Published Gamebooks I've worked on:

Some writing communities I'm involved with:

The Dark Horde release Debut Single ‘Mask’


'Mask' by The Dark Horde, track two from The Calling album

Artwork by Aldo 'Valgorth' Requena

On this day, The Dark Horde – the collective of world-class musicians, vocalists and actors from Melbourne, Australia that I have formed – are pleased to announce the release of their debut single ‘Mask’ from their forthcoming album The Calling due October 2021

The Calling, a heavy metal horror concept album written and directed by me, is a musical narrative experience featuring a supernatural horror story set to an "eighties heavy metal" soundtrack. It is the prequel to my award-winning horror novel The Dark Horde, set in south-eastern Australia in 1989.

Here in this track ‘Mask’, the second track of twelve on a fifty-minute album, the main character Henry tells of the horrible burden of knowledge and gives a portent of the horror to come. A captivating narrative journey set to a powerful cinematic sound driven by dominating riffs and compelling vocals awaits the listener…

 

 

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Of Trials, Tribulations and Long Journeys


(Vale Konrad, little buddy 1/4/2000 – 21/10/2016)

Journeys never end the way you imagined they might when they began. Journeys never really end anyway, they simply change through their various trials and tribulations, their experiences, learnings and joys.

I kinda knew at the time of my last post (a few days after the photo above) that it would be a long time before I would post here again… I faced a challenging period in this journey we call “life”, perhaps the most challenging I’d face, and I knew that had to be my focus. But part of me wanted to dream that I’d manage to keep the posts going here too, but it wasn’t to be.

My mother faced terminal cancer (with grace, wisdom and a determination to make the most of every moment left I might add) and I was her primary carer in that last period of her life, though supported by our (large!) family too. She passed late 2017, and this combined with working long hours as a developer/analyst and then taking care of her partner in the months to follow, and then also losing my father to terminal cancer in mid 2018, meant that I simply didn’t have the time or mental/emotional resources to maintain things here for a while…

But as I said back in my last post, barring death myself, I’ll always be back here to tell you about creative projects I’m working on… Creating stuff is what I do ?

And now, during this time of challenges different to those before, yet still challenging in their own way (as we all face), I’m coming to the end of another creative journey that began back in 2000. I think it’s fair to say it’s my biggest, most ambitious and complicated project to be released yet. A grand collaboration with world-renown musicians, vocalists, actors, artists and sound engineers, coming together to create a story set to music told over the course of an album…

The Dark Horde shall return!

So yes, you can expect to hear from me again with details very soon...

One long journey is about to end and new journey to begin.

 

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Express Yourself and Be the Star You Are!

Nice view huh?

(Here’s a random picture I took a while back, cos I like blog posts better with pictures)

Yes, it’s been a while… In fact it’s been almost exactly two years since my own blog post here.

It’s certainly not by intention, it’s just “stuff” comes up and directs my attention elsewhere (as it does for us all). And the longer I leave it to post back here, the less-pressing the urge becomes… But barring death haha, I’ll always be back here at some point to tell you about creative projects I’m working on, which I’ll always be doing too... Creating stuff is just what I’ve always done and always will.

And yes, occasionally I’ll even get around to publishing something from the shelves and drawers filling my room too ;)

So my plan now I’m back here is to share some of the things I’ve been doing and working on over the coming weeks and months, to finish some of the blog serials I’ve started here, and to share some other things of news and interest. (It sounds all great in theory!)

You may be wondering at the title of this post, since I haven’t actually addressed that yet… Sure it’s a great statement, and certainly something I believe in and (try to) demonstrate at all times, but the reason for such a title is that I wanted to share two radio interviews I’ve just recently done with the Voice America talk radio network, on their Express Yourself! Teen radio show, and their Be the Star You Are! show.

From the links below you can hear almost an hour of me talking about my writing, about Tin Man Games and gamebooks, about The Dark Horde, and even about Halloween. There’s a few too many ums and ahs haha, but hopefully it’s interesting for you nonetheless. I had a lot of fun doing the interviews, and the hosts, Cynthia Brian, Asya Gonzalez and Brigitte Jia were fantastic!

