author, gamer, reader, dad
I'm a YA author who spends too much time on the internet.
If you’re curious to see the cover of my next book, RWBY: After the Fall, head over to Entertainment Weekly for an exclusive reveal! I saw some early concept sketches for this, and I really love what Rooster Teeth came up with. (Plus, it’s always a treat to see a new official illustration of Team CFVY!!!)
RWBY: After the Fall will be published this summer by Scholastic Books.
Until Labor Day, Barnes & Noble is having its first “Book Haul Blowout” with 50% off many books, including my YA novels The Silence of Six, Against All Silence, and 1985–just $4.99 each!
You heard it hear last, folks! I am excited to be writing the first young adult novels in the RWBY universe, beginning with RWBY: After the Fall!
RWBY (pronounced “Ruby”) is a popular anime-inspired web series starring kickass characters kicking ass in a world overrun with vicious monsters called Creatures of Grimm. I enjoy anime and fairy tales, and especially The Wizard of Oz, and this show wears those influences and many more on its sleeve. It’s been so much fun to work with the talented writers of the show at Rooster Teeth and my fabulous editor Chloe Fraboni at Scholastic to bring fans a brand-new story in this franchise.
The book will be published in summer 2019, and more details will surely follow. Here’s the synopsis:
After Beacon Academy fell, Coco, Fox, Velvet, and Yatsuhashi made a vow: No one else is getting left behind. It’s been more than a year since Team CFVY saw their school destroyed by the Creatures of Grimm, their friends felled in battle or scattered across the world of Remnant. Since then, they’ve been settling into life at Shade Academy in Vacuo, fighting hard to finish their training so they can reunite with their friends and save their world.
When a distress message comes into Shade, asking for huntsmen and huntresses to defend refugees from a never-ending stream of Grimm, Team CFVY answers the call without hesitation. But in the heat of the desert, they’re forced to relive their former battles, both from the Fall of Beacon and from everything that came before.
If you haven’t seen RWBY yet, I recommend starting at the beginning and binge-watching the whole thing; the sixth season of the series begins on Oct. 27, so you have plenty of time to catch up. It’s really terrific! And if you just want to see Team CFVY (pronounced “coffee”) in action, check out this short clip:
If you ask me any specific questions about the story here or on social media, I probably won’t be able to share much yet, but you’ll learn more as soon as I can talk about it–and I hope you’ll be interested in picking up the book next year!
Please join me and five talented authors for the book launch of our new own-voices anthology of stories inspired by Asian folklore and mythology, A Thousand Beginnings and Endings!
WHEN: Tuesday, June 26, 2018 at 7 p.m.
WHERE: McNally Jackson Soho
52 Prince Street
New York, NY 10012
FEATURING: Sona Charaipotra, Preeti Chhibber, Melissa de la Cruz, E.C. Myers (that’s me!), Ellen Oh, and Shveta Thakrar.
About the book:
Star-crossed lovers, meddling immortals, feigned identities, battles of wits, and dire warnings. These are the stuff of fairy tale, myth, and folklore that have drawn us in for centuries.
Fifteen talented authors—including New York Times bestsellers Melissa de la Cruz, Renée Ahdieh, and Julie Kagawa—reimagine the folklore and mythology of East and South Asia in short stories that are by turns enchanting, heartbreaking, romantic, and passionate. Compiled by Ellen Oh and Elsie Chapman, this exquisite collection is for fans of Neil Gaiman’s Unnatural Creatures and Ameriie’s New York Times–bestselling Because You Love to Hate Me.
A mountain loses her heart. Two sisters transform into birds to escape captivity. A young man learns the true meaning of sacrifice. A young woman takes up her mother’s mantle and leads the dead to their final resting place.
Bestselling and award-winning authors explore the timeless themes of East Asian and South Asian myths in fifteen original stories that will appeal to every reader. From fantasy to science fiction to contemporary, from romance to tales of revenge, these stories will beguile readers from start to finish. Edited by We Need Diverse Books founder Ellen Oh and Elsie Chapman, this anthology contains stories from fifteen East Asian and South Asian authors, including New York Times bestsellers Melissa de la Cruz, Julie Kagawa, Renée Ahdieh, and Roshani Chokshi. For fans of April Tucholke’s Slasher Girls & Monster Boys and Holly Black’s Zombies vs. Unicorns.
Game Boy and all its incarnations and successors, from the Nintendo DS to even the Switch, are wonderful, but I’ve always wanted a portable NES. Yes, there are ways to emulate NES games on phones and handheld gaming devices (I’m currently using an R4i Gold card in a DSi LL), but I wanted a self-contained, dedicated piece of hardware that accepted the bulky cartridges and had only one purpose: to play 8-bit Nintendo games on the go.
The Dream
Over the years I’ve seen Chinese knockoffs, DIY mods, and a couple of commercial products that basically do the trick, but they’ve never looked that polished and/or they were extremely expensive. Last month I decided to look again–and at first I didn’t find much on offer. The only real commercial product at the moment was Retro-Bit’s RetroDuo Portable, which is a portable Super NES with an adapter for NES games. It works, but it looks a bit unwieldy with the adapter plus a cartridge, and it received some mixed reviews; I also tried one at MAGFest, and it felt somewhat light and cheap, though I couldn’t test out the controller buttons because it was being used to run an NES music cart. Nonetheless, just as I decided to bid on a cheap one on eBay–figuring why not?–I learned that there was a new contender on the horizon: the Gamerz Tek 8-Bit Boy XL. I ordered it immediately, despite its $99 price tag, and I didn’t even have to wait long for it to arrive (though apparently it had been delayed a bit from its original Fall 2017 release date).
I’ve posted a video review of my unboxing and first impressions, but since then I’ve been putting it through its paces and testing some more games on it. My opinion hasn’t changed much–I really like it, and with some caveats, it’s pretty much what I’ve always wanted and could ever want. If you’re looking for a portable NES, and you’re willing to deal with a few compromises, this could be the device for you too.