Egg hatching

Almost forgotten I’d Kickstarted the seventh FABLED LANDS gamebook - it arrived today!
Terrific art by Russ Nicholson. Can’t wait to travel through the 1200 paragraphs of THE SERPENT KING’S DOMAIN! pic.twitter.com/ebPcsUpMew

— Mark Chaplin (@Yugblad) January 12, 2018

It's hard to get definite information, but it does seem that backers of The Serpent King's Domain are now starting to get their hardcover copies from Megara. See Exhibit A above, m'lud. And while I think that the higher-level backers won't be getting theirs for a while yet, on account of Jamie and I haven't been sent any bookplates to sign, it does beg the question of when Fabled Lands Publishing should release the paperbacks.

I put this question to Mikael Louys of Megara before Christmas and he said:

"As until January I am alone to print and ship copies one by one manually it will take a lot of time I suggest you start selling your edition."

So Jamie and I figure it's time. However, we don't want to spoil anything for the KS backers, who after all are the reason this book even exists, so we're inviting any backer who strongly objects to the paperbacks being released to get in touch. Leave a comment below or, if you're concerned about provoking a pitchfork-wielding mob, our contact details are there in the sidebar.

If we don't get any vetoes, we'll press ahead with publication by mid-February. Sound fair?

The Mage of Dust and Bone - a Fabled Lands novel

A while ago the literary agent for Fabled Lands LLP, the company that owns Dirk Lloyd and our FL gamebooks, came up with the notion that it might be a wizard wheeze to write a fantasy novel with an MG-to-YA spin. Game of Thrones for young teens, sort of thing.

My usual way of working with Jamie on book projects for Fabled Lands LLP is that we come up with a story outline together, but Jamie does most of the actual writing because the company can only afford to employ one person full-time. Sometimes, if I have a week or two to spare, I'll write the first few chapters to help Jamie get started. That's how The Wrong Side of the Galaxy began.

In the case of this kids' fantasy book, which we gave the working title Mage of Dust and Bone, I wrote the first twelve thousand words, but by then Jamie was assigned to write a Frozen-style novel for Fabled Lands LLP called A Shadow on the Heart, which we decided was a better commercial bet than this tale of yet another wizard-in-training. (Earthsea, anybody?) In any case, as usual I was taking the story much too dark for the tender sensibilities of the tween and early teen readers - or of literary agents, come to that. And so it got shelved. The ironic twist in this tale is that A Shadow on the Heart didn't actually get written after all and then Fabled Lands LLP ran out of money, so in fact it was an entirely wasted opportunity. Oh well, it's not like the world doesn't already have a tsunami of fantasy adventure novels to keep it going. Small loss.

The Mage of Dust and Bone may be of some interest to Fabled Lands readers because the nominal setting is Sokara during the civil war - though not quite the same as the world of the gamebooks. Dweomer, for example, in the novel is not a wizardly university but simply a Tintagel-like castle where an old Arch Mage teaches three apprentices, one of whom is our antihero, Forge Burntholm. At the start Forge is about fifteen years old, and has been studying magic for some time, but then the book flashes back to when he first meets the Arch Mage. This is the beginning of chapter four, and I'll run chapter five over the next few days.

*  *  *

THE MAGE OF DUST AND BONE

Chapter Four

The first time Forge remembered meeting the Arch Mage, he was nine years old and running home through the woods near his home. He had jumped the brook, ducked under a branch still heavy with last night’s rain, and there in front of him stood a stranger who seemed to be made of sky and sunlight.

Forge took a step back and looked again. The stranger was a normal man, no phantom of the woods, but he was not like any woodsman that Forge had ever seen. He must have been old, very old, but the only impression he gave Forge at the time was of boundless and ageless vigour, as if he’d grown there among the ferns and belonged to the wild as much as any bear or deer. Greying hair curled down to his shoulders, and there was a silver circlet on his brow, but it was his gaze that dazzled Forge. His eyes were bright - brighter than the raindrops on the leaves, that caught and danced the sunlight in a thousand fractured colours - and yet as dark and secret-laden as the cool shade under a stone.

His cloak, swept back from wide angular shoulders, hung like a black waterfall. His blue robes, as fine as any king’s, were tucked up into his belt, revealing strong leather boots with silver buckles. And beside him on the ground were half a dozen big wooden travelling chests, as if he’d just that minute got off a carriage or a boat. Which made no sense, of course, because the forest track they were on was no wider than a fox, and even in winter the brook was so small that a grown man could stand astride it.

‘Where did you come from?’ demanded Forge, who always acted bold if he felt nervous.

