It's the last day of Christmas (officially, sunset on January 5, which is of course the evening of Twelfth Day by old reckoning) and I thought there ought to be a final gift to mark its passing. So...
In case you want to compare the original White Dwarf version of Castle of Lost Souls with the book (which was sixth in my and Oliver Johnson's Golden Dragon series) you can pick up a PDF version here. I'm issuing this under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs licence. In other words, share it around all you like but please don't take my name off it.
For completists, there's also a non-profit print version available from Lulu. It doesn't have fancy typography or anything but - hey, non-profit, meaning you only pay what Lulu charges to print it.
Okay, better get my decorations taken down and eat that last turkey sandwich. The diet starts tomorrow!
Hope you like it. Btw I'd be interested to hear from anyone who played both versions and has a preference.
ReplyDeleteHello, Mr. Morris! Is there any news on Spirit's apps and the print publishing deal?
ReplyDeleteThanks for the always interesting posts, and enjoy the New Year!
- Mike -
Happy New Year, Mike. I have been looking at lots of beautiful art that Spirit has had done for the apps, and just before Christmas I saw the first one running on a whole bunch of platforms (iPad, Kindle Fire, etc). It can't be long now.
ReplyDeleteThank you very much, I will play this for sure! :)
ReplyDeleteHappy new year Dave. I'm looking forward to another good year of fabled blogging. :)
ReplyDeleteThis is probably asking the obvious (or the already asked) but with Jamie writing a new VR adventure do you have any plans to do likewise? Or are interactive novels more where you see your writing future now?
Having just done a bit of a Morris-athon through a dozen of your books I'd be considerably keener to see new gamebook output from you than most other classic era authors. Not that I'm averse to bashing a couple hundred zombies of course.
Hi Mike, actually Jamie's new VR book is on hold now. We've decided that the initial six books we're launching in spring should include two Way of the Tiger books, so he's busy on those. And since Dark Lord: The Teenage Years picked up the Roald Dahl Prize, it's really a much higher priority for the Fabled Lands company to put him on kids' novels long-term. Jamie is a highly talented gamebook writer, but at kids' humour he's a genius.
ReplyDeleteAs for new gamebooks... Well, we have a backlist of over 30 titles to bring out, and after that lot I'm not sure that there'll be a need for any new ones. Never say never again, of course, but I could happily go my whole life and never write another gamebook or interactive novel, to be honest. I've done my time there, and nowadays I'm much more interested in writing comics.
Thanks Dave, makes perfect sense given Jamie's win. I'm keeping my optimistic hat firmly on that we've not heard the last from either of you with 'new' gamebooks, but of course wish you the best with anything else in the meantime. Either way we're in for an exciting 2013!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Mike. Jamie and I would like to complete the Fabled Lands series - though we dispute those reviewers who criticize the series as "unplayable" because all 12 books aren't out. The books were always intended to be largely self-contained and there is quite clearly no single Tolkienesque quest running through the series. Still, it'd be nice to finish it off, and we have writers such as the talented Paul Gresty lined up to do that, while Jamie and I would ideally act in an exec prod role - ie, sit by the swimming pool with our pina coladas :)
DeleteAbsolutely, not only are the first 6 books easily able to be played on their own but linked together they also allow for full exploration of most of the northern hemisphere of the FL universe, which hardly makes playing them not worthwhile. I recall from one of your earlier blogs you mentioned Kickstarter as a potential funding source, but Jamie wasn't as keen (I may be doing him a disservice there, as sloth prevents me from going back to verify this). Maybe it's time to get him down to the pub again, get a couple of pints into him and broach it again. :) That way one of your stretch goals can be a big whip to get Paul or whoever to write faster.
ReplyDeleteKickstarter is certainly a possibility - one that Jamie is probably keener on than I am. My reservations are firstly that I know from Megara's Arcana Agency project that mounting a Kickstarter is a heck of a lot of work. Secondly, the bubble must surely burst when people putting funds into projects realize that they have no guarantee the product will get made, and no back end return if it is a success. And thirdly, there aren't that many FL fans out there - yet. We hope the apps will attract new players, but the books themselves haven't built a big enough following to drive a fundraising on Kickstarter. But I do like the idea of a few pints down the pub while we discuss it :)
DeleteThe ZX Spectrum version of this is still sitting on a C15 cassette tape on my desk.
ReplyDeleteAll we need now is for the Spectrum to make a comeback!
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