I live in a yellow house, and other random thoughts

A young friend of our family has recently gotten into D&D. His friend and DM is, evidently, incredulous about the connection of our families. As in, "You know James Wyatt? You're kidding me." Evidently there were sentiments expressed along the lines of, "I can't believe you know James Wyatt. I can't believe we just drove past his house. I can't believe James Wyatt lives in a bright yellow house."

Yeah, well, about that.

See, we bought this house last summer. We tore up the carpet, ripped out the kitchen, and have been working (very slowly and not particularly steadily) to make the insides match the gorgeous setting of the house. We said last summer that we'd worry about the outside of the house this summer. Well, we did more work in the yard (reseeding the back lawn and trying to deal with the mole problem), but we still haven't gotten around to getting the house painted. That's a bridge we'll cross when we finally have our oven installed and can cook food that's not microwaveable. 

So for now I live in a bright yellow house. Maybe by next summer it'll be rich chocolatey brown. But it still won't look like a dungeon or castle. Sorry to say.

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At GenCon, Ed Greenwood told me how much he has enjoyed reading my novels. I made him put it in writing, so we can exploit his kindness for commercial gain. Here's what he said:

"Every James Wyatt novel I read is a delight—may there be many, many more!"

That was pretty much the highlight of my GenCon. Thanks, Ed!

You would think that would be incentive for me to actually get Dragon War finished. But here I am blogging instead of working on it.

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Apparently the Seattle Sonics are moving to Oklahoma. And in order to keep up with the edition change, they'll become the Thunder.

No, seriously.

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Overheard at the D&D table, a couple of weeks ago:

DM: "Actually, you find a woman with a pig."

me: "You don't have a mini for that!"

DM: "That's called roleplaying!"

Other Player: "That totally needs to go on your blog!"

This was the wonderful village of Kustarg, where Biggie and the Smalls (as we are now officially known—it's on Baredd's character sheet, right there under "Adventuring Company or Other Affiliation") met one happy citizen after another, all clutching small pigs under their arms, and all represented by the human farmer mini, which is a man with a pig.

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At work, I'm working a little frantically alongside three editors to get Player's Handbook 2 ready to go out the door, and it's an awesome book. My next character is totally going to be a . . . well, whatever class I happen to be working on at the time.

Once that's done, I'll be transitioning into a new position as Design Manager for D&D, which will mean a little less day-to-day hands-on work with our books, and more strategic oversight and, well, management of the design team. I'm looking forward to it! And I'll be especially glad to get PH2 and various other loose ends cleared out of the way so I can focus on the bigger picture. 

OK, back to Dragon War. I'm not going to post word-count totals, for fear of causing my editor heart attacks.