Those of you who follow me on Twitter will know that at the end of July, my Campaign For Real Monopoly article from issue 10 of Critical Miss went viral, being read by something like 40,000 people in just a few days. In total, it was viewed 75,015 times during the month of July.
I don’t know quite where it started from. I think a lot of people found out about it from this post in Ezra Klein’s Washington Post blog:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/…
That wasn’t the first mention of it though. It was mentioned by various people on Twitter, but the oldest mention I found was this one on a computer gaming forum called NeoGAF. And the most recent was probably this one on Inside Gaming (found via Josh Wein on the Critical Miss Facebook page).
I’ve just checked out the server logs today, and it seems that while things have quietened down quite a bit, there is still a good trickle of people coming in: in August, that one article’s had 15,646 views. To put that in context, in June, the highest rating article was one about “Semi-Sentient Bipedal Pack Animals” with 310 views, with the entire site itself getting 2073 unique visitors (which is itself not bad considering that the site hasn’t been updated for more than five years).
I don’t think this article going viral’s likely to make much difference to me in the long term. Most people coming to read it will be coming simply to read an article someone’s linked to. They’ll probably not even notice the site it’s on, let alone who wrote it. (Although if anyone is reading this having found me via this article, I’d love it if you could let me know).
So what does it look like when a post goes viral? Well a bit like this:
And this:
I’ve fancied doing some GMing (games mastering) for quite a while. (In roleplaying, the GM is the one who sets the overall storyline and runs the game). I needed something that would suit my style and my abilities, as well as hopefully working when done via a Skype video link.
This is what I’ve pitched to the guys, and the cool thing is that they’re pretty keen.
Furtown
The sky above the starport was the colour of television, tuned to a cable radio station. It was three hours to midnight, and the last of the salary dogs were heading home with shiny briefcases clutched in clawed paws, fur glistening from the driving rain, snouts already twitching at the thought of an evening meal of meat and biscuits. Behind them, the rats were emerging from their day-time hideaways, some with hairless tails casually wrapped around their wares, others with neon signs above advertising their services. Expensively coiffeured cats stepped out of sleek aircars, seeking thrills and kicks, the crueller the better. A dog could lose himself here, end up just one more dead hound when the sun returned the morning after the night before.
Furtown was not a place for the pure of paw.
The Elevator Pitch
Furtown is an anthropomorphic cartoon series, with a vaguely noire / cyberpunky theme. (Think Bladerunner with fur). It has a witty, ironic, satirical tone, aimed as much at unemployed slackers as the children it supposedly targets.
The three PCs are the joint proprietors of a private detective agency who find themselves hired to investigate a mystery deeper and more dangerous than they could possibly have imagined. This single story line will be told over the course of an entire series.
(This will not be an open-ended campaign. It will be one big story, like a novel, with a beginning, middle and end. Although we could then go on and do a second “series”, with a new story, if we wanted.)
System
The system I would use is Toon, from Steve Jackson Games
Reasons
I want a system that is very fast and abstract. This is partly because that’s the sort of system I want, but also because if I’m doing this via Skype, it really needs to be very simple and straightforward. I also want to focus on story, with combats being resolved quickly. (There will actually be a proper mystery plot to be solved, but it’s what comes after combat that I’m interested in – either you knock them out and then question them, or they knock you out, and either run away and capture you).
By doing it as an ironic cartoon that plays with the tropes and clichés of noire mysteries, I can (metaphorically) sketch quickly with a broad brush, and avoid getting bogged down in details. And I can also put in some humour without detracting from the tone.
Furtown
Furtown is a star port city that may be either on Earth, or on another world. (This is never defined). It is entirely inhabited by anthropomorphic animals. There no humans. There’s no reason, hidden or otherwise, for this. It’s just the way Furtown is.
Furtown’s system of government is never specifically defined, but is strongly implied to be a harsh and corrupt republic of some kind. (It would be a cynical Californian liberal Democrat’s view of what the USA would be like, some years down the line).
Races of Furtown
Dogs
Dogs are the largest group in Furtown, forming the bulk of the middle-classes as well as the “old-money”, paternalistic rich and the respectable working classes.
