My sweet Claude

I'm a technophile through and through, but even I know that not everything that can be done should be done. Case in point: there's a service where you can order up a plot and characters and have a bespoke novel written and printed just for you.

(Hang on a tick, though. We'll be talking about AI here, and I can't be doing with the obligatory two minutes' hate of people telling me their tribal identity via a series of muddled anti-AI arguments, so take a look at the blog policy on that one, and if it's not to your taste then come back tomorrow.)

OK, so this customized novel service involves 'romantasy' books and the way it works is each reader specifies their required hero and heroine type, the degree of steaminess, whether the relationship should be bittersweet or rosy, and any necessary plot details. Then an AI writes the thing, the company prints a copy, and it's yours for a mere $89.

I have no doubt the results are as horrible as they are expensive. There is quite enough human-generated slop in publishing without pressing a button and having machines add infinitely more. The AI models get grammar and spelling right, and their prose style is marginally better than some bestselling authors, but they still shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the actual authorial process. For one thing, speaking as a writer, the words are the fun part. Why would I want anyone or anything else to do the writing for me?

I do use AI every day, though, in the tedious support tasks for which, if gamebooks and roleplaying games made any money, I'd hire an assistant. This month I'm making a push to complete my pet project, Jewelspider, a book which is now over two hundred pages long and three years late. I'm drawing on a host of primary sources, many of which are in Latin, French or Middle English. Finding all references to medieval lycanthropy, say, in a few dozen books like that could eat up weeks -- or I can get Gemini Notebook to help me and have those weeks free for writing instead.

In the middle of that, I'm still fielding the dozens of micro-tasks that would suck up time if I let them. A publisher needed me to give them a list of fifty scenes to illustrate in a couple of gamebooks I wrote  years ago. I'd have to re-read the books, find fifty key scenes, and collate all the text the artist will need across several sections. That's a few days of the most mind-numbing work... for a human. Claude read the books, found fifty different dramatic scenes, made sure to avoid spoiler scenes, and from my text pulled together a briefing for the artist for each illustration. I was able to check that list in an hour, make a few corrections, and it was good to go.

Then an app developer who is considering adapting another series of mine asked if I could provide them with a list of every item that can be picked up in the books, where they can be used, what they do, and where the player can lose them. That's a good month of work as the books were written decades ago and I don't still have the flowcharts. But Claude did the job in twenty minutes and gave me all the info in an Excel spreadsheet. It was two hundred items, incidentally. If I'd done that myself I'd still be working on it now.

Another app developer is producing an audio version of my gamebook Heart of Ice. Every few days they send me the scripts. That's dozens of pages to check, not only for dialogue but for the logic markup that drives the game. If I allowed myself to get pulled down that rabbit hole, Jewelspider would never get finished. So Claude took a look and came back with a list of the things I needed to take a closer look at -- dialogue given to the wrong character, inconsistent tagging, that kind of thing. Another couple of weeks saved. When the developer emailed to say they'd be recording the next day and the actors needed a pronunciation guide to all the items, names, places, etc, in the book, it could have meant me pulling an all-nighter. Claude took ten minutes to find all the words that might get mispronounced along with suggested alternative ways to say them, so all I had to do was tell Claude which were right and I got a list back with both a plain phonetic respelling and (for especially diligent thespians) an IPA version of each word.

The AI dealt efficiently with chores that once would have cost me time and energy, of which I nowadays have far less than I did in my youth, allowing me to focus on the creative part of my job: the actual writing. And if you're interested in Jewelspider (which is all-human work, both the writing and the art) please come over to Patreon and take a look.

Walking the Sacred Way

Players who have completed the Vulcanverse usually tell me that they made dozens of pages of notes on all the quests. That's not surprising considering there are over 6100 sections in the whole series; I reckon that counts as a true epic. In a CRPG you'd have a quest log that automatically updated as you played. The equivalent in Vulcanverse are the companions and mentors who will nudge you in the right direction based on the titles, items and codewords you've acquired.

