Preditors & Editors rolled out its yearly Reader Polls a couple months back and readers chose HAUNTED: 11 Tales of Ghostly Horror as the Best Horror Anthology of 2011!

HAUNTED really is a great book. My story “It Happened in the Woods at Night” sits alongside original tales by Alex Bledsoe, Richard Dansky, Chuck Wendig, Monica Valentinelli, and more. I highly recommend the book—and not just because I’m in it.

This is the second anthology I’m in to receive the honor, with 12 to Midnight’s Buried Tales of Pinebox, Texas being the first. I’m proud to be involved in both collections as they feature some great stories by amazing talent and doubly honored readers bestowed this award on both of them.

If you haven’t checked out HAUNTED, you can pick it up in print and pdf through DriveThruRPG.

Well, having a book that contains your work be nominated for an award isn’t a bad way to kick off the year.

HAUNTED: 11 Tales of Ghostly Horror is up for a Reader’s Choice Award over at Preditors & Editors! The book features a lot of great authors, including Jess Hartley, Georgia Beaverson, Chuck Wendig, and Richard Dansky. I’m honored that my story, “It Happened in the Woods at Night”, is included in such illustrious company.

Voting ends soon (January 10th) so please, if you’re a fan of the book, head over to the site and place your vote. (And don’t forget to verify your vote afterwards.) If you haven’t picked up a copy yet, you can grab it in digital or hard copy from DriveThruFiction.

Top adventure gaming website AdventureGamers.com has launched a thirty-year retrospective of the Top 100 Adventure Games. Jack Allin, the editor, had the enviable* task of compiling feedback from the staff and herding us cats as we wrote up our reasons for including certain games. I was honored to be assigned some of my all-time favorites to praise, and I look forward to reading what other writers had to say about their faves. As with any Top X list, I’m sure it will inspire plenty of debate as to why one game was ranked higher than another, why someone’s favorite wasn’t included, and why another was put on the list at all. For me, that’s part of the fun.

The countdown will be rolled out over the next couple weeks, starting today with the first batch, numbers 100 through 91. I encourage you to check out the list, read up on some classics, and maybe even find a couple (dozen) new games to try. Keep checking back from now until the new year to see more games revealed on our way to the top ten.

*I kid, Jack. I kid.

I posted this over at the official Streets Of Bedlam site but wanted to drop a note here as well:

Streets of Bedlam is fully funded!
Wow! Less than three days since the Kickstarter launched and Streets of Bedlam is fully funded! I am humbled and amazed. But there are still six weeks to go and plenty of reasons to jump on-board.

First: Kickstarter exclusives. Every backer gets credit in the book and folks who pledge $5 or more get turned into NPCs. Backers at higher levels get to influence future supplements, get immortalized as a major character in the Streets of Bedlam corebook, get archetypes only available through this Kickstarter, and more!

Second: New goals unlock new perks. I’m in talks with folks to bring even more freebies and exclusives to Kickstarter pledges. I’ll have more details as we get closer but I’m looking at unlocking new content at $5k, $8k, and beyond. Your support could benefit everybody!

Third: More money means more products. I would love to launch the Streets of Bedlam line in style and the more capital behind it, the quicker I can move on it. I’m looking to release district books, character packs, more scenarios for your group, fiction anthologies, and a graphic novel.

THANK YOU TO EVERYBODY WHO HAS SUPPORTED STREETS OF BEDLAM SO FAR AND TO EVERYONE WHO DOES SO IN THE FUTURE.

You are all awesome.

I am very excited to announce my next project: Streets of Bedlam: A Savage World of Crime + Corruption.

Streets of Bedlam: A Savage World of Crime + Corruption is equal parts neo-noir, pulp detective fiction, and a bit of the ol’ ultraviolence thrown into a cement mixer and poured on top a heap of nameless bodies no one will ever miss.

It’s a modern urban setting full of despicable people doing awful things in the name of God, money, politics, or to pay off old debts. The stories shine light on the dark places of the human heart but it’s about finding diamonds in the rough, about good people in bad situations. The heroes may have questionable means but they have good intentions.

Of course, you know what they say about good intentions.

To help get this new game on its feet, I’ve launched a Kickstarter where folks can help support the game, guarantee a lot of great artwork for the book, secure an early copy of the game, and even help direct the flow of supplements. If you have any interest in ultraviolent crime roleplaying, visit the Kickstarter page to learn more and pledge your support. Check out the video below to hear about the game directly from me.

If you can, please help spread the word! Kickstarters live and die by word-of-mouth and your help means the world to me. Thank you!

I’m happy to announce that I will contributing to Clint and Cassie Krause‘s upcoming colonial America folklore RPG Don’t Walk in Winter Wood.

The official description:

Are you ready for a walk in the woods?

Don’t Walk in Winter Wood is a storytelling game of folkloric fear. Players take on the roles of hapless villagers who must enter a legend-haunted forest and uncover its sinister secrets. The game uses simple rules and a unique narrative style to help you create spooky stories with your friends. It includes:

Legends of Winter Wood: The dark folklore surrounding Winter Wood and its neighboring village.

Game Rules: Easy-to-learn rules designed to be playable around a campfire. Recommended for 2-6 players in search of the willies. Playing time averages about 2 hours.