They always walk upright.
Upper class dogs are always pedigrees, whilst mongrel’s tend to be more lower class. (There’s no reason for this, it’s just the way it is – if you want an explanation, it’s that the animators drew upper class dogs as good-looking pedigrees, and lower-class dogs as tufted, mongrel scruffs).
Dogs are generally decent and hard-working.
Cats
Cats are mainly in the upper-classes, although in more of the nouveau riche. They always walk upright. They are slightly smaller and slighter than dogs. But they have very sharp claws.
Cats are generally cruel, selfish and hedonistic, but intelligent and stylish.
Sheep
Sheep form the lower parts of the working class / underclass. They are stupid, superficial, and of often questionable morals. Most are on benefits, spending their time watching mindless TV quiz shows. When they do work, female sheep aspire to be hairdressers, males to be footballers.
They always walk upright, except for when they’re pissed (drunk), which is often.
Rats
Rats provide Furtown’s criminal underclass. They often live in the sewers andunderground tunnels. They make their money from petty larceny, businesses of dubious legality, and charging utility companies protection money. (“Nice fibreoptic cable you got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it.”)
They stand upright, but often scuttle about on all fours. They are about half the size of dogs.
Rats are devious and amoral, but will often abide by some form of moral code. (It’s often said of Ron Rat and his twin brother Reg that they’re nice to their mother, and they keep the sewers in some kind of order).
Horses
Horses are a minority group. Traditionally, they worked in the transportation sector, initially in front of carriages, and then in the driver’s seat when the carriages were motorised. They have now started to enter other employment sectors, especially Shires, who typically work as bouncers or hired muscle.
They always stand on all fours, except when they are driving a truck or riding a motorcycle.
Horses are very heavily unionised, with many of those unions having links to the rat underclasses. They are generally trustworthy and decent, if a little slow.
Furtown Style
The typical dress of a Furtown inhabitant is a jacket and shoes and perhaps a hat, sometimes with trousers, sometimes without. (It’s a cartoon, that’s how they do it). Clothing and other items are a mixture of slightly futuristic and retrothirties.
Furtown Inhabitants
Mayor Butch Slobber
The mayor is a decent Labrador, liked by all, but generally regarded as a wellmeaning but essentially useless puppet. They Mayor is rarely seen in public without his assistant Felix Creep.
Felix Creep
Felix is a lithe tom cat, always nattily, if conservatively, dressed. He is widely regarded as the power behind the throne.
Frankie Skinartra
Frankie is a rat crooner rumoured to have links to Ron Rat and his brother Reg.
Ron Rat
Ron Rat is the leader of a large chunk of Furtown’s criminal underworld. He is aided by his twin brother Reg, and their other brothers Rik, Rich, Richie, Ralph, Rob, Randy, Ramsay, Ray, Reed, Reuben, Regis, Rhys, Reece, Rene, Rio, Robin, Roger, Rock, Rocky, Rod, Roddie, Rocco, Roland, Ronan, Rolf, Rory, Ruben, Rudolf, Ross, Rudy, Roy, Rufus and Ryan. (They were part of a very, very large litter).
Baabaara
Dim even for a sheep Baabaara shot to fame on the reality show Furtown Shore, followed by a stint on Celebrity Get Your Brother Out Of Here – in which she memorably declared to Border Collie chat show host Rex Clever her belief that sheep dogs were called sheep dogs because they were “wannabe” sheep (dogs who wanted to act like sheep).
She is a regular in the pages of Baaa! magazine.
The guys have already come up with some very cool character concepts, but an actual start for the campaign will have to wait for me to come up with the full plot. (At present I have some ideas, but they need fleshing out).
I’ve also sent out some emails to them giving further thoughts about the campaign, which I might format up into a later post.
At some point in the future, I’m going to write a post explaining the steps I had to follow to get my novel Game Night available on Amazon’s Kindle platform. (It was already available in the traditional “paper” format). But did just want to mention something that I realised / noticed today.
When you publish your book to Kindle, you can’t specify that it is the Kindle version of an existing paper book. Instead, you’re supposed to wait and allow the Amazon database to figure this out and link them together. In my case, that didn’t seem to happen, resulting in me having to contact them, supply the details of the paper and Kindle versions, and ask them to do it – which they did.
