Jamie Thomson
About Author
Jamie Thomson is the minion and slave of the Dark Lord, Dirk Lloyd. Hes an author and games developer who has written numerous choose-your-own-adventure style gamebooks, including some titles from the Fighting Fantasy series and The Way of the Tiger (six linked adventures about a ninja hero: each title sold more than 60,000 copies in the UK alone). The software version of The Way of the Tiger from Gremlin Graphics went straight to number one. While working at Games Workshop, he was one of the developers of the computer game The Tower of Despair.
The Dark Lord series is written under Jamie Thomsons 2007 start-up company, Fabled Lands LLP. Fabled Lands also published its own titles to be launched as iPhone comics or novels; Jamie is currently turning some of his gamebooks (which have enjoyed a resurgence in recent years) into apps.
Jamie Thomson lives in the dungeons below his Master's Iron Tower in East Sussex, chained to a desk, where he spends every day writing for his overlord. Or else.
Interview
DARK LORD: THE TEENAGE YEARS
PUBLISHED BY ORCHARD BOOKS
Interview: December 2012
What happens when a Dark Lord arrives on Earth and discovers that he has been transformed into the body of a puny human boy....? Dark Lord: The Teenage Years was recently announced as the winner of the Roald Dahl Funny Prize.
Jamie Thomson, an enthusiast of all things dark and destructive - and author of the Dark Lord books - tells us more!
Q: So what gave you the idea of putting a fantastically powerful 'dark lord' into the body of a 13 year old boy?
A: My specialist area is role playing games, the kinds of games that began with 'Dungeons and Dragons' and moved into computer gaming - I worked on Fable III, for example. So I have spent my life either destroying 'dark lords' or creating 2D 'dark lord' characters for players to knock down.
But I felt that the Voldemorts of the world don't have good back stories, or they are lightly done. So I started to wonder, how would you write about a dark lord's back story and how would you make him appealing?
I was having a chat with a colleague and we came up with the idea of having a Dark Lord on Earth and in the body of a human boy. It is such familiar territory for me that his voice came easily, it was like I was standing behind him, and it was a lot of fun. I love humour and I am always joking around so I just put it into the writing.
The idea of a 'dark lord' coming along to kill you is absurd anyway - why would he bother? But the idea of being evil for evil's sake has a lot of room for humour in it.
Q: Would you describe yourself as a bit of a geek, then?
A: Well, I got my first Dungeons and Dragons set when I was 16, in the 70's, and it was extraordinary back then there had never been a game like it before and I have to say it changed my life. Without that I probably would have become an accountant and be retired by now....
When I left university I got a job with a company called Games Workshop - in those days they were just a chain of retail shops that sold gaming stuff, Warhammer hadn't been invented yet. They also published the Fighting Fantasy books and I eventually wrote my own computer gaming books and worked in computer game development.
Q: If it's all computer gaming and role play, is this book really for boys rather than girls?
A: In the early days it was mostly geeky boys playing role play games but now it's changed. If you look at who computer game makers are targeting, there are more girls and women aged 18 to 24 years playing these games than boys. I understand girls as well as boys are reading this book, too.
Q: How well does the Dark Lord - or Dirk Lloyd, as he comes to be known - adapt to being a human child?
A: The dark lord is used to controlling others and issuing orders, but without power he realises he now has to persuade people to do his bidding.
I had to gradually introduce emotions to him, to make him feel things like empathy and friendship, which was interesting. I couldn't let it all happen at once, though, he has to change gradually which provided a few challenges as a writer.
I also used the idea of an adult in a child's body to explore the idea of the powerlessness of children and young people.
Can you imagine what it would be like to be an adult in a child's body?! It would be so frustrating because these days young people aren't allowed to do anything!
I grew up on an oil field in Iran and we would go out the back door at the start of the day and no one would see us until the end of the day, we roamed free, but you can't do that in today's world.
Q: How many Dark Lord books are there now and are there more planned?
A: There are now two books in the series, Dark Lord: The Teenage Years and Dark Lord: A Fiend in Need. The first book took a lot of writing and thinking about as I was setting the scene and establishing the ground rules, but by the second book, it was more familiar territory. I am not sure what will happen in book three but I have a bunch of ideas.
Q: You've got a great female character, Sooz - who loves the dark side!
A: Sooz is a very interesting character. She's a Goth but while they are really into the dark, they have a strong moral code and it was great fun to put her in the Darklands with goblins and the Dark Lord's monster, Gargon, in book two. She elicits great loyalty from all the Dark Lord's minions .... which doesn't make him very happy!
Q: Did you enjoy creating your very own Darklands in the second book?
A: Yes, I have created so many fantasy maps in my time where I had to be really inventive with the names so I didn't repeating existing games - but with Dark Lord I just had to go back to all the traditional ideas and names.
It was fun doing that - especially things like the maps. The map of Whiteshields, for example, includes a cemetery so from the Dark Lord's perspective it's a great place to go if he ever needs a few more zombies!
Q: Sooz settles down well in the Darklands - does she have a future with the Dark Lord....?
A: There is a bit of a love triangle going on between Sooz and Dirk Lloyd, and Chris and Sooz. What happens to Sooz all depends on how things get resolved with Dirk and I am not sure if he will have to stay on Earth or end up as a Dark Lord but without his body. But then that raises another question - how can you have the Darklands if there is peace? How would trolls and goblins cope with that?!
