Competition closes today!

D-Day is here! You only have until midnight tonight to enter the Pax Britannia competition I am running, the prize being a walk on part in the next Ulysses Quicksilver adventure Human Nature, due to be published this December by Abaddon Books.

There have already been some very impressive entries, so if you want to win you're going to need to pull something pretty amazing out of the hat at the last minute.

Follow this link to my original post about the competition if you want to remind yourself of the competition rules.

Good luck! It's not long now...

Match Wits at Meet the Author

The video I recorded for Meet the Author is now up on their website here. Click the link to hear me speak about Match Wits with the Kids and discover why it's the book for you!

Match Wits in the Sunday Express

It was a busy day yesterday. Not only did I spend the morning recording a video about Match Wits with the Kids for a company called Meet the Author, I was also interviewed by the Sunday Express, and had a my photograph taken in preparation for a feature on Match Wits, which is due to run on Sunday 1 June 2008.

So, if you'd like to find out more about the book just before it's published, then pick up a copy of the Sunday Express in 10 days' time.

Closing date fast approaching

Just a reminder for anybody planning on entering the Pax Britannia competition - the prize at stake being a walk on part in the latest Ulysses Quicksilver adventure - that the deadline for entries is Saturday 31 May 2008.

And competition is fierce, although it's not too late to enter. So far people have written reviews of Leviathan Rising, promoted Pax Britannia on their blogs and even produced incredible photographs with themselves cast in the role of a steampunk adventurer.

If you need reminding of the details, or you want to know more, follow this link to my original post about the competition.

And good luck!

What is Myrrh Anyway?

It is with great relief and pride that I can announce that as of three minutes ago I sent my editor at Icon Books the completed manuscript of What is Myrrh Anyway? - a book that answers all those questions about Christmas you're too embarrassed to ask yourself.

In due course edits, corrections and additions will inevitably need to be made, but for the time being I can actually get to bed before midnight for once and drift off to sleep knowing that I've got to the end of another book - my nineteenth, to be precise - and that it's a job well done.

And what's more, I'm off to Italy on holiday on Friday, which will be the first time I've been abroad in five years. The timing really couldn't be better.

So, until next time...

Match Wits Podcast

If you've been intrigued by what you've heard so far about my first educational book Match Wits with the Kids and want to know more, here's the perfect opportunity.

At the end of this post you will find a podcast of a conversation I had with Andrew Furlow of Icon Books, which was all about Match Wits.

So what are you waiting for? Click the play button below and all (or at least a lot more) will be revealed.



Match Wits with the Kids is published by Icon Books this June.

A book of firsts

No, it's not a new title I'm working on, it's Match Wits with the Kids, out this June from Icon Books.

Match Wits is a first for me for a number of reasons. It is the first educational book I've written, and it's also the first book of mine to have an index! And today it has produced another first; it is the first book I've written that has led to me recording a podcast!

Andrew Furlow of Icon Books conducted the interview/recording today, and will be paring down my garbled gabbling to hopefully something approximating an intelligible discourse on why you should buy this book!

I'll let you know more when the podcast has been edited and is available for download. Until then...

Match Wits with the Kids

Much excitement in the Green household today as my very first copies of Match Wits with the Kids arrived today, fresh from the printers on Friday.


And very pleased I am with it too! It's the first book I've written that actually has an index - four pages of it, to be precise - everything's in there from acids, via the Byzantine Empire and polygons, to zygote.

Click here to order yours now!

Non-Fiction

I can't really slap this post with the 'Back Catalogue' label as I have only had one non-fiction book published (so far) and the other two I've written aren't quite out yet. But by including all three I can bring you right up to date with all the books I've written (as of this morning).

Go Gos Are Go Go was inspired by a children's craze, rather in the same vein as knucklebones, called Crazybones (which I believe has recently made a resurgence).

Match Wits with the Kids is out in June and is a revision guide for parents of secondary school children; it reminds them of all the things they once learnt when they were at school themselves. I have set up a separate blog for this book which can be found here.