The process takes several days and isn’t yet complete. When it is, reviews written about the paper version should appear on the Kindle version’s page (which is currently reviewless), and when going to the paper version’s page, you will be offered the option of purchasing the book on Kindle.
But there’s a third benefit, which didn’t occur to me until I was looking at the (now partially linked) Kindle page, and seeing how the price is displayed now that it is lined to the print version (click to make bigger):
Now I’m not an expert in the psychology of prices and pricing. But I think that might be quite cool.
See, if I had only a Kindle version, the price would be £0.70. A browser might come across this and conclude that it is “cheap”. But they might also conclude that it’s clearly not worth much. But now, they see that the price is £0.70 compared with a price for the print version of £7.99 – a saving of 91%. It’s no longer £0.70 for something worth £0.70, but £0.70 for something worth £7.99. I’m hoping that the word that will come to mind now will be “bargain” rather than “cheap”. (There is a proper name for this “price expectation” effect, but I can’t remember it now).
Well here’s hoping, anyhow.
 My novel Game Night is now out on the Kindle, priced at what I’d consider to be a bargain launch price of just 99c (or 70p in the UK). I’m not sure what to expect or hope of this. It might prove to be a runaway success, going viral in the way that the paper version just didn’t quite manage, and selling tens of thousands of copies.
Or it might fizzle out and die, taking my hope and dreams with it.
There isn’t so much I can do to determine which of those two outcomes occur. But there is something that you can do. Two things in particular. It’s really quite cheeky for me to ask you to do them, but it’s really important to me, and I’m hoping you won’t mind.
Firstly, you can buy the Kindle version of Game Night, even if you’ve already got the paper version. You don’t need a Kindle. Amazon do free Kindle applications for Windows PC, Mac OS X, iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry and Android. These allow you to purchase and read Kindle books just as if you had an actual Kindle. (It’s pretty straight-forward, but I’ve put some instructions at the end).
During this initial launch period, it will only cost you 99c in the US, or 70p in the UK, which I’d like to feel is a small enough amount that I can ask you to do as a favour to me, albeit a rather considerable one for which I will owe you a drink. (In case you’re interested, the amount of money I’ll get out of that is 35c, but it will be worth far, far more than that to me).
Buying Game Night is pretty crucial. At present, if you type “Game Night” into Amazon you get a long list of books with Game Night in the title, not one of which is my one. If enough of you buy Game Night I’ll be at the top of that list. Sales will also give it a high Amazon ranking, which gives the book credibility with readers and will help it get into Amazon’s crucial recommendation system.
Secondly, assuming you’ve enjoyed reading Game Night, you can recommend it to people who follow you on social networks like Twitter and Facebook as well as the many forum sites out there. I’ll be doing tweets about Game Night. If you’re a twitter user and could retweet one of them (or even better do your own tweet), I’d be very grateful. When it comes to making Game Night really take off, I can light the fire, but it’s those around me who have to blow on the flames.
The best links to use are:
US: http://www.amazon.com/Game-Night-ebook/dp/B0057JPZSG
UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Game-Night-ebook/dp/B0057JPZSG
Finally, as always, if you liked Game Night then I would be very happy if you did a short review, either on Amazon or your own blog, saying so. Alternatively, you can go to the Amazon pages for the book (the above links) and click on the “Like” button, to say that you like the book. (Assuming you do, or course!)
And it would be especially nice if you comment here, or on Twitter or Facebook, to say that you’ve bought or retweeted or posted.
I know this entire post is just a tad cheeky, but I really will be grateful for any and all help. Thank you. I really appreciate it.
HOW TO BUY A KINDLE BOOK (IF YOU DON’T ALREADY HAVE A KINDLE)
1) Download and install the appropriate app. If you have a Windows PC, you can download it here. If you have an Apple Mac, you can download it here (it will only work Macs bought within the last five years, as you need an Intel one and it needs to be running at least OS X 10.5 Leopard). Otherwise, if you have an iPad, an iPhone, a BlackBerry, or some kind of Android phone or tablet, you should download the “Kindle” app from whichever app store you normally use. In all case, it’s free.
