Howl of the Werewolf

My fifteenth book is due to be published next month, fifteen years after I received my first commission as a freelance writer. That first commission was ‘Spellbreaker’ an adventure gamebook in the Fighting Fantasy series (number fifty-three, in fact) published at the time by Puffin Books. These books are unusual being (as their name might suggest) as much game as they are story. The reader becomes the hero of the book, which is then related in the second person present tense.

A few years ago, the Fighting Fantasy series (created by legendary games gurus Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone) saw print again, now licensed to Wizard Books. Having re-published all of Steve and Ian’s titles, those by some of the original series other authors started to see print. I was fortunate enough to be one of those writers, as a result of the interest garnered in the intervening years by ‘Bloodbones’, due to be the sixtieth book in the original series but which never saw print at the time.

To cut a long story short, ‘Bloodbones’ saw print last September, two more of the books I wrote for Puffin for the FF series – ‘Curse of the Mummy’ and ‘Spellbreaker’ – were re-printed and I was approached to write a brand new adventure gamebook for the newly re-vitalised series. The result is ‘Howl of the Werewolf’, which is already available for pre-order from Amazon. To give you a bit more of an idea of what the book is about, here’s the blurb I wrote for the back of the new paperback edition.

Lupravia is a cursed land; a chill place of snow-capped mountains, brooding forests and mist-shrouded moors, haunted by the spirits of the restless dead. Peasants struggle daily with survival, living in constant fear of attacks from ravenous wild beasts. Only the foolhardy or insane would willingly pass beyond its borders and enter that benighted realm of predators. But enter you must, after a vicious wolf attack sets you on the path to murder and madness. Steadily succumbing to the call of the wild and the beast within, YOU must seek out a cure to your condition before the next full moon. But how long can you survive in a land where the powers of darkness hold sway and all live in fear of the Howl of the Werewolf?

Two dice, a pencil and an eraser are all you need to immerse yourself in a world of dark fantasy adventure. And, even if I do say so myself, I’m really pleased with how this one has turned out.

The finished book wouldn’t be what it is without the very fine work done by illustrator Martin McKenna. He has illustrated numerous Fighting Fantasy gamebooks and I was delighted to be collaborating with him again. We are obviously inspired by similar brooding gothic imagery and he really took my picture descriptions and ran with them.

Martin has produced thirty-six original black-and-white internal illustrations for the book and he was also the artistic genius behind the fabulous, and very moody, cover. You can see many more examples of his work over at his own website, here.

'Howl of the Werewolf' is due out on 6 September.