May 2024 be filled with awesome books, new book friends, and much literary joy!
This year has been a bit slower on characters interviews that we’d have liked, but considering the state of the world we’d still call it a win 😁
So if you are an author and want your characters interviewed or know another author who would, please reach out! We’d like to hear from your protagonists (or antagonists) from beyond the pages.
Dear readers, tonight with us is an author and gamer who woke up as his alter-ego in his own fantasy books.
A small house on the edge of a village outside Cheltenham in the west of England. Beyond the garden fence were woods and hills that we could run wild in, barefoot in the summer, padded up against the cold in winter. Up the lane towards the top of the hill was a dark, muddy pond we called The Giant’s Bath. And beyond that, through the trees, lay the open sky and the far horizon.
A medieval fort I played with for hours. A small railway set. Little animals and characters I staged elaborate stories around. Books that I lost myself in. Tales of gods and heroes, sagas, eddas, adventures in this world and a hundred others, from the Odyssey of Homer to Narnia and back again, via the Ramayana, Middle Earth and Outer Space.
I was, until this all happened, a widowed, retired schoolteacher living quietly by myself in my little bungalow not five miles from where I was born. There, I spent my time online, in my favourite MMORPG, running my avatar, an apex-level battlemage/healer, Daxx.
It all began when we won the World Championship of Sword and Sorcery, with tens of millions watching live online. The others in my crew are Grell, the Orc avatar of an Australian guy, and Qrysta, the dual-wielding, sword-dancing avatar of an Asian American girl. We only went and won the title. World Champions!
After which, everything went very weird indeed. I found myself all alone, in the middle of an untouched wilderness, armed with only a crappy, noob-level sword and shield. And I was no longer Joss, but my own avatar, Daxx. For real. There was no sign of Qrysta or Grell. And I could hear wolves heading my way. If I was going to find out what had happened, and why, first I needed to survive.
Bad enough, you might think. It very soon got worse. Captured by two wiry little Woods Kin archers, I was marched off to be sold at auction as an outlaw. And soon found myself drafted into a local lord’s army, being trained up by the fearsome Serjeant-at-Arms Jack Blunt—known to one and all as Serjeant Bastard.
It was some time before our quest revealed itself—a quest that meant going on the run with a noble maiden searching for her mysterious godmother, and learning of a foe far more dangerous, and powerful, than any I had faced before.
Continue reading “Joss, aka Daxx (of New Rock New Role, by Richard Sparks)”
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