Dave Barrett Books In Order

Publication Order of Fun and Games Books

Author Dave Barrett has been gaming his entire life, starting Advanced Dungeons and Dragons when he was only eight years old. He was first introduced by the game when his brother brought it home from school. He enjoys Pathfinder, and also likes Legend of the Shattered Empires quite a bit. To pass the gift on to the new generation, he plays Dungeon Master for both his kids as well as their friends.

He graduated with a degree in Economics/ Accounting from College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. He quickly started working for public accounting for Arthur Andersen in the city of Boston.

He hated the job thoroughly and quit this post after three years, and pursued a graduate degree so that he could do his dream job: instruct the next batch of CPAs. Dave Barrett just hopes that there are some students that actually being accountants.

He lives, with his active imagination, in the state of Maine, and teaches Financial Statement Analysis and Financial Accounting at University of Maine Orono. Dave is regularly described as not what people picture accountants to actually be like.

He is married with three kids, and it is for them that he wrote “It’s All Fun and Games”, which is his debut novel. It is from the fantasy and young adult genres.

He wrote the book about kids that are turned into heroes, due to his liking this kind of stories. All the books he read while growing up made him want to be the hero and all the girls he got crushes on were the leads in these stories.

The LARPing in the book was the most organic thing, as well as the most interesting thing for him to use. It comes from NERO, and is a lot like how he remembers this system to be, with his spin on it. He would like for kids to read the book, and find the LARPing interesting, and think more about gaming. Even if it that just means playing Dungeons and Dragons one time only; as he would like them to see that it can be cool. This is during a time when geek type stuff is cool now or can be cool.

He made Allison, the character that was new to LARPing and a female, the main character because there are very few people of color and few women playing these kinds of games. He wants the hobby to grow, and open it up to more people, so that his daughter does not feel that she is the only girl playing these games.

For his book, he won a Nerdist novel contest that was held on Inkshares. It got published by Nerdist as part of the contest. At first, he did not even really want to submit his book, but a friend, who was a big fan of Nerdist, told him he should after reading the book.

As a writer, he only has Nanowrimo, a writing competition to write stories. His household comes to a stand still, as both his wife and children know that November is his writing time.

The novel, “It’s All Fun and Games” was written during the month of November of 2010, and he felt like it was the best one that he had ever written. It was reasonably received well by his initial group of beta readers he had read it for him.

He was set up with a developmental editor, who is named Kiele Raymond, who he feels is great at what she does. After reading the entire book, she put together line edits and some notes about what worked in the story and what needed fixing. It was also about making the manuscript of better quality, not just the writing.

He believed that when the novel went to the copy phase, it was all finished and about to be published. There was the copy editing and then proofreading, before final review editing. Then finally it went to the printers. He submitted in early October, and it wasn’t until July that the backers got copies of the book.

Dave Barrett dedicated the book to Lloyd Alexander, because of his “Chronicles of Prydain” series taught him that adventure and magical worlds do exist. He also thanked Gary Gygax.

“It’s All Fun and Games” is the first novel of the “It’s All Fun and Games” series, which was released in the year 2016. TJ twists her best friend Allison’s arm to come along to take part in an epic game of live action role playing. Allison did so reluctantly, despite some reservations about this geeky pastime.

TJ fills his weekends with some mystical creatures, powerful wizardry, and some pretty intense battles with the LARP group he is a part of. Each and every single adventure he takes part in is filled with surprises, however, the goal is always the same: to defeat all the monsters and locate treasure.

Not long after they begin their quest, the friends realize that something is wrong. This fantasy world they have put together has been transformed, and the battle, they are currently in the middle of is not a make believe one.

They have to fight to survive against creatures like: kobolds, brigands, and other lethal mythical creatures that have come to life. The good news is that the group’s formerly fictional magical powers are now real as well. Like Allison’s new gifts as healer. They are going to need everything they have in their arsenal if they want to get back home alive.

Fans of the novel found this to be a great combination of characters being transported into new and odd fantasy worlds with LARPing. This is clearly a book that was made with a lot of dedication and love. Readers found this simply exciting and they want to read more stories set in this world. This author is able to make something like table top role playing sound like a fun time, which some thought would be harder to pull off. It was interesting to see a newbie like Allison, who has all of the rules explained, to allow the readers who are also new to this type of gaming to get the basics of it.