YOU ARE THE HERO - A History of Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks - UPDATE!

YOU ARE THE HERO is now past the two-thirds mark and with ten days left to run is heading towards fully funding on 6 January.

Progress is going well, but we still need to raise on average £500 a day to make our £15,000 target.

So if you've not backed the project yet, but you've been meaning to, click this link and pledge your support today.

If you have already pledged, thank you - but please check that you've added the correct amount of postage. And then blog about it, post on Facebook and Tweet all your friends.

With YOUR support a copy of YOU ARE THE HERO could be in your hands by this time next year!

Thank you.

There is such a thing as too much of a good thing...

A man from Ayrshire was hospitalised last Christmas after eating too many Brussels sprouts.

The traditional Christmas vegetable contain lots of vitamin K which promotes blood clotting. However, this counteracted the effect of anticoagulants the man was taking because he had a mechanical heart.

Doctors at the Golden Jubilee Hospital in Clydebank eventually realised too many sprouts were to blame. Consultant cardiologist Dr Roy Gardner said, "Patients who are taking anticoagulants are generally advised not to eat too many green leafy vegetables, as they are full of vitamin K, which antagonise the action of this vital medication."

Jill Young, chief executive of the Golden Jubilee Hospital added, "Whilst we think this is possibly the first-ever festive admission to hospital caused by the consumption of Brussels sprouts, we were delighted that we were able to stabilise his levels."

So don't go mad this Christmas and enjoy your Christmas dinner. Just lay of the baby cabbages, okay?

Play Christmas with the Sproutifarts here.

 

Santa-Mech!

The Chrismologist's Advent Calendar - Day 24

He knows if you've been bad or good...

Jingle Bells as you have NEVER heard it before!

The Chrismologist's Advent Calendar - Day 23

YOU ARE THE HERO - Halfway there!

The YOU ARE THE HERO Kickstarter is now passed the halfway mark (in terms of the time it has to run), has already raised over £9,000 and is well on the way to being two thirds funded.

If you've been thinking about backing but haven't committed yet, then watch the pitch video below and then click this link to pledge.



And if you're still not convinced after watching that, then watch this!

Christmas Cupcakes

The Chrismologist's Advent Calendar - Day 22

Fancy something other than the traditional Christmas cake this year? Well how about these delicious chocolate cupcakes (as made by The Chrismologist's Wife and The Chrismologist's Daughter)?

You will need...

100g plain flour

20g cocoa powder

140g caster sugar

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

a  pinch of salt

40g unsalted butter (at room temperature)

120ml whole milk

1 egg

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

a 12-hole cupcake tray lined with paper cases

You then need to...

1. Preheat the oven to 170^oC (325^oF) Gas 3
2. Put the flour, cocoa powder, sugar, baking powder, salt and butter in a free standing electric mixer with paddle attachment (or use a handheld electric whisk) and beat on a slow speed until you get a sandy consistency and everything is combined.
3. Whisk the milk, egg and vanilla extract together in a jug, then slowly pour about half into the flour mixture, beat to combine and turn the mixer up to high speed (scrape any unmixed ingredients from the side of the bowl with a rubber spatula). Continue mixing for a couple more minutes until the mixture is smooth, but do not over mix.
4. Spoon the mixture into the paper cases until two-thirds full and bake in a preheated oven for 20-25 minutes, or until the sponge bounces back when touched. A skewer inserted in the centre should come out clean. Leave the cupcakes to cool slightly in the tray before turning out onto a wire cooling rack to cool completely.
5. When the cupcakes are cooled, decorate with chocolate icing, edible stars or edible gold spray (as shown above).
6. Eat and enjoy!

*     *     *     *     *

 

For more Christmas recipes why not pick up a copy of What is Myrrh Anyway? Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Christmas, published in the US as Christmas Miscellany?

The Santa Booster

The Chrismologist's Advent Calendar - Day 21

I find out more about the challenges faced by Father Christmas every year, why not pick up a copy of What is Myrrh Anyway? Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Christmas, published in the US as Christmas Miscellany?

A Little Christmas Shopping

The Chrismologist's Advent Calendar - Day 20

Not sure what to get that special someone in your life, or wondering what to ask others to get you? Well if you (or they) are fans of speculative fiction, might I suggest the following?

Black Library Novels and Short Stories

Dark Heart - A Collection of Short Horror Fiction

And for a truly unique gift, why not pledge your support to the YOU ARE THE HERO - A History of Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks Kickstarter?

