Stay Nerd interviews Joe Dever, author of The Lone Wolf
Hello again Joe! Last time we met right here in Lucca 2014, so tell us… what happened in this last year?
Ah everything exploded in this last year (laughs), it’s been a fantastic, absolutely amazing year! Here, the show is a good example of all the projects that have come together, at the same time, for release. The big news for the show is that at long last lone wolf 29 is been published. Lone Wolf fans have been waiting 17 years for this, and the really good news for the Italian ones is that has come out in Italian first, so it’s a world premiere for Italy, so the Italians are the first to read the story, very lucky this time, it won’t be out in English for 6-7 weeks…
And the role playing game is out…
That would have been our next question: after the extraordinary success of Lone Wolf it was time to bring the game into the world of board games, do you feel like sharing something about the project with us?
Yes! It’s released now, they came into the show yesterday, arrived at 2 o clock in the afternoon, and they sold 170 copies, selling 1 copy every 55 seconds, 170 copies in about 4 hours, so it’s been a fantastic response, really a lot of people waiting, it’s amazing yeah… Do you imagine the publishers smiling? They shipped another pallet of 500 copies on top of the 500 they already have. It’s gonna be so quickly, and they still got Saturday ahead, tomorrow, the busiest day of the show, so it couldn’t be better, the response has been fantastic.
We also got the reemergence, the resurrection of Freeway Warrior, so the Freeway Warriors 1 is out… It’s a lot of new products.
A great start!
It’s been fantastic! Our stand has been packed for the last two days, completely, very busy, and that’s how we love it. It’s been great…
Here in Lucca you will show the 29th book of the saga. How did the ‘rules’ change in this period of time?
We are now probably 2/3 of the way through the New Order series but it’s using a Grand Master in the New Order, no longer playing lone wolf in the last part of the saga, and certainly is a progression from the rules of 28. In the same way that my fans have waited 17 years, there’s been a 17 years gap in the story, it covers what happened in that interim period. What you achieved in book 28 is remembered and it plays a big part in book 29 so it’s a nice progression, it works very well. For me it’s very exciting cause I’m working on the last books now. It’s been 30 years I worked on Lone Wolf and I can see the end, the finishing line in the distance, imagine how exciting that is. So I’m working on book 30 now and Im already planning 31 and 32, the final two books, and they will be bigger than normal, they will be 550 sections each so it’s quite a finale. We’ll see the final books sometime around the middle of 2017, probably see book 30, again probably first in Italy, next Easter.
You’ve been a fantastic loyal followers, always a great support here, so I’d like to give it back… You’re a very special breed when it comes to “Lupo Solitario”. I’m showing my appreciation, I’m very often in Italy and certainly in Lucca every year and I work with a lot of Italians, Alberto Dal Lago, cover artist, signed some beautiful covers for it, Vincent Books (NdR: Italian editor for Lone Wolf), I worked for two years in Milano, with Forge Reply on the computer game, so there’s a big big italian influence in Lone Wolf. And it works very well for me.
It is said that once you’ve learned how to ride a bicycle you never forget. How was coming back to your charcacter after such a long time? Was it hard or not?
No it wasn’t difficult because in the meanwhile I worked on the computer game and it is the same process, the scripting of it is almost identical of writing a game book, it’s second person present tense format, and it was the equivalent of writing about 2 and a half / 3 books, the actual text content of the game. So you know I had plenty of practice with that and I’ve been working on a lot of supplements for the role playing game as well, but the response it’s been fantastic for those who have read the story, those who have been working with the story, translators, readers, so I’ve got feedback from them, like “Wow, I enjoyed this so much, it’s so classic Lone Wolf…”. And it’s got a lot more emotions, I’d say this is a very emotional book, personally I feel I’ve sort of matured again another level up, I put a lot into 29 and I think the readers will appreciate.
Here in Lucca you’ll also present a new edition of the first volume of Freeway Warrior. Do you feel like talking about this project? Does the recent success of Mad Max have anything to do with the return of Mark Phoenix?
No actually was purely coincidental. We had already planned the revival as it were, and what is different with the new version is that I rewritten the datelines of the disaster, the background story, I updated that, I brought it 30 to 35 years on, moved it on, ‘cause you know in the original it takes place in 2020 and we are 5 years away from that now. I found it quite amusing last week when they were focusing on Back to the future: what they got right, what they didn’t get right in the prediction, you know “in 30 years what would change? What would be new?” And was a lot of it that they didn’t get anywhere near, they didn’t predict internet, they didn’t predict mobile phones. When I went back I had a look at what I predicted in Freeway Warriors I had one catastrophic mistake, I still thought the Soviet Union would be around, but I did predict rise of religious terrorism, mainly I needed it to rational for why they’re gonna have the bad guys deep underground, so I had them in secure penitentiaries when the bomb goes off, so they sort of survive as a result of it. So yeah, I wasn’t that bad, some of the predictions were quite accurate, and so I revived it, I pushed forward the dates and changed the story somewhere.
In Italy it was “Mark” Phoenix, the character, Cal Phoenix was the original and we reverted to the original English manuscript edition. I had some beautiful artwork from Alberto again, he’s done some lovely work, and… that sounds yesterday, finally out, and we expect book 2 to be out around March, book 3 around Lucca next year, and you’ll find the final one in early spring. So next year will have 3 books out in Freeway Warrior series. Including everybody’s favorite, number 3.
First a videogame, now a table game, we now expect further surprises from Lone Wolf. Can you tease us with something? Do you take requests? What about a tv series?
Oh yes, absolutely! I love especially the way they’re doing TV series now. TV has come back into fashion, because it’s really delivering what film isn’t delivering, and that is story developed over long period. Lone Wolf in a box set, in 24 episodes? Yes, PLEASE. (laughs) About story and characters, there’s plenty strong enough…
Who would you pick as the main actor?
Oh gosh I’ve no idea. Really… If it’s an established star anybody would recognize and he’d bring the “package” of all the previous work with him. That might not be the way to go. A very good new actor might be the way to go. Anyway I got a feeling that it’s gonna happen because the story is so strong and well known, worldwide, it’s all a matter of timing, and I’m pretty confident about the story, the characters, the background… so we’ll see, finger crossed, and see how it works out.
Article by Raffaele Giasi, Gabriele Atero Di Biase and Andrea Giovalè