2) Enter your Amazon account details into the app (i.e. you log in). US customers can enter their Amazon.com account details. UK customers can enter their Amazon.co.uk details.
3) Click on the “Kindle Store” button. This will take you to the Kindle Store. (Which is basically the Amazon website, but showing only Kindle titles).
4) Search for “Jonny Nexus”. Pick Game Night from the resulting list. (It should be either 99c or 70p, depending on whether you’re on Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk). Click that you want to buy it.
That’s it. It should then be automatically downloaded to whichever app you’re using to make the purchase. If you have multiple Kindle apps (on both your iPad and iPhone say, or Windows PC and Android phone) you can download it to the “other” app by going into the “Archived” section and selecting Game Night. (You only pay once, even if you read it on multiple devices).
 I tweeted about this early this morning, but my novel Game Night is now available on the Kindle for a time-limited launch price of 99c in the US and 70p in the UK. Here’s where you can find it:
US: http://www.amazon.com/Game-Night-ebook…
UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Game-Night-ebook…
As part of his I’ve done a press release, reproduced below. Please feel free to grab any or all of it if you want to post something up on a blog, on Facebook, or on a forum.
PRESS RELEASE
Game Night, Jonny Nexus’s 2007 ENnie-nominated novel of roleplaying gods, is now available on Amazon’s Kindle platform, with versions available both for standard Kindles as well as the Kindle apps for PC, iPhone, iPad and Android. To celebrate this event, it will initially be sold at a bargain launch rate of just 99 cents in the US (Amazon.com) and 70 pence in the UK (Amazon.co.uk).
As well as achieving the prestigious ENnie nomination, Game Night was widely lauded in reviews. Cartoonist and writer John Kovalic said:
“A Pratchet-esque debut novel of gods, roleplaying, and game-night kerfuffles … Buy Game Night. It’s a fun, fresh, irreverent read that’ll ring true to any gamer even if, unlike the protagonists, you happen not to be a god.”
And on RPGNet, RPG writer and reviewer Steve Darlington declared:
“The best novel ever written about gaming. One of the funniest novels ever written about anything.”
The novel’s author, Jonny Nexus, says: “Launching Game Night on the Kindle is a big thrill for me. The paper version of Game Night got a better response than I’d ever hoped for. People really enjoyed it, both gamers and non-gamers. It really seemed to strike a chord, and I can’t wait for a whole new group of people to read it.”
Game Night on the Kindle can be found on Amazon at:
US: http://www.amazon.com/Game-Night-ebook/dp/B0057JPZSG
UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Game-Night-ebook/dp/B0057JPZSG
204 words
ABOUT JONNY NEXUS
Jonny Nexus lives in Brighton with his wife, their dog, and an array of chew toys that the dog invariably leaves on the top-most step but one.
He is the editor, co-founder, and chief-writer of the cult gaming webzine Critical Miss. He wrote The Slayer’s Guide to Games Masters for leading roleplaying publisher Mongoose Publishing, as well as writing a monthly column for their magazine Signs & Portents.
His debut novel Game Night, published by Magnum Opus Press in 2007, was shortlisted for a Gen Con EN World Award (an “Ennie”). This August, Mongoose Publishing will publish “The NeXus Files”, a compilation of Jonny’s Signs & Portents articles. And a short story of his (“On Her Majesty’s Deep Space Service”) will be appearing in a forthcoming anthology from new publisher Stone Skin Press.
There’s something that annoys me about the behaviour of some (not all!) of the anti-copyright rent-a-mob found in many corners of the Internet that I can best explain through analogy.
Imagine you have a man who thinks that motorways (freeways) should have no speed limit, as used to be the case in the UK until 1965, and is still the case in Germany. And imagine that he then goes for a drive up the M1 at 85 mph per hour, 15 mph above the speed limit, and gets fined by the police.
I would expect his reaction to be something like:
“I accept that I broke the law. The limit is 70 and I was doing 85. But it’s a stupid law. The road was empty, the weather was good, my car is well-maintained and designed to drive fast, and I’m a skilled and careful driver. I don’t believe I was putting anyone in any danger.”
