About
I was the first boy in Britain to meet a Dalek in the flesh (so to speak) when my Dad took me to the BBC workshops one dark January night in 1964. That early experience probably explains quite a lot. After a childhood spent daydreaming about aliens and vampires, I discovered Marvel Comics and happily gave up all connection with reality to immerse myself in the marvellous worlds of Steve Ditko, Jack Kirby, John Romita, Jim Steranko and Neal Adams. Every Saturday I used to head doggedly from newsagent to newsagent, searching out the latest Iron Man or Spider-man comics, which I would buy for 10d each (that’s about 4p in your fancy modern digital money). Since those halcyon days I've written a lot of books. Really, a lot. If you put a copy of every one of my books in a suitcase then you’d need to get a friend to help you lift it. My favorites among my own books are Heart of Ice, a sci-fi interactive adventure story where the Côte d’Azur is a jungle and the Sahara is covered in snow, and my current project, Mirabilis, a comic book epic in the making. I'd say that my fantasy writing has been most influenced by Lord Dunsany, Jack Vance, Mike Mignola and Neil Gaiman, but I should stress that none of those gentlemen is personally to blame.
A King Under Siege: Book One of The Plantagenet Legacy
Description
<p>Richard II found himself under siege not once, but twice in his minority. Crowned king at age ten, he was only fourteen when the Peasants' Revolt terrorized London. But he proved himself every bit the Plantagenet successor, facing Wat Tyler and the rebels when all seemed lost. Alas, his triumph was short-lived, and for the next ten years he struggled to assert himself against his uncles and increasingly hostile nobles. Just like in the days of his great-grandfather Edward II, vengeful magnates strove to separate him from his friends and advisors, and even threatened to depose him if he refused to do their bidding. The Lords Appellant, as they came to be known, purged the royal household with the help of the Merciless Parliament. They murdered his closest allies, leaving the King alone and defenseless. He would never forget his humiliation at the hands of his subjects. Richard's inability to protect his adherents would haunt him for the rest of his life, and he vowed that next time, retribution would be his.</p>
Story Behind The Book
Their parents may be more concerned about grocery bills and mortgages, but for thousands of children the biggest casualty of the recession was Britain’s brightest weekly comic The DFC.
Published by Random House, The DFC treated several thousand devoted subscribers to the very best in British graphic fiction, with stories by top-name authors and artists like Phillip Pullman and Harry Potter artist Adam Brockbank.
The biggest of all The DFC's ongoing stories was unquestionably Mirabilis, a hugely ambitious comics saga planned to span a hundred and fifty issues. Mirabilis tells the story of a magical green comet that appears in the night sky over Edwardian London, ushering in an era in which steam trains and airships combine with ghosts, goblins and Martian invaders. Billed as "a modern Tintin", Mirabilis's planned 800 pages equals more than a dozen volumes of Herge's classic comic series.
When The DFC closed last year, Mirabilis creators Dave Morris and Leo Hartas had barely begun to tell their epic yarn. The next two instalments appeared on the Mirabilis website (www.mirabilis-yearofwonders.com) and drew almost eight thousand hits. That's when Hartas and Morris realized they could be onto something.
"We couldn't bear to end our story there," explains Morris, a #1 best-selling UK author and a mentor with the American Film Institute. "You have a duty both to your readers and to the characters you've created not to leave them in the middle of a cliffhanger."
"The question was how to finance the project," says Hartas, the award-winning illustrator who draws the Mirabilis comic. "It's a recession and nobody was investing in anything. Then we decided, to hell with it – rather than looking around for new work, we'd just get our heads down and complete the story."
Almost a year on, the first season of Mirabilis is now ready. It's a whopping 200-page epic whose eight chapters comprise the first act of an ongoing fantasy adventure that is destined to win a generation of loyal fans. Just as Morris and Hartas were dotting the i’s on their project, Print Media Productions announced an exciting new slate of high-quality graphic novels for the UK market. The timing was perfect. Now Mirabilis is teamed up with a new publisher and season one is available in two superb hardback volumes.
