I recently released my fourth gamebook, and am currently working on my fifth. As I set to work on this one, it struck me that a lot of the unspoken rules I apply to myself now I’ve put in place specifically because I made mistakes in my first gamebooks. As much as I like the alliteration of “made mistakes” – who doesn’t – perhaps “learned lessons”, also pleasingly alliterative, is a more positive way to look at it. In other words: improvement is both iterative and alliterative. It was a surprise therefore – a very pleasing one – when someone who picked up a copy of The Altimer, my first ever gamebook, described it as “possibly the best…
Author: Sam Isaacson
As a general rule, gamebook authors fall into two camps: those who use Kickstarters to fund their books, and those who don’t. So far, I’ve fallen into the latter category. Each time I’ve created a book, I haven’t earned a single penny on it until after it’s been published. This has obvious downsides. Firstly, it’s a pretty risky strategy. A lot of time and energy goes into creating a book, and when I released The Altimer it felt like a very likely outcome that literally nobody would buy a copy – I still feel a bit of surprise, a sprinkle of excitement and a tonne of gratitude every time someone does. Secondly, it often needs a financial investment,…
Solar War is now out – great news! – and so I immediately started thinking: What to do now? Well, I’ve started work on a few more projects. I need a sense of momentum behind one before I know which will be the next to reach production stage, but it’s likely to be one of: A gamebook focussed squarely at 7-11 year olds Another in the style and world of Escape From Portsrood Forest, but this time based in a city An ambitious piece of collaborative fiction in a new fantasy setting in which the reader shapes the world around them as much as their own story While the creative part of my brain has been working on…
I published both The Altimer and New Gaia in 2019, and had every intention of releasing the finale in the Entram Epic trilogy in early 2020. But life happened, didn’t it? I was moving house, the stress from which simply stopped my creativity. That was sad. And then the lockdown inspired Escape From Portsrood Forest. That was great! I then got distracted writing a non-fiction book, which was very interesting but didn’t leave me enough time, and 2020 ended without the book I’d planed to release at the start of the year. That’s why I’m really happy to have Solar War nearly ready to go. Coming in at 500 sections it picks up right where New Gaia left…
The first time I discovered a spelling mistake in a book it was as if a piece of reality had suddenly cracked open, leading me to question everything I’d ever thought true. As a child I found spelling mistakes relatively straightforward to spot, and made few myself, and so the idea that a grown-up would make a spelling mistake in an actual book simply seemed ludicrous. And then I tried writing a gamebook and discovered that spelling mistakes were a laughable inconvenience in comparison to trying to make the reader’s experience consistent, logical and simply possible. When I hit publish on a book, every check I’ve performed gives me confidence that there are as near to no errors…
Gamebooks ought to inherently be the most inclusive medium on the planet. The hero of each story is YOU, the reader, regardless of skin colour, gender, social class, or anything else. And yet gamebooks are a microcosm of the problems that the west in particular faces. The fantasy tropes that have formed so much of the bedrock of this craft are ultimately inspired by British myths as a general rule, in which almost all characters are Caucasian men. But the world has changed since those myths emerged. I’ve always been quite aware of gender when I’m writing, and in The Altimer and New Gaia I also intentionally gave particularly influential characters African names. I’d love to rest on…