What's new? Lots new!

A quick note about exciting new developments at the Peakrill cottage. First up, things you can buy from me, and where to buy them. My book Learning to Draw Trees is now out, and I've moved my shop to Shopify - purchase all sorts of Good Stuff from me here! Shopify's monthly fee is a fair bit more than I'm making from sales at the moment but... you know how to change that, right? Buy, buy, buy!

As well as books/zines/leaflets whatever, this includes art prints and mugs of the trees I've drawn. More of both will be coming soon, as well as greeting cards and... I dunno, tea-towels? Branded underwear? Comment here with your wants and your needs.

I'm also selling the last few of a very special pack of "tarot" cards, a magical artifact which will be spoken of a thousand years from now.

I've also also, finally, got around to drawing trees again. A beautiful ash tree covered in freaky boles, which I found in Robin Wood, Loxley, Sheffield (Ha, Robin Wood, Loxley! I've only just realised the pun). You want mugs of this? Prints? T-shirt? G-string? Let me know, and the gods will arrange. 

Bole ash tree, Robin Wood 

More exciting publishing projects coming soon. Peakrill Press is branching out! Like my friends over at Polyversity Press, I'm a big fan of "quality books of indeterminate genre", brought together by the passions and personality of the person publishing them (I'm also a big fan of "covers that look like textbooks for subjects that almost certainly don't qualify as real sciences", though that's a little less relevant here). And so, while my main focus will continue to be on gaming related guff, I'll be printing other stuff that I love, not all of it by me.

Next up will be new editions of some inspirational books on walking by my father-in-law, Terry Howard. Terry has been a huge force in the movement to secure the Right to Roam in the UK over the last 50-odd years. A documentary called Ramble On has recently been made about Terry, by Director Charlie Thorne, and it's an absolutely wonderful piece of "slow cinema". It made me cry. I believe that you can catch it next at Sheffield's Festival of the Mind on 22nd September. Here's the trailer:

Finally, for those of you in the USA and nearby territories, I'm glad to say that you can now save on mail costs by my purchasing my Cairn adventure Gespenwald from the Cairn Store - or at least, you'll be able to once Yochai gets back from vacation. Likewise, both Gespenwald and Mostly Harmless Meetings will soon be up for sale on Exalted Funeral. Words cannot express what a confidence boost it is for me having those folks appreciate my stuff so much that they will pay for bundles of it to be shipped to the USA. 

Actually, that wasn't such a short update, was it?

Oh! And there is... just one more thing (and thank you for reading this far!) My wife makes some absolutely amazing stuff out of vintage fabrics, under the moniker "Made by Candlelight". I'm hoping to add that too to my online shop in due time, although meanwhile she has a folksy store but... it's sold out. She's frantically making patchwork hot-water bottle covers in time for Winter, but if anything below catches your eye then drop me a line, custom orders always very welcome! We recently shipped a beautiful wheelchair blanket to Natchitoches, Louisiana - something else which makes me beam with joy. 

Happy almost-autumn, and may your mushroom-hunting always be safe.

New stuff in't store

 

Gespenwald

A very quick post to say that I have added two new products to my online store and both are currently on special offer: Learning to Draw Trees is a 44-page book documenting my attempt to, well, learn to draw trees. Contains drawings, photos, thoughts and tips. Gespenwald, meanwhile, is a free-form TTRPG adventure, my entry to the Forests of Another Name game jam for Cairn. 

Interview with Write Radio

Write Radio

I was interviewed recently for Write Radio on Sheffield Live. I talked to host Jane Armstrong about writing for roleplaying games, and how it differs from the sort of short story writing I'd been doing before. We also talk about the differences between TTRPGs now vs. those I grew up with in the 80s, and about my various current projects: Mostly Harmless Meetings, King Arthur vs. Devil Kitteh, and Learning to Draw Trees.