But I wouldn’t expect him to say something like:
“I don’t understand why the police stopped me and fined me. I don’t see how they can argue that I was breaking any law. They said I was breaking the “speed limit” but surely the speed limit is the limit within which your speed is safe, and that is dependent on the weather conditions, the traffic conditions, the nature of the car, and the skill of the driver? Given those, I don’t think I was exceeding the limit, and the fact that they still fined me shows that this is a corrupt system!”
To which, of course, the answer is: “No, the limit is 70 mph and you were doing 85!”
The point is that there is a very big distinction between what you think the law should be, and what the law is, and if you think a law is wrong or unfair it ill-serves your cause to totally blur the two. Now I know that copyright law is confusing, with many grey areas – but some people still manage to stand way beyond the grey and yet still argue that black is white or white black. If something is illegal and you don’t think it should be then complain about its illegality. Don’t instead try to argue that it’s legal, when it isn’t.
I came across a classic example of this yesterday, when reading some comments about the takedown of http://peanutweeter.com. This was a site that took Peanuts cartoons (minus the speech bubbles) and put in tweets that the author had come across (for humorous effect). Unfortunately/inevitably the lawyers for the Iconix Brand Group who own the Peanuts estate found out about it and sent in a DCMA takedown notice.
Many of the responses stated that this was an abuse of copyright law, in that PeanutTweeter should have been protected by two aspects of the “Fair Use” provision:
a) Because it’s parody.
b) Because it’s non-commercial.
Now I’m not a lawyer, but I’m pretty sure that neither of these apply.
Firstly, I’d say it’s not a parody. A parody is something that takes the piss out of the thing it is copying. While that might perhaps be true of Garfield Minus Garfield, I can’t see that it’s true here. It’s not taking the piss out of the Peanuts cartoons. It’s simply using the Peanuts cartoons as a building block of a new piece of art. That makes it a derivative work, and derivative works need the permission of both artists to make a copy. (If I take a painting you painted and digitally manipulate it in Photoshop, the resulting piece is part mine and part yours, and not 100% mine).
And secondly, it doesn’t matter how often people say “but they’re not making any money”, because that’s pretty much based on a myth. If you don’t have the right to copy something then you don’t have the right. Whether or not you intend to sell it is irrelevant. In fact, I believe that making copyright only apply to commercial copying is one of the things that Cory Doctorow et al want to change about copyright law.
Copyright is a hugely complex and emotive subject. I don’t myself fully agree with either copyright law as currently written nor how it is currently applied. And I very much enjoy things like Darth and Droids which are, strictly speaking, in breach of copyright. But I think the debate would be much more productive if people would distinguish between what is and what they think should be.
And at that point, having probably alienated half the Internet, I’ll shut up. :)
There are many things that annoy me, but one of them is when people tell lies to children. I don’t mean actual, “Of course Uncle Gary isn’t your daddy!” type lies. I’m talking about lazy, false, over- simplified and dumbed-down answers given in response to a child’s curiosity about the world. I think children are often cleverer than we give them credit for, and I think they deserve to have the adults who care for and raise them attempt to explain the world as fully, and as accurately, as they can.
I witnessed a grotesque failure to do this just last weekend. My wife and I had gone for a ride on the Swanage railway, a preserved steam-railway in Dorset. While waiting for the passenger train to take us into Swanage, we saw a short freight train draw up, pulled by this locomotive:
As you can see, it’s a medium-sized engine that is technically described as a 2-6-4, meaning that it has two small, un-powered wheels at the front, six large driving wheels in the middle, and then four small un-powered wheels at the back. We got talking to the guys who were driving it, and found out that they were on a “drive a steam train” experience that had been a gift from the sister and brother-in- law of one of them.
A few minutes later the passenger train pulled up. This was a much bigger, grander affair, a 4-6-2 with a separate tender, and was of the sort that would once have pulled main-line trains. Unlike the smaller freight engine, this one had a nameplate on its side: “Eddystone”.
