Tie-in Tuesday: Stormin' Sonic

Back in the day, Marc Gascoigne and I collaborated on a couple of adventure gamebooks featuring the hyperactive blue hedgehog known as Sonic.

Bizarrely, despite the fact that the second of these books - Stormin' Sonic - has been out of print for years* it has recently received a brand new review courtesy of Lone Tiger Gamebook Reviews. Here's a taster:

One interesting thought I had about this book and all gamebooks based on a tie in to an existing product is how much of it is dictated by the product's existing rules and story.  For example, did Jonathan and Marc have to make Robotnik the enemy, include characters from the game and base the game rules on rules from the computer game?  And do such things change a gamebook for the better or for the worse?  I would like to hear peoples' thoughts on this.


You can read the rest of the review here, although it's not as glowing a write-up as this one:

This Sonic adventure book is of brilliant quality and although it is not written by the writers of the game it follows the general ideas of the games incredibly well.


* It was originally published in 1996.

An Angry Update

From Angry Robot Books that is, or rather Marc Gascoigne. You can read an interview with my World Fantasy Award-winning former landlord here at Left Lion.

Small world, isn't it?

Stories of the Apocalypse at Tate Britain

On Friday night I was fortunate enough to attend Late at Tate for the launch of Pandemonium Fiction's first title Pandemonium: Stories of the Apocalypse, inspired by John Martin's infamous painting. You may already know Pandemonium Fiction in their other guise, as the commentators on geek culture, reviewers of genre fiction, and founders (not to mention administrators) of the Kitschies, Anne Perry and Jared Shurin of Pornokitsch.

Now a book launch is a cool thing in and of itself. But a book launch at Tate Britain? Top that, I dare you! The evening was, as you would expect of Jared and Anne, a very civilised affair. First there was diverting conversation over wine with the likes of Scott Andrews (who christened me with the title 'Virtual Author' since my current batch of releases are all zeros and ones) and Lavie Tidhar (who's becoming quite a regular at these kinds of things).

Anne Perry introduces Lavie Tidhar as Jared Shurin celebrates a successful launch at Tate Britain.

Seeing as this was a Pornokitsch event (in all but name) the Great and the Good of literary geekdom were there, from m'colleague Bex Levene to China Miéville (who made my night by recognising me, after we were on a panel together at the SFX Weekender back in February). The red wine flowed freely, as did the conversation and then we were ushered into the Duffield Room for the main event.

Tom Hunter, current director of the Arthur C Clarke Award (you see the serious literary kudos associated with this event?), opened proceedings and was followed by Jared himself. We then had three fabulous readings. First Anne read from a story the author of which was not in attendance (I apologise that I missed whose story it was), followed by Magnus Anderson, who's own story opening was wonderfully witty. Then came Scott Andrews. The only way to describe his reading is 'electrifying'. You could literally hear a pin drop, that is until the applause began.

After a word from Hannah Flynn, Online Co-ordinator for the Great British Art Debate, all moved back to the bar where I got to geek out over Fighting Fantasy gamebooks with James Long of Orbit Books (Spellbreaker included). When that bar ran dry we all headed into Tate Britain to find the bar there. I really was a most wonderfully, and I fully intended to visit the John Martin exhibition, but there were even more wonderful people to talk to and before I knew it the gallery was closing and we were all heading off to the Morpeth Arms just down the road on Millbank.

It was there that I got to geek out with Magnus about FF, talk to Tom Pollock about his forthcoming projects for Jo Fletcher Books, discuss BFS business with Lizzie Barrett, catch up properly with Bex, and have a number of people not believe me when I told them I turned forty a few weeks ago (which was nice).

Lizzie Barrett, Tom Pollock and James Long, complimentary poster in hand.

I also just got to say hello to John Berlyne of the Zeno Agency, who gave Marc Gascoigne's acceptance speech at the World Fantasy Awards and which you can enjoy in the video below (Marc’s award is introduced at 32.10).

So, you wanna be a writer?

If the title of this blog post applies to you, and you've done a little more than just talk about how much you want to be a writer and have actually written something, and what you've written is a science-fiction, fantasy, horror or genre-crossing alien-invasion, faerie-living in the London Underground, crime-thriller mash-up but you've never been able to get it in front of an editor because your work is unsolicited and you don't have an agent - (breathe!) - then this might just be for you.

Marc Gascoigne (one-time editor, co-writer, landlord and publisher of mine) is opening the big airy Open Submissions window in the Angry Robot Books office just for you. You can find out more about this initiative on the AR Submissions page here, and at the Literary Project here.

And all that there remains for me to say is - "Good luck!"

Angry Robot

Publishers Harper Collins have announced that they have appointed Marc Gascoigne (one-time collaborator, editor and publisher of mine) to run a new SF & Fantasy imprint. This new business venture - with the wonderful name Angry Robot - is being set up to provide the global science fiction/fantasy community with new content both in physical and digital form.

To read more about this exciting development in the world of publishing, click here. In the meantime I'd like to wish Marc all the best with his latest publishing venture.