Go to Boston! Go to Mars! Go Back to Camorr!

I Hope This Will Be a Revelatory Month | 7 April 2026

A cold April has settled over Western Massachusetts. Today the sky was a pristine blue and the sun was silver-gold and dry white flakes of snow fluttered down on green lawns. The nights are freezing, tree branches still empty, and I love it very much. I know summer has to come, I know the sun will assert itself, but these brief troughs between tundra and swamp are when I find this place the most beautiful.

News? News! Yes, have some.

My fellow Gollancz author and swordy stabby gritty sweary guy Joe Abercrombie will be coming to Boston on Monday, April 27th as part of his US paperback tour for The Devils. Joe and I will be doing an “in conversation” event at the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline, MA that night at 6 PM! All of this is being arranged by the fine folks at Brookline Booksmith, and tickets can be had here. Don’t pass up the chance to see two of fantasy literature’s wittiest and most respected stars in a rare double-appearance… but if you do pass up that chance, come see me and Joe instead!

Immediately prior to that event, Elizabeth Bear and I will be weekend guests of honor at Rising Phoenix Game Con in Milford, Massachusetts from April 24-26. We’ll be doing panels, interviews, and a signing. I will also do a live reading, and give a full-length version of my MURDER MURDER DEATH DEATH lecture! This seminar is a brisk, all-encompassing rundown of facts and misconceptions when it comes to unconsciousness, injury, death, emergency response, and body disposal, involving some lived experiences from my 11 years as a firefighter and medical responder. Many things a writer or game designer might want to know about the fragile human condition, including a lot of stuff I wish I’d known before I started writing my first novel!

Plus… I’ll be running playtests of two original games designed by yours truly.

Once upon a time writing prose was my break from writing gaming material, and since 2004 the situation has been reversed. I’ve been trying to claw back a little more room in my life for experiments in game design, and for the last few years I’ve been heavily focused on cooperative board games.

The first of these games is WE ARE RICH IN OPPORTUNITY. A new age dawns for humanity as a handful of bright, eager pioneers take up residence in the first colony on Mars! This tiny installation will eventually become the heart of a magnificent and ever-growing human presence on the red planet. Success will build on success! The names of these colonists will be immortal legends.

Or so everyone thought, until they landed. You see, they work for Sheldon Frim.

Sheldon Frim. The richest man in the world. Multi-multi-billionaire industrialist.

Also, a complete fucking idiot.

As it turns out, his Mars base is a semi-functional mess. His resupply rockets don’t always land safely. His much-touted FrimBots are barely capable of all the urgent exterior labor they were designed for. Worst of all, Frim is a feckless, petulant narcissist with the attention span of a middle-school dropout. Frim’s ongoing involvement in running the colony from earth is not merely an inconvenience— it could get everyone killed.

With few alternatives, the colonists have decided to fight back…

We Are Rich in Opportunity was first playtested at GenCon in 2023 and has gone through a few iterations since then. It’s meant to be irreverent and fast-paced, with an ideal session taking about 45 minutes if everyone knows the basic rules.

(We Are Rich in Opportunity splash art above is by the one and only Darren Calvert)

Additionally, I will also be running my first playtest of HAPPY HIVES. Happy Hives is an action-oriented reverse of Settlers of Catan in which players are basically xenomorphs trying to eat the human colonists that are attempting to terraform their home planetoid. You might also describe it as an attempt to make a faster, less complicated Spirit Island. Each player controls a hive of creatures with a unique starting power or resource; the hives must race to gain biomass and evolve new abilities while working together to contain a human incursion that progresses unpredictably every game. If the hives can’t hold back the space marines, next come the tennis courts and shopping malls…

Yesterday, Conversation Tree Press revealed the existence of its all-new limited collector’s edition of “Locke Lamora and the Bottled Serpent.” Only five hundred of these have been made; they’re spendy but also rather exquisite. This is a slightly expanded version of my two-part story from Grimdark Magazine, with a new foreword and afterword, as well as three original foldout illustrations by Even Amundsen, bringing Camorr to life in beautifully grotesque stylized glory.

Purchasers of certain previous volumes from Conversation Tree have first dibs on the print run, but all remaining copies go on sale for the public on April 9th. Copious amounts of information about the edition, as well as a number of pictures, can be found here. Each copy is signed by myself and the artist.

I have had to sit quietly on our plans for this edition for the last few months, but I’m glad the cat is out of the bag at last. Conversation Tree Press has been a delight to work with.

There’s other stuff I have to keep sitting quietly on for a while yet, but this is a month in which some proverbial beans are going to be metaphorically spilled. That’s all for now— hold fast and stay safe out there.

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