George R.R. Martin’s Stagecoach Foundation
Fundraiser Premieres at WonderCon
Santa Fe, NM - The Stagecoach Foundation, co-founded by best-selling fantasy author George R.R. Martin, is hosting an online fundraiser with events planned from Friday, March 26th through Sunday, March 28th. The fundraiser will help the Stagecoach Foundation offset losses from the COVID-19 pandemic and to support its ongoing efforts to expand access to careers in the film industry for New Mexicans.
The weekend of fundraising programming will kick off with an online auction featuring collectors’ items from George R.R. Martin’s many properties, including Game of Thrones, Nightflyers, and the Wild Cards series, which was just picked up for development as a television show. Other film-related and New Mexico-themed items will be up for auction as well, like a private balloon ride with champagne. The auction opened on March 15th, and is hosted on BidPal through the end of the fundraiser events on March 28th. The Live Auction hosted by Bernie Bregman of NerdBot will be Saturday, March 27th at 3pm Pacific Time on Legion M Twitch channel.
The fundraising programming will also feature many other exciting online events, which will stream live on the Legion M twitch stream as part of this year’s WonderCon@Home schedule. Highlights include a campaign of the tabletop Wild Cards Role Playing Game , set in the present time, featuring some of science fiction, fantasy, and horror’s most popular authors of the day, including Melinda Snodgrass, Walter Jon Williams, Max Gladstone, Caroline Specter, and Carrie Vaughn. Williams, one of the original Wild Cards authors and the creator of Ace favorite, Golden Boy, will act as the game master for the short campaign. There will also be a live AMA with the authors and a Discord AMA, as well as special messages from George R.R. Martin himself over the course of the weekend. For a more detailed schedule, please visit the Legion M page on the Stagecoach Foundation event.
Throughout the weekend, viewers will hear testimonials from the Stagecoach Foundation staff and grantees. Overall, the weekend will be an exciting celebration of fan culture, and the collaborative nature of storytelling, storytellers and the worlds we craft.
Funds raised from the event and the online auction will benefit the Stagecoach Foundation and its mission. For more information, please contact elizabeth@stagecoachfdn.org.
About Stagecoach Foundation:
Stagecoach Foundation is a non-profit foundation focusing on film-related jobs and economic development opportunities for traditionally underrepresented communities throughout New Mexico. Made possible by filmmaker/scientist David Weininger, Stagecoach Foundation is proud to support New Mexico in film, education & technology (FET). The Foundation acts as a support center to local vendors/businesses and universities/schools to help reach the common goal that we all share: economic development, job training, job creation, and job stability within these fields.
About the Wild Cards Series:
In 1946, an alien virus that rewrites human DNA was accidentally unleashed in the skies over New York City. It killed ninety percent of those it infected. Nine percent of those who survived mutated into tragically deformed creatures. And one percent gained superpowers. Wild Cards is the history of the world since then—and of the heroes among that one percent. This shared-universe science fiction series, created and edited since 1987 by New York Times #1 bestselling science fiction and fantasy author George R. R. Martin, now tells the story of a new generation of heroes, for long-time fans and new readers alike.
Originally begun in 1986, long before George R. R. Martin became a household name among fantasy readers (“The American Tolkien” ~Time Magazine), the Wild Cards series earned a reputation among connoisseurs for its smart reimagining of the superhero idea. As of March 2021, The Wild Cards series is set to be adapted for television by NBC’s streaming app, Peacock.
About Legion M:
Legion M partners with top Hollywood creators—from independent filmmakers to big Hollywood studios—to produce a slate of movies, TV, and digital content. Legion M is also the first media company in history designed to be owned by fans, which uses disruptive new equity crowdfunding laws that allow people to invest as little as $100 to own a piece of the company.
About WonderCon:
WonderCon is the sister show to Comic-Con, embracing all the main aspects of SDCC, including comics, movies, TV, animation, the Masquerade, and more. The event has grown in all aspects over the years: more attendees, more exhibitors, more programming, and more fun. In its current Anaheim-based incarnation, WonderCon continues to be a must-attend event on the comic book convention schedule.
The SAN DIEGO COMIC CONVENTION (Comic-Con International) is a California Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation organized for charitable purposes and dedicated to creating the general public’s awareness of and appreciation for comics and related popular art forms, including participation in and support of public presentations, conventions, exhibits, museums and other public outreach activities which celebrate the historic and ongoing contribution of comics to art and culture.