There was a long silence as the stranger studied him. ‘Many places,’ he said at last, and though he spoke very softly, his voice rang out clearly against the rushing water of the brook.

‘You must have come from one place last,’ insisted Forge.

‘From the sea. A place called Dweomer.’

‘That sounds a long way off,’ said Forge, for whom the next village over was an unimaginable distance.

‘Long enough to be thinking of lunch. I’m hoping your mother will have her fine herb salad ready. Maybe even some fresh-baked bread, eh?’

Forge bristled defensively at the reference to his home life. ‘How did you get here?’

‘You meet a traveller on the river bank. You’re a smart boy. How would you say he got there?’

‘This isn’t a river. It’s just the brook.’ Forge jumped over to the other side and back with a snort of contempt.

‘Just the brook, you say? Well it goes up and up into the hills, further than you’ve ever been, and miles down there to the sea, which you’ve never seen.’

‘You couldn’t get a boat on it, though.’

The stranger frowned and bent forward a little towards him. ‘Where did you get that idea? You used to know better when you were this high.’

Forge looked at his hand, held just so far off the ground. A yearling lamb might fit under it. Forge had less experience with young children, but he thought the Greysons’ toddler was about that tall, and he was two or three summers now.

‘We’ve never met,’ he told the Arch Mage.

‘Hmm. What a lot you’ve got to remember. Come on, let’s find your parents. Then we can make a start.’

He swept off through the undergrowth, straight in the direction that the Burntholm cottage lay. Forge followed, more to keep an eye on him than because he wanted to look like he was doing as he was told.

‘What about your boxes?’

The Arch Mage kept on walking. ‘You know the thing about travelling chests, Forge Burntholm?’

‘What?’

‘They travel. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they get there before we do.’

Forge looked back at the spot where the Arch Mage’s boxes had been just a moment before. The ferns were still pressed flat, the oblong outlines clearly visible, but of the boxes themselves there was no sign.

He ran ahead to the cottage, intending to warn his mother about the stranger, but as he banged in through the gate he found the boxes piled up in the middle of the lawn. His mother, who had been bending over the weeds, looked up as she heard him. He saw her face as she caught sight of the boxes – first a puzzled frown, then a smile as she saw him, and then all expression and colour drained out of her face and he guessed the Arch Mage must have appeared at the gate behind him.

Forge’s mother looked back at the thick clump of weed she was grasping, and she braced to uproot it, but it seemed that all her strength had gone. After tugging weakly at it for a moment, she straightened up, turned and went into the kitchen. By the time Forge and the Arch Mage came in, she was already filling the teapot.

‘Mistress Burntholm, I hope I find you well,’ said the Arch Mage.

’I found him in the woods, Ma,’ said Forge, going over to stand beside her.

She barely looked at the Arch Mage, just gazed sadly down at Forge. ‘I never thought… I didn’t think the years would turn so quick.’

The Arch Mage stooped under the wooden beams with their hanging bunches of onions and drying herbs. ‘Nothing’s written yet. No decision taken that can’t be undone. I can turn around and go, and the current of your lives won’t show a ripple.’

He sat at the table and waited while Forge’s mother poured steaming cups of tea. The sun blazed out on the lawn, but here in the kitchen with its clay-brick floor the day was still cool. They drank without saying anything, which made Forge think that the Arch Mage must either be an old friend of his mother’s or else somebody she didn’t like.

The Arch Mage looked out of the window at his pile of boxes. ‘Late again. Where’s it got to now?’

He muttered this under his breath, just talking to himself. They lapsed back into silence. Forge took the opportunity to hang around out of the Arch Mage’s line of sight and study him. The impression of wildness and nature was less obvious but still there. He sat at the kitchen table as if he belonged there just as much as the stove or the woodpile, or the basket where the cat normally lay – except that it had bolted up the stairs the moment it saw him.

Wrapped around his left hand was a gold ring that fascinated Forge. He tried not to stare, but from the moment he noticed it he found his eyes being pulled back, finding more details each time he looked. The ring was in the shape of a golden serpent, the band winding down from the wrist and around the hand so that the serpent’s head lay flat above the first knuckle of the Arch Mage’s middle finger. The metal was stamped with a pattern of scales, intricate and lifelike, and it had tiny black eyes that gleamed liquidly against the glinting sheen of the head. It looked so real. If Forge had found something like that under his heel when he was out in the woods, he’d have jumped ten feet.

As the Arch Mage raised his cup, his sleeve fell back and Forge was able to see that the golden coils wound all the way up his forearm, thickening as they went. The bright band against the hard-hewn brown flesh of the Arch Mage’s arm put him in mind of ivy wrapped around an oak. Strange too that it didn’t hold his arm stiff, as you’d expect a metal band like that to do. It must have moved with him.

