it's the 2 year anniversary of Into the Tower coming out, here are my favourite drawings I did for it (x)

holiday gift season approaches.

do you know a FANTASY GAME ENJOYER? or someone with a YEARNING for d&d but no opportunity/ time to schedule it?

may i suggest.... my books

Where can I obtain these: Consider US & UK indie bookstores!! But, many places, like Forbidden planet online for less than a tenner. or B&N.

Character drawings from Into the Tower (x)

A question I get asked a lot is

How do you write choose-your-own-adventure style books?

And the answer is (nervous laughter) definitely in a really organised way that's easy for other people to understand, not a nightmarish 10,000+ pixel wide image with tiny text and 100+ layers that I'm constantly changing as I go? Right??

Nothing to see here. The worst thing is this is only a tiny crop, too.

Anyway, I recently did an interview with the small and pretty niche Polish-language publisher that translated both my gamebooks (who have been extremely cool about discussing ways to include non-binary language in Polish, an extremely gendered language.

I surprised myself by actually getting pretty emotional writing about how I felt really excluded from nerd/ fantasy spaces as a kid, and a big motivation is wanting to make weird fantasy that feels genuinely inclusive for a wide audience. So whenever I talk to a foreign language publisher who seems fine and actually excited to translate queer and trans characters and themes, it still feels really amazing.)

The interview included a bunch of cool and insightful questions: Why fantasy? Favourite authors? How do you cope with feedback? What next?

AND the classic: how do you plan and test choose-your-own-path books (though to be honest, if anyone else has a better mapping system, I'm all ears.)

I enjoyed it so much that I got permission to cross-publish the original English version, which you can now read on my author blog - and, yes, it includes the full version of my nightmare map for Into the Tower.

Yes, there's an ebook version! This is the sample from the apple books app, but it's on kindle etc as well. (There should be ebook links here).

I designed it for the print version and the publishers convert it to epub, so the page turns and images won't be in exactly the same places - but it does have clickable links so you don't have to flip back and forth!

hello, did you know I had a book out at the end of last year? Here's an advert for it made of screenshots from random reviews (x)

perfect and amazing to hear, thank you

the Libertine actually has a unique death that gets you a specific achievement in the list at the back, which was extremely fun to write

'The Burned World'

The Great Library: illustration for Into the Tower (x)

Ah wow, thank you so much!! I definitely think there's a challenge to writing a page that seems like part of a fluent story... when the reader might have arrived there from 5 totally different pages that might even vary in genre from 'fun comedy' to 'weird horror'. I'm glad it worked for you!!

it's actually quite weird having a book out (I think this is common for small authors?? other small authors please respond) You have to yell about it a lot, but then after the release, you often just don't hear much from anyone who read it. Especially if you can't do in-person events!

So basically this is EXTREMELY nice to hear, thanks for taking the time to send this message and I'm so glad you enjoyed it

Things that can happen in this book:

These are just in the intros of the 4 characters you pick from at the beginning. Once you're inside there are a LOT of different choices, including eg. allowing you to be murdered by your clone, get trapped forever in the source of all magic or befriend a powerful woodlouse.

(Into the tower, out now)

✨ OUT TODAY!! ✨

Into the Tower is out NOW in the US & internationally

(it's next week in the UK for some reason... Sorry UK.)

The book has intertwining plots that unfold the hidden secrets of the tower the more you play. I basically got unleashed to write a proper full interactive book with all my favourite fantasy stuff in (plus weird magic, horror and 🏳️‍🌈 romance storylines) and I loved making it.

My disability means I'm covid-vulnerable and honestly been having a Not Great time the last few years, and I'm gutted I can't do real-life book launches or appear with the book at conventions. So I can't really say enough what a massive amount it means to see people sharing posts & excited about it in the tags and stuff, thank you thank you. I HOPE YOU LIKE IT.

You can buy Into the Tower online wherever you get books, but I especially recommend Bookshop.org if you're in the US or UK, where you can also support indie bookstores as you get it. (more info)

happened to notice a (very positive, 5*, thank you) ARC review of my new book that raised this point

I assume by 'imagery' he means 'great drawings of sometimes genuinely horrible monsters'

Though I didn't write either for kids specifically, people do sometimes tell me about reading Into the DUNGEON aloud to 5 year olds.

SO JUST TO BE CLEAR:

✧˖°. it's guidance 14+ ✧˖°.

✧˖°. please nobody traumatise young kids with drawings of horrors ✧˖°.

For general warnings, there's more (slightly spoilery) info under the cut. Please just send an ask if you have Qs about anything specific!