The Irreal Reader

 

I'm very excited to have one of my stories, 'The Kn!ghts of Slipway Seven', included in this anthology. The Cafe Irreal is one of my favourite places for new fiction and it's a real honour to be published alongside so many wonderful writers.

The Irreal Reader is available direct from Guide Dog Books or from Amazon.

By way of celebration, here is a recording of my not-very-dulcet tones reading 'While You Sleep', another story previously published by The Cafe Irreal. I recorded it a while back for a project which never took off so I figured I may as well post it here:
 

Gamebookery

Lots of interesting discussion at the moment about the future of books, games, gamebooks and interactive text. Notably here and here (where there is also an awesome looking hybrid of the whole lot in gestation).

Inkle's new adaptation of the 'Sorcery!' books looks like it could really break up some new ground and has inspired me to take the sheets off my old gamebook project, 'The Tower of Clavius Boon' and consider putting it into either Twine or inklewriter. I've tested out the latter approach here.

In other gamebook news, there is a new post over at Turn to 400. This is like a little Christmas for me.

The King of the Wood

I'm proud to have a few bits of writing (look out for the books lying around) in 'The King of the Wood' by allen. I was already a big fan of his previous game 'Good Morning, Commander' so I was really excited when he asked me to contribute and found out we were very much on the same page.

You can play it for free in your browser from here:

Agda

I'm thrilled to my marrow to announce that a new story of mine, 'Agda', has just been published in New Dead Familes #7. The strength of the other writing in this issue is phenomenal (a personal fave is 'The Value of Sea Urchin Heart Ice Cream') and my humble thanks go to multi-talented curator Zack Wentz for including me.

Anyone who reads 'Agda' might like to know that it is in no way autobiographical - my wife is wonderful and thankfully not given to acts of extreme sexual violence - but it is, in its own quiet way, one of the most personal things I have written. Any comments on it will be deeply appreciated.

I've also started work on a small game designed to teach me the rudiments of coding and pixel art so that I can see things from others' points of view more easily when collaborating. Anyway, I'm really enjoying the experience and hopefully I'll have something playable at the end of it. Here are a few little animations from the work so far:

A G-man

 A go-go dancer

 A Martian

  A crime scene

 A femme fatale

The progress of the game can be followed here.

Future Voices

Inklewriter have just released their Future Voices app, containing the eleven winning entries to their recent competition. I feel honoured that my own story, 'Your First Giant', is among them. It was a heap of fun to write and for anyone interested in writing interactive fiction I can't recommend inklewriter highly enough. It's very slick and intuitive, simple enough for anyone to pick up but with enough depth to allow the crafting of some pretty complex mechanics if you wish.

The app can be downloaded for FREE here.