The Dungeon Book, and Ten Trillion Stretch Goals
It’s been a while since the last one of these newsletters. I didn’t intend to leave it quite so long, but there are a bunch of upcoming projects in here that just got announced, and those announcements kept getting pushed back. Now they’re all tumbling out at once like a clown car of writing projects, if the clowns were mumbling about tea and tentacles.
EDIT: Two MONTHS have passed since I wrote the above paragraph. The wheels of publishing grind exceedingly slowly.
THE DUNGEON BOOK (as told by Cornelius the Skull).
This is my next novel from Orbit. Unlike the rest, it’s a standalone fantasy. Unlike the rest, it’s… well, it’s unlike the rest. It started off as a riff on Kipling’s THE JUNGLE BOOK, only the human child gets adopted by a minotaur, a talking skull and a bunch of goblins instead of a jaguar, a bear and a pack of wolves.
To quote the press release:
“Coming first, in August 2026, will be The Dungeon Book (As told by Cornelius the Skull), a brilliantly witty, gleefully fun, and yet heartfelt tale in which a small child is thrown to a dungeon full of monsters who decide to raise her rather than eat her. Epic fantasy fans will love this captivating mash up of Dungeons and Dragons and The Jungle Book featuring a labyrinthine dungeon packed with monsters galore, a nefarious sorcerer, a merciless dragon, and plenty of dungeon-crawling mayhem.
Bait doesn't remember a time before the dungeon, before the dragon stole her from her cot. She doesn't know what her name was before she was handed over to the monstrous denizens of the dungeon beneath the sorcerer's tower. Luckily for Bait, they decided not to eat her. And so, she grew up in the dark – the goblins her adopted family, a vengeful minotaur her protector, a sentient skull her tutor and a faithful blob of corridor slime her main source of nutrition.
But the labyrinthine dungeon, with its haunted halls, buried temples and forgotten magics, draws treasure hunters like moths to flame. And as the outside world starts to intrude, Bait will learn what it means to be monstrous, and she will have to decide where she truly belongs.”
The current projected release date is August 11th 2026, and it’s already got a lovely blurb from no less an august personage than Mike Carey. “Full of wit and adventure, twists and turns, wonderful monsters and astonishing revelations. An absolute joy,” says he.
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I was hoping to have another announcement in here, but it’s not in my power to make. But things are moving in Middle-earth, and as soon as I can, I shall talk about them.
I’ve found that it’s useful to have a decidedly non-Tolkien project on the go when working on Middle-earth stuff. The mood and style of Tolkien is hard to capture, and one ill-fitting idea can throw a whole project off. Having a sort of release valve lets me channel inappropriate creative inspiration away from Middle-earth and off into weirder spaces. Eyes of the Stone Thief was born from my first attempt at Moria, Dagger in the Heart from the second. While working on THING (and OTHER THING), I channeled my BadTOR thoughts into…
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THE MERRYSHIRE DETECTIVE SOCIETY
This is the GUMSHOE-powered Halfling Detective game that started off titled GUMFEET, then was announced unofficially as SHIRES OUT, then became FOOT PATROL for a bit, and is now officially called MERRYSHIRE DETECTIVE SOCIETY. It’s also been expanded - I’d originally pitched it as, well, half-sized, a humble little side project on the same scale as the original ESOTERRORISTS, but now that Robin’s the Creative Director at Pelgrane, he Creatively Directed me to make it bigger and to do a scenario anthology.
I could not make it bigger. I could, however, make it fatter, so I’ve been force-feeding it random tables and GM advice until it’s hardboiled foie gras. I’m really happy about the prospect of doing an adventure anthology, partly because the game’s supposed to have genuinely chewy challenging mysteries (the crunchy centre to the chocolate fun shell of Halfling nonsense), but also because I get to come up with silly titles. The current plan is for the anthology to contain four adventures:
The Hair of the Hare of the Heir
Two Corpses in a Trenchcoat
Orc and Pie
The Riddleton Reaver
I’ve been working on it in between a barrage of Trail of Cthulhu and Fear Itself stretch goals. No official ETA yet, but it’s going well. I’ll be running a demo at…
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COMICON MALAGA
Courtesy of Shadowlands, I’ll be back in Spain (in fact, I’m scheduling this to be sent while I’m in the air) at the first (deep breath) San Diego Comicon Malaga. I’m unsure how exactly San Diego figures in; I think it’s like the mystery of the Trinity. Anyway, I shall be there on the Friday and Saturday, running a game or two of MERRYSHIRE and an early version of TERRAFORMING MARS.
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CELSIUS
Back in Spain? Yes! For I was in Spain already this year, at the wonderful Celsius232 in Aviles. For those who haven’t been, it’s a marvellous festival that takes over the medieval heart of a town, with events on the streets and adorable little wooden vendors kiosks and SO MANY PEOPLE. True, this year there were MANY MANY MORE PEOPLE because Brandon Sanderson was there, but my talks were still amazingly well attended and I signed many books. It was lovely to hang out with the Spanish Tolkien Society, as well as other authors.
I also met up with Shadowlands and we talked…
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TERRAFORMING MARS
Which is in progress. Not quite as progressed as I’d hoped, but we’re doing some very ambitious things with it. Like, er, turning the act of engineering shrimp into a minigame that had an unexpectedly harrowing ending. (Anti-terraforming saboteurs tried to destroy the shrimp; the lead genetic engineer, already stressed out from his months hunched over a workbench in the lab, had a moment of madness and drove a rover over the would-be saboteurs, killing them. The rest of the team then debated turning their colleague in vs disposing of the bodies in the trackless wilderness of Mars.)
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STRETCH GOAL CENTRAL
It’s been a summer of stretch goal writing. As well as all the Trail and Fear Itself scenarios, I’ve written the recently-released Theseus Protocol for FiveEvil, the not-yet-released Hermitage for Cosmic Dark, and THREE scenarios for Beyond The Woods. I’m also working on the Snail Pilgrim Class for Heart: The City Beneath as part of the Ways and Means Backerkit. I’m excited to be heading back down into the Red Meat Hell after the warm reception to Dagger in the Heart.
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MORIA: THROUGH THE DOORS OF DURIN
has been powering its way through awards season. At UK Games Expo (I wasn't there), it got the People’s Choice Roleplaying awards and Best Supplement, at Origins (I wasn't there either), it got nominated for an Origins award, and at GenCon (I also wasn’t there), it racked up a Silver Ennie for Best Supplement, a Gold for Best Cartography (I can claim no credit for that!), and the Gold Product of the Year.
And a special award to me, for “not fumbling the most iconic dungeon in history.” Yay!
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It’s very much head-down, nose-to-keyboard at the moment. I rejiggered my freelance schedule earlier in the year, and there’s a crunch period in the New Year that I’m trying to minimise. So, it’s frantically clearing one project after another, and most of my reading is research for whatever’s next on deck - one day it’s Victorian fairs, then it’s Antarctic cannibalism, then it’s cities on Mars or psychics or something else. It’s interesting and fun and busy and good, but I am very very tired and shall probably fall asleep on the plane to Comicon. Speaking of which, time to fly…
Gareth