Heston's Fantastical Christmas

The Chrismologist's Advent Calendar - Day 19

Don't miss Channel 4 at 9.00pm* tonight!

In our modern world, Christmas has lost some of its wonder. Super chef Heston Blumenthal wants to change that and plans to create a supersized festive food adventure, to be enjoyed by a group of adults who normally have to work on Christmas Day. Heston visits Hampton Court, and discovers that instead of turkey, our ancestors preferred to eat pig's head. Heston wants to put this on the menu alongside edible Christmas decorations.

The final part of Heston's historical yuletide wonderland takes inspiration from the Victorian period, and their love of Christmas pudding. Heston makes the biggest Christmas pudding ever - one that's large enough to step inside.

*     *     *     *     *

 

To find out more about the history of the traditional Christmas dinner, why not pick up a copy of What is Myrrh Anyway? Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Christmas (published in the US as Christmas Miscellany) today?



* Or Channel 4+1 at 10.00pm, for that matter.

Have a Dredd-ful Christmas

The Chrismologist's Advent Calendar - Day 18

I've been sitting on this news for a while, but since Judge Dredd Megazine #331 is in newsagents as of today I can at last announce some very exciting news.

I've written a Judge Dredd story!

Yes - you read that right - I really have written a Judge Dredd story!

Now, admittedly, most people spend years writing for 2000AD (or the Megazine) - first working on Future Shocks, or Tales from the Black Museum, and then, if they're lucky, developing series and characters of their own - before being let loose on the House of Tharg's premier strip. I've yet to even have a Past Imperfect story appear in 2000AD, but I've snuck in the back door, as it were.

Regular readers of the Megazine will know that in recent months short fiction has made a reappearance in the monthly mag, so I got in touch with editor Matt Smith and... the rest is history.

What genuinely surprised me was that Psimple Psimon was my first pitch, and the first draft was accepted as finished. (That said, it was an idea I'd had filed away for a long time.) So why not pick up Megazine #331, and check out my story for yourself. It's got everything you'd want from a Dredd story: violence; puns; and pithy put-downs.

Now, what to do for a follow up...?

Charitable Giving at Christmas

The Chrismologist's Advent Calendar - Day 17

What it's good to give at Christmas time...

Enchanted Carols

The Chrismologist's Advent Calendar - Day 16

Looking for a new CD to play in the house ad infinitum this Christmas? Then look no further!

To find out more about Christmas music and the history of the humble Christmas carl, pick up a copy of What is Myrrh Anyway? Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Christmas (published in the US as Christmas Miscellany) today.

Sir Christemas

The Chrismologist's Advent Calendar - Day 15

Not a version of the classic Christmas song I'd come across before, but a very pleasant distraction nonetheless...

I AM SCROOGE

The Chrismologist's Advent Calendar - Day 14

Looking for something a little different to give your loved ones this Christmas? Perhaps one of your
family is a closet Dickens/Zombie horror fan. Well, if so, then I Am Scrooge could be the answer to all your Christmas gift-buying problems.

Marley was dead. Again.
.
The legendary Ebenezeer Scrooge sits in his house counting money. The boards that he has nailed up over the doors and the windows shudder and shake under the blows from the endless zombie hordes that crowd the streets hungering for his flesh and his miserly braaaaiiiiiinns!
.
Just how did the happiest day of the year slip into a welter of blood, innards and shambling, ravenous undead on the snowy streets of old London town?
.
Will the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future be able to stop the world from drowning under a top-hatted and crinolined zombie horde?
.
Was Tiny Tim's illness something infinitely more sinister than mere rickets and consumption?
.
Can Scrooge be persuaded to go back to his evil ways, travel back to Christmas past and destroy the brain stem of the tiny, irritatingly cheery Patient Zero?
.
It's the Dickensian Zombie Apocalypse - God Bless us, one and all!

To buy your copy of I Am Scrooge, click here.

Bah.... Bahhhh.... Brahhh.... Braaiiinnss!

A Medieval Christmas

The Chrismologist's Advent Calendar - Day 13

My children break up for the Christmas holidays today. They have three weeks off, which will be three weeks in which my productivity drops dramatically.

However, at least they don't finish as early as we did when I was a student at Warwick University, and at least their holidays don't last as long as the traditional Medieval Christmas.

Here's Dr Amanda Hopkins, of Warwick University's Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies, to tell us more.... (Do you see what I did there?)

