Finding My Way To Talliston

John Tarrow's The Stranger's Guide to Talliston has found a new home upon my book shelves

On a visit to Tonbridge's old school, labyrinthine, second-hand book store, Teppa Books, last weekend - during its half-price sale - I found myself drawn towards a hardback tome at the bottom of a pile of paperbacks.

I was actually looking for Tolkien books - as we'd visited on Tolkien's birthday - but found myself wandering through the near-claustrophobic tunnels of beautifully overladen shelves (most two layers deep, so it's a real expedition to find just the book you were hoping to find).

That's when the spine of The Stranger's Guide to Talliston  (pictured above) caught my eye, a hardback fantasy novel among paperbacks.

I carefully extricated the book, making sure the paperbacks didn't topple on the floor, read the dust jacket and skimmed through the book... only to discover that it had been signed by the author (John Tarrow)!

I love signed books, they're the ultimate "six degrees of Kevin Bacon" next to actually shaking the author's hand.

I love a signed book!

For four pounds - reduced to two - I knew this had to be mine (thanks Rachel for buying it for me) and so The Stranger's Guide to Talliston came home with us. And that's where the fun really began.

As intriguing as the dust jacket was, it didn't really give too much away, so I went to Amazon to scan the reviews and they were really good. Several, however, also pointed out that Talliston was a real place, a "magical" house in Essex.

I could have found this out if I'd flicked to the back of the book (where there's a map of the house interior), but instead I opted for Google and this sent me down a delightful rabbit hole.

Again, I only briefly scanned this as I'm always keen to avoid spoilers, but the house, which is central to the story, appears to be an incredible labour of love. I'll confess that I'm really surprised that I'd never heard of it before.

Now, I'm very excited to dig in to The Stranger's Guide and see if it stirs some kind of bravery in me that would give me the courage to travel to the village of Great Dunmow and visit Talliston in person.

MUSICAL MONDAY: Playing D&D (SJ Tucker)

HEALTH UPDATE: Looking Good For 2026

It's so clever 'cos it works on two levels 😉

While Biscuit Club has been on a break for the holidays, my various back-related problems have continued to improve - thanks to continued exercise.

On New Year's Eve, I was both signed off by the NHS physio I had been seeing and (finally) got the call from the hospital to fix a date for my steroid injections. 

These will be in a few weeks at The Pain Clinic, providing none of my other medical issues prevent this from going ahead. This was discussed during the call and hopefully will just be a few routine checks on the day.

Biscuit Club resumes soon, but we're in the home stretch now and only have a couple of months to go before we are all released into the wild.

The subject of "walking football" again came up as the "next step" along my road to recovery, this time while chatting with the physio, although Rachel let slip the possibility of getting me a personal trainer! 

The main takeaway from all this - barring unforeseen backsliding - is that 2026 is looking like a more positive year, health-wise, for me. 

Pertinent to the strip above, one of the early things I want to tackle, once my back is feeling better, is sorting out my overwhelming overflow of comic book back issues.

Jumbled piles of comics line the edges of the office and have filled every gap under the bed. I need to decide which to keep (this requires numerical filing by title on the shelves in the office) and which to either try and sell or consign to charity.

• The comic panels at the top of this piece are from Bite Sized Archie. You can find the rest of the series here on the Archie Comics website. Two paperback collections are currently available (hopefully there will be more) that include behind-the-scenes extras.

Horror Movie Flops of 2025

Remember, just because a film tanks at the box office doesn't mean it's a bad film (often poor marketing is to blame or 'serious film critics' just not getting genre work)!

Of course, on the other hand, there's also The Toxic Avenger.

Archie's Battle With The Army of Darkness Continues

Main cover art by Francisco Francavilla

Following on from February's launch of the delirious crossover we never knew we wanted, but now can't live without, Archie X Army of Darkness issue two drops in March.

Written by the great Erik Burnham, with interior art by Bill Galvan, sees the Evil Dead's Ash Williams stuck in wholesome Riverdale with a horde of deadites accidentally summoned by none other than Archie Andrews himself.

IT'S A DEADITE PARTY!

Reggie's lake house soiree was supposed to be the social event of the season, but now it may prove to be the town of Riverdale's swan song! Following Archie Andrews's unwitting awakening of the Army of Darkness, chaos - in the form of an undead horde - has descended upon the shore.

With slavering evil literally at their doorstep, the gang has only one hope of making it out alive - the Savior of S-Mart, one Ashley J. Williams. Unluckily for them, the Chosen One's car currently has four flat tires!

The issue comes with a variety of variant covers, as shown here, along with a selection of black and white variants and art-only alternates (without the text).

Variant cover by Bill Galvan

Variant cover by Laura Braga

Variant cover by Craig Cermak

Variant cover by Stuart Sayger

Maths Explains Why It's So Hard to Organise An RPG Session

Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash

THROWBACK THURSDAY: The Dark Tower

Image by Darren Vannoy from Pixabay

My first gaming store was Tunbridge Wells' only dedicated roleplaying shop and club, The Dark Tower, in Victoria Road.

Through rose-tinted glasses, the vague wisps of memory I have about the place make it appear as iconic as Weird Pete Ashton's Games Pit in Knights Of The Dinner Table.

Sadly the shop was demolished long ago and has now been redeveloped for housing.

