Cubicle 7 Folklore for Cthulhu Britannica: Video Review

Cthulhu Britannica London Boxed Set

Here's something I'm working on at the moment. Coming to Kickstarter soon.

Just who is Stuart Boon?

Portrait of Stuart Boon by Graeme Neil Reid.

A while back I had the chance to contribute to a series of questions about the state of Lovecraftian gaming today (State Of The Tentacle: Stuart Boon). It was an honour to be asked and to be included in the distinguished company of some of the industry's big names (e.g. Sandy Petersen, Ken Hite, Scott David Aniolowski, etc.). You can see my responses using the link above.

In addition I was asked to write a biography. I don't know about others, but writing a biography is quite a daunting task, but Dean at the Cthulhu Reborn website suggested we could be as creative as we liked. Ah, perhaps he shouldn't have. Given the opportunity to, how shall we say, embellish a little... well, you can see the result below:

"Stuart Boon was born in the thriving oil-boom metropolis of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Spending much of his tender youth in the idyllic Tortonian wilds outside Edmonton near Spruce Grove, Alberta, young Stuart learned valuable life lessons from the majestic elk, the hardworking beaver, the erudite buffalo and the noble gopher. He attended elementary, junior and high school in the aforementioned town while holding down jobs as a shop clerk assistant and wolverine wrangler.

Life was hard in Spruce Grove with the town under constant threat from pirates, marauding polar bears and the native man-eating mosquitos of Wabamun. Stuart finally left Spruce Grove in the early 1990s to embark as a career as a scholar, scientist and philosopher.  He obtained degrees at the University of Alberta, Acadia University and Dalhousie University culminating in his seminal treatise ‘On the Many Uses of Chip Fat’ (2001). Following this critical success, he was whisked away to the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom.  There he would remain for three years.

Ultimately disappointed by the lack of haggis, good single malts, and Highland dress in South Yorkshire, Stuart moved to the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland in late 2005. The move to Scotland would prove both portentous and prophetic: it was here that he was introduced to the dark and manifold mysteries of majestic Scotland. He took great interest and amusement in the Cyclopean tales, batrachain hymns and eldritch rites of Scottish legend and myth, but therein he also found a mind-bending significance. Five years of secretive scholarship followed and led to his discovery of the non-Euclidean tea towel of Tobermory and Black Kettle of Kilwinning among other horrors.

By the turn of 2010, Stuart had become steeped in the dark shadows that hang over ageless Scotland. Near mad with the knowledge he’d acquired, he began feverishly recording his discoveries on paper–a futile attempt to ward off others who might foolishly look or, God forbid, venture into those dark shadows. This twisted collection of mad ravings is now collected in the multiple award-winning book Shadows Over Scotland published by Cubicle 7.

Still tortured by nightmare visions of an impossible truth behind the thin veil of reality, Stuart continues to scribble madly in the dark to this day. In 2012, Stuart stepped into the role of Line Developer for Cthulhu Britannica, Cubicle 7’s line of original sourcebooks and supplements set in 1920s Britain. He has subsequently resurrected and co-written Cthulhu Britannica: Folklore due out any day now and is hard at work on a number of legacy products for the Cthulhu Britannica line, including the forthcoming London box set. Since finishing Shadows Over Scotland, Stuart has written scenarios for publishers Chaosium (Call of Cthulhu), Miskatonic River Press (Call of Cthulhu), Savage Mojo (Savage Worlds), and Sixtystone Press (Call of Cthulhu), among others.

In addition to writing for roleplaying games, Stuart dabbles in fiction and most recently has had his short story ‘A Rending Crack Of Thunder’ published in Tales of Promethea, a collection of short fiction inspired by the award-winning, critically acclaimed roleplaying game Dark Harvest: The Legacy of Frankenstein and set in the fictional country of Promethea. By day, Stuart is a lecturer and educational developer at the University of Strathclyde and, when academic and gaming collide, acts as a guest lecturer on the subject of writing for roleplaying.

In his (now virtually non-existent) spare time, Stuart is an avid film and music fan, an active role-player, and spends entirely too much time indoors. He is currently working on a number of projects involving the Cthulhu Mythos whilst trying to retain what is left of his sanity. Stuart can be found on Facebook and lurking behind his shockingly infrequently updated blog."

Surely this is more interesting than your bog standard biography as evidenced on Amazon and Goodreads, and I should thank Dean for allowing me to freely engage in a little creative ornamentation. Still, the truth is in there, staring at you cheekily from the shadows. You can see the original in its HTML glory here: http://cthulhureborn.wordpress.com/uncollected/contributor-bio-stuart-boon/

As a snapshot of where I was in early 2013, it is interesting to look back and a shame that the 'shockingly infrequently updated blog' mentioned (then hosted on Posterous.com which shutdown over the summer) and its accompanying posts are now lost to time. Ah, internet, you tempestuous, impermanent mistress! Oh well, here we go again.

Room 101: The First Writing Workshop

In addition to the writing that I do for the tabletop games industry, I've begun a Creative Writing PhD here in Glasgow. These are just the early days of four years leading to publishing a novel, but I've been very interested in what I've seen so far. For those who might be interested (navigate away now, if you are not), I thought I would share a little of my experience in our first writing workshop.

The workshop held last week was my first in a good long time--in fact, a very long time. Our first task was to consider setting. Essentially we were asked to quickly write a scene involving or describing to some extent the setting we were in, namely a meeting room in a university building.  Here's what I wrote:

"Jamie slipped into the room unnoticed. He hand slid along the inside wall searching for the light switch. He found it and flipped the hard, plastic switch upward. Above him, the fluorescent bulbs snapped to life with a quiet ping. Their cold light reflected off the white table in the centre of the room.

He let his rain-soaked bag slip to the floor and reached for the chair nearest him. He sat. As he grew accustomed to the light, his eyes darted to the blank screen on the far wall, the snagged threats in the deep, piled carpet, and finally to the scratches in the tabletop. His fingertips found their way into those scratched grooves, tracing them mindlessly.

His hand was shaking. He stiffened against the hard back of the metal chair. Relax, he told himself, relax. It will all be over soon. He glanced down to his bag on the floor. It lay there incongruous--a mottled, worn leather bag in a room full of sharp angles and stark monochrome.The gentle whispers of the air conditioning provided no comfort from the deep thrumming in his head. He looked up from the leather bag to the frosted glass door.

It would all be over soon."

One thing that really impressed me about the exercise was the quality of the writing from my colleagues. It was top-notch: engaging, literate, and often quite emotive. Each of us had a very different voice to be sure, but that, for me, is part of the appeal. The chance to see different approaches is invaluable.

One of the key points that I took to heart from the session was made by my PhD supervisor who stressed that setting, and even small descriptive passages, should have a kind of movement. It should have its own motion. I quite like this as I can see how movement can give something which might function more passively, like setting for example, an action of its own.

It reminded me of a Film Studies class (which I took during my undergrad in Edmonton a lifetime ago) wherein the lecturer focused on the role of camera movement in establishing the mise-en-scene. That motion tells a story in itself. I hadn't really considered how movement within a descriptive paragraph could function in the same way. Brilliant point and something I mean to try out more.

Please Stand By

Resurrection in progress...

Due to a catastrophic failure on Posterous.com's part. I've essentially lost everything that has been posted to date.

I will be starting afresh from here. Hello internet.