The Medieval Christmas features again and again in my festive publication, What is Myrrh Anyway? Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Christmas, published in the US as Christmas Miscellany.

From Mummer's Play to Pantomime, via School Nativity

The Chrismologist's Advent Calendar - Day 12

For an old school friend of mine, it's panto season once again. And yesterday I got to enjoy my daughter's school nativity play.

One of the things you can read about in What is Myrrh Anyway? is how the traditional mummers' plays helped influence the development of the popular pantomime, not to mention the classic school nativity.

The words ‘mummer’ and ‘mumming’ either come from the German mumme, meaning a ‘mask’ or ‘masker’, or the Greek momme, meaning specifically ‘a frightening mask’. To hide their true identities (disguise being an important part of the mummers' ritual performance) many mummers wore masks made to look like different animal heads. One of these was the stag.

Just such a 'classic' Medieval mummer mask appears in an fourteenth century illuminated manuscript in the Bodleian Library of Oxford University. A marginal panel in the lower right corner of the verso of Plate 21 shows a stag masked mummer leading four other dancers (two women and two masked men) to a musical tune provided by a man playing the lute.

The stag mask itself is particularly ancient, dating to the stone age in Europe. A painting on the wall of a cave named Le Trois Freres in France clearly shows a shaman wearing a stag mask and costume. The style of the paintings in the cave place the image at the end of the Ice Age, around 15,000 to 10,000 BC!

Modern Wiccan believers see the stag as representing the powerful male spirit of the animal world, 'the source of masculine energy; he is the raw force, wisdom and law'. Some Medieval writers also identified the stag as a force for good, determined to stamp out evil, as in the natural world the animal will trample any snakes it comes upon.

All I want for Christmas...

The Chrismologist's Advent Calendar - Day 11

 

Ain't No Sanity Clause

The Chrismologist's Advent Calendar - Day 10

Fringeworks' first collection of Christmas stories, Ain't No Sanity Clause, edited by Theresa Derwin, is published today.

It contains stories combining psychopaths and other lunatics with a Christmas theme, and I'm in it. My story is called - appropriately enough - Claws.

You can find out more about this festive anthology here.

The National Christmas Tree

The Chrismologist's Advent Calendar - Day 9
American President Barack Obama and his family have turned on the lights for the US National Christmas Tree. The annual ceremony took place in Washington DC last Thursday.

The US national tree has been having a hard time recently - it's the third one in three years. Last year's died from the shock of being transplanted, and the tree before that was lost in a storm after standing for more than 30 years.

Mr Obama said, referring to his recent re-election: "It just goes to show, nobody's job is safe here in Washington."

Watch Neil Patrick Harris crash the vocal, as it were, here:

<br />

To find out more about the Christmas tree and other Christmas traditions, pick up a copy of What is Myrrh Anyway? Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Christmas, published in the US as Christmas Miscellany.

Have yourself a Fruity Christmas!

The Chrismologist's Advent Calendar - Day 8

What you need to make your own Christmas fruit tree is:

• An apple with a carrot on top
• A whole mess of toothpicks
• Various pieces of fruit
• And blueberries for tinsel

Enjoy!

Thomas Hewitt Jones' 'A Christmas Cracker'

The Chrismologist's Advent Calendar - Day 7

You may recognise the name Thomas Hewitt Jones. He was the composer behind the music for the London 2012 / LOCOG Mascot Animated Films at this year's Olympics in London and he's now turned his hand to Christmas music with A Christmas Cracker.

You can listen to an extract of it here:



You can find out more about Thomas Hewitt Jones here.

Happy Feast Day of Saint Nicholas!

The Chrismologist's Advent Calendar - Day 6

Saint Nicholas Day, which is celebrated on 6 December (but on 19 December in most Orthodox countries), is a festival primarily for children. It occurs in many countries in Europe and relates to legends told of the saint, but particularly his reputation as a bringer of gifts.

Saint Nicholas is now better known as Santa Claus, or Father Christmas, of course. But have you heard these facts about the jolly fat man with the big sack before?

• A Dutch tradition kept St. Nicholas' story alive in the form of Sinterklaas, a bishop who travelled from house to house to deliver treats to children on the night of 5 December. The first anglicising of the name to Santa Claus was in a story that appeared in a New York City newspaper in 1773.