I seem to recall The Dark Tower was next to - or near - a small scrapyard, as one Sunday as we queued up patiently outside, waiting for the shop to open its doors for a regular club meeting, this line of innocent proto-geeks was harangued by the clearly drunk scrapmerchant on his front step complaining that we were disturbing his rest.

Decades later Clare and I shared a house just a stone's throw away from the site of the old Dark Tower - how brilliant would it have been if the shop (and club) was still there?

I do think it's a bit of a shame that, as far as I am aware (and I have looked) there's no mention of Tunbridge Wells' old game shop anywhere on the Interwebz.

It was such a formative part of my tween and early teenage years.

As well as the site of my earliest recorded character death - poor old Gordok (well out of his depth in Tegel Manor) - it was also where I purchased my first gaming product and, subsequently, began to pick up regular gaming magazines: which, for me, in those days meant White Dwarf.

I remember 11-year-old me striding into The Dark Tower clutching my pocket money and asking for the cheapest edition of Dungeons & Dragons they had. I came out a little while later with the Holmes blue book (pictured above).

This was edition I used when I tried to explain roleplaying games to my poor dad. He rolled up a dwarf who walked down a corridor under the Tower of Zenopus (the example adventure in the book), got attacked by a spider, died and never played Dungeons & Dragons again.

The shop wasn't the only place to host our nascent "gaming club"; after a while a nearby church hall was hired for regular gatherings (possibly St Barnabus' Church Hall in Quarry Road, but, as you may have gathered, my memory is rather Swiss cheesed these days).

This venue is where Staghind had her first adventure (ie. The Crypte of The Courageous).

I also have a strong memory of sitting in the waiting room of a podiatrist in Lime Hill Road, Tunbridge Wells, reading White Dwarf issue 11.

I suspect mum had let me buy it, from The Dark Tower, to take my mind off the fact that was I was about to have a verruca carved out of my left heel.

Later, I recall cutting out the pieces of the "D&D Bar-Room Brawl" game, 'laminating' them with Sellotape, and playing it repeatedly (on my own, of course).

BEST FILMS & TV OF 2025

The best, new, movies I saw last year were (in no particular order):

• Fantastic Four: First Steps
• Superman 
• The Monkey 
• Frozen: The Hit Broadway Musical

I have to be honest, because of my medical issues last year, I haven't felt like watching/reviewing many new films - instead building up a healthy backlog of unopened Blu-rays to (hopefully) throw myself into in 2026.

On the other hand, I did watch an awful lot of TV shows, much of it being new.

My favourites for the year in this category (again, in no particular order) were:

• The Assembly 
• How The Wild West Was Won - With Ray Mears
• Dexter: Resurrection 
• Frieren: Beyond Journey's End

We also said goodbye to some great, long-running shows in 2025, including:

• Stranger Things - no notes.
• Cobra Kai - now that’s how you do a franchise! Fantastic and satisfying wrap-up for the series.
• Evil - we finally got closure on the greatest pulp horror show of the 21st Century. This one really breaks my heart because it was such an inventive genre programme, running through more outré ideas per episode than most shows conjure up in a season. And Katja Herbers.
• The Handmaid’s Tale
• Squid Games 
• The Sandman 
• My Hero Academia

I'm easily pleased!

Remembering Barney The Bunny

As we approach the first anniversary of Barney of The Bunny hopping over the rainbow bridge, I've finally had the intestinal fortitude to invest in a nice personalised plaque to mark his grave.

Barely a day passes without me thinking about the characterful critter. While I shall never have another pet rabbit, I'm delighted that his little memorial rock garden has bedded in nicely in the corner of our garden where he used to bound and stretch in his run - near to where his enormous hutch stood.

My Favourite Rick and Morty Quote About RPGs

"Rick is a power gamer. He plays D&D like it’s a maths problem. Like it’s a race he’s trying to win. Me? I don’t need to be the smartest wizard. I’d rather play someone brave, clever and charming. Someone interesting… someone who always knows the right thing to do. That’s the beauty of D&D. Sometimes it’s nice to pretend you’re someone different for a little while…"

- Jerry, from Rick and Morty vs Dungeons & Dragons Part III: Reality Bites (for 3d6+1)
by Patrick Rothfuss & Jim Zub (2018)

The sentiment, of course, applies to all roleplaying games, it's just that Dungeons & Dragons is ubiquitous and has a recognition factor with the general - comic book reading - public that other games probably don't.

"For Auld Lang Syne, My Dear, For Auld Lang Syne"

For the first time in years, Rachel and I opted not to stay up and see the New Year in last night, instead we watched It's A Wonderful Life and headed to bed by about 10.30pm.

Unfortunately, come midnight and the local fireworks began crackling and popping around the neighbourhood, Alice freaked out and woke me up.

The poor pup was doing her usual jumping off the bed, then asking to be picked up, then jumping off again - all while panting like a small, furry steam engine.

Even once the fireworks stopped, she didn't - anticipating sudden loud noises that never came.

I think it took the better part of an hour to finally calm her down so that she would go back to sleep.

I soon followed, but my circadian rhythm was already disrupted and I awoke again around 6am, knowing I wouldn't nod off again any time soon.

On the plus side, this allowed me to hit my "Read Judge Dredd Every Day" target before the sun had even risen.