In the manner of an extended Goku montage, I need to build my writing strength so that I am prepared for the challenges ahead, which may or may not revolve around engaging in literary battles with alien lords or devil gods. That's what I'm hoping. Optimally I'll be able to stand in an open plain, gaze beyond the sky, and exhort them to face me.

This is my first time at a Gen Con and like Tycho mentioned, I am having a blast! Thornwatch is being demoed in the Lone Shark booth all day and the feedback I've gotten is super positive.

Do you want to know what's happening at PAX Dev on a daily or indeed hourly basis? Well, I have what you need.

I'm getting a lot of invigorated texts from Mike Krahulik, who, having stolen my birthright, is now delighting himself in halls reserved for heroes. He is currently marveling at its vasty size and at its alien ways. We go to a very specific convention now, a single convention that spans time and space, and whose apertures open and close according to an ancient calendar. There is a lot we don't know about your Gens and/or Cons.

Early Bird pricing for the show ends August 15th, after which it increases Five Dollars for both individual Day Passes and the Three Day. So, grab tickets today. Originally I typed "grab ticklets," but don't grab those, because they aren't real. Get tickets instead. We will not be accepting ticklets at the door.

It may be true that I did not explicitly mention any of the crucial data that would have created an informed comic strip BUT so much of communication is about the negative space and I'd think that as an artist or whatever you would understand that. Absence is presence. I heard that somewhere, and I knew it would annoy you.

I hope things are going well back at the office. I am sitting in the airport in Minneapolis right now, next stop Gen Con!

I realized something very important when I got the art back from this strip, which is that I hadn't like one hundred percent told him what I was going for with the Horses. I can tell you, though.

There's a few conventions I've been meaning to get to; I think I've said I was going to MAGFest a few times. I will someday. People seem to bloom when they talk about it, and I'd like to get some of that. But for years and years, Gen Con essentially defined what a convention was even though I'd never been to it and had no real way of learning about it, because it was just a picture I'd seen in a magazine. It wasn't simply an exemplar of the form, it was the entirety of the concept, moated between two deep parentheses.

August 6th, we're going back to a classic this year: a Table Tennis Tournament just like we used to do, only now instead of playing Ping Pong you're playing Ping Pong and changing lives. Not bad for an afternoon's work, eh?

I will be attending my very first Gen Con next week! I will be heading over there with the crew from Lone Shark games to talk about Thornwatch. We are coming up on the end of the design phase of this thing and it feels pretty great. We just recently had a meeting to discuss the size,shape and contents of the box. It felt like a huge milestone for me considering how many years I’ve been working on this game. I recently discovered the original notebook I used to design what I was calling Card Warriorz back then. I thought it might be interesting to share some of the earliest stuff I put down on paper.

I don't remember if there's a podcast for it exactly, it might have been after the fact, but somewhere in his rodent mind eleven o'clock in the morning constitutes an afternoonian span. It's devilry and/or witch-work; no doubt a data point in our species' tawdry decline.

I’ve spent the last couple of weekends wandering around my neighborhood with my phone out, collecting Pokemon. It’s seemed a popular past-time and a pleasant one. My usually quiet, keep-to-yourself suburban community has become a swarm of teens, adults and families buzzing around downtown Redmond, sharing smiles and hunting tips. And while I’ve spent the whole of this past week or so wearing some kind of yellow shirt (I’m a Hufflepuff, I have a lot of yellow), I found wearing the sample of our Yellow Team tee to be a neon call for pleasant conversation and fun banter.

Grand Admiral Thrawn is back, welcomed into loving embrace of canon, and I could not be more pleased. The younger iteration of myself liked him much more than the current revision, but the main thing is what it proves: that they aren't above boring into the years upon years of calcified work to haul worthies to the surface. They have an eye on it. Hopefully not all of it. Hopefully we can erect some tasteful shōji or something to obscure certain parts. You can tell from Panel Two where my own fantasies lie, in the voice Karen Traviss brought to the setting, a little more military and a little less mystic. Time will tell.

It seemed like a good time to take it all the way back, back in the day, with a podcast of the new Acquisitions Incorporated season we have promoted so vociferously. It was too fun not to do, and it's something I get asked about a lot at the PAX shows - essentially, "can I listen to the new stuff while i'm driving to work." Absolutely you can. The feed is here, so go for it! "Watch" the new season however you like, even if that includes not "watching" it per se. Big thanks to Erik Bronnum, Kiko Villasenor, Josh Price, and Jeff Kalles for making it happen. Super proud to work with these guys - official sub-interns, all.

James Patterson, as has been established, is a necromancer. And he has only begun his dark work.