INTERVIEW ONE WITH EXPRESS YOURSELF! TEEN RADIO

(My interview starts about 30:45 in, and runs to the end of the episode)

INTERVIEW TWO WITH STAR STYLE BE THE STAR YOU ARE! RADIO

(My interview starts about 38:35 in, and runs to the end of the episode)

 

 

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Visions of Madness

Artwork for The Calling - illustration by Bobby Mcglone

Today I’m giving you a sneak peek at some of the (pre-final) artwork for The Calling – a musical prequel to The Dark Horde


What you see isn’t the front cover (that’ll be revealed in due course!) but I love it. Bobby Mcglone, renowned Melbourne “heavy metal” artist, has done an amazing job I think, in capturing so many aspects of what The Calling is about: the final recording of Henry before the events in The Dark Horde begin.

 

 

I wrote about what The Calling project was in more detail HERE (where you’ll notice I’m talking about things for “2013” but let’s just pretend I said “2014” haha), and even better you can actually hear some of the music and narration from The Calling on the promo trailer that can be seen below:

 


 

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Coffin Hop Post 2: The Origin of The Dark Horde.

Coffin Hop 2013
A Unit, Timbertop 1989
Coffin Hop: Death by Drive-In Anthology

“Some things can lie dormant and hidden, festering for an apparent eternity, before eventually manifesting into reality… Such has certainly been the case with The Dark Horde!”

This is how I begin the acknowledgements section of my horror novel The Dark Horde, published for the first time in 2012. And it’s no exaggeration… It is with good reason that the book is set in 1989, for that is when I first began to write it.

A (dodgy) scan of my Dormitory photo from Timbertop, 1989

If I can pinpoint the beginnings of the story to a particular event, it was the writing of a short story for an English class exercise where our teacher, Russell Allthorpe (or “Mr. Allthorpe” as the students addressed him), asked us to write something on theme of “There’s something you should know about me.”

My writing has always inclined to horror, fantasy and science fiction in particular (even my first short story I wrote at the age of six or seven in 1980 or 1981 was horror!) and so I took that theme and created a horror short story. But what happened as a result of that story was unexpected. Mr. Allthorpe didn’t just give it top marks, he used my piece to set an English exercise on mood and pacing for the entire year. He cut my story up into individual paragraphs and set students an assignment where they had to work out the order that the paragraphs went in based on the building mood and tension. It was something of a revelation to me that my story should be considered an appropriate example for such an exercise, and began to foster in me a sense of self-belief that I was capable of writing fiction that others would respect and enjoy.

I present you now with this short story (unaltered save for typos). You may only catch the faintest glimpse of what would evolve into the story of The Dark Horde within this work, and indeed it wasn’t until 1991 that I actually began to write a novel under such a name, but nonetheless I still think it holds up *reasonably* well to this day… Well at least considering I was only fourteen at the time (and had yet to master certain concepts such as “less is more” and “show don’t tell”). Anyway, good enough to share I think, even if just for interest’s sake. J

 

The dark was cool, the air was sharp. All was fresh and crisp on a summer’s night. Two shadowy figures stood alone in the gloomy classroom. Only one would leave alive…

One of them spoke, “There’s something you should know about me,” he paused for a brief moment, gazing deeply into Mr. Allthorpe’s eyes and making his teacher feel a little unnerved, “Mr. Allthorpe.”

The taller of the two smiled and replied, “Oh yes, I know Andrew that you’ve got a little bit of an organisation problem and you need a little help.”

Andrew only grinned and took a step closer, shaking his head.

“You’re an asthmatic or… Or a loud snorer… You wet your bed at night perhaps?”

Andrew only answered with a firm no, shown by the movement of his head.

At this point Andrew shifted his iron gaze from Mr. Allthorpe and peered out through the panelled window. He stared for long moments at the mysterious, drifting clouds, as if anticipating something or waiting for something to happen.

“Is there anything wrong?” suggested Mr. Allthorpe, his lungs beginning to feel heavy and his hands slippery.

It grew darker.

“No, nothing wrong,” returned Andrew, his eyes once again firmly fixed on Mr. Allthorpe’s as if nothing on Earth could move them. Andrew took a further pace towards Mr. Allthorpe. Now only a mere metre and a half lay between them. The moon by now had half-appeared over the grey crest of one of the shimmering clouds…

“Please tell me,” Mr. Allthorpe said, almost begging. He was getting very anxious now.

