Gamebook Friday: World Lizard Day

Which is your favourite lizard-based encounter from the ACE Gamebooks series?

Quox, from The Wicked Wizard of Oz?

The Terrible Lizards of Neverland: Here Be Monsters?

The Ravager, from Beowulf Beastslayer?

The Daikaiju, from RONIN 47?

Tie-in Tuesday: Terrible Lizards

Back at the start of the year, I was interviewed by Kenny Smith for The Power of 3 Podcast about my Eleventh Doctor novel Terrible Lizards.

First published in 2012 as part of Monstrous Missions, and later released as a self-contained novel for the US market in 2016, in Terrible Lizards, the Eleventh Doctor and his friends join a group of explorers on a Victorian tramp steamer in the Florida Everglades. The explorers are searching for the Fountain of Youth, but neither they nor the treasure they seek are quite what they seem...

If you are interested in peeking behind the curtain, to find out how a book comes to be, you can listen to the podcast here. And you can order pre-loved copies of the novel here.

Doctor Who Day 2024

Doctor Who was first broadcast on this day 61 years ago!

Recently, I have been playing with the Gallifreyan translator on the official Doctor Who website. Below are the names of three of my Doctor Who books - two gamebooks and one novel - in the language of the Time Lords.

The Horror of Howling Hill

(A 10th Doctor gamebook)

Terrible Lizards

(An 11th Doctor novel)

Night of the Kraken

(A 12th Doctor novel)

Doctor Who at 60

I couldn't let the landmark 60th anniversary of the world's longest running science ficiton TV show go without a mention.

Ten years ago I was watching The Day of the Doctor at the cinema with my kids. Today, I've watched a couple of old episodes from the Third Doctor's era*. And at the weekend I will sit down to watch the first of the 60th anniversary specials.

Tom Baker was my first Doctor, although I later saw quite a few of John Pertwee's adventures when they were repeated on BBC2. I have been a fan ever since. I found things to enjoy about every era, and while I didn't appreciate Chris Chibnall's stint as showrunner, I still watched every episode. But I am optimistic for David Tennant's return and whatever comes after.

When Doctor Who wasn't on TV, I read Virgin Books New Adventures. I even pitched one, although it was politely rejected.

My involvement with Doctor Who as an author didn't begin until 2007, when I contacted Puffin Books about writing a Decide Your Destiny Doctor Who gamebook. This lead to me being commissioned to write The Horror of Howling Hill. Over the next decade I wrote for the Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors, and contributed to Doctor Who: 100 Illustrated Adventures and wrote the lion's share of the Doctor Who Annual 2010.

Doctor Who: Decide Your Destiny: The Horror of Howling Hill (2008)

The Official Doctor Who Annual 2010 (2010)

Time Lord Quiz Quest (2015)

Terrible Lizards (2016)**

Doctor Who: Choose the Future: Night of the Kraken (2016)

Doctor Who: 100 Illustrated Adventures (2017)

My involvement with Doctor Who also lead to me meeting numerous Daleks and one Steven Moffat.

Who knows if I'll ever write anything for Doctor Who again, but if the chance does arise, I would love to. After all, it's Doctor Who, isn't it?

* It's interesting how many episodes' cliffhanger endings involve someone pointing a gun at the Doctor.

** First published as part of Monstrous Missions (2012).

Tie-in Tuesday: 100 Years of the BBC

I know I'm a little late to the party, sharing what 100 years of the BBC means to me, but it took Sunday night's episode of Doctor Who - Jodie Whittaker's last as the Thirteenth Doctor - to prompt me into action.

I have not been a fan of Thirteen's run for one major reason, the poor quality of the writing. There have been some great scenarios, but Chris Chibnall never seemed to make the pay off worthy of the set up. And don't get me started on how he messed with the lore*.

Every series has had its dud episodes and, in my opinion, your typical season is roughly 50% good and 50% bad, apart from a few standout series, notably Season 3. (But more on that later.) However, in the case of Thirteen there were barely any episodes that could be considered good across all three series.

Having slept on it, I think that The Power of the Doctor was the best Jodie Whittaker episode of them all, with some lovely nods to Classic Who and past companions, as well as past Doctors.

Warning! Some of what comes next could be considered spoilers, so if you've not watched The Power of the Doctor yet and you intend to, best stop reading now...