We travelled into Swanage, spent some time there sheltering from the rain in a rather nice dog-friendly cafe, and then got on the train to head back. A little way down the carriage from us were a man and a woman and their small daughter. A few minutes after the train set off, I heard the man utter the following line to his daughter:
“This is a real-life Thomas train.”
Consider that line for a moment.
“This is a real-life Thomas train.”
Here he is, with a young mind before him just waiting to be filled with facts and understanding, and that’s what he comes up with.
“This is a real-life Thomas train.”
I leaned forward and whispered, perhaps just a tad too loudly, at my wife. “That’s not right!” She shot me a warning glance but I wasn’t to be halted. “It’s not a Thomas train at all. Thomas was a tank engine. That’s why they call him Thomas the Tank Engine. This is more like a Gordon, or a James or something!”
You tell me. Does this 4-6-2 tender locomotive:
…look anything whatsoever like this 0-6-0 tank locomative:
I think not!
A few minutes later the train stopped, and I heard the man telling his daughter that, “…the train has to stop until the red light turns green.”
Don’t even get me started on that.
I’m very pleased to announce that after getting various issues out of the way, my ENnie nominated fantasy humour novel Game Night will be arriving on the Kindle within a couple of weeks. It will be available not only for the standard Kindle, but for Kindle on Android, iPhone and iPad also.
 A ten-thousand-year quest is about to be completed. Prophecies will be fulfilled, ancient riddles answered, legendary evils bested, and the nature of the universe revealed. All that’s needed is a band of mighty heroes to do the completing.
Unfortunately for the locals, some of the gods have taken a personal interest in the chronicle of these heroes’ adventures. Now they are each guiding one of the characters towards the conclusion of their epic journey. That is, when they’re not squabbling, backstabbing each other, blowing things up by accident, refusing to play by the rules, and turning the AllFather’s creation into a mess of petty arguments, fantasy cliché, gratuitous combat and unnecessary dice-rolls.
If you thought your games group couldn’t be any worse, Game Night shows just how bad things can get when a bunch of unruly deities decide they want to play. And may the heavens help us all.
“The best novel ever written about gaming. One of the funniest novels ever written about anything.” —RPGNet review (rating 5/5) by Steve Darlington
But wait, there’s more!
Sorry, appear to be channelling the inner QVC I wasn’t aware I had.
But there is more. While I’m not necessarily aiming for world domination, it’s important to me that Game Night does well. Not just on a personal level, but because I need something to show agents and publishers that, contrary to what they might think, there is actually a market for humour fantasy/SF, and that just maybe I’m someone who can write it. So far, it’s done okay in terms of sales (probably around 1800 copies sold so far), and very well in terms of how well people liked it. But it seems I need more if I want it to be something that causes agents to sniff at my door.
So the second bit of news is that Game Night will launch on the Kindle at a special launch price of 99 cents (and a similar amount in the UK). Yes, that’s $0.99. This isn’t what I think my novel is worth – I think it’s worth a lot more. But it is an amount that I’m hoping will provoke curiosity, interest, and those all-import re-tweets.
At some point the price will go up to what I think the novel is worth (I haven’t yet determined what that is, but I know it’s more than the price of a small bottle of cola). So if you’ve got access to a Kindle device or app, and you haven’t yet read Game Night then I’d suggest you buy it when you can.
Actually, you know what? I’d just ask you to buy it.
And if you have another device, I will be trying to get Game Night out in other formats just as soon as I get this out of the way.
That writing involves frustratingly long lead times between you completing a book and it being published is a reasonably well known fact. That there can sometimes be a long lead time between you completing a book and it being announced, it perhaps less well-known. But it’s even more frustrating.
So it’s with great pleasure that I can finally now talk about the thing I spent a chunk of last summer working on, “The NeXus Files”, which is being published by Mongoose Publishing this summer. Here’s the blurb:
In May 2003, Jonny Nexus embarked on a journey that would take him from the ruins of post-WWIII Poland to the shores of long-gone realms, and from the faded grandeur of 1920s Venice to the twice-sunned deserts of alien worlds. During this journey he would view fabulous sights, witness epoch-shattering events, and meet beings of both might and majesty – many of whom he then proceeded to kill. He engaged millennia old vampires in hand-to-hand combat armed only with petrol bombs and a ready wit. He uncovered secrets of ages past; he forgot secrets of ages past. He robbed from those that had money, and kept it. Across a score of glittering worlds he entirely failed to write himself into either myth or legend.
