I first picked up “Wanted” in a Borders bookstore right before the film adaptation came out. There, I flipped through the first five pages and then, remembering the trailer for the film, promptly put it down, wondering which of these were better summaries of what the comic would have to offer. What I had read seemed amazing, what I had seen on the television… less so. And so I went the next few years without reading the comic or seeing the film adaptation, occasionally catching glimpses of the book’s cover and flipping through those first few pages again, wondering if I should take the plunge.

When I first sat down to read it –to really, finally read it– the first thing I noticed was an introduction by Brian K. Vaughan. The praise of Vaughan, author of comic masterpieces like Y: The Last Man and Pride of Baghdad, would be invaluable to me as a reader.

Explore the world of writing horror from a Bram Stoker and International Horror Guild award-winning author’s point of view. Gary Braunbeck uses film, fiction and life experience to elucidate the finer points of storytelling, both in and out of genre. This part-autobiographical, always analytical book looks at how stories develop and what makes them work-or not work-when they’re told.

Be warned: reality is as brutal as fiction. Rob Zombie, police shootings, William Goldman and human misery are all teachers to the horror neophyte, and Braunbeck uses their lessons to make To Each Their Darkness a whirlwind of horror and hope for the aspiring writer.

Flames Rising is pleased to present the introduction to this book by Gary Braunbeck.

2K Games, Top Cow Productions, Inc., and the Free Comic Book Day Committee announced today that they have teamed up to produce The Darkness II: Confession, an exclusive comic tie-in for The Darkness II video game, for Free Comic Book Day. The 32-page, full-color comic will be a prequel to 2K Games’ upcoming video game, The Darkness II. Produced by Top Cow’s lead artists and writers in partnership with 2K Games, The Darkness II: Confession will be distributed by Diamond Comic Distributors to thousands of independent comic book stores worldwide on May 7, 2011.

“Top Cow has always supported Free Comic Book Day and this year we’ve created our best offering yet with The Darkness II: Confession, a prequel to the upcoming video game The Darkness II by 2K Games,” said self-proclaimed hardcore gamer and president of Top Cow, Matt Hawkins. “In working closely with 2K Games on the comic, we’ve ensured that everything fits into The Darkness’ canon for long-time and new fans of Jackie Estacado. This free comic is a perfect primer for the game.”

Since its inception in 2002, the Free Comic Book Day event has celebrated the original American comic book art form by supplying thousands of participating independent comic book specialty shops around the world with free comic books for fans.

The first part of the highly anticipated Cthulhu Apocalypse series.

The Investigators are rendered unconscious by a train crash. When they wake they discover the world has died. White flowers cover the ground and they see, beneath the delicate petals, the faces of the dead. No other human is in sight, everyone is gone.

The struggle to survive the apocalypse takes the Investigators through Britain, across the sea to America and beyond the veils of reality.

The Dead White World contains the first three scenarios for Cthulhu Apocalypse by Graham Walmsley, author of The Purist Adventures.

Flames Rising is pleased to present an exclusive preview of this new Trail of Cthulhu product from Pelgrane Press.

At the end of April, FlamesRising.com will launch a brand new feature for our site. In addition to our news, reviews, interviews and other horror-related goodness, we are providing subscribers with additional content through our monthly newsletter.

You can sign up for this new feature by filling out the form in this post. Or, you can visit our FlamesRising.com sign-up form at our mailing list partner.

What if Frankenstein got it right?

What if Victor Frankenstein had embraced his discoveries rather than seeking to destroy them?

Rejected by his peers and his family, hunted by the Creature, Victor slips into the background of history. Manipulating people, events, whole countries, Frankenstein slowly plans and executes his revenge.

Carved out of the Balkan conflicts of the mid-1800’s, Victor Frankenstein hijacks the unification of Romania and creates his own country: Promethea. Established on high ideals of equality and scientific advancement for the good of all, the reality is very different.

Dark Harvest: Legacy of Frankenstein is a detailed, fascinating game setting, a terrifyingly plausible alternative history and a fiction anthology; a gothic horror fantasy that will appeal to gamers and the general public alike.

A standalone product, Dark Harvest: Legacy of Frankenstein uses a version of the Heresy Engine system and is fully compatible with the Victoriana 2nd Edition, also available from Cubicle 7 Entertainment.

