In this preview, FlamesRising.com is proud to present you with a preview of the new young adult novel LEGACY by acclaimed author Tom Sniegoski. LEGACY is about a boy who discovers his father was a superhero, and he now has to decide whether he’ll take up the mantle and become a hero himself.

Prologue

Twenty Years Ago

He could always see it in their eyes.

The look that said, Why would anybody put on a costume and fight crime?
He wanted to tell the poor slobs, If you have to ask that question, you’ll never know.
You’ll never understand.

The masked man, dressed in the tight-fitting costume of red and black, perched at the edge of an office building and surveyed the city sprawled below him.

Premium Ticket with Exclusive Access and Offerings!

Officials of the Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo (C2E2) have announced that VIP tickets will go on sale November 19, 2010 at 12 noon Eastern / 11:00am Central. There will be a total of 500 VIP packages available at $200 per package. “We want to make our VIP program simple and straightforward so the fan knows exactly what they are getting when they buy this awesome ticket,” notes Lance Fensterman, who oversees C2E2 and is Vice President of the Reed Exhibitions Pop Culture Group. “We are offering one package which includes some terrific benefits and provides great value for the customer who is seeking a truly special and unique experience at our show.” C2E2 is a new pop culture convention which is being launched by the organizers of New York Comic Con (NYCC). It will take place April 16 – 18, 2010 at Chicago’s McCormick Place Convention Center.

Super Genius Games (SGG) is proud to announce the addition of a new Genius to the team! Starting immediately Owen K.C. Stephens will be the Pathfinder RPG Development Manager for SGG. Owen’s role-playing contributions are legion, having contributed to the 3rd and 4th editions of Dungeons & Dragons, d20 Modern, The Black Company, EverQuest, Song of Ice and Fire, and Wheel of Time role-playing games, as well as the Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign setting. Owen is also author of the Advanced Gamemaster’s Guide from Green Ronin, the Guide to Absalom released by Paizo Publishing, and was co-author of Star Wars Saga Edition from Wizards of the Coast.

Heske Horror, creator of the critically acclaimed Cold Blooded Chillers indie horror series and award-winning Bone Chiller anthology, has released its anticipated apocalyptic anthology, 2012: Final Prayer.

What will go down on 12/21/12?

Extinction … Ecstasy … Or another Y2K non-event? Comic Creators from around the world share their creative interpretations!

Three Glories of the Most High PDFs available now!

The Exalts of the Unconquered Sun, Luna, and the Maidens of Destiny have always known that the Incarnae have had an interest in them, but what is really known about the Incarnae themselves? The “Glories of the Most High” series reveals many secrets of these higher powers, and a slew of new materials to use in your Exalted series.

A PDF-Exclusive Series Book for Exalted

The Glories of the Most High eBooks are available at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop.

FlamesRising.com is pleased to present an exclusive interview with Bob Salvatore and his son, Geno. R.A. Salvatore has written dozens of best-selling books such as The Ghost King, Road of the Patriarch and Highwayman. The Stowaway, the first in the Stone of Tymora series, is Geno Salvatore’s debut novel.

In this interview, we discuss the young adult series entitled Stone of Tymora which is co-written by Geno and R.A. Salvatore.

Spectrum Games is pleased to announce the release of Bloodbath Hotel, a whopping 139-page adventure for Slasher Flick. Written by Gregg Helmberger and Kim Foster, this adventure puts the players in the role of ghost hunters investigating a long-since abandoned hotel that was once very opulent. But when they start getting picked off one by one, the remaining characters have to figure out who – or what – is responsible. Will they escape with their lives intact or will they become the latest victims of the hotel?

Neoncon, a regional, multi-genre gaming convention, is proud to announce Gen Con LLC as the exclusive sponsor of GamesU 2009, the Social Games Unconference. Video game professionals have the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC) and GamesU serves the same purpose, but for the community of traditional, tabletop/social game developers and publishers. Already generating buzz across the industry, GamesU has all the earmarks of a “must attend” event for both established and aspiring game designers. Gen Con’s support of the GamesU launch is tremendous validation of the vision held for the event, now and in the future.

Considering I’m a huge fan of Fear Agent (Dark Horse), it stands to reason I’d be on the look-out for other pulpy sci-fi adventure “with stones”. Now I should mention right away that Mr. Phelps Space Detective is not as awesome as Fear Agent. I’m not saying it’s bad, though; oh, no, far from it. In fact, if you are looking for an action SF ka-boom fix, this should do rather nicely.

Mr. Phelps is, as the title suggests, a space detective. He also has a ship called the DeForrest (great name) and a side-kick / love-interest named Kat… who’s a cat. Well, a cat-person. Yes, a bipedal cat… person. Anyway, it all seems to make sense in the comic, which is full of space-faring adventure, explosions and people screaming in vacuum, greedy dudes named Jorge, an attack by clones, an odd device called a “hitchhiker” and lots of made up words like “skunc”, “frik’n scumlick” and “quarb”. In other words: Very, very fun.

Edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Kerrie Hughes, ZOMBIE RACCOONS AND KILLER BUNNIES is a collection of anthologies that explore the darker side of your favorite woodland creatures like raccoons, bunnies, snakes, bats and more! For this collection, the short stories range from humorous to gory and everything in between. Additionally, the stories explore multiple genres like modern horror and science fiction. Before we offer you a few samples of select short stories from this horror anthology, we’d like to highlight the titles in this book, which was published by DAW in October 2009.

