As you step under the porch of your late grandmother’s house you notice the front door is wide open. How strange, seeing that you were the only person meant to clean out the house.
You step through the treshhold into the decrepit old house looking cautiously from side to side, trying to pick up any tiny signs that might suggest an intruder.
The first thing you see, the wide, dust layered staircase, leads into darkness. You wonder whether you should take them for a moment, then you see faint marks where the dust had been disturbed. You cautiously inch your way across the hall taking care not to step on anything. Who knows what is out there.
You’re almost up the stairs when your foot suddenly steps onto nothing and you fall through what seems to be a hole in the stair. Screaming and cursing the ‘crummy old house’, you land with a surprisingly soft thud. As you feel your way along the wall looking for a way out your hand skims over a light switch you flick it downwards and a faint light comes from the bare bulb hanging from the low ceiling. You walk onwards towards a rickety, winding stair case much longer than the main one in the hall. As you reach the top you see an old sign saying ‘The Attic’ and a grotty piece of paper stuck underneath. You bend forwards to read it.
Wondering why such a paper is there, you make your way to enter.
As the door creaks open into ‘The Attic’ you feel a hand clasp over your mouth. The intruder drags you away towards a cage at the very end of the room, containing several people looking just as scared as you are, and locks you in. “Have fun with your new friends” he growls.
*Stolen from a really old Attic*
*looks around* This place is looking nice. Must have been redecorated recently!
I just had to sign up and nab my usual username. There can only be one hydramate and that is me!
I have also registered. Although with a different username! You’ll never guess who I am…
So if we are to carry user ranks over to the new board what would you like to see? The previous ones were all based on concepts from Alex Rider and Power of Five, should we retain those or use something completely different?
I like the Alex Rider ones because they’re what brought me here in the first place! I’d be open to new AR ones though.
I’m not so sure about keeping the same ones. I think it would be nice to reflect the diversity of Anthony Horowitz’s different works in the titles, especially considering that any new works that might bring fans to the board will most likely not be those two series.
One thought is, if you have the information to hand, make each rank from a different series in order of sales/views. I’m not sure how you could compare data from Foyle’s War to book sales but I’ll leave that up to you 
Hi guys, nice to meet you all!
I like the idea of adding a few new titles from Anthony’s other work, whilst we’re updating and all - it would probably just have to be ‘Detective’ if we’re looking at Foyle’s War.
Sherlock Holmes described himself as the world’s first ‘Consulting Detective’ and the ‘Baker Street Irregulars’ (Sherlockian intelligence agents) turn up a few times.
James Bond was an ‘Intelligence Officer’, but just ‘Spy’ might do there? There are lots of other options from Bond; Operative, Secret Service, Quartermaster (what Q stands for, or just Q Branch aka Q Division), Commander….etc etc
There are a lot of the old Alex Rider and Power of Five titles that I really like though and should be kept. I do agree with hydramate - it’ll be tough to decide how to rank them. I imagine most of the old Assassins would want to keep that as the top rank?
Here are my suggestions, let me know what you think! I’ve tried to order in terms of how rare or special they are, how much training you’d need and varying between each book/show etc. (also I don’t know how many there are supposed to be, so I went with a round 10):
- Agent
- Detective
- Spy
- Baker Street Irregular
- Diamond
- Consulting Detective
- Quartermaster
- Scorpia
- Gatekeeper
- Assassin
Thanks, Lauren
Hi Lauren, are you new?
Can I be cheeky and suggest that we have nexus member as the ultimate ranking? Because I always remember that being the most elusive rank and it was awesome that we only had one member with it.
Hi Rocket - yes I am new! I’m Anthony’s assistant, so I’ll be here trying to keep the website updated as much as possible.
Nexus sounds good, I don’t see why not? This is where my AH forum inexperience shows, so all suggestions are really helpful.
Hi Rocket - yes I am new! I’m Anthony’s assistant, so I’ll be here trying to keep the website updated as much as possible.
Nexus sounds good, I don’t see why not? This is where my AH forum inexperience shows, so all suggestions are really helpful.
Oh hiiiii! That’s so exciting! The last time we had a new admin, she disappeared pretty quickly, so I hope you can stay around for longer :D
Hi Rocket - yes I am new! I’m Anthony’s assistant, so I’ll be here trying to keep the website updated as much as possible.
Nexus sounds good, I don’t see why not? This is where my AH forum inexperience shows, so all suggestions are really helpful.
Oh hiiiii! That’s so exciting! The last time we had a new admin, she disappeared pretty quickly, so I hope you can stay around for longer :D
Well when we were making the new site, Anthony was insistent that he wants it to be updated regularly as I know it previously tailed off a bit. Now we have a CMS webpage I can update it from my computer, rather than emailing poor xero and getting him to do it all the time, so I’ll be online much more often 
Aw yeah - that’s awesome! 
Would there be any possibility of Anthony doing a Q&A on here at some point? Or even if he could do a blog post like he used to do way back when? It might boost a little more activity on to the board? Also, d’you have any idea when the board is going officially live?
Sorry for all the questions haha, I’m really excited about this! (Tis still a bit quiet on here, all my excitement is directed at you haha)
Aw yeah - that’s awesome!
Sorry for all the questions haha, I’m really excited about this! (Tis still a bit quiet on here, all my excitement is directed at you haha)
It would be great to get Anthony to do an exclusive Q+A here. I’ll let Lauren see if she can arrange that.
As regards when we are re-launching the site, I have a few more fixes to do and then once Lauren get’s the green light from Anthony we are good to go. Hopefully not more than a day or two.
I love the new site!!! It looks so much fresher than the old one (probably the lack of black) and Anthony’s intro is awesome - not much luck in finding the AR name though XD
Glad to hear you like it. I couldn’t find the AR name either but it’s definitely there!
I have read the article about 20 times and still can’t find the AR name. I’m going to do it though - I will find it!!!