Dark Harvest: Legacy of Frankenstein is available at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop.

FlamesRising.com is pleased to present you with an in-depth look at Paths of Storytelling, White Wolf Publishing’s latest release for Vampire: the Masquerade.

Joining us today is the developer of this product, Eddy Webb, along with the trio of authors: Jess Hartley, Kelley Barnes and Monica Valentinelli.

Relativity Media and graphic novel publisher Archaia Entertainment, LLC have formed a publishing partnership to produce and publish a hardcover graphic novel anthology based upon Relativity’s upcoming epic motion picture Immortals, starring Henry Cavill (Superman: Man of Steel), Luke Evans (Robin Hood), Kellan Lutz (Twillight), Isabel Lucas (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen), Freida Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire), and Mickey Rourke (Iron Man 2).

Archaia will release the Immortals graphic novel in September, serving as a precursor to the 3-D motion picture, which releases worldwide on November 11, 2011. The graphic novel will expand upon the film’s key characters and events through a series of original tales written and illustrated by some of the top names in comics, including David Mack (Kabuki), Ron Marz (Witchblade), Dennis Calero (Dark Tower) and Ben Templesmith (30 Days of Night). The graphic novel will be published through Archaia’s Black Label division, a publishing pipeline dedicated to working alongside creative professionals within the entertainment industry eager to launch and expand their brands in the publishing world.

FlamesRising.com is pleased to present you with the introduction from Whedonistas: A Celebration of the Worlds of Joss Whedon by the Women Who Love Them. This collection of essays was edited by Lynne M. Thomas and Deborah Stanish, and was recently published through Mad Norwegian Press.

Introduction

Lynne’s Story:

You may know me as a Chick Who Digs Time Lords, but I’m also an avowed Whedonista. Although Whedon fandom is not my primary active fandom (that belongs to the Doctor), the Whedonverse has been a part of my life for just about as long.

I mentioned in Chicks Dig Time Lords that watching Doctor Who got me through much of my pregnancy; Buffy the Vampire Slayer got me through oh, I dunno, my whole adult life.

Paths of Storytelling, offered as a free download today on RPGNow.com, is the latest product for the Vampire: the Masquerade line. According to this White Wolf announcement, it’s a long-forgotten manuscript that was rejected — and with good reason. Sure, on the heels of the Vampire: the Masquerade twentieth anniversary announcement we can understand why they’d want to keep up the buzz, but we all know not all V:tM fiction has been good fiction. Which is part of the reason why we were hoping they’d post a little more crunch. A new Giovanni adventure? Yet another awesome Bloodline?

A Chronicle Companion for Werewolf the Forsaken in Four Parts

The full book includes:
• Thirteen chronicle kits, which modify, emphasize and defy your expectations of what Werewolf the Forsaken can be.
• Ideas for chronicles set in ancient Sumer, in the trenches of eternal war, and with urban fantasy romance.
• Every kit contains tools for players and Storytellers alike, with ideas to integrate them into existing chronicles as well as new ones.

In this first part, we strip Werewolf the Forsaken down of its fundamental components.

The mythology of the British Isles fascinates me. Long before Christianity reached their shores, the people of England, Scotland and Ireland had their own fascinating, rich and complex religions. Sadly, their gods and monsters were given the short straw– devolving into leprechauns and pixies if they survived in our social conscious at all. But if you dig deep, you can usually find them still, primal and brutal, beautiful and mystic. And that’s where The Blackness Within shines.

The Blackness Within is Apex Publication’s collection of stories on the Celtic god Moccus, a god traditionally associated with boars. While both pigs and boars were held as sacred by the Celts, the boar was specifically revered for its ferocity and the strength one would require to bring it down. Little is known about Moccus– he may have been a fertility God, or one of the Hunt, or even a psychopomp, but little can be said for certain. The Blackness Within sets out to answer these questions with another: what would happen if the savage, earthen god returned today?

Flames Rising is pleased to present an in-depth interview with author and game designer Robin Laws. An industry veteran, Laws has published role-playing games, supplements, novels and fiction for several companies. His works range from The Esoterroists, produced by Pelgrane Press, to his upcoming Pathfinder novel, which will be released through Paizo this spring.

