Max Brooks and Avatar Press have announced Legendary Television and Digital optioned the New York Times Bestselling Author Brooks’ Extinction Parade as an original property for development as a new television series. Brooks is closely tied to the development of the project and will be writing the Pilot episode.

“I only brought the idea to one company, Legendary, because they do the kind of quality work of which any writer would be proud.” stated Brooks.

“Max Brooks is a visionary with an incredible ability to tell stories that deliver a fresh approach to the horrors that haunt our nightmares. His work on Extinction Parade has been a stunningly rich tapestry of cultures in decline and a biting indictment of the perils of privilege. It will make the perfect television series to appeal to fans who have until now settled for thinly veiled soap operas parading as horror.” said William Christensen, Publisher of Avatar Press.

The Cthulhu Mythos Bundle at DriveThruFiction.com includes 9 eBooks, 1 Audiobook, and 1 Soundtrack with stories from Dennis Detwiller, Kenneth Hite, Greg Stolze, Robin D. Laws, Brian LeTendre, and more. As well as classic tales from H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and others who defined the genre.

The Bundle saves you about $22 off the regular price of these digital goodies (or 40%) and will only be available for a limited time at DriveThruFiction.com.

On Wednesday, April 9th, Gen Con has named its 2014 Industry Insider Guests of Honor [IIGoH]. A diverse group spanning the breadth of the game industry, IIGoH members participate in numerous panels, seminars, and discussions on topics in their field of expertise. Selected by a four person Advisory Panel, IIGoH member events provide numerous opportunities […]

DriveThruComics.com, the first digital comics retailer, announced today that it has teamed up with Rebellion and Mongoose to offer an amazing deal on Judge Dredd titles including comics, eBooks, and an RPG in support of the Hero Initiative charity.

“We’re happy to have this chance to help out a great cause like Hero Initiative,” said Matt M McElroy, Director of Publishing for DriveThruComics.com. “The Judge Dredd titles that Rebellion and Mongoose have in this Bundle are a must-have for fans new and old.”

The FIREFLY RPG puts you right in the middle of the action of the wildly popular television series. You and your Crew will trade bullets with fearsome bounty hunters, folk who want what you have, or varmints that try to put out the light of hope you represent. Keep your Browncoat banner flyin’ high and dodge Alliance cruisers. Side with the Alliance and track down riff-raff to haul ‘em in for justice. Explore your ‘Verse to find a crew, find a job, and keep flyin’!

RPGNow today announced that its shareholders have approved a definitive agreement for RPGNow to merge with DriveThruRPG. The agreement is a friendly transaction that will create a leading online marketplace in the tabletop gaming industry, outstanding in its ability to deliver ground-breaking products on a superior network while leveraging an international platform to create operating efficiencies and economies of scale.

“The combination of RPGNow and DriveThruRPG creates an exciting opportunity,” said Stephen Wieck, Chief Executive Officer, DriveThruRPG. “In addition to joining our two world-class companies, this is a compelling strategic, accretive transaction for our shareholders. The RPGNow team have created a business that, when combined with DriveThruRPG, has the foundation for remarkable future growth, and it will yield many synergies and benefits. We are looking forward to bringing our teams together to deliver the most innovative products and services and a superior customer experience in the highly competitive and dynamic marketplace within which we operate.”

The Fine Young Capitalists’ begins their first online project allowing any women to have their chance at creating a video game In 2011, the Video Game Industry took in over $16 Billion dollars but despite women representing 45% percent of the game playing audience they directed less than 2% of the Games. In combination with […]

Solaris is very proud to announce the follow-up to Tony Ballantyne’s critically-acclaimed novel, Dream London. “Tony’s Dream London was this poetical, phantasmagorical, satirical, and fantastical mash-up of a book, a real joy to read and a world I didn’t want to leave in a hurry,” said Solaris editor-in-chief Jonathan Oliver. “I’m delighted then that we’re […]

Angels are everywhere.

