Jonathan Green's Blog, page 42

Short Story Saturday: The Doll's House

Available now from Green Man Books ...

What horror dwells behind its peeling paint façade and lifeless windows?

A young mother, struggling after the birth of her second child, starts to question her sanity when the appearance of an unwanted childhood toy rekindles unwelcome nightmares.

A chilling tale written by award-winning author Jonathan Green.

“Jonathan Green will make you lose sleep." ~ Amazon.co.uk

"Seeing the name Jonathan Green on a cover of a novel, for me, sells it instantly." ~ Amazon.co.uk

Download The Doll's House from Amazon now and read it for free via Kindle Unlimited.

The Con+3 Emergency Fundraiser

Last year I donated some prizes to the Con+2 online convention . This year's convention has been brought forward from October to now, because of the coronavirus pandemic. Here's a wizard to tell you more...


The Butterfly Project is going the extra mile to provide basic necessities for the nearby slum districts during their COVID-19 lockdown. However, due to Ugandan laws  The Butterfly Project  is really struggling with this. Currently there is no one else supplying aid to these people, so the need for donations really is urgent this year.

To help raise money for  The Butterfly Project  people and companies within the gaming industry have donated prizes for the Con+3 giveaway. If you check out the sponsors page you will see that I have donated three ACE Gamebooks prizes.


Con+3 is running all this weekend, 16th-17th May, so make sure you check it out and find out how to take part here .

Gamebook Friday: Happy Birthday, L. Frank Baum!

On this day in 1856, Lyman Frank Baum - who would one day write The Wonderful Wizard of Oz - was born in Chittenango , New York.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz  was a hit right from the start, the story of Dorothy and her friends the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion capturing the public’s imagination.

It wasn’t long before there was merchandising associated with the book, a Broadway musical, a film, and eventually thirteen sequels, although the majority of these were written because of Baum’s money problems. A year after writing the sixth (and what was supposed to be the final) book in the series, The Emerald City of Oz , Baum filed for bankruptcy and resumed writing the Oz books to pay his debts.

All and all he wrote over 50 novels, 80 short stories, hundreds of poems, and at least a dozen plays.

And almost three years ago today, I sent the finished manuscript for my gameified take on his classic work of children's literature to Snowbooks ready for publication.


Hunted by the Wicked Witch of the West's winged monkeys and joined by her friends - the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Lion - Dorothy Gale sets off for the Emerald City.
Surrounded by enemies on all sides, will you uncover the secrets of The Wicked Wizard of Oz?
YOU decide which route to take, which perils to risk, and which of Oz's strange denizens to fight. But be warned - whether you succeed in your quest or meet a dire end, somewhere over the rainbow, will be down to the choices YOU make.
Are you ready to return to Oz?

Thought for the Day

“I opened a book and in I strode. Now nobody can find me. I've left my chair, my house, my road, My town and my world behind me."
~ Julia Donaldson

Gamebook Friday: Vampires - The Dead and the Damned

Unusually,* this week I put out the call on social media for people to tell me what they would like to read in this week's Gamebook Friday blog post. There were a significant number of responses** - everything from where do I get my ideas from to how my approach to Kickstarters has changed over the last 8 years - but the suggestion that piqued my interest came from Ian Reynolds on Facebook who wanted this post to be about "Anything to do with Horror and particular Vampires!"

Since I am currently writing a gamebook about a vampire , I thought it might be fun to go back and look at how vampires have been portrayed in my previous gamebooks. However, before we proceed, I should warn you that this post will include SPOILERS!

Still here? Then let's get started...


Bloodbones (2006)

A vampire bat made an appearance in my second published gamebook, Knights of Doom , but the first full-fledged vampire didn't turn up until my fourth Fighting Fantasy adventure was finally published by Wizard Books in 2006.

Bloodbones was originally commissioned by Puffin Books in 1996. At the time, the publisher was intending to reprint the gamebooks but having edited them all to be only 300 sections long, so that's how long Bloodbones was. However, when Wizard Books agreed to publish it ten years later, they wanted it to be the traditional 400 sections long, so I had to add some new material.***

I did make up some entirely new encounters, including the Rainforest Sprite and the vampiric pirate Jolly Roger. Here is his flag-draped coffin, as illustrated by Tony Hough.


Howl of the Werewolf (2007)

Only a year later, another vampire turned up - or rather, a vampiress - in my gothic horror gamebook, Howl of the Werewolf . This was the Machiavellian Countess Isolde, a.k.a. the Lady of Maun and the illustration of her and her Werebat flunky by Martin McKenna is still one of my favourite images from any of my books.


