. And over time we came to understand what ‘Dragonlance’ was about in the meta-sense.

“What I would hope for in the next generation of developers is that they would take the time and the opportunity to learn what made Dragonlance ‘right’ in the first place—its development history and original vision before they put their hand to changing it. If there has been a consistent problem with Dragonlance in particular, it has been that new people coming into the product ignore the foundation, vision and roots of the product and, in doing so, keep having to learn the lessons that have already been hard won by those who went before them.

“So, I suppose what I would most value in those who come after me is a respect and understanding of the great work that so many other people have done before them.”

Ed Greenwood’s sentiments were basically identical: “I most value the ability to ‘think Realms,’ and express it. In other words, to respect what has come before and mesh with it, treat the Realms as a real place, and make all changes and developments seem to be part of the unfolding history of this real world known as the Realms, not something tacked on or jarring with what we’ve already seen in print, or ‘it’s not a change; it’s always been this way, what you read before was wrong.’ To take that latter route would be disrespectful to the creators who came before and to the readers and gamers who already use and love the setting, because they are made to feel duped, or less brilliant than the new guys on the block because they loved and identified with something that is now being ‘improved’ or ‘fixed’ or worse, openly sneered at.

“I most value the capacity to love, and express that love, in people who create in worlds I’ve created, or game or read in those worlds. What goes around, comes around: love, and the love comes back to you.”

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For many of you out there I am sure it is no surprise that I am super excited to finally see the trailer for the Green Lantern movie.  With so few pictures coming out and the horrible Entertainment Weekly cover that just made the suit look well rather dumb in my opinion.  I was geeking out over the fact that DC was finally goingt o push out a movie that was Superman or Batman.  That they were finally going to take a chance one of their other line ups!

And after looking at that cover I was honestly put out and really doubting if I wanted to go see this movie.  I am a huge Green Lantern fan!  And I am so happy to see that the movie will live up to the character and that I am excited to see Ryan Reynolds playing Hal Jordan.  The suit looks amazing, you see a brief glimpse of Kilowog in the trailer as well.  I have posted the trailer here on this blog entry for all to enjoy! 
"In brightest day, in blackest night,

No evil shall escape my sight.

Let those who worship evil's might

Beware my power--Green Lantern's light!"

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If only every session of Encounters could go down this well, I think I would stop all gripes and complaints about 4th Edition forever. But before this tale begins, I would like to preface with a few details. First, the characters:

"D"- a halfling "assassin". Below average intelligence. By below, I mean *well* below. He pronounces his name "Caboose". Imagine Brick Tamland as a hobbit.

"Sinclair" - a moody, goth "cleric", who, for some reason I can't define, specializes in healing. Famed for K.O.'ing a guard with a stone, on her first try.

"Tristan Gray" - a human mercenary looking to start his own merc business. Never short on charm, skill, or gold. (That's my character, if you haven't guessed by now)

Now, the second part of the preface, the setup: The whole thing started when Tristan became so incensed over having his favorite shirt pierced by an arrow, he decided to bill the town, namely a man named "Benwick", for the repairs and cleaning. I will clear this up now, Tristan can be a butt hole at times. The three of us have been chasing down a banker named "Ronnik" (I think that's how it's spelled) for Benwick and remove an evil cult of Tiamat (a dragon god). We just got down a zipline leading to the clearing where we finally cornered Ronnik. Now that we have the setup, enjoy the rest of the epic comedy.

Everyone rolls their initiatives like normal. Both of Ronnik's henchman are killed without much fanfare. It was subduing him that things started getting pretty bonkers. Tristan tackles him down to the ground and attempts to pin him down. Ronnik is able to see through Gray's ruse of being much weaker than he looks and powers his way out. This is a common theme for Gray, as he is much more of a con artist than a mercenary, but I digest. As Ronnik gets to his feet, this dialogue happens:

"D" - "Hey buddy, look over here"
(The player, who shall remain nameless to protect the innocent, turns to our DM and says, and I quote:

"I do the Truffle Shuffle to distract him."

