Ein Beitrag von Bettina von Allwörden (Meister)
Mark Bauman is not really famous (so far :-), known far and wide, we had previously known him - quite frankly - only by the fact that he sent Jack Venture on an exciting adventure.
Jack Venture is a private detective, jazz musician, world traveler, treasure hunter and "man of action".
The game book (see the online-gamebook "The Smoking Mirror #1, Murder in Monte Carlo" on the website spielbuch.net by Pierre Voak) still is in "demo" status, Mark is still working on it, but some parts of this story history of a Pulp Thriller / Mystery genre are already published. We liked them so much that we wanted to know more about the author and its positions on gamebooks. Here is our interview with him.
(Note: The sections marked as quote are textparts taken from the game).
Ein Beitrag von Bettina von Allwörden (Meister)
A headless soldier riding through a spooky forest and killing innocent people for apparently no particular reason in the small town of Sleepy Hollow on the East Coast of the United States. The people are helpless. Luckily Ichabod Crane, investigator of the police fallen in disgrace in New York, has nothing to do right now. He is sent to the sleepy hole and is supposed to clearify the situation. And of course he does.
Washington Irving told a pretty different story in his short story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", published in 1820 in a story collection called "The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent." 1
Ein Beitrag von Horst Hermann von Allwörden
A born Chinese with Finnish passport founded a publishing company in England, und publish German fantasy. That is an example of globalization. Enough reason to turn to, with some questions to the perpetrators of this project and we asked questions and got answers.
Ein Beitrag von Bettina von Allwörden (Meister)
When entering the world of "The Well Between the Worlds", one will - for an amazingly long time - find little resemblance to what seems familiar to us regarding the Arthus-legend. Yet it is the center of many interviews with Sam Llewellyn on this book of his.
Instead, one finds an interesting and exciting fantasy novel, which offers some predictable, and enough surprising twists and turns. This is emphasized by the use of machines in a fantasy novel and a historical legendary (in the truest sense of the word) background.
Sam Llewellyn turned out to be a very nice and interesting interview partner - sadly he won't be attending the book fair, otherwise we would have continued the interview in Frankfurt.
Ein Beitrag von Horst Hermann von Allwörden
Without a doubt John
Howe belongs to the first row of Tolkien illustrators.
Along with Alan Lee, he was "conceptual designer" for Peter Jackson's
film version of 'Lord of the Rings'. He is also in the making of 'The Hobbit'.
But to reduce him solely for illustrating Tolkien and Middle-earth would mean to neglect a huge part of the artist and person John Howe. There is still a lot to discover, not only the fact that he is an active member of an association that wants the Middle Ages to come alive.
In addition, his book "Lost Worlds" was
just published in Germany by Arena. A wonderful reason for us to ask him some
questions. We caught him just before he traveled to New Zealand to work
on the Hobbit with del Toro and Jackson.
... Norman Spinrad on SF, Iron Dreams and commercial censorship
... Mark Baumann on »Harrowing Tales«, gamebooks und their chances in the WWW
Headless Hessian and human trafficking -
... Venjin He and Heero Miketta on Xin, publishing, principles and German
... Sam Llewellyn on Scilly, Arthus and Lyonesse
... John Howe on »Lost Worlds«, Tolkien, Jackson, del Toro, reenactment and inspiration