• Clement Moore's 1822 poem A Visit From Saint Nicholas was first published anonymously on 23 December 1823. The 56-line poem introduced and popularised many of Santa's defining characteristics, chiefly that he drove a sleigh guided by "eight tiny reindeer."

• In 1890, Massachusetts businessman James Edgar became the first department store Santa. Edgar is credited with coming up with the idea of dressing up in a Santa Claus costume as a marketing tool. Children from all over the state dragged their parents to Edgar's small dry goods store in Brockton, and a tradition was born.

• In his satiric 1809 book A History of New York, Washington Irving did away with the characterisation of Santa Claus as a "lanky bishop". Instead, Irving described Santa as a portly, bearded man who smokes a pipe. Irving's story also marked the first time Santa slid down the chimney.

• The first mention of a spouse for Santa was in the 1849 short story A Christmas Legend by James Rees. Over the next several years, the idea of Mrs Claus found its way into several literary publications, but it wasn't until Katherine Lee Bates' widely-circulated 1889 poem Goody Santa Claus on a Sleigh Ride that Santa's wife was popularised.

"Goody" is short for "Goodwife," or "Mrs", but I always thought that Mrs Claus was called Mary... Mary Christmas... or was it Santa Barbara...?

 

If you have any more questions about Father Christmas and the Christmas traditions most associate with him, then you need to pick up a copy of What is Myrrh Anyway? Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Christmas, published in the US as Christmas Miscellany.

Christmas Lights - Gangnam Style

The Chrismologist's Advent Calendar - Day 5



If you liked that, you'll probably like this one from last year too...

O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum

The Chrismologist's Advent Calendar - Day 4

These days we take the traditional Christmas tree for granted. After all, it's - well - traditional!

But to find out precisely how the Christmas tree became a staple of the festive season, you need to pick up a copy of What is Myrrh Anyway? Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Christmas, or the US version, Christmas Miscellany.

But while you're waiting for your copy to arrive, did you know that six species account for about 90 per cent of the Christmas tree trade in the United States? Scots pine (also known as Scotch pine) ranks first, with about 40 percent of the market, followed by Douglas fir, which accounts for about 35 percent. The other big sellers are noble fir, white pine, balsam fir and white spruce.

The first national American Christmas Tree was lit in 1923 on the White House lawn by President Calvin Coolidge, while Franklin Pierce was the first president to introduce the Christmas tree to the White House in 1856.

Santa Sunday

The Chrismologist's Advent Calendar - Day 3

Nearly 300 skiing and snowboarding Santas took part in the 'Santa Sunday' event yesterday at the Sunday River resort in America. This was the thirteenth time the charity event had been held, and it seems to go down particularly well with the hundreds of kids who turn out to watch.

People donated money to charity, then got to ski free dressed as Father Christmas.

You can watch a video of the event here.

If you have any more questions about the history and traditions of Christmas, then you'll probably find them answered in What is Myrrh Anyway? Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Christmas, published in the US as Christmas Miscellany.

The Three Wise Men

The Chrismologist's Advent Calendar - Day 2

In 2004, the General Synod of the Church of England agreed to a revision of the Book of Common Prayer. A committee agreed that the term Magi, as used in the Bible, was the name used by officials at the Persian court. This means that not only were the three wise men who visited Jesus not kings, they did not number three and were possibly not even wise. They might even have been female as well!

* * * * *

If you have anymore questions about the history and traditions of Christmas, then you'll probably find them answered in What is Myrrh Anyway? Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Christmas, published in the US as Christmas Miscellany.

Why do people open Advent calendars in the run up to Christmas?

The Chrismologist's Advent Calendar - Day 1

The first Advent calendars, as we would recognise them, were made in the middle of the 19th century, But before that, German Lutherans were already counting down the days to Christmas, as they had done since at least the beginning of the century, by some physical means. In some households this meant lighting a new candle each day or hanging up a religious image in their house, but could be something as simple (and cost-free) as marking a line in chalk on the door of the house. If candles were used, they were mounted on a device called an Advent clock.

The first recognisable Advent calendar, however, didn’t appear until 1851, and even then it was a handmade creation. There is some debate as to when the first printed calendar appeared. Some say that it was printed in 1902 or 1903, in Hamburg, Germany; others that it did not appear until 1908 and that it was the creation of one Gerhard Lang, a printer from Munich.

*     *     *     *     *

If you have anymore questions about Advent calendars or the other traditions associated with Christmas, you'll find them all answered in What is Myrrh Anyway? Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Christmas, published in the US as Christmas Miscellany.