But he did have fun.
And somewhere along the way he even found time to die.
Several times.
For thirty months, Jonny Nexus recorded the thoughts aroused by, and the lessons learned from, his twice-weekly roleplaying habit in a column he wrote for Mongoose Publishing’s Signs & Portents magazine. Part travelogue, part guide, part manual, and part manifesto, these are those columns.
It all started around eighteen months ago when Mongoose contacted me to ask if I would be interested in working with them on a reprint / compilation of the “Jonny Nexus Experience” column I used to write for their magazine Signs & Portents. I was pretty happy with the pieces I’d written, and loved the idea of them being available in one nice neat package with my name on it. So I said yes. But we didn’t want it to simply be a reprint, so we agreed that we would try to add some extra content. What we ended up with was this:
- An introduction (introductory essay really), giving a bit of context to the creation of the columns, together with a tutorial about roleplaying intended to make it a bit more accessible to non-roleplayers.
- All 30 columns that I wrote, together with new, additional “explanitory” notes for each (a sort of “director’s commentary”).
- Two bonus columns, one of which completes the story of my Sunday/Tuesday/Monday group’s Orient Express Cthulhu campaign.
So far, there isn’t much information out there about it. The best I found was this link on FRP Games, where it’s available for pre-order. But as I get more information, I’ll mention it here.
I’m pretty chuffed to have it coming out. Hope everyone likes it.
Last Thursday, at a loud and chaotic Euston station, I received a phone call from my wife to tell me that our friend Joanne Pullan had died the previous evening. Jo had been found collapsed in a park by a bystander, after suffering an asthma attack while walking to the shops. She was taken to Lewisham General Hospital, but was declared dead there.
 At the time, then, I could scarcely comprehend the words my wife was saying. As I type these words, now, nearly a week later, it’s still no easier to accept that she’s gone. To lose anyone is hard; but to lose someone whose entire second half of their life was yet to be lived, is harder, doubly so when it’s to a cause that seems both trivial and preventable.
(Of course, it’s not trivial, as Jo’s death so tragically demonstrates. Asthma kills. If any good can come of her passing then it will be from people reading these words, and the many others that will be written about her, and treating asthma with more fear, and respect, than they had previously done so.)
My wife and I are going to miss Jo tremendously, not because she was perfect, but because of the ways in which she wasn’t. How could I describe Jo? There are as many ways to describe her as there are days in the year, but the words that come to mind now are that she was often mad and frequently exasperating, but always fun, engaging, warm and compassionate. Some people live life with its accelerator mashed down hard against the foot-well, careering through corners in a manner likely to cause a certain degree of consternation in those friends and family following on behind. Jo was one of those people.
 Jo was my wife’s friend before she became mine. They met in the early part of the last decade when they both worked for the League against Cruel Sports and having become firm friends (my wife described Jo as her “vegan sister”), they stayed in close contact as their professional lives moved on.
After working for Leonard Cheshire Disability and Médecins Sans Frontières, Jo ended up at PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, where she worked in fund-raising. Unlike my wife, I never worked with Jo, but I know she was very highly thought of, with her charm, intelligence, diligence and professionalism being the perfect tools for persuading people to donate generously to the organisations she represented.
 Animal welfare was a cause close to Jo’s heart, as her choice of employers indicates. If someone close to her had an elderly cat that needed rescuing, it would usually end up with Jo. And she was a devoted step-mum to our own little four-pawed bundle of canine joy.
But when I think of Jo and animals, it’s her dog, Claude, who I think of. Claude was Jo’s closest companion for all of the years in which I knew her, and she doted on him. He might have had four paws and a flat nose, but he was very much her little baby, and this showed in the dedication she displayed when facing the health problems with which he suffered over the last years of his life.
