I’m back, and feeling somewhat behind on my writing projects, but I had a wonderful time overseas! (And up north too.) If you missed me, I left signed books in many places I visited. I’ll post a full list below, but do want to give special mention to the Sentry Box in Calgary—who kindly sponsored my Magic draft at When Words Collide—where I hid one of the very last Szeth punch-out figures I have! All of the books they have there are signed, with prizes inside, but one copy of Words of Radiance has the Szeth card. Thank you, Calgary, for a wonderful reception!

The start of this trip was in Avilés, Spain at Celsius 232, where (despite having to fight off Rothfuss fans at every corner) we had a wonderful, and relaxed, convention experience. If you live in Europe, I highly recommend this convention. They were friendly, the weather and scenery were great, and I had a lot of fun. I even worked on a novella on the flight home, much as I did for Legion (written on the flight home from France sevearal years back) and The Emperor’s Soul (done on the flight home from Taiwan). You should see it eventually, though right now I have other projects to get to. (More on that below.)

The next stop was London, at the ever-awesome Forbidden Planet store. I did a new Stormlight reading (if you missed it, Tor posted it here) and afterward headed to a local pub to play a Magic tournament. This one was particularly cool since Wizards of the Coast’s European branch showed up with cards and extra prizes for everyone.

If you’ll indulge me, I want to talk about an epic game we had during this tournament. We played late enough that the pub kicked us out and we headed to my hotel lobby, where I finished up a few games with fans waiting to try their hand against me (and hoping to win one of these cool foil signed cards.)

This was Conspiracy, and I had a really solid [card]Vent Sentinel[/card] control deck. I was dominating the board against the fan, whose name I believe was Jason. (Might be some other J-name. Sorry if I got it wrong!) Well, I was feeling pretty confident and then suddenly, he played [card]Magister of Worth[/card]. This wiped out all creatures, but more importantly, wiped out the little creatures I was using with [card]Secrets of Paradise[/card] to create white mana.

I looked at my hand, which was full of white cards, and made the snap decision to tap one of my guys for mana before they died, then [card]Swords to Plowshares[/card] his Magister. This left us both with completely empty boards, and him with an empty hand.

I was still feeling all right about this. I had almost full life, while he was under ten.

Then, he top-decked a 30/30 [card]Cogwork Grinder[/card], flipped over a conspiracy that gave it haste, and smashed my face. Instant game over. I’d done an okay job of defending the expensive cards Wizards sent (only losing the Foil [card]Brainstorm[/card] so far) but this stomped me flat, and so, I present to you the winner of the foil [card]Dack Fayden[/card].