The remaining three of us, two players and the DM, stop what we're doing in shock. D then proceeds to do the "Truffle Shuffle".)

DM - "Ummm. Okay. Normally that takes a bluff check or..." (trails off, dumbfounded)

Gray - (looking at Ronnik, trying his best to be nonplussed by the spectacle) "To think, Ronny, he's on *my* team."

This whole time, Sinclair is, for the first time since the first session this season, without words. Ronnik is still distracted by the Truffle Shuffle (who wouldn't be?) so I decided to up the ante a bit and try executing a wrestling move I've seen done several times by A.J. Styles, but can't seem to pull off myself. Without wasting time getting back to my feet (that would be boring), I nip myself up, wrap my legs around his head, flip him head over heels and take him back to the ground. In wrestling vernacular, this is called a "headscissors". In D and D terms, many might call this a "waste of a turn". In Guy Named Joe terms, this is called "business as usual".

DM - "Wow. That is going to take one hell of an athletics check. That's sheer athleticism you're using. What's your current modifier?"

Gray - (out of character) "Plus zero".

DM - "Yeah. Well..."

Gray - (still out of character) "Do I have any chance of making it?"

DM - "Yeah, I don't see why not."

Gray - (OOC) "Sweet, I'll take it." (back in character) "Oh, no you don't!"

(A Guy Named Joe rolls his d20.)

I'll make it short, so I can avoid all the alarmed cursing that went on for several minutes, and the shock that followed that. Ronnik soon found himself back on the ground, flung over himself by a man who, by all accounts, never got back to his feet, nor actually tried to lift him with his hands. Look it up on YouTube, kids. Its a real move, I swear. But the story gets better from here. Ronnik once again gets up and attempts to flee the scene, but not before one last attempt at awesomeness by A Guy Named Joe. Gray springboards off the same table that has the still 'Shuffling "D" on it and tackle Ronny down.

Now, let me just say that karma, well, she can be a real downer. Two words come to mind at this point: Air Ball. Once things calmed down at the table (we spent the next 3 minutes or so laughing about the events so far), we just barely managed to subdue Ronny and revive Benwick's friends. Before Benny was to deliver his lines about "doing a great service" and "you will be honored" and stuff like that, the moment finally arrived: time to deliver the Invoice for services rendered. I had taken the time to physically draft up an invoice, just so I can savor this exact moment. I even signed it in character. Sinclair even signed it. Unfortunately, so did "D". I hand the bill to Benny, he looks at it for five seconds, and hands it back.

DM - (as Benwick) "Is this serious?"

Gray - "Sure is. I figured since you're a first time employer that we would waive our usual retainer..."

DM - (as Benwick) "No, the company listing."

Where I put on the invoice "Sign name here", "D" had traced the words "Sign name here", and scratched out the word "here" and replaced it with "hear". I look at "D" with a scowl that is crumbling under the weight of suppressed laughter.

Gray - "What the hell is this?"

"D" - "I didn't understand what you were trying to say. 'Sign name hurry'? You have terrible spelling Tristan."

Take a second and slowly read the last few lines. Can you spot how many things are wrong? If you answered 'everything', then you are not alone. Here's the real punchline to this whole train wreck. We escort Benny and his friends back to town, with Ronny in tow. Despite the embarrassing invoice, Benny decides to gives us the reward he planned on giving us before Tristan's favorite shirt was ever damaged. "How cool of him", I thought. The reward turned out to be about 20 gold pieces more than the invoice was made out for!