The snag is that you might be focused on one quest when the companion decides to give you a clue about another. So then it's back to the notebook. And not everyone likes taking copious notes (me, for one) so I got to thinking that a Guide to the Vulcanverse might be a handy adjunct to the series.

But how to do it? In an app I could easily hide spoilers. It's not that hard in a Kindle book either, where every clue could have its own page so you only see as much as you want. Here's one way it might work -- and be warned there are spoilers ahead.

Your brother's story

A tragic, multi-book quest concerns the death of your brother and your subsequent hunt for vengeance. The quest is tracked by three codewords: Ostrich, Quibble and Quad. The first of those triggers the quest, and the last means you have successfully completed it. This quest is only open to worshippers of Ares.

A death on the road

In the deserts of Notus (The Hammer of the Sun), you cross paths with a stranger whose face is obscured by a cloth. Later, after his death, unwinding the cloth from his face, you discover to your horror that he was your own brother. As his jaw gapes open, you realize he did not speak because someone had cut out his tongue.

The codeword Ostrich tracks your guilt at your brother's death and your vow to find the person who mutilated him. You are now a grieving sibling on a quest for justice. There are multiple circumstances that reflect your trauma and your thirst for vengeance:

• The Seer's Advice (The Hammer of the Sun): When you speak to the seer Antiphantes, he questions your responsibility for the death, but advises that before answering that, you must "find the one who cut out your brother’s tongue".
• The Furies (The Houses of the Dead): If you venture into the abyssal prisons of Tartarus where the Furies (the winged goddesses of retribution) nest and punish the wicked, the game checks if you possess Ostrich but do not yet have Quad. Since you are carrying the burden of guilt, this alters your encounter with them.
• Counseling the Dead (Workshop of the Gods): You can speak with the weary authority of someone who intimately knows grief and suffering. It grants you a bonus to your CHARM roll when trying to convince a despairing shade to cross over rather than fade into nothingness.
• Homecoming (Workshop of the Gods): The Ostrich codeword is checked when you return home (if you began your adventures in Book 5, in which case you'll have the codeword Reverie). Your sisters mournfully break the news that your brother was found dead by the roadside, mistakenly believing that "robbers stabbed him through the heart".

The hunt for the mutilator

In the realm of Boreas (The Pillars of the Sky) you encounter two men holding an amulet that belonged to your brother. When you threaten them, one of them breaks and confesses that he was given the amulet by a Halizon named Belus, a man with a purple tattoo of a crow's beak across his face. This news awards you the codeword Quibble. You have identified the man who mutilated your brother and you now have a specific target to hunt down in the Borean mountains. 

Having the codeword Quibble opens up specific avenues of investigation in the Halizon stronghold. For example, it allows you to make discreet enquiries about the crow-tattooed Halizon, leading a loquacious slave to inform you that the vicious Belus hangs out at the Inn of Prokoptas.

Vengeance is yours

When you finally confront Belus, he reveals a bitter truth: your brother was actually a highwayman who robbed travellers alongside him on the western road. Belus cut out his tongue so he wouldn't reveal the magic password to a hidden door where they stashed their loot. In a fight to the death, you cut Belus down and leave him choking on his own blood. Upon his death, you gain the codeword Quad. Your quest is complete and your brother's soul can rest easy.

The codeword Quad acts primarily as a resolution filter to turn off the ongoing vengeance-based encounters:

• Bypassing the Furies: As noted above, encounters like the Furies in The Houses of the Dead explicitly check if you have Ostrich and do not have Quad. Having Quad signifies your guilt has been expiated, meaning the Furies no longer pursue you.
• Family Reunion (Workshop of the Gods): As mentioned before, if you return to your childhood home in Vulcan City your sisters mournfully break the news to you that your brother was found murdered in Notus with his tongue cut out. If you possess the codeword Quad you can comfort your family with the knowledge that you have already tracked down Belus and exacted retribution.

