Marc Simon: From Childhood Passion to The Last Defender
I can still remember it. I can remember the classroom, the shelf and the book. It was 1982 at primary school when I pulled a book from the library shelf. This book changed my life. The cover showed a wizard and a dragon. The title was The Warlock of Firetop Mountain by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, and it was an adventure gamebook. I flicked through the pages revealing swords, sorcery and illustrations of strange creatures, monsters and ghouls. My path was set.
The Warlock of Firetop Mountain was just the beginning. Over the years I lapped up every book in the series, fifty in total, and then found others like it.
This led me to Dungeons and Dragons, but unfortunately none of my friends wanted to get involved. So, I designed my own game similar to D&D but easier to play and quicker to set up.
My friends loved it. I still have the scrapbook I wrote my game in, along with the dungeon map. I called the gamebook The Fire Demon and the objective for the players was to navigate their way through the dungeon, fighting monsters and avoiding traps, to hunt the Fire Demon.
There were useful items that could be found and ones that could harm or kill. The point was that they had freedom of choice, THEY were the heroes.
Then I grew up and did the things teenagers and young adults do, but my scrapbook seemed to follow me. Although I had forgotten about the book, I took it to Ireland when I moved there with my Kiwi girlfriend, and then to New Zealand a year later. Quite why I took it I do not know, perhaps it was destiny. A few years later I met an Irish girl in Queenstown (ironically), where I was landscaping at the time. She discovered my book and encouraged me to update it and get it published. In 2012, my gamebook The Fire Demon – Death Awaits You! was published. I had enlisted four young artists to illustrate the book and give them the opportunity to have their art in a published book. The artwork completed the book, just like I remembered in The Warlock of Firetop Mountain.
I subsequently made a series with a broader storyline. I wrote book two in the series, The Fire Demon – Deadly Trails, and half of book three, The Fire Demon – Deadlocks. Book two was never published but is still available as an unedited PDF on: DriveThruRPG.com
Then life happened again. We had a son and moved back to Ireland for nine years. Not once did I venture back into the world of the Fire Demon. Then in 2024 we decided to move back to New Zealand, and to Whitianga. I was very lucky, and extremely grateful, to get a job with Chops Landscaping and live in such a beautiful area. As a family we enjoy the outdoors and the Coromandel is perfect for a life outside. Kayaking, biking, running and camping. This was ideal to get my creative juices flowing again. Unfortunately, on one such family walk I slipped and broke my hand, leading to time off work. This was the catalyst. Rather than sitting around watching box sets, I came up with the idea to convert my gamebook to a novel and continue where my writing left off, by making it a series.
Although I had the story background from the previous books for the novel, I still had to weave a plot from a completely different format, reflecting my roots in interactive gamebook storytelling. In the gamebook, the main protagonist is you, the player, so I decided to make the novel, at its core, character driven.
Just like in the gamebook, where players can be one of six characters, there are six main protagonists in The Last Defender. Like the gamebook they all have their flaws and merits, but each is seeking redemption on a path to destiny.
It took me six months to write The Last Defender Part 1: Fire Demon. It then took a further six months for the publishing process. By March 2026, the book was published and for sale. As of now, I have nearly completed part two.
You can find the adventure and more online at: marcsimonauthor.com or on Amazon and Goodreads
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