The snake’s eyes blinked. Forge bolted for the door and ran straight into a leather apron that felt like it had a brick wall behind it. His father. He held Forge’s shoulders, laughing, but he fell silent when he caught sight of their guest.

‘Those’d be your cases, then. I remember now.’

‘All but one,’ said the Arch Mage, ‘but I expect it’ll be along in its own good time. How have you been, Gar Burntholm?’

‘Hale as horseshoes, Magister, if you’d asked me yesterday. Now, seeing you here at my table, and knowing what that means – ’

‘As I told your wife, there’s no step taken yet that it’s too late to turn around and go back. We’ll sit here and talk awhile, if you like. Smoke a pipe or two and mull it over.’

‘Burntholm,’ said his mother with sudden hope. ‘We could – ’

Forge’s father shook his head, always stubborn. ‘No, we spoke about all this before and the years haven’t changed anything.’

Forge was full to bursting with questions. ‘Who is he, Poppa?’

He got a slap across the back of the head for that, as he expected, but an answer too. ‘Don’t be rude, Forge. This is the Arch Mage of Dweomer. I’ve a mind to have you scrape the Magister’s boots.’

‘They’re not muddy, Poppa. He got here by magic – ’ Ducking another half-hearted cuff, and bowing to the Arch Mage. ‘Begging your pardon, Magister, but I reckon you did, didn’t you? And your travelling chests too.’

The Arch Mage reached out to him. It was his left hand, the one with the gold serpent ring, and Forge detached himself from his father’s grip and stepped nearer, half-hypnotized by fascination and the tug of fear.

Their fingers touched. Forge jumped. ‘What do you feel?’

‘Something stung me,’ said Forge. ‘Just for a moment. It’s gone now.’

‘Like calls to like. That sting is the stroke of a current you’ll learn to use. Did you know that rain can carve a mountainside? Wind shapes rocks. Rivers scoop out the landscape. A current just like that is flowing inside you.’

Forge squinted at him, unsure if he was being teased. ‘Do you mean blood?’

‘Blood? A surface thing. You used to know to look below the surface, Forge. A broken pot is not the anger that broke it. And so too life. It’s what runs inside the current, is life, while blood and sap are only what flow on top.’

‘I don’t understand.’

Forge went to draw his hand away, but the Arch Mage caught his wrist and with the other hand plucked a sprig of dried lavender from the potpourri bowl on the table. He placed it in Forge’s palm and curled the fingers round it.

‘Say what you feel.’

Forge shrugged. ‘Tickles a bit, I suppose. It’s scratchy.’

‘Not like a fresh flower. That would be soft, wouldn’t it?’

‘It’s just to make the kitchen smell nice,’ said Forge patiently, as if the Arch Mage were the child.

‘Imagine it now. You’re holding it in your hand, now hold it in your mind.’

Though he gave a small scowl of defiance, Forge closed his eyes. He pictured the desiccated blossom clutched in the pink darkness of his hand, its purple hue half rusted away, its scent pungent but powdery now that the life was gone.

‘You can see it?’ He nodded. ‘Now remember this flower as it was when your mother cut it. Picture it bathed in sunshine. It’s sturdily watered. Can you see it rippling there in the breeze? A growing, living thing. A bee settles on it, attracted by the colour and the scent. Feel it against your skin. Do you feel it?’

Forge opened his eyes, startled. Slowly and disbelievingly he unfolded his fingers. The lavender lay there bright and fragrant, as alive as if it had been cut just that moment.

There was a long silence as they all bent to look at the tiny miracle. Finally Forge’s father spoke. ‘Now see if you can do the same for my wrinkles.’

It was his usual plodding humour, brought out as clumsily as a bit of scrap iron. Forge had always enjoyed his father’s quips, groaning delightedly at them along with his mother. This time, with the Arch Mage there, he winced. It was the first time he was conscious of being embarrassed by his parents.

A Dark Lord in full colour

Jamie Thomson and I created the character of teen lord of evil Dirk Lloyd over beers in my garden back in the late summer of 2007. It's easy to assume when you see a big success such as the books have grown into that it all comes about overnight. Not a bit of it. Jamie gave blood, sweat and tears to develop the concept into a very funny novel that (as you know) eventually won the Roald Dahl Prize. Five years and many drafts, that took. We would have given up if not for Fabled Lands LLP supremo Frank L Johnson, who rallied us for one final push and spent one Guy Fawkes' Night in Lewes pep-talking Jamie into writing the masterpiece of his career.