You can see how a full guide to all the quests, NPCs, and items could easily fill a book. I should have written it at the same time as Jamie and I were working on the books. (Hindsight is a wonderful thing.) On the other hand, I now have NotebookLM, which makes sorting through all the references a lot easier and a lot more fun than it used to be with a simple Word search.

This is a good time to own up to a few errata from the Vulcanverse books namely:

The Houses of the Dead 182 should have the two initial codeword filters the other way round, ie:

• "If you have the codeword Negate ► 656 immediately. If not, read on. If you have the codeword Newhouse or Nimbus ► 343 immediately. If not, read on."

The Houses of the Dead 629 should begin as follows:

• If you have the codeword Nought or Nervous or Nefarious ► 587 immediately. If not, read on.

The Hammer of the Sun 474 should include this line, which should be deleted from section 6:

• Note the knotted rope on your list of possessions.

Thanks to the anonymous reader who spotted those. A much bigger howler is in Workshop of the Gods, where one of the endings couldn't be reached. Teófilo Hurtado, who has surely walked the Sacred Way many times, pointed out the problem. It requires a slight amendment to Workshop of the Gods 973, the options for which should read:

Make a STRENGTH roll at difficulty 16 to endure her punishing onslaught.

Success  ► 458 if you have the codeword Rhombus, and ► 1531 if not.

Failure  ► 385

Get a complete list of Vulcanverse errata here.

X marks the spot

Recently I've been working with Paweł Dziemski, co-author of Whispers Beyond The Stars, on an app version of my 1990s Tudor pirates gamebook Down Among the Dead Men. 

Paweł said it would be nice to have background images appearing behind the text panels that would indicate the prevailing location. So when you're escaping across the ocean in an open boat at the start, you get an image that distills the atmosphere of desperation and precarious survival. Later, there are images for the islands you might stop off at, and later still for the ports you stop off at and the various ships you might sail aboard.

Great idea. The snag was that I needed to find which sections correspond to which locations, which is not easy given that the whole adventure is randomized. So it was off to the loft to search through stacks of boxes until I found the original flowchart. (Yes, I still have it. What do you mean, hoarding? It was just as well I hung onto it these thirty years as it turns out.) Along with the flowchart I found the sketch above, the very genesis of the adventure.

I only realized after digging out the flowchart (written out on sheets of paper, incidentally -- no Twine in those days) that I didn't need it after all. I could just feed the book to NotebookLM and ask questions like, "Give me the section numbers for when the player leaves Port Leshand". Although Claude is my main AI assistant/coworker, producing helpful aids like the updated flowchart below, I'm continually impressed by what NotebookLM can do. It's moved far beyond simply being an intelligent index, which was how I first encountered it, and I can now set it to doing logic markup or helping me navigate old gamebooks.

My evangelism for AI aside, the Down Among the Dead Men app was coded the old-fashioned way (by Paweł) and you can get it from the Storm Weavers online shop in both English and Polish. I particularly like the atmospheric sound effects that Paweł has added. The creak of timbers, the cry of gulls, the lapping of waves, all add immeasurably to the sense of immersion. I know that most gamebook readers prefer a physical book, but this digital version is a lot more than just the text on a screen. If you try it out, let us know what you think.

An intelligent book index

Recently (here and here for example) we've listened to some of the Deep Dive podcasts that Google's NotebookLM can generate. Fun as they are, I didn't want anyone to go away with the idea that's all NotebookLM can do. As a friend who uses NotebookLM for work put it, the audios are just a party trick. What's much more useful (and reliable) is the ability to get it to read a bunch of source texts and then answer questions about what's in them.

I'll give you an example. A few years ago, I was part of a team working on an adaptation of Jack Vance's Lyonesse setting to the Mythras RPG system. I was responsible for the chapters involving the Ska, an austere race of invaders, and the city of Ys. The first thing I did was go through all the books, which I'd been given in digital form, to pull out any references to Ys or the Ska. So I ended up with fifty pages of notes like this:

Fifty pages is a lot to wade through. Four years on, how much easier it would have been with the help of NotebookLM. I uploaded the three Lyonesse books and then asked, "What do we know about Ska warships and naval tactics?"

