I'm used to the idea that most visitors to this blog are really only interested in Fabled Lands news, maybe with a side order of 1990s gamebooks - and hey, I'm not knocking it. It's nice to have your work appreciated, even if it is sixteen-year-old work. But I didn't retire or anything, and naturally I think I'm a better writer now than I was back then, so I hope the hardcore gamebook fans will allow me the occasional indulgence of talking about what I'm working on nowadays.
One such project is of course Frankenstein, which came out earlier this year on iPad and iPhone. I'm right now working with Spirit Entertainment (the new FL app developers) on Kindle and EPUB versions of that, which should be published by Profile Books this autumn. And next year there might even be a print edition - which is not easy, because this is an interactive novel rather than a gamebook, so telling the reader about the characters' degree of alienation or trust is not exactly conducive to the literary experience. But I'll see if I can figure something out.
And then there's my ongoing comics epic Mirabilis: Year of Wonders, created with Leo Hartas and Martin McKenna. This is my labour of love. The work that I would still do if I was stranded on a desert island with no one to read it.
Recently Mirabilis was released on the NOOK and in the iBookstore, but the important scoop du jour is that it's just out on Kindle and for this week only the first two issues are discounted down to - oh, absolutely free. Well, how about that. There's never been a better time to try it out. And if you like it, let me know. Writers are more like cats than sharks, you know. We like to be stroked.
Speaking of Fabled Lands, any news?
ReplyDeleteHar har har.
DeleteI have grabbed these freebies from amazon, although I found four Mirabilis issues for free, I don't know if they are the same things with different names or not but I got them all anyway.
ReplyDeleteI noticed that strip magazine No5 has finally arrived in Britain after the publishers changed courier, does that mean the hardback of winter volume 2 might now get through?
Also when is spring out?
There will be a preview of Spring (a full chapter) in the complete Winter tpb, which should go on sale for $13.99 next month. The rest of Spring is written, and partly illustrated, but Leo Hartas can't continue with it now so I need to find a new artist - and the means to pay them, as the art fund I had built up for Leo from Fabled Lands commissions seems to have evaporated. Oh well, as the Daleks say, every problem has a solution.
DeleteMaybe that should be *almost* every problem. I don't believe that the hardback edition of vol 2 was ever printed, despite what I and editor John Freeman were told. We won't see that until the green comet arrives!
Why is it that paperbacks have a smaller page size, the hardback was a lot bigger. I think they should make them the same size even if it costs a bit more to buy them. What is the reason for it? I'll be getting that paperback, I need the second half of winter again after I gave away my paperbacks.
ReplyDeleteWe're publishing the complete Season One book using a new process which means we can keep the price really low ($13.99 for a 240-page full-colour paperback book) but we're constrained by the sizes the printer offers - in this case, 7" by 10".
DeleteI wish there had been a Print Media edition of Vol 2, because their print quality was amazing and (imo) worth every penny. The only drawback was that no bookshop was able to display them because they were so big. My local Waterstones doesn't have shelves that tall!
Comic shops like forbidden planet have big shelves. Mirabilis would fit right in there.
DeleteI have just seen (in a photo) physical copies of Vol 2, so they do exist and will hopefully be on sale before too long. Fingers crossed.
DeleteTremendous news!
DeleteIt's not just Fabled Lands. There's Dragon Warriors as well...
ReplyDeleteYeah, but DW doesn't seem to interest the FL hardcore much.
DeleteI'm not sure about that, I bought all the DW books (in PDF). I wasn't aware of DW until it appeared here, and I was brought here by FL. DW posts are the best reads too, as opposed to simply being a conduit for news - although clearly that is needed too. Would be very keen to here more from the lands of legend.
DeleteThe Serpent King Games website is the place to go, then. They will hopefully have news of the long-awaited Players' Guide soon. I have no ongoing involvement in the creative side of DW these days.
DeleteSorry to hear you are no longer involved, a shame for those of us who enjoyed the material and its appearances here. Sure you can't be persuaded to post the occasional adventure?
DeleteI don't tend to write up adventures in a way that other people could run them, as they are tied in to characters and events in our campaigns.And of course we use GURPS, which reduces the usefulness of a detailed scenario to Dragon Warriors players.
DeleteStill, last Christmas I wrote a very detailed one-off Legend scenario for my players, with far more descriptive text and rules than I normally would, and I'm tempted to do something with that. The only snag is that it is, as I said, GURPS.
Oh go on Dave, you know you want to! A new Legend adventure from you would get us DW fans very excited, and I'm sure you could let people sort out the rules for themselves...(I think you mentioned something about this last Christmas, so I will make sure that I am checking this blog on 25th December)
DeleteBy the way, sorry to hear that Leo has stopped illustrating Mirabilis, I have the first two books and liked them a lot, so hope that somehow you can get it finished
I hope so, Gavin. Writing Mirabilis is my labour of love (all we writers must have at least one) so I don't intend to abandon it!
DeleteYou're probably a better writer now than you were then, but I feel that with gamebook prose you hit an angle that simply wasn't available to other writers - and an angle which most gamebook writers weren't talented enough to pursue. The Lords of the Rising Sun, for example, features many simple paragraphs of poetic beauty. There are less quests, but much more of a feeling (a very Japanese feeling) of wandering about and appreciating nature.
ReplyDeleteOn a more concrete level, take the dreamy dragon encounter in the Jawbone Isles. I tried translating this into a short story when I was younger (before I understood that plagiarism was wrong) and found that it simply couldn't be done. It works fine in the universe of a gamebook, but not in standard prose. The only other format it might work in is a graphic novel.
Thanks for those kind words, Mitch. Funnily enough, the main criticism we had levelled at the prose in the Fabled Lands is that it wasn't as good as in our earlier books. In fact, it's a lot harder to write those short, evocative descriptions than to come up with 500 words about what a castle looks like. I'm glad that the more discerning gamebook readers (like yourself) appreciated that!
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