The fluorescent moon, like a glowing dish, was unveiled. Andrew began to laugh a deep, mocking boom. Mr. Allthorpe’s eyes increased dramatically in size, opening up to the grisly horror that was now before him. His dry mouth opened up to a silent scream…

*               *               *

Crunch! Splat!

-Was all that could be heard from outside. Soon after, the classroom door was suddenly torn bodily off its metal hinges and a huge, hairy wolf bounded through it and away, out into the translucent moonlight…

 

 

As you (hopefully!) observed, I’ve gotten better at writing. But I see many of my tendencies, particularly when writing horror, in this early work. And more importantly I think, I kept going with it and eventually did publish my horror novel, even if it did take another twenty-four years! (But that’s a story I’ll elaborate on another time).

The Dark Horde has won a number of major international indie awards and the ebook version is currently available on Amazon for only $0.99 and the UK paperback version dis available (with free delivery) for only £2.99. 

As part of COFFIN HOP 2013, I am having a giveaway where you can win either one of three pdf copies of my horror novel The Dark Horde, or if you win the grand prize, I’ll mail you a signed copy of the paperback version completely free. (And if you already have a copy, I’ll send you a copy of my other published novel Evermore: An Introduction instead). The grand prize winner will also get a free t-shirt of The Dark Horde (if you want it that is - I only have a single L size one left).

Not only this, the grand prize winner will also win an ebook copy of the Coffin Hop Anthology DEATH BY DRIVE-IN featuring some of the best work of several of the Coffin Hop authors, released especially for this very event! (This competition ends when midnight strikes on Halloween - EST time in the US)

*** Click here to enter Brewin’s 2013 Coffin Hop Giveaway ***

 

The COFFIN HOP: DEATH BY DRIVE-IN anthology is available for sale here and the best part about this is that all profits will be donated to LitWorld.org to help encourage children’s literacy throughout the world. The COFFIN HOP store is also selling a range of COFFIN HOP merchandise and the proceeds of these sales too, are being donated to charity J

 

To coincide with this special event, I have also released a promo video for my forthcoming project The Calling, which is a musical prequel to The Dark Horde. You can view the video on You Tube HERE. 

Lastly don't forget that the full list of all the other awesome horror maestros taking part. Happy Hopping!

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Coffin Hop 2013 is here!

Coffin Hop 2013
Coffin Hop: Death by Drive-In Anthology

 

It’s that time of year again… The time of COFFIN HOP when the veil between here and the other side wanes and those sinister forces that dwell there make their presence felt. The time when horror authors and artists from around this frail globe we call Earth come together to venerate all that is dark and horrifying. The time to revel in the darkness and to partake in the celebrations, revelations and cooperations. And the time to “blog hop” between the many many sites taking part and be in the chance to win stacks of awesome prizes!

So once again, dear visitors, I have a special giveaway for you. For just a few mouse clicks you can win either one of three pdf copies of my horror novel The Dark Horde, or if you win the grand prize, I’ll mail you a signed copy of the paperback version completely free. (And if it happens that you already have a copy, don’t despair! I’ll send you a copy of my other published novel Evermore: An Introduction instead). Not only this, but if you win the grand prize, you’ll also get a free t-shirt of The Dark Horde (if you want it!) bearing in mind that I’ve only got a single L size one left to give away…

Want more? Well how about this, the grand prize winner will also win an ebook copy of the Coffin Hop Anthology DEATH BY DRIVE-IN featuring some of the best work of several of the Coffin Hop authors, released especially for this very event! (This competition ends when midnight strikes on Halloween - EST time in the US)

*** Click here to enter Brewin’s 2013 Coffin Hop Giveaway ***

 

The COFFIN HOP: DEATH BY DRIVE-IN anthology is available for sale here and the best part about this is that all profits will be donated to LitWorld.org to help encourage children’s literacy throughout the world. The COFFIN HOP store is also selling a range of COFFIN HOP merchandise and the proceeds of these sales too, are being donated to charity J

 

To coincide with this special event, I have also released a promo video for my forthcoming project The Calling, which is a musical prequel to The Dark Horde. You can view the video on You Tube here and also know that The Dark Horde ebook version is currently on sale on Amazon for only $0.99 and if you’re lucky enough to live in the UK, you can get the UK paperback version delivered free for only £2.99 !

Lastly, in closing, here’s the full list of all the other awesome horror maestros taking part. Happy Hopping!