Since then the Dirk Lloyd story has been continually optioned for TV and movies (fingers crossed) and we regularly return to the idea of a DL game. And now Dirk is bursting into new life in a vibrant comic strip that will run in The Phoenix, the UK's best kids' magazine, starting on March 7. With art by the ultradimensionally talented Dan Boultwood and story ideas by Jamie and me, what's holding you back?

Blood Sword is back!

And here it is at last - the new, remastered, large format paperback edition of Blood Sword. The first four books are on sale now and the whole saga ties up in book five, The Walls of Spyte, which will be out in time for Christmas. (Given that the series runs to over 2800 sections and about three hundred and fifty thousand words, I don't think you're going to get through the first four before then.)

Blood Sword, in case you're a newcomer to this plane of existence, is one of the gamebook series of the late '80s. It's set in the land of Legend, which Oliver Johnson and I also used for our Dragon Warriors RPG and in a sense Blood Sword is a halfway point between gamebooks and role-playing, as you can play through the books solo or in a team of up to four. Those four character classes each get to star in the new cover paintings by Sébastien Brunet (warrior, trickster, sage and enchanter respectively in the picture above) and to do the artwork justice we've opted for a 22 x 14 centimetre format.

The interior illustrations are by who else but Russ Nicholson and at long last the tactical maps get the room they need - a far cry, as you can see in the photo above, from the cramped layout of the '80s books. The new logo (no dripping gore, hooray!) and cover layouts are by Matt Hill.

I'm calling this the "classic edition" of Blood Sword to differentiate it from the streamlined rules-lite version I'm still intending to get around to eventually. The content in the classic edition is 99% unchanged from the '80s books, although I couldn't resist a few tweaks. There are some extra sections in each book to make the flowchart work better. I've added some codewords like Jamie and I used in Fabled Lands to clarify points of logic. More significantly, the Enchanter gets a new spell and there's a restriction on the Sage's healing ability to make using it a non-trivial choice.

Quite a few old-time gamebook fans have told me how they've been playing Blood Sword with their kids as an intro to role-playing. Corrupting a whole new generation, ah, that's music to my ears. If you have any Blood Sword stories, why not share them in the comments? I'm eager to see if they hold up a quarter century on.

You can buy Blood Sword from leading bookstores or direct from Amazon: in the USA here, in Britain here, or come to that in any Amazon store throughout the world.


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Tune in tomorrow...

Clouds and silver linings

A couple of bits of gamebook news today. First, Fabled Lands LLP has secured a publisher (one of the Big Five, no less) for the ebook versions of the four Critical IF books and my Frankenstein interactive novel. Hang on, though. Before you get too excited: that's the good part, but there's a cloud hanging over the deal. The holdup is in actually taking delivery of finished versions of the ebook files. I'm told by Tim Gummer, who runs the business side of Fabled Lands LLP, that he has so far been unable to get definitive copies of the completed files. We were hoping to have them out in time for Christmas, but now, who knows?

Is this vexing? Considering that we have a shot at worldwide distribution with a major publisher, yes it is. But you can still get the books from Amazon (paperback and Kindle editions) so if the epub3 versions never see the light of day it'll be a pain, but not a total disaster.

The other news is all silver lining - well, a step up from silver, in fact. Tin Man Games, the undisputed kings of gamebook apps, will be releasing my six Golden Dragon gamebooks next year in the form of two compendium apps, each comprising three books. Read all about it on Tin Man's site, and while you're at it, be sure to check out their advent calendar, which trails a lot of gamebook goodies for 2014. The one that most interests me so far is Marie-Paule Graham's The Second Garden, a magical realist journey through seasons and stages of grief. No zombies or luck rolls in there, I suspect.

As it's Tin Man, who have a spotless track record for both reliability and innovation, you can be absolutely sure of seeing the Golden Dragon apps for both iOS and Android in 2014. And if the Critical IF ebook publishing deal does fall through, we'll probably be offering those books to Tin Man to turn into apps instead. What I'm really hoping for, though, is a Warhammer Quest style version of the Blood Sword series. If you agree, better start pestering Tin Man about it right now.

You wait for a gamebook and then four come along at once

I think we pitched the Virtual Reality books as "like novels only you get to make choices". Mark Smith certainly wrote his that way. The Coils of Hate in particular has some beautifully evocative descriptions and sharply tuned dialogue, though even after struggling from dawn till midnight for weeks on end I don't think I managed to fix its dysfunctional flowchart.

My own VR books were not so much novels as role-playing adventures. Heart of Ice in particular was based on a Tekumel campaign that I ran many times, except that for the book I moved it to a near-apocalyptic future where the world may end with a bang or a whimper, and which of those fates it will suffer is largely up to you. I always saw it as a Sergio Leone movie with operatic sweep and pragmatically amoral heroes. In the new edition, I've corrected one logical flaw and in the process added yet another possible ending with the obligatory nod to Blade Runner.