Each of those numbers opens a quote from the source text. The first note, for example:

"The Smaadra, unable to outrun the Ska ship, prepared for battle. The catapults were manned and armed, fire-pots prepared and slung to booms; arrow screens raised above the bulwarks. The battle went quickly. After a few arrow volleys the Ska moved in close and tried to grapple. The Troice returned the arrow fire, then winged out a boom and slung a fire-pot accurately onto the longship, where it exploded in a terrible surprise of yellow flame. At a range of thirty yards the Smaadra’s catapults in a leisurely fashion broke the longship apart. The Smaadra stood by to rescue survivors but the Ska made no attempt to swim from the wallowing hulk of their once-proud ship, which presently sank under the weight of its loot."

You can see how much time that would have saved me and the other Lyonesse designers. Dedicated large language models like NotebookLM are going to be indispensable to writers, especially if you're working on an ongoing series or doing the worldbuilding for an RPG or videogame. A lot of people protest about the use of AI in creative fields (just look on social media; there are more Dunning-Kruger AI pundits there now than there were overnight "experts" in immunology during the covid pandemic) but by that argument it's cheating to have an index or contents page in any reference book. The truth is that the time the LLM is saving is just the drudge work. It's essentially doing a researcher's job, which leaves the writer more time and energy to be creative. And I call that progress.

The image is Mick van Houten's painting for the cover of The Green Pearl.

More deep dives into the future

Google's NotebookLM is my latest toy. I've been having a blast unleashing it on various books of mine, game write-ups, favourite novels, etc, and listening to the podcast discussions it generates. They're not perfect -- a bit repetitive, and sometimes the virtual hosts get the wrong end of the stick, but this is still in experimental mode. Imagine what it will be like in a couple of years. And NotebookLM also has a serious use as a tool for writers. That's my excuse for playing with it, anyway.

Here are a few of its analyses; you'll need a Google account to listen to them.

Can You Brexit (Without Breaking Britain)?

"Can You Brexit is a political thriller that follows a fictional British prime minister as they navigate the complexities of Brexit negotiations. The book explores a variety of potential Brexit outcomes, including a 'hard Brexit' where Britain leaves the European Union and the single market, a 'soft Brexit' where Britain leaves the EU but remains in the single market, and a 'Swiss model' where Britain has a more limited relationship with the EU. The book delves into the internal political pressures the player faces as they attempt to negotiate a Brexit deal that satisfies both their own party and the British public."

Listen to the Deep Dive discussion here.

The Conclave 

"The story follows a group of wizards on a quest to find a prismatic jewel in a labyrinth on the island of Tartuva. They are hunted by a powerful adversary named Pale, who seeks to erase all names in the world. The wizards are aided by various spirits, including Surma, a wizard who is worshipped as a god, and Wax, a shaman who can communicate with the dead. The story highlights the importance of names in the world, and the struggle between those who seek to control them and those who seek to preserve them."

Listen to the Deep Dive discussion (admittedly with a few hallucinations about the plot) here.

Dark Lord: The Early Years

"The story of Dirk Lloyd, a young boy who believes he is the Dark Lord transported to Earth by a magical mishap. While he grapples with his new reality, Dirk tries to adapt to life as a human child, and plots to reclaim his powers. The novel delves into themes of identity, power, friendship and good versus evil, with a darkly humorous tone."

Hear those puny mortal AIs talk about the great Dirk here.

Down Among the Dead Men

"The story follows the player-character as they navigate treacherous seas, battle pirates, face undead monsters and ancient demigods, and ultimately try to rescue Queen Titania from the clutches of the villainous Captain Skarvench."

Listen to the Deep Dive discussion here.

Dragon Warriors

"From the medieval-inspired kingdom of Albion to the exotic Ta’ashim lands, the game portrays a vibrant and diverse world with distinct societal structures, belief systems, and unique inhabitants."

