Meanwhile, Tor has just sent us the final cover for the next original volume in the series: HIGH STAKES, scheduled for release on August 23 (though we will be launching it a little earlier in Kansas City at a special group signing event).

Cover art, as always, by the amazing Michael Komarck.
HIGH STAKES is the third and concluding volume in the triad that began with FORT FREAK and continued with LOWBALL. It's the twenty-third volume in the overall series, but don't let that intimidate you, boys and girls. It is NOT necessary to have read all of the preceding twenty-two volumes to make sense of this one... though it would help to have read the aforementioned LOWBALL and FORT FREAK.
This one is a "full mosaic," like many of the other climactic volumes of our triads; there are no individual stories per se, but rather six storylines featuring six different viewpoint characters, interwoven so as to create a full on collaborative novel. Which is a lot of work for all concerned, yes, but our fans and readers seem to think it's well worth it.
In HIGH STAKES, the participating writers (and their featured characters) are John Jos. Miller (the Midnight Angel), Caroline Spector (the Amazing Bubbles), Ian Tregillis (Tesseract), Melinda M. Snodgrass (Franny Black), Stephen Leigh (Babel), and David Anthony Durham (the Infamous Black Tongue). Editing by yours truly, assisted by Melinda Snodgrass.
Fair warning, this one is not for the faint of heart. HIGH STAKES is our Lovecraftian horror volume, and things get pretty dark. But it's when things are darkest that heroes are most needed...
FYI, while we won't have any copies of HIGH STAKES for another month, the Jean Cocteau Bookstore can now offer both hardcovers and paperbacks of many earlier Wild Cards books with lots of signatures from the authors. Me, yes, but not just me. We have WILD CARDS, ACES HIGH, JOKERS WILD, ACES ABROAD, INSIDE STRAIGHT, BUSTED FLUSH, SUICIDE KINGS, FORT FREAK, LOWBALL... and even the very scarce and hard to find volumes sixteen and seventeen, DEUCES DOWN and DEATH DRAWS FIVE. Email the JCC for details and prices.
July 25 2016, 21:03:11 UTC 4 years ago
Kansas City
July 25 2016, 21:11:28 UTC 4 years ago
Have you finalized the dates and times for all of your MidAmericon II events or is there still more to come?
Me and my new bride are hoping to make the trip from Omaha NE to Kansas City just for you before we leave on our honey-moon on August 21
Hey -D
July 25 2016, 21:33:31 UTC 4 years ago
Big Mac 2
July 25 2016, 21:58:10 UTC 4 years ago
Do you know if Howard Waldrop will be joining the Wild Card's gang this year in Kansas City?
For the love of Lovecraft
July 25 2016, 22:33:53 UTC 4 years ago
Do you ever think you might release all your short stories in one collection like "The Necronomicon" did for Lovecraft?
Re: For the love of Lovecraft
July 26 2016, 14:31:50 UTC 4 years ago Edited: July 26 2016, 14:33:13 UTC
Unfortunately it only contains two WILD CARDS stories, but they are two of the very best in the series.
July 26 2016, 14:54:21 UTC 4 years ago
Off-topic question: are you watching Stranger Things? It's awesome!
I think that it looks like something you would like.
July 28 2016, 15:05:41 UTC 4 years ago
Background Questions: Wild Cards I published in 1987. When did you and the gang actually begin writing it, when was it completed before publishing, and how long were you all playing Superworld before then?
Comments for this post were locked by the author