Down Among the Dead Men is an adventure with pirates, magic and the undead. Pirates of the Caribbean in those days was still just a ride at Disneyland, and I don't know if I'd even heard of On Stranger Tides. If this one were a movie it'd be directed by Tim Burton. The setting is about a century before the powdered wigs era popularized by Hollywood. Think Drake and Raleigh and Doctor Dee.

I researched Necklace of Skulls while on honeymoon in Mexico and Guatemala following the Maya trail. Spirtually it owes a debt to Professor M A R Barker - as do all my books, really - but there's nothing there that came directly from our Tekumel role-playing games. There are two main routes through: one the underworld of Pre-Columbian myth, where I aimed for the logic of dreams, and that's contrasted with the "reality" option of the everyday world of the hero's clan and the historical backdrop of the collapse of Teotihuacan. Director of the movie? Jan Švankmajer or Terry Gilliam, maybe.

For the new edition, I've retitled Twist of Fate as Once Upon a Time in Arabia and I've given it a completely new prologue. The core of the adventure is unchanged, though: a whirlwind of encounters with a 1001 Nights flavour involving ghouls, djinn, flying carpets, magic rings, lost palaces, strange lands, devious villains and brave comrades. Well, you've seen the movie and played the boardgame I'm sure.

All four of my VR books return to print this week as Fabled Lands Publishing's new Critical IF series. These are completely re-edited versions, in many cases with new sections, and with brand spanking new covers by Jon Hodgson. All but Once Upon a Time in Arabia have the original illustrations, and they are formatted to fit on the shelf along with the new edition Fabled Lands and Golden Dragon books.

And if you're into the digital era of reading, all four books are also out on Kindle. Even better, they're included in Amazon's new Matchbook bundling program, meaning that if you buy the print book, you get the Kindle version for no more than 99c extra.

And, and, and - this weekend only, you can pick up a FREE Kindle edition of Down Among The Dead Men. This is what heaven is like for e-gamebook fans. But just till midnight on Sunday, mind you.

These are some of my very best gamebooks, so I'll hope you'll check them out - or, if you already read them, maybe you'd like to go put a review on Amazon? If so, may your barysal gun never want for charges.



Sorry about all these covers. I know it looks like a supermarket shelf, but I wanted to be sure everybody had easy access to at least the US and UK links. (Hey, I could have added Italian, German, Canadian...)

Lost souls found

The Castle of Lost Souls is one of my least favourite of my own gamebooks. I guess that's what's called a soft sell, seeing as what I really wanted to tell you is that it's back in print again for the first time in over twenty years. Still, you don't have to take any notice of what I think. There are plenty of people who do like it, and the author is dead, after all. Well, not really dead in this case, thank goodness, but irrelevant.

I don't think very fondly of Lost Souls for probably just the same reason that its devotees would give for enjoying it. The style is quite tongue in cheek, almost to the point of being a send-up, and that's not the kind of fantasy gaming I go in for. No Scottish dwarves and Monty Python clerics in my role-playing sessions, no sirree.

It began life as a serial in White Dwarf magazine, and you can read that version by starting here and following the tags. The subsequent Golden Dragon Gamebook edition was softer-edged, the hero less cynical, less opportunistic and not so arbitrarily cruel to children. You can read that version as a free PDF here. And that's the version that Fabled Lands Publishing have released in paperback this week. The blurb should give you a sense of whether it's your thing:

Beyond the hills and haunted swamps towards the sunset lies the grim castle of the arch-fiend Slank. For centuries this demon has plundered the souls of mortal men, gathering them to his terrible abode to dwell in eternal torment. Now the secret magic that can destroy Slank is known at last. You agree to undertake this perilous adventure. But can you rid the world of the demon’s dark shadow, or are you merely destined to become his latest victim?

Blimey. Well, that was the tone of gamebooks in the early eighties. The flavour of the adventure is quite folklorish. If it were a Fabled Lands adventure it would be set in Golnir, probably somewhere west of Delpton. Spriggans in thorn hedges, meadows full of fairy rings, that kind of vibe.


You know, put like that, it's starting to grow on me. Not one of my best, perhaps, but maybe it deserves another look.

Murdoch press bow before Dirk's evil majesty

I've been saying that Dirk Lloyd was going to conquer the world, and it's happening sooner than I thought. Yesterday, the Sunday Times crowned Dark Lord: The Teenage Years their children's book of the week. They know evil genius when they see it.