Here are the automaton town criers to tell you all about it.

Florien

"Diana encounters a mysterious and alluring young man called Florien. The novel is characterised by a romantic and supernatural tone, with Florien appearing and disappearing at will, leaving Diana to wonder about his true nature and his relationship to the girl, Janice, who lives in a dark and forbidding manor house. It explores themes of obsession, captivity, and the allure of the dark and dangerous, particularly Diana's attraction to Florien and his mysterious and potentially sinister nature."

See what the Deep Dive hosts made of it here.

The Hammer of the Sun

"The Great River lies barren, its lifeblood drained by an ancient curse. Journey through scorching sands and forgotten ruins, where sphinxes guard lost secrets and skeletal Spartoi wage perpetual war. Explore a vast open world where brooding sphinxes, proud Amazons, and forgotten gods cross your path. Uncover the mysteries of Iskandria, a once-great city now lost to time, and face challenges that will test your courage and cunning. Seek out mythical creatures, confront deadly foes, and collect powerful artifacts as you race against time to restore balance to the land. Will you become a legend, or be forgotten beneath the relentless hammer of the Sun?"

Listen to the Deep Dive discussion here.

Lifeform Three

"The story of Paftoo, an artificial 'bod' in a dystopian future who works at Harkaway Hall, a nature reserve created from the ruins of a lost civilisation. Paftoo has no memory of his past, and his life is a constant cycle of work and night mode, where his mind is wiped clean. The novel explores themes of memory, identity, and the nature of reality as Paftoo tries to piece together fragments of his past and understand the true nature of the world he lives in."

Watch the bods discuss it on YouTube.

A Minotaur at the Savoy

"A series of letters sent to the Royal Mythological Society from individuals across the globe, detailing their encounters with fantastical creatures and events during the Year of Wonders, a period in which the lines between reality and imagination became blurred. The letters are a mixture of the mundane and the extraordinary, with correspondents reporting on everything from mischievous fairies and shape-shifting demons to giant birds carrying people off to ancient palaces. The letters serve as a humorous record of this extraordinary time, offering a glimpse into the impact of fantastical occurrences on everyday life."

Listen to the Deep Dive hosts talk about it here.

Necklace of Skulls

"The adventure involves the player taking on the role of a Mayan character searching for their lost brother in a fantastical mythological realm, encountering various challenges and finally confronting the semi-divine mage Necklace of Skulls, who may or may not be an aspect of the god of death."

Listen to the Deep Dive discussion here.

Richer source material typically inspires the AI to give a more interesting discussion. There's more depth to a novel like Lifeform Three than you'll find in any gamebook, even Heart of Ice. On the other hand, here's a case of our virtual hosts rising to a seemingly impossible challenge and acquitting themselves well.

Heart of AI

Worldbuilding matters if you're creating any sort of ongoing series, but especially if it's fantasy or SF. Think of the problems that have bedevilled writers of Doctor Who or Star Trek when they try to remember what's been established in the show's canon. Or even if you're just writing a novel and you introduced a minor character a dozen chapters back and now you have to go searching for what you said about them.

Thankfully it's not as hard as it used to be in the days of typewriters or even fountain pens -- I still have no idea how Anthony Trollope kept track of everything that was going on in the Barchester books while also holding down an important job in the UK postal service. But now we're on the cusp of AI making it much easier. Google's NotebookLM takes your books and can generate a timeline, story outline, FAQs, contents list, and can answer questions about the text with references so you can find the relevant section.

Here's what it had to say about my book Heart of Ice:

Power Corrupts in a Frozen World

Players choose a character with unique skills and navigate through a perilous post-apocalyptic world. The story centres on the search for the Heart of Volent, a powerful artefact believed to hold the key to ultimate power. Players must make choices and engage in combat with other characters and dangerous creatures, navigating through a frozen wasteland to reach a ruined city full of buried secrets. The game's mechanics are detailed, including skills, weapons, and items, allowing for a diverse range of play styles. The text provides a narrative experience with specific instructions and outcomes based on player decisions, culminating in a final confrontation for the Heart of Volent.