Temple of the Spider God (2011)

Jump forward four years to 2011 and I was busy writing my contribution to Tin Man Games Gamebook Adventures series of digital interactive fiction apps. This is probably one of the most classically 'fantasy' adventures I have written and one of the encounters contained within it involved an island that was ruled over by a vampire.


Shadows Over Sylvania (2012)

Shadows Over Sylvania , the only Warhammer gamebook I have ever written, is also the most blood-soaked gamebook I have ever written, and is chock full of vampires. The reason for this is that you actually get to play as a vampire and can even choose which vampire bloodline you are from. This ultimately brings you into conflict with the blood-sucking thralls of other vampire factions, most notably at the climax to the adventure.

Good luck getting your hands on a copy of this, if you don't already own one - they are as rare as vegan vampires.



Alice's Nightmare in Wonderland (2015)

2015 saw the publication of Alice's Nightmare in Wonderland, which kicked off the ACE Gamebooks series.

In it, I re-imagined the well-known characters from not only Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventure in Wonderland but also Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. And when you have an antagonist called the Red Queen, it is not hard to imagine where I went with that...

Here she is, as illustrated by Kev Crossley.


Dracula - Curse of the Vampire (2021)

Which brings me to the book I am currently writing, Dracula - Curse of the Vampire. Dracula is the ultimate vampire story, and I'm hoping that Dracula - Curse of the Vampire. will go down in history as the ultimate gamebook re-telling of the ultimate vampire story.

In the adventure you can either play as one of the Vampire-Hunters who are trying to stop the blood-sucking Transylvanian warlord, or you can play as Count Dracula himself, and try to stop Professor Van Helsing et al. before they stop you.

Dracula - Curse of the Vampire is scheduled to be published next March. If you missed out on the original Kickstarter, you can still place a Late Pledge here .

And remember - the blood is the life!


* In fact I think it was the first time I've ever done this.

** Which may well form the topic of other Gamebook Friday blog posts in the future.

*** Or more accurately, in some cases, re-instated material.

On the 101st anniversary of L. Frank Baum's death...

L. Frank Baum, author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz , and numerous sequels, died on this day in 1919. He was buried in Glendale's Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery. His final book, Glinda of Oz , was published posthumously on 10th July 1920,


Almost 98 years to the day that Baum died, I completed The Wicked Wizard of Oz , the second in the ACE Gamebooks series.

Hunted by the Wicked Witch of the West's winged monkeys and joined by her friends - the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Lion - Dorothy Gale sets off for the Emerald City.

Surrounded by enemies on all sides, will you uncover the secrets of The Wicked Wizard of Oz?

YOU decide which route to take, which perils to risk, and which of Oz's strange denizens to fight. But be warned - whether you succeed in your quest or meet a dire end, somewhere over the rainbow, will be down to the choices YOU make.

Are you ready to return to Oz?

Thought for the Day

"Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again."
~ C. S. Lewis

Gamebook Friday: White Rabbits

Today is the first of May, and on the first day of the month people often say "White rabbits! White rabbits!"*

So in honour of the occasion, I thought you might like to see Kev Crossley's** new map of Wonderland that will appear in the fifth anniversary hardback of Alice's Nightmare in Wonderland that is being published later this year.


If you're looking for something calming to do during lockdown, you could do a lot worse than check out the Alice's Nightmare in Wonderland Colouring Books , featuring lots and lots of Kev's artwork.


And in other ACE Gamebooks -related news, due to events such as the UK Games Expo being cancelled this year, I have some spare hardbacks of NEVERLAND - Here Be Monsters! , Beowulf Beastslayer , and 'TWAS - The Krampus Night Before Christmas for sale. If you would like one (or more), drop me a line at info@jonathangreenauthor.com.


* Don't ask me why.

** Check out Kev's Batman-themed re-imagining of Alice and the Cheshire Cat here.

Thought for the Day

“I do not think that you can be changing the end of a song or a story like that, as though it were quite separate from the rest. I think the end of a story is part of it from the beginning.”
~ Rosemary Sutcliff

Short Story Saturday: The Serpent's Egg - A Dark Tale of the Cthulhu Mythos

First published seven years ago, as part of the Dreaming in Darkness collection, The Serpent's Egg was the first novella I self-published under the Green Man Books banner back in 2017.

But now I have given it a face-lift, with a new cover image of the Lambton Worm licensed from 2000AD and Magic: The Gathering artist Dave Kendall .

You can pick it up for just £1.99 on Amazon, or if you are signed up to Amazon's Kindle Unlimited plan, it won't cost you a penny.

So why not check it out today ?