At New Mexicon, a role-playing game convention, I had the pleasure of playing The Unofficial Highlander 2 Role-Playing Game and I took some time to write down as much as I could from my notes about how the game went. If you’d like to read about a writer’s room writing a sequel to Highlander 2 on the fly, well… you’re in luck.
Author: M Van Vleet
GANGS OF THE SUNKEN PALACE (by order of resources)
1) Poison Girls
2) The Eighteen and One
3) Manny’s Chicken Hut Buck-AWK
4) We Are Not A Gang We Are Nothing At All
5) Reds
6) Bone Rollers
7) Elliot, With A Bat
8) A Dropped Quarter
9) The Aerated Fronds
10) Us, You and Me, If You Say Yes And Join My Gang, I’m On My Knees, Just Us
paperback from hell
Horror drippy blood font:
THE COCONUT
green wash background of beach sand and in foreground is a coconut, but the coconut has been carved so it looks like a SKULL
pull quote along bottom: “I’ve never been more scared of a nut… or more nuts about a scare!” [find writer from same publisher to attribute quote to]
Plot: Coconuts figure out how to kill. Let the contract writer figure out the rest. FALL 2019 release.
paperback release MSRP $5.99
Character: The Person Who Thinks You’re Dumb For Talking About How The Forest Is Haunted
Sure, we may have strung a few twig dolls throughout the forest, but that doesn’t mean the forest is HAUNTED. Or EVIL.
It’s the ghosts. The forest is haunted ’cause of ghosts. Not twig dolls.
Duh.
Oh, and real quick, you’ll never make it out of these woods alive, you’ll be trapped in our dollies forever, okay GOODBYE.
ADVICE FOR YOUNG CURSEMONGERS
Top three curses you’re gonna want to have in your shop window, or you’re not going to make it in this town:
) Nose Puddle
) They Were Looking At You The Whole Time
) It’s Always Someone’s Birthday
You get those down, you’re all set. Bills will be paid. Lucky horseshoes will crack as you pass by.
You go your own way? Try to write a new bullpucky curse like Daffodil’s Lament? Or Tears of Mt. Fallen?
This town will swallow you whole AND you’ll lose that lease.
WITCHES TOWN: Now available
For the low, low price of Pay-What-You-Want, it’s my latest microfiction collection WITCHES TOWN!
Weird locales! Bogs and caves! Monsters and ghosts! Jokes! A PDF/epub/mobi .zip file like the pros use!
If your heart can stand it, you can download/purchase it here:
https://gum.co/witchestown
An entire microfiction from the book for our delight and amazement:
FLOWER GOLEMS ARE A TERRIBLE IDEA
We thought it’d be simple: a little blood, some petals, a bit of chanting and you’ve got a garden that can move and talk.
Instead: Visibility is terrible as the pollen fog collects in drifts. I am so covered in pollen I look like a bee’s hind legs. Children, as they sleep, produce mucus in such astounding quantities that they need to be chipped free from their beds in the morning.
And still the golems won’t stop making out.
LONG STAR SHIPPING COMPANY EMERGENCY PROTOCOL BINDER
CONTENTS:
1) Out of fuel
2) Too much fuel
3) Think you saw aliens
4) Definitely saw aliens
5) Suspect you might be the real aliens
6) Cryochamber malfunction
7) Hypochamber malfunction
8) Scent Therapy Chamber malfunction
9) Doppelganger protocols
a) Only one doppelganger
b) So many doppelgangers
10) So you think you’ve got “space madness”…
11) Why the self-destruct button isn’t attached to anything
12) Suggested soundtracks
expanding the cinematic universe
Text on the flip side of this postcard:
The Air Bud expanded cinematic universe had a misstep when AIR BUD: MY BULLETS ARE JUSTICE featured a police dept. embarrassed to discover that there’s no law against a dog being a loose cannon cop with a dead or alive attitude.
Duskwall Residents (Blades in the Dark sketches
The Bishop of Antlers: Most often seen as a horned silhouette on rooftops, this bandit works with the local orphan community to organize thievery (when the orphans aren’t too busy kicking rat corpses for sport). The antlers are from a stuffed stag head that can be worn on the head or back and are festooned with keys on rings & strings that match the locks of innumerable hidey holes, save houses, previously robbed locales.
Gray Caps: A faction consisting of mushroom farmers, known for their facility at disposing of unwanted bodies via their dark and private grow caves.
Leviathan: A pit fighter, named after the demon-blooded ocean inhabitants. Has someone’s tooth stuck in their forehead. Mouth leaks black viscous liquid. Has probably had an unfortunate encounter with leviathan blood that has marked them in some way.
genre fiction
As the torch drips in the dark passageway, the archaeologist of the group pores over the ancient glyphs.
“As I thought. This squiggly bit here looks like a doggy.”
As the wizard watched his entire occult library go up in flames– a hazard for those who stick candles in skulls and expect them to never fall over– he could be heard muttering to himself “Oh, I do hope it turns out the magic was inside me all along.”