 Claude suffered not only from diabetes, but a number of other ailments. Keeping him on four paws was neither a cheap nor easy undertaking. He required twice daily injections of insulin, made harder by the fact that he also suffered from – as one vet put it – “small dog syndrome”. Add to this pills, inhalers and operations to restore his eyesight, and you had a monthly bill of significant proportions. But it was a bill that Jo never hesitated to pay. When Claude finally reached the end of his time on this world a few months ago, Jo was devastated. But sad as his passing was, it at least means he’s not faced with a life without his mummy.
Jo had an eye for taste and style apparent even to someone such as myself, universally acknowledged as something of a style desert. She always looked good, even on those occasions where she was convinced she didn’t. And each of her homes were not so much decorated as designed. Where the rest of us might think in terms of what colour to paint the walls, Jo would see a room as one big art, craft and design project.
This didn’t involve lots of money When it came to decorating a home, Jo could make a budget stretch further than anyone I know, although being Jo, that budget would still be slightly larger than the sum of money she had available. She had an eye not only for a bargain, but for a bargain that with a bit of work, a sand, a repaint, or a replacement cover, could be transformed into something fabulous. She was a demon ebayer, buying and selling, although I fear half the things she was selling were things she had previously bought. My wife would often return from a visit to Jo’s with a story of finding a new sofa or bed or floor, justified by the previous one being slightly too big, or too small, or just the wrong shade of whatever. (The story’s telling would usually end with an exasperated cry of, “But there was nothing wrong with the old sofa/bed/floor/curtains/rug/house!”)
 I met Jo before I met my wife, at a London Vegans event, which she’d attended with Paivi, a mutual friend of hers and Jules. It was entirely down to those two that I met my wife. Thinking I might be right for their friend, they arranged for us to meet at a small party hosted by Paivi. It all came from that: dating, moving in, getting married.
I couldn’t say that I own Jo everything, but I owe her and Paivi my wife and soulmate, and if that isn’t everything then it’s not far off it. Initially, Jo was my wife’s friend and I was her friend’s other half. But gradually, imperceptibly, and with what I’d like to think was the ease that marks all true friendships, Jo became my friend too, and I’m pretty sure I became hers.
 That Jules and I are going to miss her terribly is a truth so obvious it scarcely needs saying, but some truths deserve to be spoken, and this is one of them. Jo was not a person to pass though a person’s life unnoticed. She occupied a place in my wife’s life and she occupied a place in mine, and in her passing she leaves a Jo shaped hole in both of those lives.
We’re going to miss her terribly, and while time will blur the edges of that hole it will always remain, a gap in what could have been, and a missing part of what should have been. Jo might have gone before we were blessed with the children she so wanted us to have, but if time does bless us with those children they’ll grow up knowing about their Auntie Joanne. We will never forget her.
Jules and I were apart when we heard the news, she with her mother in Yorkshire, and myself travelling to Eastercon (the British National Science Fiction convention). My first thought was that I should abandon Eastercon and head to Kings Cross to get myself on a train to Leeds. But Jules told me to stay at Euston and head for the convention. Eastercon was where I needed to be if I wanted to meet with agents, writers and the people who will hopefully end up buying my books. She reminded me that Jo had always been one of my writing career’s biggest supporters, always urging me to stay confident, always declaring her conviction that I would one day make it big. She told me to go, that it was what Jo would have wanted.
 I was originally going to stay at Eastercon until Tuesday morning, and then head straight to work, finally meeting up with my wife on the Tuesday evening. But we altered our plans so that Jules picked me up from the convention on the Monday afternoon and we drove home together.
That evening, really for no reason other than wanting something to take her mind off things, Jules got onto the web in search of the new kitchen table she’s been unsuccessfully searching for over the last couple of months. She found something on Gumtree that looked perfect, and having texted the owner and received a reply, we found ourselves driving over there to take a look at it.
On the way, Jules asked me if I thought we were doing the right thing. We didn’t actually need a new table, and this perhaps wasn’t the best time for us to be making decisions. Maybe we should check around a bit more, she said, and see what else was out there, or perhaps just stick with the one we had?
I only needed a moment to consider what she’d said, because the answer was clear. What better way was there to remember Jo than for us to make an impulse purchase of a table we didn’t actually need?
After all, it was exactly what she would have done.
|
|
Recent Comments