Advice: Tips on running games of folkloric horror, building your own scenarios, and creating a memorable, spooky atmosphere.

Scenarios: Three ready-to-run scenarios set in Winter Wood. Desperate villagers strive to save a girl hexed by a long-dead witch in The Curse. A mischievous children’s dare leads to an encounter with The Strangers. Rumors of a skinchanging beast haunt the village in The Witchery Way.

This is the revised and expanded second edition of the game featuring all new layout and artwork by George Cotronis, new legends, new rules clarifications, and new adventures. It is the definitive edition to add to your game library.

Originally released in 2004, the second edition of the game expands on the old ruleset and includes folk tales/story hooks from Jason Morningstar (Fiasco), Daniel Bayn (Wushu), Jeremy Keller (Technoir), Rafael Chandler (Dread), Daniel Moler (Red Mass), and me!

A Kickstarter for the project is still running for six more days. You can get in on the new edition early and secure yourself a shirt, a poster, and your name in the book. Check out the video below to see if this is something you might be interested in.

I hope you consider throwing some support behind the game. From what I’ve read, this is going to be a great game. I look forward to seeing the final product.

I’ve been pretty silent on here. Initially, I was busy putting the final touches on Among the Missing for Little Fears Nightmare Edition and then jumping right into the tenth anniversary edition of the original Little Fears (which will be out soon). On top of all that, I had an absolutely fantastic opportunity come my way that has me really excited and reunites me with a great team on an amazing project (and I’m not just spouting hyperbole).

I’m very happy to announce I’ve rejoined Human Head Studios as the Writing Production Coordinator for the upcoming open-world first-person shooter PREY 2. I’m in charge of wrangling the narrative and working with the team to deliver a consistent, engaging experience. I worked at Human Head previously, and I was there for the last eighteen months of their developing the first PREY. Already knowing the studio and fiction, as well as being part of the revision team on the first title’s script, made sliding into this role very smooth.

The job is an absolute blast. I can’t wait for you all to see what this game has in store.

You can check out the PREY 2 portion of the Human Head Studios website here. I posted some official images and the launch trailer below (language and violence warning on the video).

(Linked from GiantBomb.com.)

The second book in the Little Fears Nightmare Edition line came out today in PDF. This book was a long time coming but I had a lot of fun writing it and I think I came up with some pretty terrifying stuff. Here’s the cover and blurb:

You were a normal kid once with a normal life and a normal family. Then things changed. There was a moment when your life took a sudden turn and you stopped being a normal kid. You became a headline, a statistic, a picture on the grocery store window. A warning for other children.

Maybe you were taken, stolen by a monster, or maybe you simply disappeared.

Whatever happened, at that moment, you became one of the missing.

Book 2: Among the Missing is an expansion to the Little Fears Nightmare Edition game. In it, we talk about what missing children mean in the world of Little Fears, how kids become missing, what happens to them next, how they can help in the fight against monsters, and how they can be saved. Includes expanded GMC rules, new monsters, information about the World In-Between, and a full-length episode titled “The Long Way Home.”

If that sounds like it’s up your darkened alley, check out the official Little Fears website for details on getting your own hardcopy when it comes out or you can grab the PDF right now for just $10 from the good folks at DriveThruRPG and RPGNow.

As you may remember, I spent a good portion of my summer last year working with the fine folks at High Voltage Software on their upcoming Wii-exclusive shooter Conduit 2. After seeing a few delays (very common in the video game biz), I am happy to tell you that Conduit 2 hits store shelves today. If you have a GameStop local to you, you can pick up the Limited Edition of the game (which includes a 44-page art booklet as well as an exclusive suit of multiplayer armor and a fancy version of the game’s All-Seeing Eye) for the same price as the regular edition other stores have.

I can’t wait to tear open a copy and get playing. I really enjoyed the game while it was in pre-alpha development and can only imagine how good it must be now.

I’ve been a fan of point-and-click adventure games since I was a teen. Like a lot of my hobbies, I came to it through my brother who introduced me to games like Prisoner of Ice, Bad Mojo, and Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father. Once I had my own PC, my first game purchase was Sanitarium and I soon moved on to Grim Fandango and Blade Runner, two classics of the genre. I took a break from gaming in the early 2000s but I came back big time in 2005. Quickly upon my return, I rediscovered my love of point-and-click adventure titles. I fell hard for Syberia I & II, Still Life, Puzzle Agent, Trace Memory, Hotel Dusk, and many others. Right now, my computer’s desktop is littered with shortcuts to adventure titles from the new games on retail shelves and Steam to the not-so-new from my personal archive or Good Old Games.

My love of the genre is well-documented, as many online and face-to-face conversations attest. And that love is about to be even more documented as I have recently joined the world’s most popular site dedicated to my favorite genre, AdventureGamers.com, as a Staff Writer. My first article, a preview of the hotly-anticipated A New Beginning is up already, and I’ll be contributing as much as the site’s editor-in-chief Jack Allin and my schedule will allow.

If you dig adventure games, you should already be checking out AdventureGamers.com. My presence there, on the main page and in the forums, is just a bonus, right?

Right?