Let this be a lesson about modesty, listeners. It can be horribly overrated. Thank you for laughing alongside me today. As a reward, especially for those who have never seen "The Goonies", a visual demonstration of the "The Truffle Shuffle".
XOXO,
-A Guy Named Joe
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Motivational! 09/22/2010
 
Here are a few motivational posters to help you get through your day.  All brought to you by our super powered friends!
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Epic Failures!! 09/22/2010
 
On Monday nights show (September 20th 2010) we were talking about epic failure posters that are out there on the net and how funny and crazy some of these are.  Well one of our listeners reminded us of one simple fact.  We are on radio and though we can see you folks out there can not.  So here we are posting those Epic fail posters on the blog for your enjoyment!
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So Malak has been salivating at the bowl just waiting for a chance to get a glimpse of what Steve Rogers would look like in his full Cap attire.  With Captain America: The First Avenger rolling at full steam now, we were bound to get that sneak peak. Daily Mail is the first one to snag some set photos featuring our patriotic hero himself filming a motorcycle chase scene – from Agents of  H.Y.D.R.A.! The report states that that isn’t actually Chris Evans in the costume, but a stunt man, but it’s still pretty cool to see the costume “IRL” – and there are wings painted on his helmet/mask thing!

My first impression was that the costume looks a little cheesy, but sometimes things don’t translate from a basic set photo but that was more about casting complaints, not the costume . . . Also, if I remember correctly, the costume stems from something Steve Rogers is forced to wear to support the troops at a USO-type show – which he then modifies into the costume he continues to wear. So maybe this is the former?

In any case, pretty exciting to see! You can check out two of the photos below, and the rest of them along with a set report over at Daily Mail!
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So last night the three of us including Bane, Nate from Mountain West Paranormal, and the 14 year old engineering genius Jayden traveled from the Salt Lake Valley down to Pleasant Grove, UT to have the chance at a real scifi space mission. 
The Alpine School district is home to the Christa Mcauliffe Space Education Center.  They run space flight simulators for the kids to teach them about space flight as well as with private parties.  Author Jaleta Clegg is one of the many amazing people that work at this center and since meeting her she has always talked about this space camp/flight simulator she helps run.  Well last night we had the chance to fly a mission for the USS Odyssey.  Malak to command of the ship as its Captain, A Guy Named Joe was Number one.  I was at the Helm and running communications, Nate was tatical, Jayden was our engineer, and Bane did the scanners and everything else he could to help including transporter controls!
We had a great time flying the Odyssey through the mission, some of us were flying all over the place like a crazy mad scientist!  Others were overwhelmed with the responsibility of command!  In the end though we were floating in space with no Impulse or warp engines,  No Weapons,  Shields on Full, and infected with an Alien virus.  Thanks to the mad last second and I do mean last second, Bane literally transported an active torpedo in our ship that was one second from blowing up over to the enemy ship to save the day and defeat the eveil ghost ship!
At the end of the day we were able to say we hadn't died and defeated the mission.  If you haven't done this before and you are a huge Star Wars or Star Trek Geek you have to try this out!!
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This morning something amazing happened that at this moment I can't announce yet.  However I was thinking that wow!  We are a year and a half old and look at everything we have accomplished.  Back in December of 2008 when Malak and I sat down deciding to do a podcast based on a geek show we made some basic goals. 

1.      Learn how to do a podcast.

2.      Publish our podcasts.

3.      Get a website.

4.      Get on-air on a radio station.

We then jokingly set up the goal of interviewing Tracy Hickman and RA Salvatore.  Both amazing fantasy authors, which have made huge impacts on our lives both with gaming and reading.  For those of you that have been following since the beginning we have had our bumps and bruises along the way.  We have lost our hosting for our podcast and we went to a CON with no experience in interviewing people.  So we were able to get our first three goals out of the way and put out fifteen podcasts and then got online with CONDuit a large CON based in Salt Lake City.  CONDuit really changed our lives and the direction of the show in May of 2009.  We were pretty much the newbies on the block but everyone treated us like friends.  They sat us down with our very first interview.  Up until this point the podcast had always just been Malak and I.  So here enters in Howard Tayler.   Author and Illustrator of Schlock Mercenary and we knew nothing about him and boy did he let us have it!  Now don’t get me wrong Howard wasn’t rude in any way but he seemed a bit put our or annoyed that we didn’t know who he was.  After that we did an interview with Dan Wells a great guy that was a friend of Howard’s.  They do a radio show Writing Excuses and he said he enjoyed interviewing with us and they would do a plug for us.  Little did we know that this would be the catalyst that changed our fate forever.