Here is the interview. I've added comments at various points to indicate which topics we talk about: 

dansumption · Write Radio interview with Dan Sumption - 18th February 2022 - Sheffield Live

Learning to Draw Trees - now live

Cover image/limited edition print - work in progress

 Just a quick note to say that Learning to Draw Trees is now live on Kickstarter

Learning to Draw Trees - and other news

 

While Mostly Harmless Meetings is nearly ready to go to print, I have launched a pre-launch page for my next Kickstarter project, Learning to Draw Trees, which will be part of ZiMo - #ZineMonth222.

In other news, Peakrill Press now has a Twitter account. Also, the more eagle-eyed of you may have noticed that the address of this site has now changed from peakrill.blogspot.com to blog.peakrill.com. Hopefully it all works exactly as it used to though - if not, please let me know via the comments.

Future Peakrill Projects

Although I’m now full-steam ahead working on Mostly Harmless Meetings, I’ve also been thinking about future projects. The success of my SideQuest project has given me the confidence and inspiration to devote a large amount of my time to publishing my work (regular visitors may notice that the title and design of this blog have changed to reflect this).

At the beginning of 2021, friends of mine at Liverpool Arts Lab launched a monthly magazine called Bodge. A number of us “claimed” pages in the magazine, and were then each expected to produce a page per month, containing anything we wanted to put on it. My page was called “learning to draw trees”, and was exactly that. One tree per month, with no expectations other than to see how much my drawing (and looking, and appreciation of trees) progressed over the course of a year. It went far better than I’d ever imagined, and I’m now thinking of adding “professional tree illustrator” to my CV. This month’s tree is still under wraps, and will be the cover of the final Bodge (due out on 23rd December) but here are my first tree from January, and my November tree (ink smears and all: imperfections are very much a part of the learning process):

January...

...November

For February’s ZineQuest I will be making a Learning to Draw Trees zine, containing all of my tree drawings from 2021 (plus a few extras), some thoughts and insight into the process, plus (to keep the project gaming-adjacent) the rules for the game “You Are a Tree”, kindly donated by Côme Martin.

After that, I will produce an illustrated hardback adaptation of one of the earliest stories of King Arthur, which I call King Arthur and the Deville Kitteh. This features in a 15th Century English text, The Prose Merlin, translated from a 13th Century French source. It tells the story of how Arthur defeated a terrifying kitten. I’m not making this up.

I firmly believe that this tale was the inspiration behind at least two scenes the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I’m adpting it as an alliterative poem, in the style of Gawain and the Green Knight, but with added Monty Python and Lewis Carroll references. Because it feels like they belong there. I’ll see if I can’t squeeze some Edward Lear in there too.

Spoiler alert

This is a pretty big undertaking, and I don’t envisage it seeing the light of day before Summer 2022 at the very earliest.  But I’ve made some first steps...

Adapting middle English into modern-ish English

Next up will be a zine full of (very) minor gods - gods so minor that they may not have any worshippers - complete with backstories and stats for RPGs. This project is inspired by Terry Pratchett's book Small Gods, and the gods will be generated by my Twitter bot Deity Galaxy.

I’m also thinking of doing another gaming zine, insired by the Combat system of Chris McDowall’s games Electric Basionland and Into The Odd. Here is an early impression of the cover.

Trauma - cover concept

Finally, a while back I posted the first installment of a Mörk Borg adventure, Ship of Theseus. It’s taken me longer than planned to get the second part up, but a large part of the rest of the adventure is already written. At some point I plan on producing a print version of that too.

A few people have asked whether Mostly Harmless Meetings will be available to purchase after the Kickstarter. Absolutely! Obviously I will be making sure that all of my KickStarter backers get their rewards first, but once that’s all done and dusted then I’ll set up an online shop to sell the remainder. I envisage it costing around £10 for the zine, or £5 for the PDF version, though I will have to do some Big Sums before I can confirm that.

In the meantime, back to work on  Mostly Harmless Meetings…

Backgrounds & decorations for Mostly Harmless Meetings

Encounter titles for Mostly Harmless Meetings