Temple of the Spider God

The freaky Spider God-related discoveries continue. This time an elite 14th-century executioner has been found buried with the tools of his trade. To find out more, click here.

How to write an adventure gamebook - Part 3

Many moons ago I wrote a blog post entitled 'How to Write an Adventure Gamebook - Part 1'. This was intended to be the first in a series of posts on the subject of gamebook writing, but it wasn't until a whole month later that I got around to writing 'How to Write an Adventure Gamebook - Part 2'. I foolishly finished the post by saying that 'How to Write an Adventure Gamebook - Part 3' would be coming soon...

It's well over a year since I typed those fateful words and I still haven't got around to writing 'Part 3', but Stuart Lloyd of Lloyd of Gamebooks has taken up the challenge and written a series of posts on this subject himself. And here are the links:

How to write a gamebook part 1 - thinking of a plot (and then a few more plots)

How to write a gamebook part 1a - the map method

How to write a gamebook part 1b - the flow diagram method

How to write a gamebook part 1c - the just write it! method

How to write a gamebook part 1d - ideas

Who knows, in another year or so's time I might eventually get around to writing 'How to Write an Adventure Gamebook - Part 3', but for the moment my writing time is all about Pax Britannia...

A plea for help

It would appear that as of 9pm on Sunday (7 August), or thereabouts, my entry on Wikipedia will be deleted, unless the aforementioned entry is improved.

Now I should point out here that I never set up my Wiki entry and am rather busy writing my next book, so if there's anybody out there with the skills and inclination to clean the entry up, I would be eternally grateful.

You never know, you might earn yourself a walk-on part in a future Pax Britannia adventure (or something similar).

Here ends this public service announcement.

Writers on... well, writing.

More writers with interesting things to say about the experience of writing.

1) Weston Ochse talks about short stories.

2) Then we have William King discussing the idea of writing 'when the mood takes you'.

3) And here, William King is very honest about how much actual writing gets done during a writer's week.

4) Sarah Pinborough is an awesome writer, as she demonstrates here in a seemingly simple blog post about haunted houses.*

5) Roz Morris has something to say on the subject of chapter breaks...

6) ... while Rob Sanders writes about soundtracks to write to.

* Sarah and I are appearing together in Solaris Books' forthcoming horror anthology House of Fear. I'll give you three guesses what the stories it contains are about...

Hive of the Dead

I've known about this for a while now but I'm delighted that I'm now able to share the news with you, my loyal blog readers and gamebook fans.

Hive of the Dead is the first in a new range of Warhammer 40,000 gamebooks - that's right, interactive novels where you take the role of the main character and decide where they go, what they do and whether they live or die, only set within the mad medieval universe of the 41st millennium.

Hive of the Dead casts you in the role of an Imperial Guardsman who wakes in a cell only to find himself surrounded by the walking dead. Your mission then is to escape, preferably without developing a nasty rash or a craving for brains…

To find out more about this brand new gamebook, click this link. Oh, and by the way, it's by my long-time editor* and fellow FF fan, Christian Dunn - or, as he's now known, C Z Dunn.

* And now New York Times bestselling editor...

Blog update

So I finished the first draft of another chapter of my latest project today and thought it was time to update the old blog again.

First up, readers of this blog who are also readers of SFX magazine #212 or White Dwarf (Games Workshop's hobby magazine) #380, may have noticed a couple of connections with yours truly in the new issues - or maybe not...

The new White Dwarf is full to bursting with some brilliant new Undead additions to the Warhammer Fantasy milieu*. And the big Vampire Counts update goes under the title of 'The Dead and the Damned'. Well, when a title's that good, why not use it again and again...

There's also a fabulous new piece of terrain in the form of Morr's Garden, and just such a cemetery was the focus of the climax of my novel Necromancer.

And now we come to SFX. The links here are a little more subtle. At the start of the mag, each of the SFX team list their current raves and rants. Rob Power, Editorial Assistant, raves about going to the 2000AD offices in Oxford and then spending a day at the pub. Well, that was with me (SFX's Editor-in-Chief Dave Bradley and Michael Molcher, 2000AD and Abaddon's PR guy) that was. And then right at the back of the mag, the Total Recall article is all about Fighting Fantasy gamebooks. Even though I don't get a mention, my book Curse of the Mummy does, as does Alan Langford, who illustrated my first published book Spellbreaker.

* Expect to see these at some point in the future in Hammer & Bolter, if I can convince the editors with my scintillating new proposal.

Daemonifuge - back in print!

Available again from the Black Library, as part of their Print on Demand range, is the complete Daemonifuge. And by complete, I mean, complete!

For - according to my sources, at least - not only has Kev Walker and Jim Campbell's original seminal classic been reprinted but you will also find Daemonifuge Book 2 and the start of Book 3 contained within this mighty tome's covers - along with Ephrael Stern, Sister of Sigmar, which you can read more about here.