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What is Myrrh Anyway? is out in October and answers all those questions about Christmas traditions that you were too afraid - or too embarrassed - to ask. I've also set up a blog about this book here.

JG's Back Catalogue: Doctor Who

One of the gigs I'm proudest of is getting to write the Doctor Who: Destiny Your Destiny adventure The Horror of Howling Hill. It's easily the most high-profile thing I've done so far and (I'm hoping) might help open a few doors for me writing-wise.

JG's Back Catalogue: Pax Britannia

So now we come to the steampunk world of Pax Brtiannia. I created this series setting for Abaddon Books in 2005 and with the exception of Al Ewing, who wrote El Sombra, I am the only writer for the line.

'But what is Pax Britannia?' I hear you say. Well, in a nutshell... It's 1997 and Queen Victoria is still on the throne, kept alive by means of a steampunk life-support throne. The British Empire - now called Magna Britannia - rules supreme... well almost. Dinosaurs still exist in small pockets around the world and can be seen on show in the Challenger Enclosure of London Zoo. Railways span the globe and both the moon and Mars have been colonised. Steam-powered and clockwork robots can be found in all walks of life as can Babbage-inspired analytical engines (in other words, computers).

The first title in the series is Unnatural History (published in 2007) and centres around a plot to bring down the empire on the occasion of the Queen's 160th jubilee. My second adventure is Leviathan Rising (published in March 2008), a murder mystery set on board the world's largest submersible cruise liner. The hero of both theses stories is the dashing dandy and government agent, Ulysses Quicksilver.

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As well as the two novels to date (with more to come), Ulysses Quicksilver has also appeared in two novellas, Fruiting Bodies (published in El Sombra) and Vanishing Point (which accompanies Leviathan Rising).

JG's Back Catalogue: Sonic the Hedgehog

In 1995 I was living in Nottingham and giving the life of a freelance writer a go. At that time I had mainly written Fighting Fantasy gamebooks and it was through this work that I had met Marc Gascoigne. Through our mutual contacts at Puffin Books we were commissioned to write two Sonic the Hedgehog gamebooks back to back.

Although the project was almost cancelled at one point, in the end both Theme Park Panic and Stormin' Sonicsaw print, and very well received they were too.

JG's Back Catalogue: The Black Library

Continuing the theme of informing potential readers about my back catalogue of already published works, today we come to my work for the Black Library.

The Black Library is part of BL Publishing, the publishing imprint of Games Workshop. The Black Library produces stories about the game worlds of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000.

I started working for Games Workshop in 1994, writing short stories for their rulebooks. When the Black Library was set up in 1997 it was only natural that I start writing for the imprint.

I began by writing short stories for Inferno! magazine and then moved on to writing comic strips for the monthly Warhammer comic.

The Black Library commissioned my first novel in 2002. This was set within the Warhammer world and was called The Dead and the Damned. Thereafter I wrote two novels a year, alternating from Warhammer to Warhammer 40,000. These were Crusade for Armageddon, Magestorm, Iron Hands and Necromancer. My last book published by the Black Library to date was Conquest of Armageddon, which came out in 2005.

JG's Back Catalogue

It occurred to me the other day, that visitors to this blog might be unaware of my earlier works. So, as a result, this post is intended to be the first in a series about my back catalogue, as it were.

I started out writing Fighting Fantasy adventure gamebooks for Puffin, receiving my first commission back in 1992. I had three adventures published during the 90s, Spellbreaker, Knights of Doom and Curse of the Mummy.

In 2002 Wizard Books started to re-publish some of the old FF adventures. And then in September 2006 Bloodbones (a brand new adventure 10 years in the making) was published, with Curse of the Mummy and Spellbreaker being reprinted soon after in 2007.

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My most recent FF publication to date is Howl of the Werewolf, which came out a year after Bloodbones, in September 2007.