Happy Thanksgiving!

If you are reading this and you celebrate Thanksgiving, I hope you have a great day with your family and friends.

Interestingly, for a UK author, my blog receives far more visits from North America than is it does from the British Isles. Of course, many of my books are available in the US but there is only one that has been directly commissioned by an American publisher.

The title in question is Scottish Miscellany: Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Scotland the Brave, which is being re-released by Skyhorse Publishing with a new cover next January, a week before Burns' Night.

Skyhorse Publishing also released a new edition of Christmas Miscellany a few years ago, so if you're looking for a convenient, informative and fun Christmas stocking filler or Secret Santa, you can pick up a copy here.

Jonathan Green Author Newsletter

If you've only recently started following my blog, you may not be aware that I publish a monthly newsletter, which gives you the lowdown on my various Kickstarter projects, my self-publishing endeavours with Green Man Books, and any other tidbits that take my fancy.

From the New Year I plan on introducing occasional competitions too. So, if you would like to be kept informed about what I'm currently working on, or other projects I have in the pipeline, as well as which events I'll be attending, subscribe today here.

Gamebook Friday: JG interviewed by the Farsight Blogger

I was recently interviewed by Jonathan Hicks, a.k.a. the Farsight Blogger, and the interview is now online here.

Gamebook Friday: Fighting For Your Fantasy

Justin McCormack has been systematically playing through my Fighting Fantasy gamebooks on his Fighting For Your Fantasy blog and has now tackled all of them.

His playthroughs make for very entertaining reading. If you would like to sample his words, and my adventures, simply click the appropriate link below.


Spellbreaker

Knights of Doom

Curse of the Mummy

Bloodbones

Howl of the Werewolf

Stormslayer

Night of the Necromancer

Happy Thanksgiving, America!

Today I am thankful for all my readers and followers in the United States. I should say I am grateful to all my fans, but as it's Thanksgiving Day in the US I am going to focus on my American friends, who are actually responsible for for than twice as many visits to my blog as the next nearest nation, which just happens to be the UK*.

Back in May 2011 I set up a widget on my blog to track how many visitors drop by to read through my missives. In the intervening five and a half years, the blog has received over 191,724 visits, and you can see many of them on this map of the World.

Click on the map to see a larger version.

And here's the USA.

As you can see, my readership comes from right across the country. It is also highly likely that some of those visitors picked up the Alice's Nightmare in Wonderland Colouring Book, which has now received 108 5-star reviews on Amazon.com!

So, Happy Thanksgiving Day, America!


* Russia is third!

Tie-in Tuesday: Lovin' the Kraken

Apart from one rather strange review, in which the reviewer seemed put off by the smell of the book more than anything else, my latest Doctor Who gamebook Choose the Future: Night of the Kraken has been receiving a lot of love online.

First there's this review by blogger and book critic Kathryn White.

And then there's this one, written by Antony McGarry-Thickitt, over at Geek Syndicate. I particularly liked this bit:

"I always consider it a good sign when I see Jonathan Green’s name attached to any interactive fiction project. Green has a long and successful record writing these types of books and so I was reasonably sure that Night of the Kraken would be a solid adventure in its own right. I wasn’t wrong."

Tie-in Tuesday: Shakespeare Vs Cthulhu*

I received a rather curious email from Kickstarter yesterday. It read:

"Just wanted to drop you a line to say we really love your project, Shakespeare Vs Cthulhu!

We love it so much, in fact, that we featured it on our blog today."

Shakespeare Vs Cthulhu was fortunate enough to be promoted by Kickstarter during its run, being a Project They Love, and featuring on the Publishing projects page. My first thought was, it's all well and good giving the project a plug now, but it funded a week ago. Then I clicked on the link...

Shakespeare Vs Cthulhu has featured on Kickstarter's 'The First 100,000 Funded Kickstarter Projects in 100 Numbers' blog post. Check out #73-#75 on the list:

In other words, out of the 100,000 projects funded via Kickstarter so far, Shakespeare Vs Cthulhu has been singled out for individual attention. Not bad, I say. Not bad at all.

* If Shakespeare Vs Cthulhu isn't tie-in fiction, then I don't know what is!

Alice's Nightmare in Wonderland around the Web

You may have heard the news yesterday that Alice's Nightmare in Wonderland has passed its funding threshold. This is, of course, thanks to the 168 backers the project has (at the time of writing) but it is also thanks to various websites and bloggers who have written or hosted blogs about the forthcoming gamebook, or even interviewed me about the subject.

Here is a round-up of the all the ones I know of. If you know of any more, do let me know.

Alex Davis

Geek Pride

Geek Syndicate

Lloyd of Gamebooks

SciFiNow

SF Signal

Sidekickcast

Starburst Magazine

Tony Cooper

Don't forget - you can still back Alice's Nightmare in Wonderland, up until 1.00pm on Monday 3rd August.

Guest Author April

During the month of April this year you will see various posts appearing on this blog by other authors promoting their work. A number of years ago I took part in the A to Z Blogging Challenge and interviewed all manner of artists and illustrators about their work.

This year I'm not committing myself to 26 blog posts over the month, but I am going to give my fellow wordsmiths a crack of the whip and let them tell you about what they've got coming up next that might be of interest to you.

So keep an eye on www.JonathanGreenAuthor.com over the coming weeks for blog posts from the likes of William King, Graham McNeill, Nicola Vincent-Abnett, Ian Whates and many more...

SHARKPUNK Saturday: Just when you thought it was safe to go online...

Word of SHARKPUNK continues to spread - like blood through water - thanks to the blogging efforts of its various contributors*. Click the links below to read their blog posts for yourself - and don't forget to tell all your friends about the book and ask for it in your local bookshop.