FlamesRising.com is pleased to present an interview with author Thomas Sniegoski. Tom is a veteran author who has written for dozens of comics titles (BONE, THE SISTERHOOD), media tie-in novels (HELLBOY, ANGEL) and his original fiction (The Remy Chandler Series). Fans of Christopher Golden might recognize Tom’s work; the two have collaborated on a number of projects. Our first Girls of Gore article highlighted their character named Eve from The Menagerie.

In this interview, Tom Sniegoski discusses what he enjoys writing, monkeys and some of the challenges he faces.

September 19th, 2008. The Large Hadron Super Collider in Cern, Switzerland is about to go operational. Humanity is poised to re-create the very same conditions that resulted in the Big Bang and the birth of the universe. Physicist and Cern team member Kate Prosper notices something in one of the tests, a temporal anomaly with no reasonable scientific explanation. Meanwhile, truck driver Alain Murais would do anything to save his dying son, who is suffering from leukemia. But he’s out of money, insurance and time. Kate and Alain’s paths will end up on a collision course not only with one another, but also the mysterious Steward. Before the Day is over, no one will ever be the same…

There can be no doubt that, love him or hate him, Alan Moore is one of the greatest creative minds to ever grace the comics medium. His story-telling is so earnest, weird, kooky, slick and downright awesome all at once that it’s no wonder he’s one of the Greats. Now, I’m a Moore admirer myself, and I’m especially influenced by his earlier works; specifically Swamp Thing, Captain Britain and his many 2000 AD accomplishments. Sure, I suppose little things V for Vendetta, Watchmen and From Hell are what people mostly know him for, but I like to think his best work was with Mighty Tharg and his humble weekly newsagent-bomb 2000 AD. And with the galaxy’s greatest comic Marvelous Moore laid upon us mind-blowing wonderment-inducing things in the form of titles such as The Ballad of Halo Jones, D.R. and Quinch, his Time Twister tales, Abelard Snazz, and, of course, Future Shocks.

Review by Steven Saunders

Spectrum Games is pleased to announce the release of the Killer Collection, the very first hardcopy supplement for the Slasher Flick RPG.

The Killer Collection is a compilation of three supplements previously only released as PDF products, plus a brand new 24-page mini-supplement that will also be released as a PDF soon. That’s four supplements in one book!

It features CASTING CALL (offering 100 pre-made characters, each of which is completely customizable), HORROR ISLAND (A full length adventure that sends the characters to a remote island that isn’t as uninhabited as they thought), DELETED SCENES (Rules and information that was cut from the rulebook due to space limitations) and SPECIAL FEATURES (Yet more new material, including random character creation, new special abilities, Director’s advice and three ready-to-use killers that have several plot seeds each).

As part of our continued efforts to bring you the best horror content for Halloween, FlamesRising.com teamed up with Ryan Macklin from The Master Plan.

Ryan Macklin is a veteran podcaster, producing Master Plan: The People’s Podcast About Game Design, The Voice of the Revolution and This Just In…From GenCon! He has also worked with Evil Hat Productions on various projects, including the Silver ENnie award-winning DON’T LOSE YOUR MIND and the upcoming DRESDEN FILES RPG.

Dark Matter Studios, producer of the well-received fantasy rpg Epic Role Playing, has released its latest offering, the Mark II Edition of its Game Manual. Weighing in at over 300 pages, the Game Manual, Mk II contains the complete Epic RPG ruleset, as well as a continent-sized setting (the high feudal realm of Rullaea), and a sample bestiary with a tantalizing selection of monsters and animals. Additionally, the authors have incorporated a host of improvements and new content to the ENnie Award nominated system (Best Rules, 2008).

“We’ve added some great new stuff to the game,” commented Kent Davis, one of the two principal designers. “We’ve streamlined parts of the character generation system, but still provided a number of new opportunities for fleshing out characters. We also simplified character growth, pumped up our faculties system and added a boatload of depth to our tactical play, which has already planted its flag as a fan favorite.”

In this interview, Flames Rising is pleased to feature urban fantasy author, Anton Strout. Anton is the author of a series of books called the “Simon Canderous series.” Set in modern-day Manhattan, Simon, the main character, has a power called psychometry.

We’d like to share with you Anton’s thoughts on urban fantasy, what inspires him as an author, and his perspective on his Simon Canderous series of books. If you’re a fan of Anton’s work, you can also touch base with him throughout the year at several conventions including New York Comic Con, GenCon and more!

I was destined to be a game geek. Back when I was but a wee Stevie, my folks introduced me to board games early. It was a fun and cheap family oriented activity we’d partake in when we could. My folks were big fans of the classics like Monopoly, Clue, Battleship and Trivial Pursuit while occasionally picking up a new “fad game” here and there like The A-Team, Pac-Man and Frogger.

As I got older and found ways of making my own coin, I started buying my own board games, the kinds that caught my interest more than the rest of the clan. These were games with more strategy and story/themes added to them, many of which you fellow board game geeks might recognize. Titles like Risk, The Omega Virus, Dragon Strike, Nightmare, oh yeah… let’s not forget a personal favorite of mine, HeroQuest and its expansion packs. My love of games in general led me to eventually discover RPG’s, which led me to start attending cons, which in turn opened my eyes to a ginormous cornucopia of gaming opportunities! And I dove in head first.

The critically-acclaimed game of childhood terror is back in Little Fears Nightmare Edition!

Monsters are real and they hunt children like you from the shadows. As a child, you have your wits, your belief, and the friends by your side. No adults can help you. No one else can save you. It’s just you and the monsters.

Completely reimagined, with an all-new system, Little Fears Nightmare Edition is the definitive version of the classic game.

Little Fears Nightmare Edition is available at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop.