Proud Lion needs writers!

by Rae

As part of our ongoing mission to improve our online presence, Proud Lion is now actively seeking additional writers for the store's blog. We are looking for people who are skilful at writing reviews of new comics, graphic novels, tabletop games, and TV/films.

Articles written for our blog would be a combination of assigned and free choice reviews, though all chosen subject matter must be approved before submission. Articles are expected to be approximately 500 words in length. Payment for writing is 1p per word, up to a maximum of £5 per article, payable in store credit only. Writers can expect to be assigned, on average, 1 article per week.

If you think you would be an excellent addition to our writing team, please submit a 500 word review in one of the above topics to rae@proudlion.co.uk by Sunday 9 August. Please also include a description of your particular knowledge strengths and previous writing credits (if any). All submissions will be reviewed and all writers will be contacted to let them know whether they have been successful.

The Lion's Share - NaNoWriMo

November is a lot of things to different people. Bonfire night. The end of Autumn. The beginning of Winter. St Andrew's Day. Remembrance Day. Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month. Alzheimer's Disease Awareness Month. All important to many.

But back in July 1999, a small group of people in San Francisco began an annual project that has grown to over 200,000 participants last year. National Novel Writing Month sees writers undertaking the challenge of writing a 50,000 word manuscript (a novel of approximately 175 pages) in just 30 days.

One of the biggest draws - other than to chance to write with abandon - is that NaNoWriMo has developed a massive community vibe of support; writers spurring one another on to their determined goal. Between online forums and local meets, the chance to meet like-minded people is quite compelling for potential novelists!

I recently took the time to speak to the two Municipal Liaisons for the local Gloucester & Cheltenham area, Rae Gould and our very own D Kai Wilson-Viola.

Ben Fardon: What does NaNoWriMo mean to you? What's it about and why did you become a Municipal Liaison for the Gloucester and Cheltenham area?

Rae Gould: Caffeine, chocolate, and extension cords! NaNo is when I send my inner editor on holiday with an overflowing box of chocolate chip cookies, leaving me free to write whatever I want for an entire month. It's about getting the words down on paper (or screen, or parchment, or whatever you fancy) as quickly as you can, and having fun doing it.

D. Kai Wilson-Viola: I get more writing done because of the Nano than anything else I’ve ever done. So professionally, it’s ‘freedom’. Personally, it’s basically my whole life in some ways. I wouldn’t have met my incredible GM other half without the Nanowrimo, I don’t think. and without meeting him, I wouldn’t have moved here, and wouldn’t be writing for Proud Lion. In all seriousness, it’s freedom on so many levels for me, even though I’m responsible for the region.

RG: Well I discovered a fondness for encouraging other people to keep writing, and that being a cheerleader for others to reach 50,000 words in 30 days actually pushed me to do the same.

DKW-V: I was an ML for the whole of Scotland before we moved here, so that’s why I’m ML here now. The reason I became an ML in the first place was because I wanted to actually make sure I carried through. This is my first year with an official co-ML, so it’s going to be a lot of fun – Rae’s been my constant helper since I met her, she’s wonderful!

BF: How did you first get involved with NaNo? What's the first thing you ever wrote for NaNo?

DKW-V: I started in 2003. Joined up October 1st 2003, as soon as signups opened, and then volunteered about a week later to be ML. I found out I’d gotten ML about three hours before our first meet, a position I shared with another guy. First thing I wrote for Nanowrimo was Glass Block.

RG: I was introduced (okay, link-bombed) to NaNo after learning I was incapable of finishing more than one chapter of a novel. I needed something to break my cycle of continuously rewriting that first chapter, and NaNo was definitely a solution to that. Getting the words out in time to meet the goal is impossible if you keep changing what's already written! The first NaNo novel I wrote was a reimagining of werewolves and various creatures with the ability to change their forms, based in an ancient fantasy world.

BF: Can anyone take part or is it best suited to people who are already writing prose fiction?

DKW-V: Officially? It’s for unstarted books. You’re supposed to start writing the draft on November 1st, and it’s supposed to be the first thing that you write that isn’t plotting or research. Unofficially? I think it’s important that people go with what works for them. Squish the pesky editor and kick ass.

RG: Anyone can join, but I think to make it to the end, you have to want to write, at least a little bit. Already having some writing experience definitely helps, but it's not a requirement. Some of our fellow NaNo-ists had never written anything before joining up, managed to win their first year, and keep coming back.

BF: What is the most rewarding thing for you about taking part in NaNo?

DKW-V: Helping others slaughter their inner editor, or at least gag him or her for a little while.

RG: The people! Having regular meet-ups with other people taking part has led to crazy conversations, hysterical jokes, and more plot bunnies than any of us can possibly keep up with. All my favourite moments of NaNo come from our write-ins. (Granted, many of those moments were also fuelled by far too much caffeine and sugar, but being surrounded by writers who are just as crazy as we are makes it that much better.)

DKW-V: I love helping other people, I love the meets, and I adore the friends I’ve made via the Nanowrimo. It basically accounts for most of the friendships I’ve picked up in one way or another.

BF: Do you have a favourite NaNo creation thus far?

RG: My favourite project has to be my novel from last year's NaNo. I dropped a modern, rebellious teenager into ancient Egypt, and set her up to cross paths with the Pharaoh. The resulting chaos was far more fun to write than I expect it to be, and the main character got herself into situations I never would have predicted if I hadn't given myself free reign to write whatever I wanted.

DKW-V: My favourite NaNo has to be Glass Block, which - after nine NaNos and four re-drafts during November (as secondary books, because I write more than one!) - is out on November 12th. It’s about a policeman, and is quite a satirical and bloody look at reality TV in some ways. It’s also the start of a massive 22+ book series all set in Elliot’s universe, with Glass Block being the first.

BF: Finally, without giving too much away - what have you got planned for this year's NaNo?

DKW-V: *wince* Up to 75 connected short stories, in sets of 10, or 35 novellas. It’ll shift from short story to novella when it’s over 10k words. My overall goal is 375,000 words this year, because it’s my ninth year. Next year, if I’m still going at it, is 10 books, all from Elliot’s universe (hopefully the final ten), and a massive party.

RG: The plan is to write a story based around the Lost Colony of Roanoke, and giving it a supernatural twist. But it's worth remembering that what is planned for my NaNo projects rarely works out the way I expect it to, so I wouldn't be surprised if aliens dropped in during chapter nine.

NaNoWriMo 2011 runs throughout November. For more information head to www.nanowrimo.org or check out the Gloucester & Cheltenham region's Facebook page for details of local meet ups.

Ben Fardon is going to give NaNo a miss this year, but is planning on trying ScriptFrenzy...

The Lion's Share - Jon Lock's Afterlife Inc.

One of the greatest things about running a comic shop in Cheltenham has been the diverse mix of creative people I've met here. There's my fellow bloggers; the fine folk at Judder; the amazing festivals like the Literature Festival and the upcoming Film Festival and Comedy Festival in November; and the many writers that have made this little Regency town their home.

The internet and ereaders like the Kindle and the iPad are changing the world of fiction - giving a generation of talented writers a chance to bring their work to an appreciative audience in a way that might have been stifled by publishers in the past. For example, our very own D Kai Wilson-Viola is poised to self-publish her next novel, Glass Block, and former contributor Martin Smith edited an anthology called The Redundancy Of Flightless Birds.

Elswehere, local comics writer Jon Lock has been blazing a trail on the internet with his own website jonlock.com. Having previously contributed to other works such as the Dead Roots anthology and Unique Tales, he's spent much of this year working on his own universe - the wonderful Afterlife, Inc.

Elementary, the latest chapter of Dying To Tell - a series set in the world of Afterlife Inc. - went live this week and I had chance to catch up with Jon soon after.

Ben Fardon: Jon, your webcomic Afterlife Inc. is a wonderful mix of fantasy, action, humour, corporate intrigue and mythology. What can new readers expect from the chapters of Dying To Tell?

Jon Lock: When corporate con-artist Jack Fortune’s life comes to an abrupt and brutal end, he finds himself in the Empyrean, a bizarre afterlife that has recently been struck by a mysterious Calamity. Never one to miss a business opportunity, Jack reinvents the afterlife as a modern day corporation, stealing fire from the gods to sell back at a profit. Hence Afterlife Inc. “A Company You Can Believe In.”

Jack’s rise to power, and the subsequent challenges facing his company, is a story for the future. With Dying to Tell, however, I wanted to present snapshots of Jack’s new afterlife as seen through the eyes of the deceased souls arriving on its doorstep. Be it sentient computer programs, stars of the silver screen, world leaders or fictional detectives, if they lived, they can die, and that places them firmly in Afterlife Inc.’s domain.

BF: I can see influences from a broad range of comic creators from stalwarts like Neil Gaiman to newcomers like Jonathan Hickman. There's definitely a vibe akin to Atomic Robo or early Hellboy in the energy within the pages. What has influenced you?

JL: Grant Morrison will always be the dark totem to which I aspire, but Warren Ellis’ work on Planetary has been a massive inspiration in terms of narrative style and sheer inventiveness. Atomic Robo – my latest love – is pure comic book magic. Writer Brian Clevinger and artist Scott Wegener are, to me, the ultimate success story for an independent, non-superhero comic. If I can match just a fraction of the energy, humour and emotion they bring to their work, I will consider myself a very happy man indeed.

BF: Do you specifically listen to any music when thinking of Afterlife Inc.?

JL: Music also plays a massive part in bringing Afterlife Inc. to life. Ok Go, LCD Soundsystem, David Bowie... I love any music that tries something different and then waits for the rest of the world to catch up. But, if Jack Fortune is anything to go by, I may have a slight bias towards snappy dressers...

BF: What do you feel has been the biggest challenge in getting a webcomic out into the world? What advice would you give other creators considering producing a webcomic?

JL: The hardest part – alongside trying to generate interest in your stories – has been operating in a bubble. As a writer or artist working alone, it can be all too easy to miss out on meeting like-minded people and other aspiring creators. The greatest part of producing Dying to Tell has been the friends I’ve made through the internet, or at UK comics events such as Launch Pad, Kapow and Birmingham Comicon. There’s strength in numbers. Get out there, meet people, and you can’t help but grow in your craft.

Jon is currently putting the finishing touches on his entry to the Observer/Comica Short Comic competition, colloboarating with artist Jade Sarson. There are also more Dying To Tell stories due this year, then in 2012 Afterlife Inc. will return with a new series Near Life, which will be debuting on the site in January. Unlike Dying to Tell, which dealt with a wide range of characters and situations, Near Life focuses on the core team of Afterlife Inc. – Jack’s board of directors – as the company repels an assault on the afterlife by the US Government.

Jon was kind enough to provide us with some exclusive new preview art from Near Life. Check it out!

Don't forget to check out Elementary and the rest of Dying To Tell.

Ben Fardon is loving the idea of the transformative powers of fountain water and is already a Nuriel fanboy!

Big Game Hunting - Short stories aren’t necessarily short campaigns

In my previous article, I talked about why I thought GM’s should have a storyboard. As it comes up to when Glass Block is released (WOOOO!), I’ve been thinking more and more about player and reader experience rather than one of a writer, a GM or a designer. One of the major things I’ve hit on is that the games I enjoy most are those that I know there’s something churning away in the background. But I can’t decide if I prefer the stuff that’s driven by my character, or the stuff that I do in response to what’s going on around her.

This got me thinking about short stories. Are there any parallels in construction between the two that would work to give people an idea about running one shots?

While this feels suspiciously like stripping away the innards of a magic trick and showing people sleight of hand, one of the biggest things I learned at Uni in my first year was that character driven stories engage people more than stories driven by circumstance - and that’s the difference between short stories and short campaigns.


Short stories are often character driven, while gaming is almost always response driven – unless your character is seriously proactive. But there’s less of an issue with that in fiction – characters are almost always proactive and almost always move the story forward by their actions, whether deliberately or otherwise. One shots are the essence of this in most cases – there’s little time and a smaller story arc to deal with, but things move forward. If they don’t, the one shot feels dissatisfying and can really put a crimp on deciding whether to go back to the universe for longer games. But that’s the other half to this equation – not everything that would make a great short story would make a good one shot.

I guess one of the major drawbacks with this is it’s kind of like saying that one form of media is instantly comparable to another. Which of course they aren’t. If you’re looking for a way to understand gaming more, it might be an idea to slip into a couple of one shot games (Free RPG Day is an ideal way to get your hands on some to try, if you don’t have many) and see where your characters lead you - see if they’re doing the things that you’d expect. Then think about the same story, as a short story, and write it. It’s a fair bet that you’ll think of different ways to deal with the things you faced in the one shot, which might give you an idea for your own next games.

This week, Kai is frantically putting the finishing touches on blowing up a prison and trying to make sure Elliot gets out alive...

Big Game Hunting - Should GM’s have a storyboard?

One of my friends was in chat with me the other evening and was idly talking about gaming and ideas for games and asking about some of the stuff that I write, when we hit on one of the questions that she’d always meant to ask, but hadn’t remembered before.

Should GM’s have a storyboard?

That’s kinda like asking whether a writer should have a plot but bear with me on this.

One of the major areas players have a problem with gaming is when they’re put in a position of feeling like they’re not playing the game – they have no control and are instead being shoehorned into a story that doesn’t work for them, or anyone else in the party. In other words, their GM isn’t so much as giving them a place to play and explore as putting them into a linear story that can’t be influenced. In some cases, in other words, a rigid story isn’t a good idea. But rigid stories and storyboards aren't quite the same thing.

As a writer, I’ve spent the last seven or so years listening to one main male voice in my head. His name is Elliot and he’s the main character in seven of my books and lives in a universe with two other characters, which also have their own books. Elliot’s world or stories weren’t consciously storyboarded and unfolded as they went, but at the same time, I had this overarching ‘arc’ that was storyboarded, planned and meticulously plotted in my head. I’m sure many people would argue that you can’t do both, but I did. And as a GM I do the same thing.

Writing and designing games means that you have to have sets of storyboards in your head, but it’s a lot more flexible, because your GMs will eventually come up with the story themselves. But if you’re GMing, you’ve got to walk a very fine line – there has to be a goal, a story arc to reach for, but at the same time, you gotta give your players enough control over some of the incidents that are happening around them to ensure that they not only engage with the game, but feel like it’s positively contributing to the world around them. Only then can you be sure that your players are getting the most out of the game and are feeling good about how they move on from whatever predicament they’ve found themselves in. But, at the same time, it doesn’t mean that you’ve got do deal with your arc in a ‘linear, the players have to be involved too’ way – in fact, sometimes, the occasional element that slipped passed them (such as choosing to deal with one thing over another) makes things even more interesting. Games shouldn’t be about players being all powerful – in fact, kicking their feet out from under them occasionally because of their choices is a good thing.

Which is why I argue overarching storyboards are not only essential, but make the game more enjoyable.

This week, Kai has been starting at storyboards so much that she keeps thinking her conservatory windows are whiteboards...

Big Game Hunting - What happens when writing, uni, and roleplay collide?

A mess is what happens.

As some of you possibly know, I’ve got a book out in 60 days. I’ve got a dissertation due in three months and two other hand-ins to get to the point where I can actually graduate before the end of the summer. Luckily, the novel coming out was the novel I used for my class ‘The Novel’ so we’re all good, if a little sick of saying the word ‘novel.’

What a lot of people don’t know - and in fact, this is the first time that it’s been mentioned in public - is not only is this the Universe I built for ohmygodIdon’tknowhowmany novels, but I’m also designing a gaming system around them. Many people feel I’m kinda crazy – I think they now understand exactly why I get a vague look sometimes when asked about some mechanic or other in another game – I’m checking to see if I can bodge it into mine.

And this is where it gets complicated.

One of the difficulties is I’m releasing case notes onto my blog every two days to help support the eBook launch on June 4th. I’ve had my book cover, so it’s now all official, and shiny and squee-worthy, but the complication comes in that some of these case notes are actually RPG notes.

And that’s confusing for some people to say the least. Especially when I forget to remove the "roll a D10, that’s your luck" from the background story.

Herein is a lesson for anyone that’s writing novels and games to go with them – don’t do it. Your brain will melt, you’ll start to resent the fiction you’ve spent your hard earned free time crafting and you’ll begin to question what you see in RPGs in the first place. Or at least, if you are hell bent on doing it because it’s kick ass merchandising - and lets be fair, seven years in any universe where you’re the mistress of all creation, plus getting shot on a regular basis will leave most people able to talk about a game rules set in terms that most people can understand - for the sake of your sanity remember this one crucial piece of advice.

Background writing for RPGs is not the same as novel writing. They might look the same on the surface, but if you leave any rules in that you’re referring to, you’re really going to bamboozle anyone coming along and reading it as fiction.

So um... yeah, that’s my excuse for missing two weeks of articles. Certainly beats "the zombies ate them." To make up for it, I’m doing a write-up on Mansions of Madness, complete with pictures of the carnage…

D Kai Wilson-Viola’s squeals over her book cover passed from human hearing into a range only audible by dogs

Big Game Hunting - Enjoying Writing If You’re A Gamer

Most people, from the outside, think it’s the best job in the world. You can pad downstairs in your PJ’s, curl up with a nice cup of tea, and enter a world of your own making. Or use all those English lessons that you daydreamed through to make a good living.

It gets a bit vague after that – most people seem to focus on the bliss of working from home than the actual work of writing though, and don’t realise that doing it day in, day out kind of takes the shine off it.

While writing is a dream gig, it’s also one of the hardest things you’ll ever do, not because it’s technically difficult (it is, but so are other jobs); not because it’s hard to motivate yourself (it is, but if you’re self-employed, that can be true anyway); and certainly not because people ‘don’t get’ writers (most don’t, but I can’t get my head around regular jobs either). It’s because being ‘always on’ is harder than any other career.

For a start, writing isn’t just a job. It’s not just a vocation. It’s a calling. And I don’t mean that in the poseur way – I mean quite literally, once you begin writing, it’s something you’ll often never stop. Not for long anyway.

It changes your perspective of the world. It’s not all dramatic and angst ridden though – writing is fulfilling, rewarding and to be honest, I kind of get a thrill knowing that I’ve got as much power in the world I’m writing in, as worlds I game in. And honestly, where else can you plan setting fire to a merry-go-round full of bodies without getting arrested?

Megalomania and serial killer tendencies aside, it’s difficult to keep things entirely fresh and separate sometimes – I write horror and sci fi, so playing in grim-dark-sci-fi sometimes feels like I’m back in the world I was writing – it was worse for us when I was playing a Mage in World of Darkness.

The always on thing comes back to bite me lots of the time – and unlike a regular gaming schedule, I can’t predict when my muse is going to hop up and down and sucker punch me with the new ‘thing’ I need to be writing – in fact, she normally gets me either in game, or just before it. And I’ve yet to find a stat line that gives me the opportunity to play a slightly scatter-brained, distracted type in game with any regularity.

What I have found though, is the more I role-play, the more I like designing games - I can see where games work, and where they don’t – and I really quite enjoy designing something that might work better. Keeping it fresh and interesting might be hard, but you know what, I’d never change my job for the rest of the world, and I still love exploring other worlds, whether it’s of my making – or that of someone else’s.

If you have any requests regarding gaming and writing, D Kai Wilson-Viola would love to hear them.