The Elfish Gene

[Barrowcliffe] writes how D&D twisted his teenage development and about how twisted teenage development is in general. It''s easy to read in a weekend and thanks to several hilarious unbelievably well-remembered recountings of dialogue-heavy extreme nerdiness begs a movie adaptation.Seattle Times Barrowcliffe''s retrospective self-awareness is by turns poignant and amusing ... as fantasy movies dominate the box office; the author offers a timely appropriate memoir of addiction recovery ... worth a few hours holed up in the basement. -Kirkus Reviews I urge you to buy it yourself and make up your own mind. You''ll love discussing it with your friends. There''s not a whole lot written about gaming especially from the inside and The Elfish Gene belongs in every gamer''s library. -Enter the Octopus Blog This is agood funny book and I am enjoying the heck out of it so far. Barrowcliffe ... has an excellent writing style that is light and funny and when he describes the game you feel his excitement as he rolls the dice....I hope [it] intrigues you as much as it intrigued me. -Geekscribe Summer 1976. Twelve-year-old Mark Barrowcliffe had a chance to be normal. He blew it. While other teenagers were being coolly rebellious Markand twenty million other boys in the 1970s and 80schose to spend his entire adolescence pretending to be a wizard a warrior or an evil priest. Armed only with pen paper and some funny-shaped dice this lost generation gave themselves up to the craze of fantasy role-playing games. Spat at by bullies and laughed at by girls they now rule the world. They were the geeks the fantasy war gamers and this is their story. Mark Barrowcliffe grew up in Coventry England. He worked as a stand-up comedian before writing his first hit novel Girlfriend 44. He has written two other acclaimed comic novels Lucky Dog and Infidelity for First-Time Fathers. He lives in Brighton England.