Still here? Okay, but don't say I didn't warn you.

My favourite bits included:

• The return of Ashad.
• The return of Graham.
• "And if that's not enough, I was an air hostess in the early Eighties."
• "Nitro 999."
• "Tag, you're it!"
• "I know these teeth."
• Durdle Door**

I feel that the most consistently strong series was David Tennant's second as the Tenth Doctor, i.e. Season 3. Which is why I'm excited to see what Russell T Davies comes up with for the 60th anniversary next year.

Season 3 is special to me for another reason - it's when I started writing tie-in fiction for Doctor Who. First was The Horror of Howling Hill, a Decide Your Destiny gamebook featuring the Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones, published in 2008.

I wrote the lion's share of The Official Doctor Who Annual 2010, and in 2012 my Eleventh Doctor novel, Terrible Lizards, was published***.

I was back in 2015 with the Doctor Who: Time Lord Quiz Quest, and 2016 saw publication of my Twelfth Doctor Choose the Future gamebook, Night of the Kraken.

Who knows whether I will return to Doctor Who in the future, but I would never turn down an opportunity to write for TV's favourite Time Lord. 

But the BBC means more to me than just Doctor Who. Its programmes have inspired me over the years and will have inevitably influenced the content of the stories I have told. And to top it all, once I was interviewed about Fighting Fantasy gamebooks for Radio 4.

So thank you, BBC, and here's to the next 100 years!

* I hope not irrevocably.

** Just up the coast from Broadchurch. May Jodie or Chibs have a house down there in Dorest.

*** Originally as part of the Monstrous Missions compendium.

Gamebook Friday: International Women's Day

This time last year, I posted about the heroines who feature in my ACE Gamebooks, concluding:

"And then there is NEVERLAND - Here Be Monsters!, which I am currently in the process of writing, and which features not one but two heroines, the Lara Croft-esque shipwreck survivor Wendy Darling, and the Sabretooth-riding heroic hunter Tiger Lily."

Well NEVERLAND - Here Be Monsters! has now gone to print, and here's how Wendy and Tiger Lily ended up in the book.

Wendy Darling

Shipwreck Survivor, The Girl Who Lived

Oldest child of George and Mary Darling, Wendy was eighteen years old when she and the rest of her family – including her younger brothers John and Michael, and their pet dog Nana – boarded the RMS Titanic at Southampton on 10^th April 1912, for the passenger liner’s maiden voyage.

She is well-educated, well-mannered, and resourceful. While at finishing school in Switzerland, as well as learning the formal rules of etiquette and improving her French, she also learnt how to fence.

Tiger Lily

Heroic Hunter, Saviour of the Accala

Daughter of Chief Great Panther of the Accala, and therefore technically a princess, Tiger Lily nonetheless dreams of being inducted into the elite warrior brotherhood of the tribe. She is already well on her way, having raised her Sabretooth steed Fang from when he was a cub, after his mother was killed while protecting him from one of the terrible lizards that dwell on the island. She is adept at using not only her flint-headed tomahawk axe but also a spear, whilst hunting with Fang.

Tiger Lily models herself on the great Warrior Queen Lai Tai’Glaa, the legendary ruler of the Accala who supposedly first brought her people to the promontory the tribe now calls home.

NEVERLAND - Here Be Monsters! goes on general release on 1st June.

Tie-in Tuesday: Dinosaur Day

According to Twitter, today is Dinosaur Day. My working days are filled with dinosaurs at the moment, as I'm nearing the end of writing the first draft of NEVERLAND - Here Be Monsters!

But of course it's not the first book I've written that features the terrible lizards. There's Terrible Lizards for one. There are also dinosaurs in the Fighting Fantasy gamebook Bloodbones, and the Pax Britannia novels Unnatural History and Leviathan Rising.

Like many 5 and 6 year-olds, I was obsessed by dinosaurs. I would spend hours tracing the dinosaurs in the colouring book I had, and I loved films like The Land That Time Forgot, Valley of the Gwangi, and One Million Years BC, shown on TV during the afternoon at weekends. When I was a little older, by father and I would make Airfix kits of dinosaurs together, and I have very fond memories of travelling up to London on the train with him, specifically to visit The Natural History Museum and its dinosaur collection. I even remember an English lesson, early on in Secondary School, in which we studied an extract from Ray Bradbury's A Sound of Thunder, focusing on the arrival of a T-Rex.

