Guest post: You Are The Hero

The other day I found my original copy of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain while rifling through the loft. I immediately say back among the boxes and spider webs and started flicking through the musty pages, each picture evoking such memories.

I loved these books when I was a kid, playing them over and over again. Now, 30-years later my friend Jonathan Green is raising the funds to write the definitive history of Fighting Fantasy. Here, in a guest blog, he explains how you could be the hero…

Everyone remembers their first.

Mine was The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. It was 1982 and I was ten years old at the time. Here was a book in which I – the reader – was the hero. I got to choose the course of the adventure, deciding which paths to take, which traps to risk, and which monsters to fight. I had never seen or read anything like it before – and so began a life-long love affair with Fighting Fantasy gamebooks.

The Warlock of Firetop Mountain inspired me like no other book ever has. It’s why I’m doing what I doing now, and I know others have also been inspired to follow a career in genre writing because of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks.

Earlier this year I wrote a piece about the history of Fighting Fantasy for SFX magazine. But the more I researched the story behind the creation of the world’s premier gamebook series, the more story I realised there was still to tell. To do the subject justice I needed to write a book –and so the idea that was to become YOU ARE THE HERO was born.

YOU ARE THE HERO will tell the story of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, from the early days of Games Workshop right up to the present day and beyond. I have already interviewed the creators of the Fighting Fantasy series – Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone – who are both keen to have their story told. In fact, Steve Jackson once said to me, “You are the perfect person to write this book.”

Not only will YOU ARE THE HERO tell the amazing story of how Fighting Fantasy gamebooks changed the world, it will also cover everything from spin-off novels and puzzle books, to foreign editions, board games and video games. It will even delve into such areas as the gamebooks that never were, the myths and legends surrounding the series, and how Ian Livingstone’s newest gamebook – Blood of the Zombies – almost never happened.

But I can’t do this without your support. Check out the YOU ARE THE HERO Kickstarter page today and the unique rewards available to those people who back the project and pledge your support today.

Thank you.

Go to the YOU ARE THE HERO Kickstarter page or the Facebook page and support Jonathan today.