Sorry for the lack of posts; been a busy week!  Saturday was my birthday.  I spent the morning at the gun show.  Due to the pending house payment on Aug. 1st I was unable to go hog wild and get myself a bunch of new toys.  I picked up a few knick-knacks that were a good deal.  Later that afternoon we saw the new Batman movie with some friends.

Great flick, but I guess I don’t have to tell anyone reading this that as it has been all over the news for the last week.  Heath did a bang-up job; with due credit to the writers for giving him great material to work with.  Loved the Jokers ‘magic trick’ and his bit in the hospital dressed as a nurse!  As good as it was I am also stoked for the next installments; as we have yet to see the Riddler, Penguin, Cat Woman or Robin.  (And the Bat Cave has yet to make a full-fledged appearance either!) It seems Marvel, DC and others are starting to figure out the whole Comic Book Movie paradigm.

I just got some art back from Anthony and he continues to blow me away with his l33t i113ztr4t0r sk1llz! Worth. Every. Penny.

Played the second installment of Keep on the Shadowfell last week also.  We ran into a bit of a rule issue where on of the bad guys used a power that granted his allies temporary hit points. Several of the players thought that this would not apply to minions as they can be killed with one hit and have not real “hit point” total.  A quick search of the web indicated that they do indeed benefit from the temp hit points.  (Which is how I was leaning.)  We have one player who, for the second session in a row, has utterly failed to connect with his coolest daily power! Dude needs to buy some new dice or something.

I noticed an up-tick in sales thanks to the Christmas in July sale OBS ran.  The extra funds will go to paying Anthony for artwork.

My wife took the Basic Rider Course this weekend and is newly licensed to ride motorcycles! We went for a ride yesterday afternoon.  She needs a few more miles under her belt, so we will ride around the neighborhood and surrounding area for a bit before venturing forth onto the highways and byways on our fair state.

I got some more art back from Anthony yesterday; the cover for Adventurer Essentials: Iron Rations as well as this fellow:

He’s hard at work on some other images for me as well.

I am gearing up for my weekend NRA Instructor course.  It will be Sat and Sun all day; say 8-5ish.  Hopefully I will still be able to get some other work done at night when I get home from class.  There is a Point-Shooting class at a range not too distant; rifle and pistol, that is late next month I would also like to attend if the funds are available.  They want you to bring 400 rounds of rifle and pistol ammo each; so 800 rounds total; that plus the tuition for the course and it’s starting to get a wee bit expensive!

I just finished the audio book Pastwatch by Orson Scott Card.  I really enjoyed it.  Some aspects of Card’s writing I am less thrilled with, but every book of his I have “read” has been the audio version so perhaps it is a bit different listening rather than reading the prose.  That isn’t a complaint; he is quite a good writer and I would not hesitate to pick up a book from him, but some of the ways he goes about presenting ideas or topic in his writing I would maybe do differently.  But since he is a famous, wealthy writer who makes his sole living crafting words and I am a full-time computer guy, part-time RPG Publisher, part-time firearms instructor I may not have much room to judge.

There was an ice storm last night so all the local schools are closed.  My daughters event has been re-scheduled for next Friday.  Unfortunately I am also scheduled to attend the D&D Experience that night.  I have a feeling my daughter’s event will have to trump D&D; but I will be there Thursday for a game and I have the weekend open as well.

Still putting the finishing touches on this one; but I thought a peek at the new cover was in order:

Anthony hits another one out of the park!

So yesterday in the AM I sent Anthony an email asking him to do a cover for the long-awaited Black Tokyo project because I didn’t like the stock art cover I had put together a while back.  About an hour later he sent me a sketch asking for my opinion of it.  (I told him it had to be a PG-13 cover.) I made a couple of comments, and let him go to work.  When I got home last night from work, THIS was waiting in my inbox:

Wow.  Nuff’ said.

Tried to get some work done last night after I got home on some PDF releases, but my daughter seized my laptop for her homework.  Grrrr!  Kind of frustrating; I need to buy a second computer to keep my wife and daughter off mine.  So I painted some Warmachine figures instead.  I am knee-deep in a Khador faction, with some Menoth behind them.  I plan on having both factions ready for GenCon this year.  My daughter has some WHFB Dark Elves she is working on as well.

I got some artwork back from Anthony today for a project I have had forever.  The trouble is I had given the artwork assignment to two seperate artists, and they both dropped the ball and never did anything with it.  So I sent it over the Anthony and, as usual, he is doing a fantastic job!  The project is a Modern Arcana street gang called the North Side Spiders, very similar to the Mia Famiglia Lodovoco crime family relese we have already done. Check out some of the images:

Look for it soon!

Making some headway of several different projects. Chris Field and I had another productive conversation that lasted just long enough for my cell phone to die! I am in negotiations to acquire the publishing rights to another series of products that is going quite well. I am very excited about the way things are shaping up for the next year.

Sales are down a bit this month, as I suspect they are across the board since 4th edition was announced. But, I don’t think my sales are all that far off, and with three more days in the month I can’t complain at the way things are going. I am gearing up for November and hope to have a maximum number of releases in November.

Got a piece of artwork back from Anthony this weekend also.  Take a look at the Manhunter:

 I spent the morning cleaning the house up in preparation for my wife’s parents coming to visit.  I had the time to whip up three covers for some upcoming April releases.  Now I am off to fencing class.  Later tonight I think we are going to go see Blades of Glory; which looks really funny!  Anyway, enjoy the covers….

RPGNow has been down all day…I heard on the publisher forum they are having a DoS attack. Right after the credit card info hack hit the street. This can’t be good. DriveThruRPG is up, but half of the products have missing thumbnails so it might as well be down.

Had a server crash here at work, so that has taken most of my time yesterday and today. Got it fixed now, but need to re-install a bunch of stuff. Fun Fun.

Got a new piece of artwork back from Anthony. he’s hard at work on the long-awaited mob family for D20 Modern. The underboss:

Worked on the layout last night for the NeoWitch Guardian. That should be released either tonight or tomorow. I like that class; it has a lot of character to it, and the artwork nails it also.

Just got a batch of artwork back from Anthony, and as always he has done a masterfull job!  I put together several of the covers for some of our upcoming releases; and here is a quick pre-view!

The Mega-Feats book has over 120 new Feats, plus almost 30 ForgeBlood feats that allow you to create a brand new race of flesh and machine, plus some house rules.

The Neo-Witch is the Modern take on Witches.

The Prince of Doggs is your basic Werewolf-Rap star.

And the Tech. Update covers Nano-Robotic PAN’s than characters can have installed at higher tech levels.

My internet was working last night (So I did get to play Gears of War and Halo II!) but my FTP client is acting up..having trouble connecting from home and from here at work.  That is why the Lightweaver isn’t up on YourGamesNow; I haven’t been able to upload the file!  I’ll get that sorted out this weekend.

Here is a sneak-peek at our latest Dept. 7 Advanced Class.  We continue our Hero related theme and bring you the Lightweaver!

Coming soon from Skortched Urf’ Studios!