Brand GamblinSince 1996

Writer · Software developer

Six books, five shipped games, and one cosmic horror with a telephone.

I write science fiction, I build the tools I wanted while writing it, and for a few years I pointed a camera at a puppet. All of it is still here.

On the benchOct 2026

Writing
Rerunners — Danny Graves has lived for centuries, one childhood at a time.Novel in progress
Building
StoryLoom — a workspace for keeping a novel's pieces straight.Private · password protected
Next
The Un-Dictionary — words that don't exist yet.undictionary.brandg.com · not live
Cover of Tumbler Cover of The Hidden Institute Cover of The Danny Cover of Discount Miracles Cover of Give the Devil His Due Cover of Invito Rex Cover of Walk The Fire
Fig. 1 — Everything with my name on the spine 2009 → 2013

What I'm building now

Two things · both unfinished

Software · in private beta

StoryLoom

Outlines, scenes, characters and the thousand small facts a novel accumulates — in one place, so the continuity error happens to someone else. Built because I kept losing track of my own books.

Open StoryLoom ↗ Password protected · ask me
StoryLoom with Chapter 1 of Tumbler open: chapter list on the left, manuscript in the middle, assistant panel on the right

Toy · coming soon

The Un-Dictionary

Words that don't exist. Definitions that insist they do.

Stellevateverb
To gaze at the stars until you feel yourself falling upward.
1 / 5
undictionary.brandg.com · not live yet
The StoryLoom project list, showing seven novels side by side
Fig. 2 — Seven books open at once. Tumbler alone runs to 63,876 words in here.

Books

Six titles · 2009–2013 · 469 Goodreads ratings
Cover of Tumbler

Start here

Tumbler

2009Novel★ 3.96263 ratings

Libby Carter buys a one-way ticket to the asteroid belt expecting a fresh start and finds a company town with better lawyers than life support. The one people still email me about.

Cover of The Hidden Institute

The Hidden Institute

2011★ 4.08Noblesse Oblige I

A street kid is taught to counterfeit nobility, in a future where getting above your station is a capital offence.

Cover of Invito Rex

Invito Rex

2013★ 4.07Noblesse Oblige II

The forged noble lands in the worst possible posting for a con man: the king's own palace.

Cover of Discount Miracles

Discount Miracles

2012★ 3.61Novel

A stranded crew makes rent performing miracles for the locals. Then a royal commission asks for a big one.

Cover of The Danny

The Danny

2011★ 4.07Seven stories

A traveller between dimensions keeps arriving at the hinge moment of somebody else's life, looking for his own way home.

Cover of Give the Devil His Due Cover of the Walk The Fire anthology

Shorter things
Give the Devil His Due (2012) — three bargains, each with a contract so reassuring you'd sign it twice. Walk The Fire (2012) — a shared-world anthology. Plus stories in FlagShip Science Fiction & Fantasy (2010, 2012).

Before all this, games

Five shipped · 1998–2008
European Air WarProgramming · MicroProse1998
Gunship!Programming · MicroProse2000
Turok: EvolutionProgramming · Acclaim2002
Sid Meier's Railroads!UI programming · Firaxis2006
Civilization RevolutionProgramming · Firaxis2008

Smaller credits along the way: voiceovers on X-COM: Interceptor (1998) and a thank-you in Vexx (2003). Two others never shipped at all — Tank Platoon III at MicroProse, Crimson Order at Kinesoft. That happens.

Full credits on MobyGames ↗

Calls for Cthulhu

Ten episodes · 1996
Still from Calls for Cthulhu: a green puppet Cthulhu sits behind a desk ▶ Watch an episode
Still from Calls for Cthulhu Still from Calls for Cthulhu

An elder god takes your call.

1996★ 8.2IMDb

The premise is the whole joke: a being of unknowable malevolence runs a phone-in advice show, and the callers' problems turn out to be depressingly ordinary. I wrote it, directed it, and did the voice.

Made on a card table against a green cloth backdrop, which is exactly how it looks. It also predates everything else on this page.