Target reached

The Kickstarter project ran close to the wire. With only two days to go before the all-or-nothing deadline, I had pledges for only 20% of the target. Although both the I Ching and Tarot predicted a favourable outcome, common sense told me it would take a miracle for the remaining funds — several thousand euros — to come in.

The following day, the miracle occurred. A single pledge came in to cover the outstanding amount needed to reach the target.

The funding was backed by the estate of a dear friend of mine who had died a few years earlier. The executors had decided she would have wanted the project to succeed and made a pledge on her behalf. So the spirit of my old friend made it possible for me to lay the ghost of my fictional Pharaoh.

Crowd-funding a Ghost

My latest project - to lay the ghost of an Egyptian Pharaoh who has been haunting me for more than thirty years - is currently active on Kickstarter. It’s a spooky story. The ghost is determined to have his story told and has given me no peace. I've written and re-written the story in various ways.... some almost published before something prevented it. So, in this final rewrite, the pharaoh’s biography runs as a thread through Traveller From An Antique Land, a science fiction novel I'm crowd-funding to publish myself.

Please click on the link below to take a look - and hopefully support, share and pledge - if this interests you. Thank you!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/herbiebrennan/crowd-funding-a-ghost?ref=ksr_email_creator_launch

The Fire*Wolf Saga

Back in the good old days of the early 1980s when my GrailQuest series of gamebooks was (literally) selling in the millions, I was struck by the sort of revelation that only comes to those who don’t get out enough. As I recall it now, my thought processes went something like this:

Gamebooks generally were all the rage among children at the time, but my fan mail suggested children weren’t the only ones reading them. (I had a couple of letters from university professors.) Was it not possible, I asked myself, that there might be a market for an adult gamebook series? I set my agent -— Murray Pollinger in those distant days -— to finding a publisher who would agree; and he swiftly succeeded.

Having had what might well have been a good idea, I proceeded to change it. Gamebooks, as you know, are almost always written in the second person, present tense. In other words, you are the hero. But I felt this was far too unsophisticated for an adult market and decided my new series would be the world’s first interactive novel, written, like any self-respecting novel, in the third person, past tense.

Thus was born the Sagas of the Demonspawn a traditional sword and sorcery fantasy featuring the barbarian Fire*Wolf, whose asterisk represented a glottal stop in the way his people pronounced his name.

Needless to say, while it was indeed the world’s first interactive novel, the buoyant adult market I expected never actually materialised. To my astonishment, it sold well enough, but to the same young gamers who were buying GrailQuest.

That was the first time Fire*Wolf surprised me. Today is the second. Because today Tin Man officially published The Complete Sagas of Fire*Wolf, which contains all four Demonspawn books in a single app. This is Fire*Wolf in an electronic loincloth and I never thought I’d live to see the day.

Wish me luck and buy the app. There are versions available for download from the iOS App Store, Google Play, Amazon Appstore for Android. The sagas are also available for PC, Mac, Linux and Android via the Humble Widget on the Gamebook Adventures website: http://gamebookadventures.com/gamebooks/the-complete-sagas-of-firewolf.

 

New Emag

There’s a new emag stalking across the plains of cyberspace. It’s called Innovate, I’ve just seen the first copy and I can thoroughly recommend it. (And not just because it’s running an interview with me and a lovely review of Whisperers.) 

Rush out (or stay at your computer) and buy your copy now. Available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and, I suspect, all good emag outlets.

Whisperers Now OFFICIALLY on Sale in the UK

It’s publication day, hurrah, hurrah and the Duckworth edition of Whisperers: The Secret History of the Spirit World should be available throughout the length and breadth of the British Isles.  I urge you to rush out and buy a copy in aid of the Help Make Herbie Rich and Famous project.

Oh, and reader reviews on the internet would be helpful too.

Whisperers Now On Sale in U.K.

Early copies of my non-fiction study of spirit influence on human history, Whisperers: the Secret History of the Spirit World are now on sale on Amazon UK.  Although the U.K.’s Duckworth edition isn’t scheduled for publication until November 21, Amazon U.K. has it listed as in stock now at more than a pound cheaper than the U.S. edition which is also listed.

Gamebook News

I see the boys at Megara Entertainment in Seattle are predicting a gamebook resurgence. To celebrate, they’re planning a collector’s edition of The Way of the Tiger, a welcome revival of Mark Smith and Jamie Thomson’s hugely popular 1980s gamebook series. Interestingly, the project is being funded through Kickstarter (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1615043334/the-way-of-the-tiger-gamebooks-new-collectors-edit ) with a heap of pledges already in place, which suggests Megara are right about the growing number of game book fans out there, You can get the whole story in their Press release at  http://richardhetley.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/tiger-gamebook-press-release.pdf

Meanwhile the launch of my own electronic game book projects (Demonspawn and GrailQuest) with Tin Man in Australia have been delayed until next year to allow their technical team time to develop a new and more sophisticated games engine. It’ll be worth the wait.