THROWBACK THURSDAY: HAWK THE SIGNATURES!

Earlier this year I talked about the magic of signed items, but among my small collection of such I have an old paperback that I now consider priceless.

Here follows the two-stage yarn of what makes it so.

First, we must travel back through the mists of time to 2011, when rumours started circulating that the writer/director of 1980's Hawk The Slayer (the greatest Dungeons & Dragons movie of all time), Terry Marcel, was - finally - seeking funding for the long-awaited sequel, Hawk The Hunter.

Sadly, we know what became of that, but I'm jumping ahead.

Although my memories of what transpired are hazy these days, I know that because I had written voluminously and passionately about Hawk The Slayer online for years I somehow got in contact with one of the producers for the planned sequel.

And he offered to get my old copy of the novelisation (which Terry was also co-author, with script partner Harry Robertson, of) signed by Terry Marcel himself.

I'll confess I was anxious about mailing the book away. Purchasing it when I was a youngster is one of my few, remaining solid memories from those days. 

But the producer was true to his word and got Terry to sign it. Not just sign it, as you can see above, but also inscribe the opening text of the movie.

Then, four years later, in the build-up to the film-funding Kickstarter, my producer-contact wove his magic again, asking me if I'd like the coolest elf in cinema history, Crow aka actor Ray Charleson (pictured below, holding The Mindsword), to also sign my book?

Again, I was slightly anxious about mailing the book off. Not that my contact wouldn't come through, but that something would happen to it in the post.

And, again, I needn't have worried. Everything went as promised.

As I said  earlier, my memory may not be what it used to be, yet I can still vividly recall buying that book in WH Smiths in Tunbridge Wells. It was dark and I'd popped in after school on the way to catching the bus home. I was 15 and the book cost the grand sum of one pound.

Who'd have thought that one day it would be priceless?