They are under the everyday world, behind it, beyond it. They are sent by the God-Machine to enact its will through time and space, delivering messages, building infrastructure, protecting some people, killing others. You were one of those angels…

But not anymore.

Now you are one of the Unchained, a fallen angel who defected to the human race. Yours is a world of false identities and clockwork conspiracies, stolen faces and hidden works of the Machine.

You cannot — will not — return to the sterile embrace of Heaven.

All you can do is reign in Hell.

The Flames Rising RPG Design series continues with Eric Staggs from Spectacle Publishing.

The Darkest Age is a Horror RPG set in a grim, alternate history. Enter the gritty and dangerous world of Europe in 1350, as an unusual strain of the bubonic plague ravages the countryside and those afflicted don’t just die. Faced with extinction, the people of Europe are forced to survive in any way they can. Characters face death, disease and the myriad undead, as well as cannibals, xenophobic city-states, and religious strife in an unending battle for the resources that mean survival.

Eric tells us about his process of creating the game.

Valiant Entertainment is proud to announce that it has partnered with Catalyst Game Labs to produce role-playing and tabletop games featuring Valiant’s award-winning library of comic book superheroes. The partnership will lead off in mid-2014 with the release of the Valiant Universe RPG—Valiant’s first-ever role-playing game, designed for the Cue System (the Origins and ENnie awards-nominated system first published in Catalyst’s 1950s Rockets/Rayguns/Robots RPG, Cosmic Patrol). Subsequent releases, spotlighting a wide array of Valiant properties, will follow in 2015 and beyond.

The edge between superhero and villain has never been sharper. In the Valiant Universe RPG, players will immerse themselves in a dark and gritty world where every mission and every battle has deadly consequences. Whether playing X-O Manowar, Bloodshot, Shadowman or even the all-powerful Toyo Harada—or any of dozens of characters—Valiant’s most fearless heroes will unite for the first time in a roleplaying game, allowing you to join their stories and create new ones! Whether you’re a longtime fan or brand new to the Valiant Universe, this is the only source you’ll need to bring Valiant’s leading characters to life in a fantastic superheroes setting!

Since 2003, FlamesRising.com has supported first-time novelists and veteran authors through our interviews, reviews, and excerpts. Our chapter previews, which are hosted with permission, are one of the most popular features of our website.

If you’re an author (or publisher) seeking an outlet to host your horror, dark fantasy, or dark science fiction excerpt, we invite you to join FlamesRising.com. Since we are a website, it’d would be helpful if you saved your excerpt in a format conducive to the web. To add your preview to this feature on our site, please review our Submission Guidelines and use the Contact Us page.

To coincide with the 200th anniversary of the birth of Edgar Allan Poe, this anthology celebrates the depth and diversity of one of the most important figures in literature. Compiled by multi-award winning editor, Ellen Datlow, it presents some of the foremost talents of the genre, who have come together to reimagine tales inspired by Poe.

Sharyn McCrumb, Lucius Shepard, Pat Cadigan, M. Rickert, and more, have lent their craft to this anthology, retelling such classics as “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Masque of the Red Death,” exploring the very fringes of the genre.

Don’t embrace the darkness. Fear it.

The Gothic is the most enduring literary tradition in history, but in recent years friendly ghosts and vegetarian vampires threaten its foundations. The New Gothic is a collection of short stories which revisits the core archetypes of the Gothic – the rambling, secret-filled building, the stranger seeking answers, the black-hearted tyrant – and reminds us not to embrace, but to fear the darkness. A dozen tales of terror fill this anthology including an original, never-before-seen story from the godfather of modern horror, Ramsey Campbell.

Flames Rising is pleased to present a selection of excerpts from this collection.

It’s sold more than 150,000 copies worldwide since 2009 and spawned its own genre of ‘Godpunk’; now the best-selling Pantheon series draws to a close with James Lovegrove’s Age of Shiva!