The narrative of Heart of Ice explores the themes of power, ambition, and the nature of humanity by placing characters with diverse motivations in a race for an artifact of immense power, the Heart of Volent. The story portrays a bleak future where humanity is on the brink of extinction due to a new ice age and the legacy of past conflicts. 

• The Heart of Volent, a meteorite resembling a violet gemstone, possesses the power to reshape the universe. This power attracts individuals driven by various desires, highlighting the multifaceted nature of ambition. 
• Some, like Kyle Boche, seek ultimate power for personal gain. Boche's treachery and self-preservation instincts are noted by other characters who have dealt with him previously. 
• Others, like Chaim Golgoth, a USI agent, are motivated by duty and the pursuit of national interest. Golgoth's pragmatism is evident in his willingness to secure the Heart for the United States, claim its power for himself, or destroy it to prevent it from falling into "hostile hands". 
• The story also presents characters like Janus Gaunt, who initially seeks the Heart to "set things right" but ultimately succumbs to the corrupting influence of power, plotting to eliminate those he perceives as weak. This descent into ruthlessness exemplifies the seductive and transformative nature of ambition.

The narrative suggests that the pursuit of power can warp even the most well-intentioned individuals, leading them down a path of destruction. This is evident in Baron Siriasis's transformation from a seemingly rational individual to a power-hungry schemer willing to sacrifice the universe for his own rejuvenation and immortality.

The story's focus on a dying Earth further emphasizes the dangers of unchecked ambition. As characters fight for control of the Heart, the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, suggesting that the pursuit of individual power can blind individuals to the collective good.

Finally, the narrative uses the concept of a "heart of ice" to symbolize the ruthlessness and lack of empathy that often accompany the pursuit of power. This recurring motif underscores the story's cautionary message about the potential for power to corrupt even the most humane instincts.

I then asked it a specific question: "Who is the 'gene genie'?" NotebookLM said:

"There is a character named Malengin who is referred to as a 'Gene Genie'. Here's what the text says about him: 

• Malengin is specifically sought out by Thadra Bey, who is described as a 'veritable Amazon' enhanced to be 'more than human'. This suggests that Malengin possesses knowledge or abilities related to enhancing humans beyond their normal capabilities. 
• Thadra Bey seeks Malengin out because the science of genetic engineering cannot be practised where she is from, on al-Lat, due to the risk of infecting the colony with a deadly plague. This further suggests that Malengin is skilled in genetic engineering, and that his practices might be considered dangerous by some. 
• Malengin is described as someone who is said to trade in genetic enhancements through the use of retroviruses. This confirms that Malengin is involved in the world of genetic engineering and uses retroviruses to alter the DNA of his clients, resulting in permanent changes."

What I liked most of all was that NotebookLM can (in mere minutes) generate a podcast-style discussion about the book(s). It's not exactly In Our Time but it's a sign of great things to come. As long as you have a Google account you can listen to the Heart of Ice discussion here.

I've just heard from Fox that their online version of Heart of Ice is now updated, so you can play the adventure for free right now.

Four jewels of fantasy fiction

All ready for Halloween? If I were plonked on the spooky equivalent of a desert island -- say a remote manor house with flickering candlelight, wind howling down the chimney, and rain pelting the leaded panes -- the reading matter I'd want with me is Coven 13, the late-'60s horror/fantasy magazine. 

As our two virtual hosts from NotebookLM explain here, Coven 13 gave a uniquely modern twist to the genres it dealt in, often with an outlook that still feels fresh today. It was the '60s fantasy/horror version of Black Mirror. You can see what I mean thanks to the Internet Archive, which has brought all four issues back from beyond:

• Issue #1
• Issue #2
• Issue #3
• Issue #4 

(That's assuming that by the time you read this post the Internet Archive has recovered from the DDoS attacks that knocked it out of action recently.)