It can't be long before all the other British newspapers jump on the bandwagon - followed by their US counterparts when Bloomsbury (who just bought the rights for a mid-five-figure sum after a fierce bidding war) start releasing the series in America early next year. And not long after that you should be able to watch the fabulous NBC television series. I wonder who they'll cast as Dirk. A very scary child indeed, no doubt.

Details of Dark Lord and other Fabled Lands properties in our Spark Furnace online bookstore.

Top of the world mwahaha

He's here at last - and the world may never be quite the same again. I'm talking about Dirk Lloyd, the boy with the soul and the intellect of the Lord of all Evil. Sauron as a schoolboy, Tom Riddle's more sinister younger brother, Darth Vader Junior - call him whatever you like, as long as you remember to add "Master" in suitably respectful tones.

The first Dirk Lloyd book is officially out this week, though if you live in London and have been into Waterstone's any time in the last fortnight you may have seen it already. The UK edition, that is; US readers will need to wait a few months, but Jamie and I got the news in the last few days that the US rights have just sold to Bloomsbury for a good five-figure sum, so Dirk will soon be conquering America too.

This is the first of the all-new concepts that Jamie and I dreamt up for Fabled Lands LLP. We've kept pretty busy since, so there'll be more news on the way soon, but in the meantime you can get the first instalment of Dirk's adventures on Amazon now, with book two coming in the spring. There's more info on the Spark Furnace of course. And here's a taste of what it's like if you live in Dirk's world:

Invisible bridges of "what if?"

I wrote a few months ago about the brilliant, award-winning Binscombe Tales series written by my friend and writing mentor John Whitbourn, concluding that "the stories would be perfect for Kindle, but John is never going to sanction that."

Well, I have great pleasure in announcing that I could not have been more wrong! John Whitbourn is not only licensing Fabled Lands LLP to release the stories in a set of Kindle "chapbooks", but we are also preparing a three-volume print edition of the never-before-collected Complete Binscombe Tales. The new covers will be by Leo Hartas (though the illustration above is by Alan Hunter, from an earlier edition of the tales) and whether your penchant is for ebooks or old-fashioned paper and ink, there'll be a version for you.

The books should be out by Halloween, and Jamie is even talking about releasing some of the stories in audio format. It's still rather summery to be thinking of drawing the curtains, stoking up the fire and settling down in a deep leather armchair with a classic collection of whimsical spine-chilling tales, but so that you can start to plan your autumn, here's the author himself on the inspiration to the series:

These are stories about the "least vivacious" and "most threatened" people in the world - the aboriginal South-East English. They concern a mythical village where strangers are welcome, but not always safe. The cast comprises, to quote Oliver Cromwell, "men of modest means and ancient principles" while the spirit which imbues the Binscombe Tales is best expressed in these words of Kundera's: "On the surface, there was always an impeccably realistic world, but underneath, behind the backdrop's cracked canvas, lurked something different, something mysterious or abstract... On the surface, an intelligible lie; underneath, the unintelligible truth".

It sometimes strikes me that the English are losing sight of their history, that is to say, the vital perceived links between past, present and future - and, just as importantly, their shared mythology. I also gibe at the growing Americanisation and Londonisation of everything. The Binscombe Tales emanate from that vague sense of loss. They perhaps seek to prompt an alternative perception of life in England (and Britain).

There is, more or less, a real place called Binscombe, a village with a working men's club still known as 'the Moscow', with old men with Anglo-Saxon names like Aethelbert, and where many family trees verge onto that interesting time before records. The two Binscombes are not the same but they are linked with subtle and invisible bridges of 'what if'? However, the truth of the matter is that these are just ghost stories which I hope you will enjoy, and that:

"God gives all men, all earth to love

But since man's heart is small,

Ordains for each one spot shall prove,

Beloved over all."

It's alive!

As a follow-up to the previous post, I'm pleased to announce that Fabled Lands Publishing has just released a Kindle edition (Amazon US here and Amazon UK here) of award-winning SF author John Whitbourn's latest novel, Frankenstein's Legions.

Baron Frankenstein's work let the genie out of the bottle. New life can be created from the bodies of the dead. The governments of the early nineteenth century see a means to create a new supply of slave labour and military cannon-fodder. An army that falls on one day can be pieced together and returned to battle the next. And so the world descends towards the maelstrom of total war.

Ada Lovelace has been murdered, her friend Charles Babbage framed and arrested, and Julius Frankenstein, last of his line, looks set for an "accident". But Ada's death, while no exaggeration, is not going to slow her up. Restored to life, she teams up with Julius to find out just who it is that will stop at nothing to see the Analytical Engine destroyed.

