An interview with Jonathan Stark, author of the successor to the Lone Wolf series

The Huntress is a new trilogy set in the world of Magnamund. A world well-known to fans of 80s fantasy books. In 1984, Joe Dever published his first gamebook, Lone Wolf. This series continued far into the future, with 32 books published in total. Fortunately, even after forty years, Dever's work has not lost its loyal fans, and many are now becoming authors themselves. Among them is Jonathan Stark, whose The Huntress trilogy is a worthy successor to Dever's immortal work.

We met with the author of The Huntress trilogy and asked him a few questions. You can find the answers to the most common topics in the following interview (translated from the original interview for Holmgard Press).

Let's start with you, Jonathan. What is your experience with the Lone Wolf series so far, and what inspired you to write your own story set in the world of Magnamund?

For a child who was very insecure and a bit of an outcast, Magnamund was a place where I could be a hero and feel safe… as long as I stayed away from ships. I read the first book when I was eight, and I never stopped reading them. In fact, the world of Magnamund didn't inspire me to write. I simply never left Magnamund.

What was your inspiration for writing The Huntress?

I am drawn to tragedy. Probably because one of my first reading experiences was the massacre of my brothers and sisters of the Kai Order. Thanks, Joe! I think the key to a successful tragedy is the question of choice versus free will. A good tragedy always raises the question of whether something could have been done better. And gamebooks inherently always ask this question. In The Huntress, I really wanted to sharpen this conflict – it's a series that asks whether we can change our destiny.

Tell us something about the characters in your series. They all seem so diverse, complex, and at the same time, they fit into the story and move it forward. Do you have a favorite character?

I didn't want to create clichés when populating the series – Magnamund is a rich world and deserves better. I thought through every character thoroughly. I didn't want to jump at the first idea that popped into my head. I asked myself questions like: "Could this role be played by someone of a different gender? Or someone older? Someone funny instead of serious?" The result was a lot of surprising twists – for example, characters ended up where I hadn't originally intended them to be.

Even so, my favorite character is one I've known for a very long time. Brother Cathar is a wizard of the Brotherhood of the Crystal Star. He is endearingly naive, but self-aware enough to know it, yet too scatterbrained to do anything about it. He is the creation of a role-playing game fan who created this character over ten years ago for the original D20 Lone Wolf RPG. I only ran the game a few times, but Cathar has appeared in many other worlds since then. But he truly belongs in Magnamund. I'm glad I could bring him home.

Writing even a single gamebook can be a challenge, especially when you're writing it for the first time. You wrote an entire trilogy. What obstacles and problems did you encounter during writing? How did you overcome them?

I did a lot of rewriting for The Huntress. At least 50% of each book went through complete rewrites before it even reached the editing and proofreading stage. At first, I thought rewriting was a sign of poor planning… but eventually, I realized it's a process. My creative process. I sit down and write a book that reveals problems to me. Once I start seeing them, I rewrite it. The hardest part was learning to accept that and come to terms with it. It's not a sign of failure, but a means to achieve a better result.

In connection with your challenges – can you walk us through your creative process? Every author does things a little differently. So, what does a *creative day* mean to you?

Writing isn't my day job, so I have to balance it with a 40-hour work week and raising my two-year-old son, Taran. I write a lot at night and during work breaks. I have a pile of notebooks that I carry with me. When I'm working on a gamebook, I'm constantly writing down sections and notes and creating flowcharts. I write big outlines of the overall story and then write the adventure linearly from them, as if I were playing it and exploring every path as I go.

I use three programs: Google Docs for the actual writing, the interactive fiction tool Twine for mapping out paths, and a spreadsheet to track items, clues, and the number of uses for individual skills (to try and keep things balanced). I try to write 3-4 entries a day, knowing that around 50 or 100 entries, I'll probably run into a lot of plot problems and have to rewrite everything I've done up to that point. Sometimes I'm unhappy with the work. That's a feeling that warns me that something needs to be rewritten. It's a signal to go for a walk and try to figure out what the problem is.

And finally, what can fans expect when reading The Huntress series? How do these books differ from the Lone Wolf series? What are they similar in? In what way is The Huntress a unique new addition to the saga?

Lone Wolf series is the story of a character seeking salvation. At the very beginning of the series, he realizes who he is, and Silent Wolf becomes Lone Wolf. This series remarkably ends with the birth of the New Kai Order. Lone Wolf is no longer alone. This trait is also shared by The Huntress: at the beginning of the series, she is very lonely. However, where the books differ most is that the player decides where the story of The Huntress ends. There are many secrets and different paths to explore in The Huntress.

I recommend that readers play the gamebook multiple times and try different choices – it's up to them, and many will greatly influence the overall story. Even down to what kind of Hunting Art you choose at the beginning.

translation by Eva Lassler