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The Calling - Promo Video

Watching

Waiting

Latent

Lurking

Can you hear...

 

Can you hear The Calling?

 

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Kintsugi Poets Society BlogHop - Day 8: A Parting Poem...

Kintsugi Poet Society BlogHop
Kintsugi Poets Society BlogHop - July 21st to 28th 2013

 

Broken memories. Twisted dreams.

Shattered hopes. Tortured screams.

 

These elements have given birth to a new society of dark poetry…

 

KINTSUGI POETS SOCIETY

Turning dark cracks & broken fragments into golden seams of poetry

 

So come join us…

In the darkness…

If you dare.

 

*    *    *

 

 

 

 

Today is the last day of the Kintsugi Poets Society Grand Launch Bloghop of Dark Poetry – 21st July to 28th July, where we, Kintsugi members, have posted dark poetry on our blogs and the Kintsugi Poets site

There'll be more dark poetry to come from the Kintsugi Poets of course, but I'll leave you today with a poem that hasn't really made it into my forthcoming musical story/album The Calling (which forms the back-story to my supernatural horror/thriller novel The Dark Horde). You see there's already been three versions of the album produced over the years, with different tracks and musical composers, and some tracks have seen six or more versions... But the final (i.e. released) version won't include the following words, once again those of Henry Wilcox as he records his final words and tells of what is to come... 

 

*    *    *

 

TESTIMONY

 

To know the future

Is to know the horror to come

To know what stalks us

Calling from the darkness inside

 

How do I explain

The forces that words can’t describe?

Who can believe me

And stop them before it’s too late?

 

These words I speak, these things I feel

I want you to understand, and see it is real

My will grows weary, strained is my breath

All that’s left now is to wait for…

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Kintsugi Poets Society BlogHop - Day 5: Who's Your Master?

Kintsugi Poet Society BlogHop
Kintsugi Poets Society BlogHop - July 21st to 28th 2013
Puppet

 

Broken memories. Twisted dreams.

Shattered hopes. Tortured screams.

 

These elements have given birth to a new society of dark poetry…

 

KINTSUGI POETS SOCIETY

Turning dark cracks & broken fragments into golden seams of poetry

 

So come join us…

In the darkness…

If you dare.

 

*    *    *

 

 

 

 

Once again we are here in darkness, as the Kintsugi Poets Society continues this Grand Launch Bloghop of Dark Poetry – 21st July to 28th July, where we, Kintsugi members, will be posting dark poetry on our blogs and the Kintsugi Poets site

And once more, I reveal some of the darkness that is to come in the form of the musical story/album The Calling, the back-story to my supernatural horror/thriller novel The Dark Horde. In The Calling, Henry Wilcox records his final words that not only tell of his past but of the things to come... The return of unstoppable things of ancient evil that are beyond our comprehension. Things he calls "The Dark Horde".

What follows are their words: 

 

*    *    *

 

 

PUPPET

 

Your puppet strings I pull like reins

I suck the life that flows through your veins

I poison your mind with confusion and hate

Ever-present, I alone control your fate

 

Open your eyes and see that I am master

Running from me will only bring you faster

With lies, I drug you, deceive you and taunt you

You’ll not find truth for only I know what is true

 

You think you know me, when you don't even know yourself

You try to hide from me behind your science, religion and wealth

Yet these are my weapons, and mine alone to deploy

Using hate of race, hate of place, hate of face, I only destroy

 

For at the end of it all, at a time you will not see

 There will be nothing left, only death, only me!

 

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Kintsugi Poets Society BlogHop - Day 3: Henry's Inner Demons

Kintsugi Poet Society BlogHop
Kintsugi Poets Society BlogHop - July 21st to 28th 2013

 

Broken memories. Twisted dreams.

Shattered hopes. Tortured screams.

 

These elements have given birth to a new society of dark poetry…

 

KINTSUGI POETS SOCIETY

Turning dark cracks & broken fragments into golden seams of poetry

 

So come join us…

In the darkness…

If you dare.

 

*    *    *

 

 

 

 

So join me in darkness once more, as the Kintsugi Poets Society continues this Grand Launch Bloghop of Dark Poetry – 21st July to 28th July, where we, Kintsugi members, will be posting dark poetry on our blogs and the Kintsugi Poets site

Today, continuing the Bloghop's theme of darkness, I reveal some more "poetry" from the forthcoming musical story/album The Calling, which tells the back-story to my horror/thriller novel The Dark Horde via the final words of one of the central characters, Henry Wilcox.