Jonathan Oliver

Alec Worley

David Grimstone

David Tallerman

Josh Reynolds

*As well as a social media blitz. Like the Facebook page here and follow us on Twitter here.

Happy New Year, Happy New Writing Career?

Could 2015 be the year you make it as a freelance writer, or that you get to create a fantasy or SF world of your own for the first time (like that of Pax Britannia), or you get to write for one of the biggest SF (and fantasy) publishers in the world?

If that sounds like the kind of Happy New Year you would like to enjoy, then check out both Abaddon Books' and the Black Library's open submissions windows now!

The Abaddon Books submission window is open from midnight GMT on 14th January 2015, and closes at midnight GMT on 15th February 2015, while the Black Library is already accepting submissions for Deathwatch stories, and will be until midnight GMT on Monday 26th January.

So don't delay - get writing today!




PS - Matt Sylvester has written a comprehensive piece on his blog about why you should follow publisher guidelines during open submission periods very carefully.

Gamebook Friday: FIGHTING FANTASY FEST 2014 where YOU ARE THE HERO

Just in case you didn't happen to see it yourself earlier this week, both Fighting Fantasy Fest and YOU ARE THE HERO appeared on the SciFiNow website on Wednesday.

You can read the post for yourself here. Alternatively, you could just click this link and buy your ticket for the gaming event of the year. ;-)

FIGHTING FANTASY FEST around the Internet - Part 4

More on FIGHTING FANTASY FEST from the World Wide Web.

Fighting Fantasy was the focus of the Friday Five on Pornokitsch on Friday (funnily enough)...

On Saturday, backers of the YOU ARE THE HERO Kickstarter got the first look at Martin McKenna's wraparound cover art for the book...

And on Monday, this guest blog post went live on SFX.co.uk...

FIGHTING FANTASY FEST around the Internet - Part 2

Word continues to spread about FIGHTING FANTASY FEST.

There's a piece here on Geek Syndicate...

Another post here on Lloyd of Gamebooks...

A mention here on Reddit...

And a post here on the Fighting Fantazine blog.

Check out the links, buy a ticket, and tell all your friends to buy a ticket too. ;-)

FIGHTING FANTASY FEST around the Internet

Word is spreading about FIGHTING FANTASY FEST 2014.

It's cropped up here, at The Trollish Delver...

Here, at Farsight Blogger...

Over at the Wonky Spanner...

And here, at RPG.net...

And on Fantasy Faction...

Check out the links, buy a ticket, and tell all your friends to buy a ticket too. ;-)

Short Story Saturday: The Book of the Dead

To help promote Jurassic London's The Book of the Dead - which features my story Egyptian death and the afterlife: mummies (Rooms 62-3) - I wrote a piece on the enduring appeal of Mummies for the The Speculative Scotsman, which you can read here.

You can pick up The Book of the Dead (edited by Jared Shurin) here.

In a change to your scheduled programme...

One of the New Year's Resolutions I made to myself in 2012, was to post something on this blog every day that year. I didn't announce this with a big fanfare, like some authors have done in the past. In fact, I didn't announce it at all. It was just a promise I made to myself.

Since then (unlike some other bloggers) I have managed to keep that promise, with often more than one post appearing on any one day. In the process I developed the themed day blogs, starting the week with a Thought for the Day on Monday, Tie-in (Fiction) Tuesday, Warhammer Wednesday, Steampunk Thursday (the alliteration gave up on me at this point), Gamebook Friday and Short Story Saturday. Sundays were reserved for any other news/amusing YouTube clips/extracts from the funny pages, that kind of thing.

Well now a change in circumstances means that it is no longer realistic, or even possible, for me to blog every day, so instead I will be blogging once a week (minimum). I may still use the themed day tags to hang posts on, but they won't be so prescriptive anymore. (Not that they were that prescriptive to begin with.)

So, there you go. Hopefully I'll manage to maintain a certain level of quality to my blog posts, if not the same quantity as in the past, but bear with me... There's still plenty of cool stuff to come from the laptop of Jonathan Green, Author. ;-)

Seven Reasons Why Writing A Book Makes You A Badass

"If I had a nickel for every time I heard someone say, “I have an idea, I’m going to write a book about it” and then watch as they never did it, I’d have—well, I’m not sure exactly how many nickels I’d have because I’m terrible at math, but it’s safe to say I’d have a ton of them."

Read Brian Klems' blog post about why writing a book makes you a badass here.

Steampunk Thursday moves to Friday: International Steampunk Day 2013!

14 June is (or was) H G Wells' birthday, and as Mr Wells is one of the godfathers of the Steampunk movement, 14 June is International Steampunk Day.

And it just so happens that tomorrow is the start of Steampunk Doncaster*. In the lead up to the UK's newest Steampunk event, I wrote a guest post for Craig Hallam's blog**.

If you are going to Steampunk Doncaster, maybe I'll see you there...

* Anybody'd think they'd planned it that way.

** Craig Hallam is the organiser of the Litarium element of Steampunk Doncaster.

Tie-in Tuesday: Nathan Long's Light Bulb Moments

Amongst other things, I am a tie-in writer*. So is Nathan Long. Okay, tenuous link to Tie-in Tuesday established - now on with the blog...

Nathan has learnt a thing or two about writing over the years - what he likes to call Light Bulb Moments. For example, did you know that writing a novel is impossible? Or that proper channels don't work?

Interested? You should be. And if you are, you can read more about Nathan's Light Bulb Moments here.


* I've recently been working on a couple more Moshi Monsters titles.