The Players
Melinda M. Snodgrass studied opera at the Conservatory of Vienna, graduated Magna cum Laude from U.N.M. with a degree in history, and went on to Law School. After 3 years as a lawyer she realized she hated lawyers and turned to writing.
In 1988 she accepted a job on Star Trek: The Next Generation and began her Hollywood career where she has worked on staff on numerous shows and has written television pilots and feature films. She is currently an executive producer on Wild Cards for Universal Pictures and Peacock.
In the prose world she writes for and co-edits the shared world anthology series Wild Cards with George R. R. Martin.
She has completed the fifth book in her five book Space Opera series Imperials, is working on a fourth novel in the Carolingian series and a fourth novel for her White Fang Law series. All of her books are being released on-line and in print-on-demand. Presently available -- This Case is Gonna Kill Me, Box Office Poison, The High Groun,. In Evil Times, The Hidden World and Currency of War.
For fun she rides her dressage horse, plays video games and spends a lot of time in the gym. (Or she did before there was a pandemic)
Over the past twenty-five years, Caroline Spector has published and edited numerous game modules, written three computer game hint books, published three novels in the Shadowrun/Earthdawn universe, and has been working in the Wild Cards series, appearing in INSIDE STRAIGHT, BUSTED FLUSH, SUICIDE KINGS, HIGH STAKES, TEXAS HOLD 'EM, KNAVES OVER QUEENS, and is in the to-be-released books JOKER MOON, and THREE KINGS.
Her novella, “Lies My Mother Told Me,” was published in the anthology DANGEROUS WOMEN edited by Gardner Dozois and George R.R. Martin.
She was an Associate Editor at Amazing Magazine while the Earth was still cooling and lives in Austin, Texas with her husband, noted game designer Warren Spector.
Hugo-, Nebula-, and Locus Award winning author Max Gladstone’s works include Empress of Forever, the Craft Sequence of fantasy novels and games, and, with Amal El-Mohtar, the internationally bestselling This is How You Lose the Time War. His interactive projects include the XYZZY-nominated Choice of the Deathless and Deathless: The City’s Thirst, which take place in the world of the Craft Sequence. Gladstone created the Serial Box series Bookburners, and the interactive television series Wizard School Dropout.
Gladstone studied Chinese literature at Yale, and lived and taught for two years in rural Anhui province. He is a martial artist, fencer, and fiddler. Before writing full-time, he also worked as a researcher for the Berkman Center for Internet and Policy Law, a Swiss Embassy tour guide, a go-between for a Chinese auto magazine, a translator, a philosophy TA, a tech industry analyst, and an editor. He has wrecked a bicycle in Angkor Wat, sung at Carnegie Hall, and been thrown from a horse in Mongolia.Max Gladstone
Carrie Vaughn's work includes the Philip K. Dick Award winning novel Bannerless, the New York Times Bestselling Kitty Norville urban fantasy series, over twenty novels and upwards of 100 short stories, two of which have been finalists for the Hugo Award. Her most recent work includes a pair of novellas about Robin Hood's children, The Ghosts of Sherwood and The Heirs of Locksley. She's a contributor to the Wild Cards series of shared world superhero books edited by George R. R. Martin and a graduate of the Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop. An Air Force brat, she survived her nomadic childhood and managed to put down roots in Boulder, Colorado. Visit her at www.carrievaughn.com
Walter Jon Williams is an award-winning author who has been listed on the best-seller lists of the New York Times and the Times of London. He is the author of thirty-seven novels and four collections of short fiction.
His first novel to attract serious public attention was Hardwired (1986), described by Roger Zelazny as "a tough, Walter Jon Williamssleek juggernaut of a story, punctuated by strobe-light movements, coursing to the wail of jets and the twang of steel guitars." In 2001 he won a Nebula Award for his novelette, “Daddy’s World,” and won again in 2005 for “The Green Leopard Plague.”
He has also written for George RR Martin's Wild Cards project.
His latest work is Quillifer, a epic fantasy.
Walter has also written for comics, the screen, and for television, and has worked in the gaming field. He was a writer for the alternate reality game Last Call Poker, and has scripted the mega-hit Spore.