Henry is haunted by inner demons... literally.

More to come soon! Enjoy!

 

*    *    *

 

VICTIM

 

It isn’t me nor what I planned

I’m victim to a force that takes command

They rule my thoughts and force my hand

Why does no one understand?

 

Save me I pray, from this fate

I did not want and did not create

My prayers go unanswered, what can I do?

They will destroy me and destroy you

 

Nobody sees, nobody knows

Where anger feeds and malice grows

Hate in my heart, fire in my brain

What is fantasy and what is sane?

 

They will destroy me and destroy you

How can I live, when this is true?

All hope is lost, I want to die

To end it all, but fear to try

 

Helpless, abandoned, victim am I

Night has fallen, dark is the sky

Darkness through which I cannot see

Darkness corrupts inside of me

 

Malignant, eternal, a hidden blight

Casting life into deepest night

Black in mind, black in heart

Slowly tearing our souls apart

 

There’s no escape that I can see

The Dark Horde are, will always be

They come for me, they come for you

 The Dark Horde are, their time is due

 

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Grand Launch Bloghop of Kintsugi Poets Society - 21st to 28th of July

Kintsugi Poet Society BlogHop
Kintsugi Poets Society BlogHop - July 21st to 28th 2013
Mask

 

Broken memories. Twisted dreams.

Shattered hopes. Tortured screams.

 

These elements have given birth to a new society of dark poetry…

 

KINTSUGI POETS SOCIETY

Turning dark cracks & broken fragments into golden seams of poetry

 

So come join us…

In the darkness…

If you dare.

 

*    *    *

 

 

 

 

To celebrate the launch of this Society we’re having a Grand Launch Bloghop of Dark Poetry – 21st July to 28th July, where we, Kintsugi members, will be posting dark poetry on our blogs and the Kintsugi Poets siteThe theme for the Bloghop is Darkness, so be sure to check the main site and our linked blogs over this week to read lots of mesmerising poetical darkness J

This Bloghop launch of Kintsugi Poets is the perfect time I think, for me to show you some of the poetry I’ve written around the theme of the Dark Horde: from the already-published book of the same name and from the forthcoming musical story/album The Calling.

The Calling tells of the story leading up to the events in the novel The Dark Horde:  a recording of Henry Wilcox’s final words where he reveals all. It’s not going to be out for a while yet, but if you basically imagine something like Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds musical, but instead a supernatural horror story and set to a “dark and epic heavy metal” soundtrack, with a narrator, guest characters and sung sections, then you’ll have the idea of what’s to come J

So here’s a taste of the madness to follow, with more to come over this week ….

 

*    *    *

 

 

MASK

 

Take my hand, render me blind

Hide from me the fear that grips my mind

I want to live, I want to be

No longer want to know nor want to see

 

For now my world's a dark void where no hope exists

And despite my efforts, only the dark persists

The Dark Horde will soon be victorious, that I clearly see

And then these words shall be all, all that's left of me

 

I wish to erase from my mind all I now know

Delude myself and forever dwell in truth's shadow

But I know it's useless, for our souls they've already won

So let these words be a warning of what's to come…

 

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My Next Big Thing(s)...

The Dark Horde - The Calling
Grail Quest by J.H.Brennan
My Grail Quest collection!
(Some of) my Fighting Fantasy collection!
Sagas of the Demonspawn by J.H.Brennan
Illustration by Joshua Wright





“The Next Big Thing” is a chain-blogging event where authors and artists write about their “next big thing” before tagging another five people to do the same thing the following week or so.

My exceptionally talented writer friend Anita Bell (author of numerous best-selling and award-winning books) tagged me (and four others) and wrote up her blog HERE, so now it’s my turn!

There’s been a few things happening in “the land of Brewin” lately, and although I’m not in the habit of talking about things I’m doing (or even have done!) yet, I’ll try to give you a taste of what’s to come… Oh and whilst this is meant to be done in question and answer format (five questions I think it is), I’ve kinda just done this my own way…

         

 Photography by Jake Lowe, Dodgy MS Paint mock-up cover by Brewin’ …And yes, these are actually Manna Gums.