All of this clearly had an impact on my growing up, and I still have a passion and fascination for prehistoric life today. Last year family Green visited New York and I dragged everyone to the American Museum of Natural History, just so that I could see the dinosaur exhibits, which did not disappoint! And because it had an impact on me growing up, it has also impacted upon my writing.

But I have never explored dinosaur life in so much detail as I have in NEVERLAND - Here Be Monsters! For a start, the book includes over 30 different dinosaurs, marine reptiles, flying reptiles and other prehistoric creatures. But one of the fun things about writing the book has been coming up with new names for dinosaurs, because most of the characters in the story wouldn't have known what the nascent fossil hunters had called these primeval beasts.

I'm keen for the book to be finished and out there in readers' hands for various reasons, but one of them is to see if people can work out which dinosaur is which. Maybe I'll reveal the answers next Dinosaur Day.

Happy 54th Birthday, Doctor Who!

It's crazy to think that since the epic 50th anniversary The Day of the Doctor event four years have passed, during which time I have had not only the Doctor Who: Time Lord Quiz Quest published but also my second Doctor Who Choose the Future gamebook, Night of the Kraken.*

          

And the most recent Doctor Who-related release that I have contributed to is Doctor Who: 100 Illustrated Adventures, which makes the perfect Christmas gift for the Doctor Who fan(s) in your family.

* Not to mention Terrible Lizards being published as a standalone story.

Happy St Dragon's Day!

Since today it St David's Day, I thought I would draw your attention to works of mine with a Welsh focus... or at least ones featuring dragons!

Actually, my very first published book Spellbreaker features a lot of Welsh names.

When I was starting out as a writer, I consciously tried to steer clear of fantasy cliches in my writing (although a magic sword does appear in Spellbreaker), but one of my earlier gigs was writing an article about Dragons in Warhammer, for White Dwarf magazine, entitled Enter the Dragon.

Dragon-like creatures appear in Knights of Doom and Stormslayer, but there are not technically dragons.

There was a dragon in Warlock’s Bounty: Revenge of the Sorcerer, and there was a Zombie Dragon in Shadows over Sylvania.

I do have ideas for various stories featuring dragons, including a Pax Britannia one, but I just haven't got round to writing them yet.

I gave the old explorer's adage 'Here be Dragons' a twist with my Doctor Who novel Terrible Lizards, and I intend to revisit that concept later this year, in Neverland.

World Animal Day

Today, 4th October, is World Animal Day, so it seems appropriate that I am writing a story about the Beast of Bodmin Moor whilst also plotting the Lion's next encounter in The Wicked Wizard of Oz.

Animals have featured to a greater or lesser extent in many of my books and stories but among the most notable must be...

Sonic the Hedgehog Adventure Gamebooks

Howl of the Werewolf

Pax Britannia: Unnatural History

Pax Britannia: Leviathan Rising

Temple of the Spider God

Terrible Lizards

Pax Britannia: Time's Arrow

SHARKPUNK

Night of the Kraken

And there are still more animal-themed stories to come...

Tie-in Tuesday: Doctor Who - Terrible Lizards

Available now in paperback in the US and as an eBook here in the UK, my 2012 Eleventh Doctor story Terrible Lizards!

And coming soon, my brand new 2016 Twelfth Doctor adventure gamebook Night of the Kraken!

World Book Day 2016

In case it had slipped your mind (like it had mine) today is World Book Day, which has got me thinking about which books of my will see the light of day this year.

Here's what came out that I was involved in last year...

My 2015 publications.

As you will already know if you read this blog post earlier in the year, this time last year I didn't even know I was going to write Alice's Nightmare in Wonderland, which, after YOU ARE THE HERO, is my best and most reviewed title that I was solely responsible for. And it spawned a colouring book too, which the Americans love! 

At the time of writing, I definitely have three books coming out. The first is a re-issue of sorts - Doctor Who: Terrible Lizards - and the second is another Doctor Who title, but a new one this time - Choose the Future: Night of the Kraken.

And then there's Robin of Sherwood: The Knights of the Apocalypse...

And Shakespeare Vs Cthulhu...

Hopefully there will also be a sort-of-follow-up to Alice's Nightmare in Wonderland, which I have finally decided will be called The Wicked Wizard of Oz, but other than that, who knows?