Martyn Cruise, Author

 Uploaded a video about writing Attack of the Zombie Vampires The original inspiration for attack of the zombie vampires or zompires came years ago when I had an idea for a series of short films. They were a parody of a Van Helsing type character who would disguise himself as a typical victim and after defeating the monster loudly proclaim 'the menace has been defeated'. I can remember wanting to call one of them 'the phantom menace' and having a chuckle about the thought of someone clicking on the video and instead of enjoying a George Lucas epic they would see this strange little movie instead. Yes, I have a pretty weird sense of humour. I never made the films but the idea of the character stuck and after having various discussions about what a vampire / zombie hybrid might be like, I had the seed of what became 'Attack of the zombie vampires'. It was always going to be slightly comedic because it just sounds like some trashy straight to video flick from the 1...

 Uploaded a video about writing 'How to write an adventure gamebook'. Buoyed with confidence after finishing Monstrous Manor, I decided to try to create a useful guide to writing an adventure gamebook. I was and still am clearly no expert in the field but I felt I could gather together lots of useful information into one place to give a useful overview of the process from initial gestation to published book. I had also developed a short lived but rabid interest in AI and wanted to explore its possibilities. To that end, I used Dreamstudio and other AI image generators to create characters and backgrounds for the cover and internal decoration. I experimented with ChatGPT to try to create a gamebook which I quickly discovered was way beyond its capabilities. Nonetheless I expanded some of the passages it produced to create a small gamebook adventure which I included both to illustrate potential AI capabilities and as a bit of fun for the reader. Overall I think I managed to give ...

 Uploaded a video about writing Monstrous Mythology Monstrous mythology was my second adventure gamebook. I had read a number of fighting fantasy books in the months in-between Publishing monstrous manor and planning this one and I learnt a lot about structure and flow. I also decided I wanted to try to implement a simple scoring system. Letting the player do some of the work makes it easier to plan the book but also increases it's interactivity so it's win win. And here I have to make a confession. I never played a full gamebook properly using dice or scoring systems and I have frequently used the multiple fingers in pages method of reading just in case I met an untimely end. I was and still am a reader as opposed to a gamer. The mechanics got in the way of the story for me. I do appreciate that lots of people play gamebooks because they enjoy the mechanics of it which is great and that's why I decided to include a scoring system in this book but I probably made it a bit t...

 Uploaded a video about writing Monstrous Manor Monstrous manor was my first attempt at an adventure gamebook. I was already thinking about writing one and I discovered some amazing open source illustrations which formed the basis of the layout of the book. I started by sketching a map on note paper, then started working out the layouts of the levels and what encounters, items, and traps the player would discover along the way. I then drew them properly on gridded paper with a tracing paper overlay so I could write the temporary address of each entry on top. I remember driving myself crazy trying to figure out how to map some of the sections because for some reason instead of using codewords I had decided that the player would switch between duplicate entries if they made certain choices. I made things insanely complicated for myself. Which led me to buy a whole set of the Wizard re-releases of fighting fantasy for the next book just so I could learn some of the tricks other author...

 Uploaded a video about why I write gamebooks. So why write adventure gamebooks? To explain that we'll have to take a little dive into history. I'm not sure what was my first gamebook but the first ones I remember were the fighting fantasy series, starting with house of hell. I was around 10 years old and loved horror so the combination of the illustrations coupled with the spooky story was right up my alley. I bought a few more in the fighting fantasy series then started to branch out into other ones. I was really into ninjas so bought a couple of the assassin series which were great and then got hooked on the falcon series, buying all but the last one which I couldn't find anywhere at the time. I had a few other one offs like an Indiana Jones tie in and a choose your own adventure as well as a 2000AD Slaine adventure comic. As I grew older I lost interest and got more into console gaming, leaving the books in a box to be found every now and again for a quick perusal befor...

 Family illness has prevented me from concentrating on my writing. I was hoping to get a book out for Christmas but its not going to happen :( This one will have to wait for next December. Merry Christmas!