Guns and Grapple:
Fanfiction

THE BEGINING
Katie Fleming is a twenty one year old Tomb Raider writer from Ontario (Canada). She has created one of the biggest Tomb Raider fan sites and made 12 original Tomb Raider stories based on her favourite gaming heroine. Her fascination with the games started when she was just 13 years old, when she began to play through the first level of TR1. She became an instant fan, but Katie didn’t start to write her own stories until she went on holiday to pass time during the journey. A few more stories followed but Katie had no desire to load them on a site or to have them published.

 

CORE DESIGN’S COMPETITION
On February 2003, Katie Fleming’s “Sweat Strength and determination” won first prize in a worldwide competition hosted by TombRaiderChronicles.com and Core Design, Katie was awarded a framed poster of Lara Croft in several poses, signed by the creative team at Core. Until then Katie only wrote stories for herself, but decided to publish them on the internet after she won.

 

TALES OF LARA CROFT
Later that year Katie received another prize. She was asked by James Watson (Lead Editor - Tales of Lara Croft) if Planet Lara’s fanzine could publish her stories in their first issue. Ms. Fleming agreed to the deal, and “Search for Delphi” was chosen to lead the series. The beautifully illustrated comic featured life like drawing, amazing detail to the surrounding environments and the characters, while still staying true to the original story.  In March, Katie held her own competition; four lucky winners received a copy of Tales of Lara Croft signed by the creator of the original story. The comics were shipped to Canada, US, Netherlands and Greece. For more detail on how to purchase the comic visit; http://www.planetlara.com/fanzine.asp and http://www.tombraiders.net/katie/fanclub03.html for more info on the fanzine and original story!

 

NEWSPAPERS
After Tales of Lara Croft was released, Katie’s site attracted more and more fans. This grabbed the attention of a local newspaper. In April 2004 she was interviewed for a feature called “Tomb Raider writer connects with worldwide audience”. In the paper she was interviewed about Tales of Lara Croft, Core’s contest and her website’s statistics.

Another newspaper followed, the feature focused on Katie’s appearance in the Anniversary documentary. The story was named “”Tomb Raider fan fiction writer goes from website to big screen.” The piece involves two photos, one involved Katie next to her signed poster and the other was a screenshot from the documentary.

 

Tomb Raider: The Quest

 

Tomb Raider Anniversary Documentary

To celebrate 10 years of Tomb Raider, Eidos Interactive hired Turner Broadcasting to record a documentary on the Tomb Raider franchise. Four Tomb Raider fans were picked to star in the documentary; the lucky few were GoranAgar, Catsuit and Ponytail, Chantal Slagmolen and Katie Fleming.  Originally the documentary was supposed to be released with all versions of the game world-wide; however it was only released in the UK with the collector’s edition. The interview took three hours to complete, during this time Katie answered a variety of questions from the producer, showed her TR collection to the camera and talked about her website and fan made movie.

 

A Room in Waiting
After several months of writing, editing and typing, Katie Fleming has now launched her 12th story “A Room in Waiting”.  This latest edition to her series is extremely detailed and a real pleasure to read. The story is one of the best Katie has made and it is a personal favourite of mine. If you haven’t read it yet, be sure to head over to http://tombraiders.net/katie/story12.html to read it!

 

Official Synopsis:
Like thousands of others before her, and true to her adventurous nature, the indomitable Lara Croft is fascinated by the mysterious and intriguing Maya civilization, deemed one of the brightest to have ever existed. Setting out on yet another of her famous quests, Lara journeys to Tikal, one of the most glorious locales of the Maya culture. Her explorations take her deep into the thick Guatemalan jungle, through ancient temples and tombs, as she solves age-old and fascinating puzzles and collects clues. What secrets did the Maya leave hidden beneath the lush jungle and deep in the cryptic temples? Only Lara finds the true answer, and the biggest secret of all, in the hidden room in waiting.

 

Katie’s Stories

  1. The Evil House
  2. Revenge of the Aztec Gods
  3. Lara’s Mansion – Death Trap?
  4. Search for Delphi                                  (Tales of Lara Croft)
  5. Sweat, Strength and Determination   (Core Design Competition winner)
  6. A New World, a New Life
  7. Run – and don’t stop
  8. The Lost City of Tsumeb
  9. The Strenuous Escapade                    (Katie’s favourite)
10. Premonitions                                       (Guns and Grapple’s Favourite)
11. Perilous Paradise                                (Katie’s favourite)
12. A Room in Waiting                              (Latest) (Guns and Grapple’s Favourite) (Katie’s favourite)

 

Screenshots
As well as having one of the most famous Tomb Raider fan fiction sites, Katie manages to capture, and post clear beautiful screenshots from all the Tomb Raider game including Angel of Darkness iDVD. Her screenshots website is also accompanied by several projects she has completed for example her mini Tomb Raider film and her 3D Max Croft Manor, as well as up to date and exclusive news on Tomb Raider Underworld.

Ms. Fleming has also posted a handful of screenshots taken from Fan Levels, dedicating an entire section of her website to it!

To see the screenshots and more info on Katie’s work visit http://tombraiders.net/katie/index2.html