No Man’s Land is basically home

The Dark Lord books are supposed to be for kids, but I have yet to find an adult reader of fantasy who hasn't enjoyed them too, usually to the point of laughing immoderately in public whenever they open the book, thereby risking a tasering from the people who used to patrol the streets with nothing more dangerous than butterfly nets. I was recently reading the manuscript for the third book (WIP title The Dirkest Hour) in bed and I had to stop because I was laughing so loud I woke my wife up. It's a little hard to explain... "What's so funny?" "Well, there's this goblin and he's throwing custard at the wall, and then he lets off this horrendous fart and... Oh, never mind."

Jamie has just done an interview on the Hachette Children's Books site. Be sure to read the whole thing if you're interested in the creative process and the craft of writing. Here are a few highlights from the interview - and come back on Friday for more news from Jamie:

Some background before we begin... What were you doing, in the pre-Dirk world?

Well, I started off life in the '80s doing game books - the choose-your-own-adventure type - for Puffin in the Fighting Fantasy series. The first book I ever did, with my writing partner Mark Smith, was called Talisman of Death. Those did rather well, so I went off and did a load of them, then I did a two-player series and it had the only book I ever dedicated to my mother – ‘To my darling mother’ – and it was called The Arena of Death.

I must’ve done about twenty five game books, and then that whole market dried up when computer games came along. So I got back into computer games and had a computer game company called Black Cactus which went horribly wrong in the end and we lost a lot of money. After that I got back into novels, really.

Are there any games we might remember from that computer game company?

There was something called Warrior Kings, which was an RTS, in early 2000, a sort of fantasy thing. So essentially, it’s been thirty years of selling goblins to kids and just doing fantasy left, right and centre, creating endless Dark Lords and big, bad villains, shooting them down or killing them. I’ve lived in that world for so long you begin to think ‘surely Dark Lords have mothers…’ and that starts getting you into why someone would become a Dark Lord.

Do you remember where you were when you had the idea for Dark Lord?

Yes, I was with a friend of mine, Dave Morris. We’ve since started another company, Fabled Lands LLP, and we have an American investor. He’s quite a serious biotech venture capitalist, but he also used to love all of our gamebooks; for him it’s a bit of fun and he can meet up and talk to us and set us working on fun projects. It’s great for us because we’re just free to write whatever we like - it’s like having a patron, like a medieval Medici, except he’s called Big Wedge Frank. So that’s wonderful, and actually we’re doing quite well at the moment.

So it was just me and Dave, having a few beers and riffing off about how great it would be if you had a Dark Lord wandering around Earth. It began with an idea about a Diary of a Dark Lord, so it would be like Darth Vader or Sauron actually writing ‘Had to destroy a goblin today’, or you can imagine ‘Today the hobbits found my ring – Noooo!’, that kind of stuff. And then you start thinking about how could you really do the biography of a Dark Lord? You’d need to make him sympathetic or likeable, and you couldn’t really do that if you were doing it straight – then it would be like trying to make Hitler or Stalin likeable. It had to be jokey. And then the comedy angle led to the fish-out-water stuff, and then having him cursed is a natural progression, cursed into the body of a thirteen year old boy and sent to school is just perfect.

This is a very detailed world you’ve created – how long did it take to do that, and is there loads more that you know about but haven't been able to put in the book?

There is a lot that’s been left out, but nothing’s wasted. I’m writing the third Dark Lord book now and you never know when stuff will come in. But my career has mostly been about creating worlds, so that was the easy bit. You need the nations, but you leave religion out of it as it’s too sensitive these days. Already in the American version we’ve had to take out the word ‘Hell’, so instead of ‘By the nine Hells!’ Dirk has to say ‘By the nine nether worlds!’and there’s other stuff like that.

But normally, if you’re doing a computer game or role-playing game, you’d have a very detailed pantheon of different gods for different cultures, different politics and battle and combat tactics, like you’re creating an entire medieval nation from scratch, with stuff from mythology, science fiction and Japanese themes. I’ve done so much of that it would be easy to parody, but this is a more of a comedy parody and at the same time a great example of the genre and a loving homage

Reading the book is almost like being in the mind of a proper mad person, for whom other people’s reality is incomprehensible; how did you do that?

It was definitely part of me, I’m afraid! I think I started life a bit bemused by the world, so I think I drew on that a bit…it’s a product of all that gaming, coupled with my own bemusement. Although, saying that, I was born in Iran and lived there for the first ten years of my life, and then went to boarding school in England; my dad worked for Shell and we lived on an oil field. So, in a way, that also makes you look at the world from a different perspective.

It gives you a very good understanding of the outsider principle.

I think that’s true. You're born a little bit of an outsider, in a small, unique group of people, then you come to Britain still a bit of an outsider.

No Man’s Land is basically home.

Yes, or the alternative is…I fell to your planet many years ago, from the Dark Lands – I pretend it is fiction, but it’s all true.

Do you know where you’re going next?

Not really. We sort of had this idea to do stuff, and it seemed like a good idea to write, but I never realised it would be so successful and create this writing career for me. It was more like, I’ve got some bills coming in and what can you do when you get to a certain age? I was so evolved as a specialist in game books. It's like pandas and bamboo…if there’s no bamboo, they die. As I still wanted to be a panda I had to learn to do something else.

The Dark Lord arrives in America

To coincide with the release of Dark Lord: The Early Years in US hardcover this week, Jamie has an exclusive interview with the International Reading Association; "My name is Dirk, but you may call me Master."