Here's NotebookLM's perceptive but typically bullet-pointy view of what set the magazine apart:

• The emphasis on originality and uniqueness: The editor of Coven 13, Arthur H. Landis, repeatedly stresses the importance of originality in the horror genre. He criticises the overabundance of clichéd vampire, werewolf, and pact-with-the-devil stories, urging writers to find inspiration in contemporary settings and themes.
• The focus on contemporary vignettes with an occult twist: Landis encourages stories that ground supernatural elements in the realities of the modern world. He cites examples like Rosemary's Baby, Bell, Book and Candle, and Psycho as successful examples of blending horror with contemporary life.
• A preference for genuinely frightening content: Landis expresses a desire for stories that evoke genuine fear in both the reader and the writer. He yearns for manuscripts with the terrifying impact of classics like The Haunting of Hill House and The Uninvited.
• Rejection of formulaic horror tropes: Coven 13 distinguishes itself by rejecting mindless, stereotypical monsters and scenarios. Landis advocates for more nuanced and psychologically grounded depictions of horror. 
• An appreciation of psychological horror: The magazine showcases a preference for gothic and psychological horror, exemplified by stories like "Odile" and "Leona!". These tales emphasize atmosphere, suspense, and psychological complexity over gore or gratuitous violence.
• Openness to diverse subgenres: While Coven 13 focuses on horror, witchcraft, and the supernatural, the letters page reveals a demand from readers for a variety of subgenres. 
• High-quality artwork: Both the editor and readers commend the artwork of William Stout, praising his ability to capture the mood and atmosphere of the stories. This emphasis on quality illustration further distinguishes Coven 13 from other pulp magazines of the time.

If that sounds intriguing, stock up on those four issues, and also drop in on our sister blog, Wrong, which is a spiritual successor to Arthur H Landis's ideas, but also be sure to keep a space on your bookshelves for something else that I'll be back to tell you about on All Hallows Eve as the sun sets over Wistren Wood.

Dusk in Wistren Wood

This year is the fortieth anniversary of my first published book, Crypt of the Vampire. I've blogged about it before, and longtime readers will already know the story of how it came to be written -- and revised (in 2013) and later expanded (in 2016) by David Walters.

And if you're familiar with the Mirabilis blog you'll also know how the Golden Dragon Gamebook series led to my lifelong friendship and creative partnership with Leo Hartas -- which also weaves back into the present day and my Jewelspider RPG, which is being illustrated by Leo's son Inigo. Everything's entangled.

In the introduction to David Walters's 2016 version I wrote:

"As my preference when running role-playing games is to let the players drive the story, I dispensed with the long introduction usual in gamebooks at the time. There’s no spoon-feeding here, no overt mission. You aren’t told your history. You are the hero, as the back cover blurb used to say, so your background and motivation are up to you. I’m not saying it works. You as the reader must decide that. I’m just saying it was deliberate. Crypt of the Vampire is my love letter to Hammer horror, and I wanted it to have the pace, vigour and dislocating dreamlike quality of the best of those movies."

Is there anything more to say? Yes, plenty. The full origin story of Crypt of the Vampire has yet to be told, but it's coming soon. With Samhain approaching, expect to hear the creak of a coffin lid, the howl of wolves, and the flapping of leathery wings. There's no escape -- so stock up on garlic and hawthorn stakes now, and watch this space.

While you're waiting -- have you tried this Golden Dragon mini-adventure, "The Island of Illusions", that Oliver Johnson and I wrote back in 1984? And listen to this comparative analysis of two very different Gothic novels by the virtual hosts on NotebookLM.

To get you in the mood for Halloween, here are some vampire movies I've enjoyed. Got your own favourite? That's what the comments are for.

• A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night
• Count Dracula
• Cronos
• Dance of the Vampires
• Let The Right One In
• Mr Vampire
• Nosferatu the Vampyre
• Shadow of the Vampire
• Viy