“Even lifeless, he was still the beating heart of this barren courtyard, you know?” The old man didn’t wait for an answer to his rhetorical question. “His stone eyes stared through the entrance to the monastery. His sandstone skin was smoothed by time and he wore sandstone clothes from a bygone era. He leaned on his cane, hand over hand, waiting as if for news of better times, or maybe that...
He secretly admired her but they never really clicked. Until one night when she called out-of-the-blue sounding cryptic and urgent and needing him to go to her. He had no idea how his world was about to change.— Logline. FADE IN The freezing mist oozed up the river bank and slowly filled the main street. Echoes from late night revellers lingered in eddies drifting away half heard. He...
What started out as an intended moonlight encounter ended up as a close encounter.« — Logline. Eerie. Haunting. Secret. Until now. I have to tell. It’s been gnawing at my soul on still evenings; evenings which conjure the memory of that night, that place. Ugh, it makes me nauseous even now. What happened? You really want to know? OK, but it’s really no big thing, it’s just...
Episode 2 in the Legion series expands the back story a little and drops our protagonist into a new mystery on the fringes of science. Shady characters, hitmen, corporate dealings, science and religion are all intertwined.
Stephen Leeds, AKA 'Legion', is a man whose unique mental condition allows him to generate a multitude of personae: hallucinatory entities with a wide variety of personal characteristics and a vast array of highly specialised skills.
Arriving at the party, and greeted by the macabre realisation that the host is secretly having his dog buried in the grounds, Alexandria wonders what other skeletons may be unearthed this evening. ⟸ Logline. Evening has drawn its inky velvet curtains across the tapestry of the day. Faint memories of once magnificent stars now dot the skies, keeping only the full moon as their guide in the...
About 40 years ago, I discovered role-playing and Dungeons and Dragons in one of the after school clubs. It revealed a universe that allowed me to flex my storytelling muscles and enjoy a mixture of fantasy and sci-fi and feed the escapist dreamer inside.
Over time, I played (and story-led - marked with *) many systems including Call of Cthulhu*, Shadowrun, Dungeons & Dragons*, Middle Earth, In Nomine*, Bushido, Chivalry & Sorcery, Chill, Warhammer, Warhammer 40k, Gammaworld, Hawkmoon, Stormbringer, Immortals*, Marvel Super Heroes, Paranoia, RuneQuest, Vampire: The Masquerade*, and a couple of systems my own devising (Medieval* and Parody*).
I explored live-action role-playing – eventually running my own club and creating my own LARP systems (Fools Gold and Dream Conquest) – and usually found myself in script-writing or game-master duty, writing over 500 individual live adventures over the period (usually weekly), many linked into the world events of the fantasy land we created. I also volunteered for Curious Pastimes and Lorien Trust at their main LARP events (special effects at the Ritual Circle), and did a little script work, cameos and improv for Curious Pastimes. I was also the South East's Editor (UK) for the LARP magazine The Adventurer. The biggest event I ran was a 10-month modern-day "murder mystery" LARP set around parts of Kent where characters were "always-on" and could get updates and interactions at any time outside of scheduled events. That was in the 1990s.
I was also the artistic director for English Heritage for their live Halloween Horrors events at Fort Amherst in Kent from 1998-1999.
Now, I write as the mood takes me with occasional competitions and challenges, and this year (2020) I will be taking on #NaNoWriMo.
Here's to the future!