Today, we sit down with Robin to discuss horror in role-playing games, his work on the GUMSHOE system, and his endeavors as an editor and novelist.

Comic book publisher Boom! Studios debuted a web exclusive for the brand new Hellraiser comic series, written by Clive Barker. Boom! celebrated the release by raising hell all over the blogosphere. They reached out to bloggers and reviewers by offering the short story and pages of the preview for free. Then, they highlighted each and every instance of the coverage on their Twitter, Facebook pages and blog.

We’ve included a page of this unique web exclusive at the bottom of our post to give you a feel for the artwork and tone. The short story prelude is entitled At the Tolling of the Bell and is downloadable via several sites including DreadCentral.com, which we’ve linked to here.

Publisher New Baby Productions announces that a graphic novel adaptation of H.G. Wells’ short story, “The Chronic Argonauts,” is currently in production. Originally written by a 22-year old Wells, and published by the Royal College of Science in 1888, the story is considered to be the first well-developed use of a “time machine” in science fiction. It predates Wells’ more famous time traveling novel, The Time Machine, by seven years.

“The Chronic Argonauts” begins with the arrival of the mysterious Dr. Moses Nebogipfel to a small Welsh town. The apprehensions of the simple rural folk eventually cause them to storm the inventor’s workshop in an effort to avenge perceived witchery. Nebogipfel escapes with one other person, the sympathetic Reverend Elijah Ulysses Cook, in what is later revealed to be a time machine.

Sunday, March 20 marks the fifth anniversary of Open Design, a game company run under the patronage business model where gamers themselves can be a part of the design process. Here’s the blog post that started at all.

To celebrate 5 years, Open Design is running a sale at the KQ Store from Friday, March 18 through Thursday Mar 24. Our Kobold-in-Chief Wolfgang Baur says, “This sale is my way of thanking all of you for your support over the past five years. By definition, Open Design could only succeed with your participation. So to all the patrons who helped create our sourcebooks and adventures, and the folks who bought the finished products…thank you very, very much for this wonderful five-year ride. I look forward to continuing on with you to our glorious 10-year mark.”

White Wolf is making a 20th Anniversary Edition of Vampire: The Masquerade and we want your help!

Why are we? Vampire: The Masquerade changed everything! Exploding into hobby games in 1991, it evoked and inspired a generation of fans of which the game industry had never seen before or since. The gothic and punk subcultures from which it drew, previously unseen in the gaming world, created an unparalleled worldwide phenomenon that spanned novels, TCG’s, LARPs, video games, and television. But it all started with one RPG. The cultural significance Vampire left on not just the gaming world but on modern vampire-related pop culture can be seen and felt at virtually every turn and in every medium today. This combined with the unwavering sheer dedication of an unparalleled fan base is the reason this book is being published. Vampire: The Masquerade – 20th Anniversary Edition brings the entire World of Darkness experience full circle and will serve as the perfect anniversary milestone to celebrate two decades of gaming after dark.

The latest supplement for Mage: the Awakening debuted today at RPGNow.com. Dubbed Mage Noir, this new World of Darkness supplement offers a fresh historical feel. Set in the 1940s, the book covers a mage’s perspective in America. Writers include Matt McFarland and Filamena Young.

Mage Noir is an eighty page PDF, and is available at RPGNow.com for a retail price of $8.99.

A massive earthquake hit the Pacific Ocean nearby Northeastern Japan on March 11 causing damage with blackouts, fire and tsunami. The large earthquake triggered a tsunami warning for countries all around the Pacific ocean.

RPGNow is helping raise funds to help those affected by this disaster. Please help with a $5 donation at RPGNow.com.

Lord of the Rings RPG Headlines an Industry-Leading Lineup

Cubicle 7, one of the RPG industry’s leading publishers, today took the wraps off a 2011 schedule that also makes it the most prolific. With four major RPG core games being released, and over 100 products on the 2011 schedule, Cubicle 7 is the biggest supplier of new titles in the RPG industry.

The One Ring: Adventures over the Edge of the Wild launches a new line based on the grandfather property of fantasy: J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The Lord of the Rings hasn’t been represented in gaming for several years, and Cubicle 7, in partnership with Sophisticated Games, promises a new approach that will invigorate fans of this highly-developed and much-loved universe—as well as pull in a whole new generation of gamers.