 

To know the future, is to know the horror to come

To know what stalks us, calling from the darkness inside…

 

“The Calling”, otherwise known as “The Dark Horde album”, is an album-length musical that tells of the events leading up to the beginning of my associated horror novel The Dark Horde. The story is told through both narration and sung lyrics, and is set to atmospheric music. The idea is that you can sit back and listen to the whole album and absorb the story: regardless of whether you have read the book or not. Making the album possible are a number of expert vocalists and musicians, including Liam “Wagener” who did the music and video for The Dark Horde book trailer, and Hanny Mohamed who did the music for the Infinite Universe gamebook. “The Calling” is a project that’s been around at least 13 years, and like the The Dark Horde novel, has already gone through many iterations, but has yet to be released. I’ll refrain from showing you old versions for now, but you’ll get to hear some of the new stuff (i.e. the stuff we are aiming to release) soon enough… In the meantime just imagine it’s something like Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds musical, but more horror-based and with an atmospheric “metal” soundtrack.

“The Calling” is just one of the many things I’ll be doing in 2013 though… In fact I’m involved in a lot bigger goings at Tin Man Games, and some of this work I can say a little about, starting with the biggest ever news to rock the land of the Brewin:

                                                    

 Grail Quest is without a doubt, my favourite gamebook series of all time…

 As you probably know by now, gamebooks were a HUGE part of my childhood and along with role-playing games (particularly Dungeons and Dragons and Call of Cthulhu) have influenced my life ever since… Fighting Fantasy may have been the most well-known of “dice-based gamebooks”, but as soon as I discovered Grail Quest in what year was it? 1985 perhaps? they quickly became my all-time favourites… I proudly own the whole series to this day, and from the looks of the Imprint details, I have the original UK printings too:

                                       

Neil tells me that these are worth quite a bit now… Not that that matters since I’ll never be selling them ;)

I remember I used to spend quite a lot of time reading these in grade six (1986 was the year), including in class. My grade six teacher became quite intrigued by these gamebooks that I was reading, so much so that he began to use them to set class exercises. He’d take pictures from them (mostly the first two as I recall) and have a whole class write stories using one of the pictures as a prompt.

Anyway so where I’m going with this, is that Tin Man Games (that I’ve worked with since just after their first gamebook by S.P. Osbourne, An Assassin in Orlandes, was released) is now bringing the series to a digital platform, and Neil Rennison, director of Tin Man Games, knowing my love for the Grail Quest series, and my background in statistics, editing and game design, has put me in charge of figuring out the conversion: i.e. suggesting how it can be implemented (it remains to be seen how much of the actual implementation I do owing to my own time constraints). To be in such a position now, working on the conversion of a series and author I idolised, along with the works of Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone’s Fighting Fantasy series from the same era, is surreal to say the least! You can read all about the announcement, including some special words from the author, J.H. “Herbie” Brennan, himself HERE.

                                                      

A few of my friends take pride in their rare vinyls from the eighties… But I have gamebooks which are way cooler!

Yes I still have the first versions of the Fighting Fantasy books too, with their original covers before the green spines came in (which I must admit, I’ve never really been a fan of though they did certainly reinforce “the brand” which I guess was the point). –By 1987 I’d collected over a hundred gamebooks, before stupidly selling off most of my collection save for the Fighting Fantasies, Grail Quests and Lone Wolfs, plus a handful of others like Duel Master and Falcon. (Choose-your-own Adventure, Endless Quest and Tunnels and Trolls were just some of those that got sold off: but the ones I miss the most are my Interplanetary Spy gamebooks – I had the whole series dammit!)

But back to Tin Man Games again, they certainly seem to have established themselves as the “go to place for gamebooks” in the current era, and have been announcing an incredible line-up of gamebook releases HERE, concluding with the “grand daddy” of them all: Fighting Fantasy. It was a strange twist of circumstance (you could even say “fate”) that I became involved with Tin Man Games in the first place, and having now edited, rebalanced (and to a significant degree rewritten) the first four titles, plus written one of my own, Infinite Universe, I take some credit in the success that Gamebook Adventures have had, and for what they’ve done to “bring gamebooks back” J

But that’s not all I’m working on… In fact far from it:

                                                 

I was lazy and just grabbed this from Tin Man Games blog post on the same topic…

Among other things, Tin Man Games have also announced that they’ll be bringing Herbie Brennan's other classic gamebook series, Sagas of the Demonspawn, to digital format. Like the Grail Quest series, these were exceptionally well-written epic fantasy stories that were targeted towards the “older reader” owing to their adult content at times (which was quite unusual for the era). One thing that (IMHO) they didn’t succeed with so much was the combat system used. I notice I’m not alone in the opinion that not only was the system unnecessarily convoluted but the combats are nigh impossible at times. And having compiled my own gamebook simulator which you can download HERE, I have the stats to back these perceptions up (note that the simulator I’ve made available for download only includes the Fighting Fantasy and Gamebook Adventures systems at this point).