The latest stand-alone title in this action-packed military SF series brings you a world where the multitude of Hindu gods hold sway and a simple comic book artist finds himself trapped in the middle! Zachary Bramwell, better known as the comics artist Zak Zap, is pushing forty and wondering why his life isn’t as exciting as the lives of the superheroes he draws. Then he’s shanghaied by black-suited goons and flown to Mount Meru, a vast complex built atop an island in the Maldives. There, Zak meets a trio of billionaire businessmen who put him to work designing costumes for a team of godlike super-powered beings based on the ten avatars of Vishnu from Hindu mythology. The Ten Avatars battle demons and aliens and seem to be the saviours of a world teetering on collapse. But their presence is itself a harbinger of apocalypse. The Vedic “fourth age” of civilisation, Kali Yuga, is coming to an end, and Zak has a ringside seat for the final, all-out war that threatens the destruction of Earth.

Don’t embrace the darkness. Fear it.

The Gothic is the most enduring literary tradition in history, but in recent years friendly ghosts and vegetarian vampires threaten its foundations.

The New Gothic is a collection of short stories which revisits the core archetypes of the Gothic – the rambling, secret-filled building, the stranger seeking answers, the black-hearted tyrant – and reminds us not to embrace, but to fear the darkness.

A dozen tales of terror fill this anthology including an original, never-before-seen story from the godfather of modern horror, Ramsey Campbell.

Monsterhearts should come with two warning stickers. The first is “Warning: This is a game for mature gamers and deals with adult themes.” It doesn’t have this because that sort of warning fits the Book of Erotic Fantasy rather than a genuinely mature take on the subject matter. It has lead to some of the most intense and immersive experiences I’ve ever had roleplaying, but I refuse to play it with my main tabletop roleplaying group.

The second is “Warning: This game can go into uncomfortable territory. Discuss expectations and respect boundaries.” It doesn’t have this, and Monsterhearts is the only game I’ve played that’s imploded when it has become clear that one player doesn’t know the meaning of the word “consent”. Better there than in real life.

So what is Monsterhearts? Monsterhearts is based on the Apocalypse World rules and claims to be about “The messy lives of teenage monsters”.

R.A. Salvatore’s New York Times best-selling saga continues as Drizzt Do’Urden and the Companions of the Hall join forces in an adventure filled with drow intrigue, the likes of which have not been seen in Salvatore’s work since the hugely successful the War of the Spider Queen series.

With faithful friends by his side once again, Drizzt Do’Urden returns to Gauntlgrym, to find and turn Pwent, Bruenor’s loyal shield dwarf, from vampire back to mortal once again. But not only do he and his cohorts face a perilous journey through the Underdark and the dangers of the undead that lie within, but in order to do so, they must face a colony of drow and their leader, who would like nothing better than to see Drizzt Do’Urden dead.

Flames Rising is pleased to offer a short excerpt from this new Forgotten Realms novel from Wizards of the Coast.

Dreams of the Red Wizards

Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle chronicled the efforts of the Red Wizards to unlock the power of elemental nodes located in an abandoned temple dedicated to the Princes of Elemental Evil. A gate to the Nine Hells lay open for some time, spewing devils and smoke. The heroes who closed the gate could not know it then, but amid the chaos of battle, another threat emerged.

Dreams of the Red Wizards: Scourge of the Sword Coast, by Tito Leati, Matt Sernett, and Chris Sims, is the adventure for Season 17 of Encounters.

Tear down the tyrants!
Paint the streets with the blood of Princes and Archbishops!

With Anarch domains increasing their hold over new territories every night, the vampiric Kindred can no longer afford to consider the Movement an unruly mob of wayward childer. As the doomed tactics of the past have made way for a sleeker, wiser Anarch Movement, the nights are numbered for outmoded elder vampires and their weak blooded lackeys.

Anarchs Unbound takes the bomb-tossing, rabble-rousing vampire revolutionaries of the Anarch Movement and updates them as one of the most energetic and fast-growing sects, gaining ground as they use technologies and mortal agents to advance their agendas in the modern nights. With the Movement revitalized, the time is right to tell the stories of the Anarchs as they topple the old regimes and seize praxis with a promise of egalitarian rule and an end to the oppression of centuries best forgotten.