You know how you watch a movie and there is that one pivotal moment in the movie that forever changes what happens from that point on? This was that moment.  We went in to this panel for writing excuses thinking that this would help get our name out there.  Well then that moment struck and the guys at writing excuses had forgotten their recording equipment.  We offered to help out since we had all of our equipment on hand at our table.  We rushed back got all of our equipment and the rest is history.  After that panel we had tons of interviews and we really grew stronger in our interviewing skills.  Then form there we were approached to do a live internet radio show.  Two months later we were live on-air with UtahFM.

Since then we have had many great experiences and met many great and talented people.  We have interviewed L.E. Modesitt Jr., John Brown, Dan Wells, Clint Johnson, Dan Willis, Larry Correia, Paul Genesse, Howard Tayler, Sandra Tayler, Jaleta Clegg,  B.C. Hailes, and Brandon Sanderson to name a few.  And finally after all this time in May of this year we interviewed Tracy Hickman a dream come true to be sure!  That interview will be posted as a podcast later today.

And now today I spoke with RA Salvatore and Bob gladly agreed to interview on our show.  We are now in the works of arranging an interview with WotC. 

Malak and I are ecstatic!  This last year has been a dream come true and has really helped to fuel our passion and desire for the show.  We want to thank all of our listeners new and old.  Please tell your friends and family about us!  We want to thank everyone that has given us a portion of their time to sit down and interview with us.  We are very excited for the upcoming GeeX Expo at the South Towne Expo Center in Sandy, UT and the upcoming to air interviews.  Brandon Sanderson’s Way of Kings book release party and the many more things we have coming in the future.

Who know what the next year will bring but if anything it will be a fun and wild ride!! 

-Revan
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I just recently finished reading John Brown’s novel Servant of a Dark God.  The cover art for this book is amazing and immediately demands your attention. The book is a good sized read roughly 492 pages.  From the start John begins to unfold the elements of the world around you progress deeper and deeper into the book.

 

Servant of a Dark God is about a land which is ruled by the Divines, magic exists and is tightly controlled. Only the Divines are allowed to wield the knowledge of Fire. 'Fire' consists of the spirit and life of a person and is the direct fuel for magic. Anyone who attempts to use Fire other than the Divines are labeled as 'sleth' or 'soul-eaters--dreaded figures thought to steal and consume the Fire of others.  

 

The novel largely follows Talen, but the book doesn’t completely follow any specific protagonist. The story is instead the story of two families in particular. Therefore, if Talen's an irritating protagonist (he did start out a little immature and annoying), the reader can look forward not only to his maturation (he does eventually), but also the thoughts and motivations of many other characters.

 

Brown's novel is unlike any story you have read before.  There are some traditional fantasy elements here and there, but I felt like I was embarking on a new adventure. And thus, I want to say first that I truly enjoyed my adventure.  John Brown's immense attention to detail is astounding. His world is immense and detailed--almost dauntingly so. It did take me awhile to pick up the exact structure of the government and whatnot (which was easier after I conceded and made liberal use of the 'Terms and People's section in the back of the book).

 

I found myself enjoying the book quite a lot and am looking forward to reading the next in the series: CURSE OF A DARK GOD.  So if you are looking for a great read, a new and interesting world to explore where the magic of the land is far different than any other fantasy book out there, a book with rich vibrant characters you will find yourself hoping against all odds for.  Then this book is for you! 

 

-Revan
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