So like Grail Quest, I’ll be working on the conversion of Sagas of the Demonspawn to a digital format, and I’m almost as excited about this as I am about Grail Quest. In many ways I imagine that this conversion will make Sagas of the Demonspawn better than it ever was: You keep the fantastic world and story, but streamline the system and ensure it is properly balanced, to end up with one of the greatest gamebook experiences you can have! Everyone wins! J (And to be honest, it doesn’t actually take many tweaks to achieve this: but you’ll see that for yourself soon enough!) Anyway, Neil of Tin Man Games talks more about this release HERE.

                                                                                     

Amin al Joddah, “the jewel of the desert”, capital of the United Emirates of Akbir

Those Tin Men have certainly been keeping me busy lately, as I’ve also been working on the editing/implementation of another two Gamebook Adventures titles: Sultans of Rema (an illustration from which can be seen above by Joshua Wright) and Shadow over Rema.

Sultans of Rema (which Neil announced HERE) is written by Gaetano Abbondanza, and is the sequel to his first Gamebook Adventures title Slaves of Rema. This title, together with Ashton Saylor’s Shadow over Rema, will form the “Rema trilogy” if you will. Sultans of Rema is an "Arabian Nights" style of adventure, whereas Shadow over Rema has more of a dark fantasy flavour... I guess I was best placed to take on the implementation of these since I not only created (most of) the map and history for the Reman continent (with Neil’s direction of course: being the world he created for his Dungeons and Dragons campaign from childhood), but I wrote much of the content in Slaves of Rema too, in order to fill it out with world details etc. Anyway Sultans of Rema isn’t far from release, with Shadow over Rema to follow sometime later… Sultans also contains a handful of references to things in Shadow over Rema, but you’ll probably only be able to spot those once both are out ;)

I also get asked about sequels to my other works: Infinite Universe, The Dark Hordeand Evermore: An Introduction. The short answer is yes there will be sequels at some point, but no I cannot say when. I work a “day job” as an analyst/programmer for the market research company Nielsen as well (my hours varying from one to five days a week depending on demand) and somewhere around that try to maintain a semblance of a social life too… Time is ever the enemy! Hmm I’d like to do a movie-adaption of The Dark Horde too, but such things are well beyond my current focus.

Then there’s the other things I’d like to do (given time, I’m not making any promises yet): An expanded version of Trial of the Battle God, something for the Adventurer solo roleplaying system, and other collaborative works such as Operation: Time Bomb. But the biggest (and greatest I think) of all these by a long way is a game system known to many of my friends as Creator. Creator fills over four drawers in my room, comprises many thousands of pages, close to thirty years of work and the collected input of about a hundred playtesters over the years… I haven’t come back to this for a while (Trial of the Battle God includes some elements though), but is certainly something I aim to get to sooner or later: It’s my “life work” if you will, and still to this day, there’s nothing out there like it (at least to my knowledge). Time will tell when I can start to talk about that more as it becomes a more concrete release reality.

Okay so enough about me, it’s time to pass the baton to those up next. (And apologies if I’ve made it seem like a hard act to follow: I had a lot to cover haha).

I’ve tagged the following eclectic bunch of individuals from around the globe, whose exceptional talents range across vastly different creative disciplines:

 

                                        David Walters - Book/Gamebook Author and Eastern expert, hailing from Scotland.

                                        Kevin Powe - Villainous voice over artist and gamer, hailing from Australia.

                                        Kimberly Kinrade - Novelist and Publicity/Marketing guru, hailing from the US.

                                        Joshua Wright - Illustrator and Designer, hailing from Australia.

                                        Stuart Lloyd - Gamebook guru and Designer, hailing from England.

 

 

And finally, given the day it is now (I meant to have posted this earlier but oh well):

 

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

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