If you like your science fiction dark, devious and steampunky, with intrigue, horror and violence, you'll love Frankenstein's Legions. Just one warning, though. This book is definitely adult content and not for the squeamish.

And even if you don't have a Kindle or emulator thereof, don't lose heart. As long as there's enough demand, Fabled Lands LLP will consider a paperback edition to come out following the Binscombe Tales series in October. (Sadly, we can't use Martin McKenna's brilliant painting above for the cover, but scoot over to his website and I guarantee you'll find lots of other deliciously gruesome stuff.)

Get ready for Dirk Lloyd

If you've been following this blog from the start, you'll know that Dirk Lloyd was the first new concept that we came up with after founding Fabled Lands LLP. By that I mean the company Fabled Lands, not the gamebook series - though Fabled Lands projects (the world, gamebooks, RPG and apps) are all controlled by Fabled Lands the company. Don't worry, it confuses us too.

Anyway, back to Dirk... In a nutshell, it's the story of what happens when the Lord of All Evil is defeated by the forces of good and banished to our world in the body of a 13-year-old kid. Oh, the ignominy! Whoever heard of a dark lord having the crusts trimmed off his peanut butter sandwiches? But even stripped of his powers, Dirk isn't going to take his exile on modern-day Earth lying down. Imagine a novel told from Tom Riddle's point of view - and with a style of crazed humour that will be familiar to anyone who used to enjoy Jamie's hilarious column in the old Warlock magazine.

The first book had a pretty drawn-out development process, as new projects often do. We plotted it in detail, Jamie went away and wrote a first draft, we then completely reworked the storyline, and Jamie wrote another draft before getting a full story analysis from Roz Morris (bestselling author who I had to foresight to marry so as to save the company money) which guided him in polishing it. Would you believe that all took nearly two years? What can I say? Perfection doesn't come overnight. Then the series took another year to sell, and even after that it went through a healthy process of thorough critiquing and editing from our UK publisher, Megan Larkin, at Orchard Books.

And now this lovingly polished jewel of dark brilliance is about to be unveiled to the world. The first book, Dark Lord: The Teenage Years just got a glowing review from Hazel Holmes over on the Chicklish site and you can pre-order it on Amazon. (Just don't look at the product description there as it contains a massive spoiler about the end of the book!) Freya Hartas, daughter of Leo and grand-daughter of John Vernon Lord (how's that for an artistic pedigree?), has produced a clutch of macabre illustrations as unique and tasty as devilled dragon eggs that perfectly complement the dry black humour of the text.

Now that the characters and scenario are all worked out, coming up with new stories is much easier. In fact, Jamie has already written the second book in the series, Dark Lord: A Fiend in Need, and is about to start work on the third, The Dirkest Hour. Orchard are planning a promotional tour, so if you keep an eye on your local bookshop window you may find that Jamie is coming to your town. (Hide the beer and sausages if so.) NBC are developing the Dirk Lloyd TV show. There are plans for apps and gamebooks and bunch of other stuff. And all for you, dear reader; all for you.

The UK books will be out in October with editions in Germany, Spain and the US to follow soon after. So there you have it - Dirk Lloyd is going to conquer our world. There's no use fighting it.

A master, a mistress and two slaves

Some personal news for once, but not without bearing on Fabled Lands, as our patron and Grand Panjandrum, Franklin Lee Johnson Jr, tied the knot with the lovely Lydia Radosevic in London on Saturday. Somehow the Fabled Lands LLP team wangled an invitation, and you can see us here in the sort of clothing we often throw on for a weekend bash. From left to right: Jamie Thomson, Berenice Gummer with her hubby, FL business brain Tim Gummer, and finally yours truly. Among the guests were the legendary founder of MUD, Dr Richard Bartle, and Professor Mark Watson-Gandy, the legal genius behind FL LLP and incidentally also a Papal Knight (yes, he was in full regalia, including sword). And we got to meet the globetrotting Johnson clan, as nice a bunch of people as you could ever hope to share a slice of wedding cake with. A very happy day.

Mwa ha ha - UPDATE

I don't think I'm letting the cat out of the bag here, as this was the subject of one of our first FL posts and is now up on Amazon too. Dirk Lloyd is what happens when the Lord of Darkness is banished by his archfoe the White Wizard and is magically hurled across the dimensions, crashing to earth in a modern car park and finding himself in the body of a 13 year-old boy. It's Sauron in suburbia - with zits. Starting in October you'll be able to read the hilarious adventures of the Lloyd of Dirkness (say it in a Brummie accent, it makes sense) in a series of novels penned by the great squamous beast himself, Jamie Thomson. This is the first of Fabled Lands LLP's original properties to see the light (or dark) of day and already plans are well-advanced for a TV show, comic book and other fun stuff. Just don't read the Amazon synopsis because it's riddled with spoilers.

