Jamie Thomson (author)

Jamie Thomson is a British writer, editor and game developer, born 14 November 1958 in Iran and winner of the Roald Dahl Funny Prize 2012.

Jamie Thomson grew up in Brighton where he met one of his co-authors Mark Smith at school at Brighton College. He graduated from the University of Kent with a degree in politics and government.

Jamie Thomson was an assistant editor on White Dwarf magazine from 1981 to 1984 and wrote a regular column for Warlock (magazine). While working at Games Workshop, he was one of the developers of the computer game The Tower of Despair.

From 1984 to 1996 he was a prolific and best-selling author, usually publishing at least two titles per year. One of his most successful series was The Way of the Tiger, six linked adventures about a ninja hero, written with Mark Smith. The books have been published in Japan, France, USA, Italy and Sweden. Each title sold more than 60,000 copies in the UK alone. The software version from Gremlin Graphics went straight to number one.

He is the author of numerous novels and 'choose-your-own-adventure' type gamebooks. His contributions to the genre include four major creator-owned series: Duel Master, Falcon, and Way of the Tiger (all co-written with Mark Smith) and Fabled Lands (co-written with Dave Morris). He also co-wrote three books for the Fighting Fantasy series: Talisman of Death and Sword of the Samurai, again with Mark Smith, and The Keep of the Lich Lord with Dave Morris. He also co-wrote an adventure game, The Tower of Despair for Games Workshop. Currently he has three novels for children published, Corvus, by Boxer Books and the Dark Lord series (Dark Lord: The Teenage Years and Dark Lord: A Friend in Need) published by Orchard books in the UK, by Walkers Children in the US, by Arena in Germany and Alfaguara in Spain.

After twelve years as an author, he moved full-time into videogame development at Eidos Interactive, publishers of Tomb Raider. In 1999 he raised over £1 million to set up his own game development company, Black Cactus, developers of the game Warrior Kings and its follow-up Warrior Kings: Battles.

After cancellation of a further sequel to Warrior Kings by the publishers, Black Cactus was wound up. Thomson raised a quarter of a million dollars in 2007 for a new start-up, Fabled Lands LLP, an intellectual property development company specializing in its own titles to be launched as iPhone comics or novels.

In addition to originating new titles for Fabled Lands LLP, Thomson has authored a novel, Corvus, for Boxer Books, was a writer on the creative team at Lionhead Studios working on Fable III for Microsoft, and has just written two novels for Fabled Lands LLP, Dark Lord: The Teenage Years, published by Orchard Books in 2011 and a sequel, Dark Lord: A Fiend in Need, published by Orchard in March 2012. A third in the series, Dark Lord: ETernal detention came out in 2014, along with the first in a new series of comedy adventure in space: The Wrong Side of the Galaxy. A second SF novel, A Galaxy Too Far is published in November 2015.

The Dark Lord books are also available in Spain, Germany and the United States and have been optioned for TV. Turkish, Italian and Czech versions are expected in 2013.

Dark Lord: The Teenage Years won the prestigious children's book award, the Roald Dahl Funny Prize 2012.

• The Tower of Despair
• To Hell And Back, a teletext adventure on UK Gold.
• The Heart of Harkun, a six-part fantasy adventure radio play, written with Peter Thomson, performed on BBC Radio 5 and Radio 7.