Game book released!

My gamebook "Dwarven Vengeance" is now available to buy via LuLu.  This is a game book where you choose which path to follow and which fights to have. It's a classic "turn to page" style game book with 401 entries. It differs from some of the classic gamebooks in that it doesn't have any of the lame endings where you just die. Instead there is always a chance to win through, a small chance true, but then you pick your own fights! 

 This is currently only available via Lulu's Print On Demand printing service.

So onto the back cover blurb...

You've lost your home, your family and your future.

When you woke to find a dragon smashing through the gates of the underholm and goblins swarming in the corridors your first thoughts were of survival.

Then the anger came, and the thirst for revenge and the need to get your home back.

So starts the quest to find the Dragonbane, a mystical item that is your only hope to defeat the dragon.

Buy the book at LuLu.com

Nearly done

I'm finally reaching the end of the work associated with my game book. This has been an ongoing project for most of the year. I've only be working on it in fits and starts. Indeed it was mostly written during my lunchtimes at work, just a few paragraphs a day. Then I left it sitting for a while before starting on the editing.

I did two full editing passes, again during lunchtimes covering just a few entries per day, then let it sit again.

Then I sent it out to a few beta readers, only one of whom sent me feedback. I applied the fixes he suggested and let it rest again.

So here I am now doing the final proof-read-aloud. That's reading the whole book aloud. I'm so glad I opted to give this try. Even after all those passes once I read it aloud I found even more problems to fix!  This is process I'll definitely use in future.

With luck by the end of the weekend I'll have this book done and uploaded to LuLu as a POD book and I'll order a proof copy. If that comes through without issue I'll be foisting this on the whole world!

Cthulhu and How I Found Livingstone

My "annotation" project is complete.  What was it you ask? You've probably been asking every time I mentioned it.  I didn't want to speak plainly about until it was done, in case someone else stole the idea and got theirs out first. Now it is complete and the first version released for public consumption...oh... what is it?

It's called "Cthulhu and How I found Livingstone". What I've done here, is take the public domain text of Henry  Stanley's book "How I found Livingstone", and have annotated it for readers who role-play.

The original book tells how Stanley carried out an expedition to relieve an explorer called Livingstone, and you must have heard the famous words "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?", well this text is that story told in the words of the man who did it.

The expedition was a genuine darkest-Africa adventure, and I've added a series of graphics and over seventy footnotes to the book. Each footnote looks at the people, the locations or the events and explains how the role-player could take that incident and turn it into an exciting plot element for a horror role playing session as part of an entire gaming campaign.

If the term "role play" or the phrase "campaign" mean nothing to you then this book is not for you!  Anyone who runs a game of "Call of Cthulhu" or a similar role playing game might well find it interesting.

The job of annotating was a long one. The book was four hundred odd pages which I had to carefully read and then consider, determining if any incident/person/place was worthy of a footnote, and indeed what that footnote would say.

This is actually the second book I've done this to.  The first was called "Cthulhu and the River of Doubt", which followed Teddy Roosevelt along an uncharted river in Brazil. That too was a long project. In both cases it's not the writing that takes so long, its the reading, re-reading and time spent pondering. Unlike straight fiction writing, where I follow an outline, I had no outline to follow, and had to spend more time thinking than actually writing. The exact reverse of my usual writing process!

I've added details to the Books page and it's available to buy as a P.O.D. paperback. ePUB, Kindle, Nook etc will follow over the coming weeks.

Hard copy from the POD for proofing

Today I received a hard copy of the gamebook from the P.O.D. company. It sure does look good, but of course I'm biased!  The cover put together by my collaborator has really popped into life when printed on shiny card. He's done an outstanding job of work.

I'm glad I paid for this copy as it's highlighted a couple of issues that need to addressed and a revision made.  Just like all stories need to be revised and edited before release, print editions all need to be printed and checked before going public.

In this case the bar code on the rear has crossed over some of the blurb text; it's come out significantly larger than I expected. Secondly despite all of the read throughs and double and triple checking, there is a sub heading that is not highlighted as it should be. Drat! and double drat!  You must always check the release before you blurt out and tell the world.  If I hadn't checked I could have been pushing a sub-standard text on an unsuspecting public.  However the joy of POD is that I can just make a minor revision online and it will be good to go!

Nearing the end

My currently most advanced writing project is a collaboration.  It's the first collaborative writing project I've ever worked on and has been a blast.  It's also the first "game book" or "gamebook" that I've ever written.

Now there is a chance that you kind reader do not know what a gamebook is!

Simply put, it is not a traditional novel but rather a game in the form of a novel. The story is split into  numbered entries, usually a paragraph or two long each. You start reading at the beginning and after a page or two are presented with a story based choice. As an example, you might be informed that if you want the protagonist to take the left hand fork you should turn to entry109 or if you want the protagonist to to take the right, turn to entry 205. Almost every entry ends with a similar choice, thereby giving the reader the chance to guide the narrative.

There have been a number of game books over the years and some very famous brands, the two best known being "Choose your own adventure" and "Fighting Fantasy". Our book follows in the footsteps of the latter in that it is a fantasy adventure style game that actually calls upon the reader to roll a die now and then in certain situations.

The collaborative nature of writing the book has been fun.  We started by devising an overall plot then split the actual task of writing so that we had 2 sections each to write.

I found this style of writing rather different from usual.  For a start, each entry had been plotted out before the actual writing began, it was like have an outline detailed right down to the individual page level. It made the physical writing extremely easy.  Each night as I sat down to compose an entry or two, I didn't have to consider plot, it was already detailed. All I had to do was effectively fill in the blanks.

I had in the region of two hundred entries to write, most of those I wrote at the rate of two or three per evening and then up to as many as ten on Saturdays and Sundays.  It gave me a very simple writing experience.  No planning or plotting each time I sat down to write, no need to reread the last chapter as the story was kept fresh in my mind as I was writing every day. Just writing a couple of entries meant I would only spend at most half an hour at the keyboard before getting on with something else.

I'm currently preparing a P.O.D. version of the finished book to go on sale at LuLu, with luck that might be finished this weekend.  After that my esteemed partner-in-this-crime will be preparing other digital formats which we'll put online as they are completed.