On the 1st of January we welcomed Allen Stroud into the Luna family. Now, Fantasycon 2017 is less than two months away, and the Luna team is hard at work finalising his next release, 'The Forever Man', which will be launched during the convention. We are delighted to reveal the fantastic cover of this release, created by South African photographer and graphic designer, Karl Eklund.
As you can see from the banner on the cover, Allen hasn't been idle and, among other accomplishments, managed to win an award celebrating Sir Arthur C. Clarke's centenary.
When we asked Allen about the book, he told us: "The Forever Man brings together some of my experiences and ideas I had about popular fantasy stories. I always thought C. S. Lewis’ ‘Wood between Worlds’ was a concept that wasn’t explored enough and Robert Holdstock’s ideas about ancient magic and myth surrounding such places are fascinating. The Forever Man is set on an alternative Earth, with some subtle differences to our own, particularly with places like Stonehenge and characters like King Arthur. The mythical concepts and ideas in the book are carefully researched and familiar, but taken in new directions."
Allen came to us with incredible writing experience, from many different fields; from books to videogames. He is a multitalented SF and Fantasy writer and academic from Bedfordshire. He worked on the computer game Elite: Dangerous with David Braben and Frontier Developments as both a concept writer and official author, publishing Elite: Lave Revolution in 2014. He then worked with Julian Gollop and Snapshot Games on Chaos Reborn, devising the world of the game and publishing The Loremaster’s Guide and Dreams of Chaos in 2016. He is now involved with their new game, Phoenix Point, set to be published in 2018. Allen is also working with World of Darkness creator, Mark Rein-Hagen, and his company, Make Believe Games, on the roleplaying game, Xenofactor.
In the world of academia, Allen is a PhD student at the University of Winchester.
He writes reviews for The British Fantasy Society, SFBook.com and Concatenation.org, and is the editor of the British Fantasy Society Journal. He has also written for Total Film and SFX Magazine.
The release date of 'The Forever Man' has been set for Friday 29th of September.