The interview gives you a taste of the side-splitting humour that won Jamie a shortlist nomination for the 2012 Roald Dahl Prize. Not only that, it's full of brilliant creative insights like this one:

'[Dark Lord] is a classic fish out of water/odd couple plot, but it also parodies its genre, albeit in a loving way. It lampoons fantasy, but it is also a cracking fantasy tale in itself, though I do say it myself. It's also interesting that this book probably couldn't have been written thirty years ago. Its time is now because everyone knows what a Dark Lord is, the imagery, the “trope” is everywhere.'

...though the truth is you can't study to acquire authorial talent like Jamie's, you have to be born with it. Curse him.

You can buy Book One in hardcover from the Amazon.com link below, and UK readers can still get it in paperback, as well as the sequel A Fiend in Need. I know, I know, you want him to write more Fabled Lands books - but really, take a look at the Dirk Lloyd series as they are genuine modern children's classics that I believe will be read and enjoyed by kids and grown-ups for generations to come.

Dirk Lloyd shortlisted for Roald Dahl Prize

Here's an exciting bit of news that I've been keeping under my hat for a couple of weeks, but today it can be revealed. Dark Lord: The Early Years is one of six books shortlisted for this year's Roald Dahl Funny Prize.

(To digress: obviously it disgusts me to have to write the words "Funny Prize" but that's the name the organizers have given the thing. I console myself with the thought that Roald Dahl himself would shove them out the way and correct it to "Humour Prize" with big red pen, chortling derisively to himself all the while.)

Anyway, the important thing is that the genius of the book, which I believe is Jamie's greatest work to date, is being recognized. And if Roald Dahl himself were one of the judges I have no doubt it would win. As it is, we must rely on Dirk Lloyd's talents for self-promotion and social networking. I asked Dirk for a quote and he said:

"The Roald Dahl Funny Prize? Shouldn’t that read the Dirk Lloyd Funny Prize?"

So, in the bag then.

While opening Jamie's cage to throw him an extra scrap of rancid meat as a reward, it occurred to me that credit is also due to the wacky drawings of Scrawny Earth Girl (aka Freya Hartas), depicted here in the office where her father Leo and I work on our epic comic saga Mirabilis, wearing a jacket given to her by my wife Roz. Put like this, I guess it sounds like our lives are driven by the same kind of incestuous cronyism that pervades modern politics and business, only in our case without the vast wealth and the freebie honours.

I know I'm biassed, but Dark Lord really is one of the funniest books I've ever read. I was laughing out loud all the way through, and how many books can you say that about? Pick it up in the USA from October 2 at the link above, or in the UK on Amazon here.

Surfeit of white

If you have so far escaped the attention of Dirk Lloyd, the evil boy genius and erstwhile Dark Lord, then you have two options. Option one is to hide under the sofa and hope he never notices you. Option two is to embrace your fate and go with the flow. With his second book now out in the UK and his first book shortly to be released in the USA, I'd advise the latter. This snippet from A Fiend in Need may help make up your mind:

The White Wizard, Hasdruban, sat at his great desk of living oak, staring at the painting on the wall. It was a painting of the Dark Lord of the Iron Tower of Despair, the Nameless One, the World Burner, the Sorcerer Supreme, etc and Hasdruban’s Arch Arch-Enemy. He had to be destroyed once and for all, along with all his works.

A knock at the door interrupted his flow of thought. ‘Ah, here she is,’ said the Wizard, his voice hoary with age and wisdom. ‘Enter!’

A strange apparition walked into his Inner Sanctum. She was dressed from head to foot in long, flowing white lace, an ornate headdress on her head, her face completely hidden behind a veil. Not an inch of her flesh was exposed.

‘Ah, the White Witch of Holy Vengeance.Welcome.’

The White Witch merely inclined her shrouded head in acknowledgment.

Hasdruban continued. ‘It seems our foe, though he has been trapped in the body of a human child and is weaker and more vulnerable than he has been in a thousand years, was still able to thwart our last attempt to destroy him – he defeated the White Beast of Retribution. This time, we must try harder.’

He paused, hoping the White Witch would speak, but she didn’t. In fact, as far as Hasdruban could recall, she had never spoken. Not a word.

‘So, I am sending you this time. You willmasquerade as something the humans of that strange plane call a “nanny”. I believe their task is to look after other people’s children and their families. In this case, the child in question is the Nameless One himself. Though actually, he has a name over there. They call him Dirk. Dirk Lloyd.’

The White Witch stood there, silent.

Hasdruban went on. ‘You will beguile the family he lives with, the Purejoies – they know nothing of the viper they nurture in their midst – or rather they choose not to believe what is obvious. You will…persuade…them that they need a nanny. They will put you in charge of the Dark One. Find out what he is up to, and if you can, destroy him. But be warned! Though he has no sorcerous powers to speak of and inhabits the body of a mere child, he still has his cunning, his endless malice and his evil genius!’

The White Witch inclined her head in acknowledgement. Then she bent low, draping her long veil over her arms and began to do something under her robes.

Hasdruban raised a hairy white eyebrow. After a few seconds, she handed Hasdruban a note written on black paper in white ink. Hasdruban scanned it.

‘Ah, how will you get to that plane the inhabitants call Earth? Well, I have some rather special magic for that! Let me show you, my dear…’

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:

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.