I am Herbert 'Joe' Thomas and this is a blog dedicated to the works of myself and my brother- Donald Lawrence Thomas. Currently we are finishing up on our first fantasy novel The Brothers Jade. We currently have over 600 pages complete and we our finishing up the finale. Because there are some of you that were in our gaming group some 20 years ago you will find that this story is loosely based upon our gaming experiences.
We have just attended MidSouthcon 26 and had a thoroughly good time with the authors and gamers there. We appreciate the seminars and all the authors that took a moment of their time to give us those precious gems of insight in how to produce a novel. Special thanks to Selina Rosen from Yard Dog Publishing who was the Toastmaster- we appreciate her taking time out to talk to the fans.
About the Authors:
I am Herbert 'Joe' Thomas. I am an accomplished poet
Some twenty-plus years ago when I was in eighth grade in Rock Springs, Wyoming I was introduced into role-playing by Shaun Neilson. I'll never forget my brother's first time playing he was having so much fun he was about to hyperventilate. What we found out was that their was this new game that you would 'role-play' knights,wizard, rangers, rogues, monks and assassins. It was basically the same as 'play pretend' when you were kids where you would imagine you were another person or character and be faced with challenges by another person or dm.
We absolutely fell in love with the game and it even helped us socialize with other teenagers since we were constantly moving from place to place. Not long into our 'initiation' into role-playing we found a huge negativity concerning the game. Our parents tried to throw all of our books away- we rescued them from the trash. People were scared because of the 'outer-planar' creatures and the study of gods and demi-gods. Also certain 'gamers' went 'goth' which took us even more out of the norm. My gaming group constantly was ridiculed because of our affiliations with certain games.
My defense to that is that role-playing is like any other 'artistic tool' it can be used for good or evil or just plain entertainment. Music is a nice parallel- you know of all forms of music and the right song can be mood altering -enhancing or changing your frame of mind. Well role-playing is the same way. It can be used in a positive or negative manner depending on the group and its motives. Personally I believed our group maintained a positive outlook focusing on our own search for the Holy Grail- or exploring Joseph Campbell's monomyth through role-playing.
Out of these sessions came this story that we wanted the public to have a chance to read. My brother and I felt like this was our life's work to put this out to the public. We thoroughly believe in the characters (I will be posting pix of them and a written description on this website), the story and we believe it to be entertaining and we hope you do too.
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