Latest news: Freya Hartas, awesomely talented daughter of the famous gamebook illustrator and Mirabilis co-creator, Leo Hartas, has a meeting next week at Hachette, UK publishers of the Dirk Lloyd books. I've seen some of Freya's pictures for the first book and they are amazing. The combination of zany humour and outrageous imagination are very reminiscent of Leo's work, but she has a dark, disturbing touch that's all her own. Check out her other work at Carl Has The Funk.

Serpents and mongooses

If you're interested in Dragon Warriors, you may have noticed that the former printer of the books, Mongoose, have been putting their stock up for auction on eBay, one copy of each title at a time, at a starting price of 99p. Far be it from me to keep eager fans from a bargain, but it is important to realize that buying the books that way not only deprives the creators of the game (me and Oliver) of our royalties, it also takes revenue from Fabled Lands LLP and, much more importantly, from Serpent King Games, who are the guys trying to make a go of the series. So if you want to see more DW books in future, enlightened self-interest suggests you probably should buy direct from the authorized publishers.

Coming attractions

SF author John Whitbourn's first novel, A Dangerous Energy, won the coveted BBC/Gollancz prize for its virtuoso depiction of how a young hedge wizard's progress towards his goal of becoming a master sorcerer is a long, slippery slope over a precipice of damnation. Harry Potter it ain't. The follow up, To Build Jerusalem, won these accolades from one-time White Dwarf book reviewer Dave Langford:

An alternative England where magic works, science is retarded, and everyone grovels to the Vatican. It's a dark world, with witty touches – like Winston Churchill's eulogy to the martyred hero whose successful action shaped this history, Saint Guy Fawkes.

Something is rotten, though, in the alternative 1995. A major new demon is loose, and besides alarming sexual tastes she has a nasty sense of humour. King Charles IV himself is diabolically abducted. So is an entire castle. The workers – the Levellers – are revolting.

Enter papal investigator Adam, a one-man Inquisition who demonstrates painful martial arts on anyone slow to answer questions. After a spectacularly disastrous conjuration in Westminster and gory mayhem in Guildford, Adam locates the she-demon's lethal private universe and leads in the troops...

There are worse things than the demon, whose excesses are limited by an unnamed but guessable Power. England's real rottenness is the dispossession of farm workers, echoing the Thatcherite feeding frenzy of our own world. The fate of the rescued King is an ultra-black joke; Adam's fate is best not thought about.

A worthy successor to A Dangerous Energy: clever, uncompromising and uncosy.

I was lucky enough to play briefly in John Whitbourn's now-legendary Continuum role-playing game, set in the same world as his early novels - as I reminisced in a recent comment on this blog:

Player-characters could summon up magical powers; they just couldn't control them. I remember the first time I called on the Wild Hunt. I was being pursued cross-country by foes and fondly imagined I could sic Herne and his horde on them. Instead, I heard the thudding of hooves, the blaring of horns, I was seized by the scruff of my neck and carried pellmell over miles of fields at terrifying speed, finally to be dumped in a ditch as slavering red-eyed hounds barked around me. The Wild Hunt departed, leaving me bruised and muddy, but far from my enemies. That was real magic - it raises hairs on my neck just remembering it now.

Why mention all this now? Because Fabled Lands Publishing has just snapped up the rights to John Whitbourn's latest novel and we'll be setting it loose on the world in less than a month. If you like your science fiction to be uncompromising, unsettling, amazing and laced with dry-as-a-bone black humour, you're going to love this.

The Spark Furnace is now fired up

But just what is a Spark Furnace..?

A curious invention, whose precise origins have been lost in the mists of time, it is believed that only one of the handful of Spark Furnaces originally bequeathed to mankind remains in existence today.

Somewhat otherworldly in its design, the workings of the last remaining Spark Furnace are little understood, and its inner secrets are rumoured to be guarded by the surviving members of a long-forgotten society.

What we do know, however, is that the Spark Furnace is a truly amazing device, capable of extracting strands of psychic energy and inspiration from every dimension. In the hands of a skilled operator, it weaves together whole collections of entertainment, literature and interactive experiences into a seamless transmedia experience encompassing novels, comic books, videogames, television and movies.

Some say we have tapped into just a tiny fraction of its potential, while others fear what might happen if its harvested energy were to leak out. However all who have seen it at work agree that the huge influx of power required to keep it fuelled and smoothly running is repaid many times over by the fabulous creations which it brings forth at tantalisingly unpredictable intervals.