A Prescient Title?

This is worth a look if, like me, you're interested in the lawless frontier between literature and games. It partners the wonderful Emily Short with the great new inklewriter tool:

First Draft of the Revolution

It's a neat premise, winningly executed. More of this sort of thing, please.

Interactive Fiction

The lovely Sue Howe has kindly hosted some of my ramblings about interactive fiction on her blog. Click HERE if you dare! (Or have a bit of time to kill...)

Summer Update

'Words With JAM' have just published my short story 'Saturday Superbus', an unholy fusion of my love for Samuel Beckett and my love for Saturday morning cartoons from the eighties. It's an honour to be included in such a great magazine. Subscriptions for both the print and online (free) editions can be arranged here.

Also, I'm very excited that 'New Dead Families' have accepted another of my stories, 'Agda', for their next issue. The current issue can be viewed here and is well worth a look - editor Zack Wentz is passionate about what he does and in my opinion he regularly publishes some of the most exciting and eclectic fiction on the net.

In other news, I've been helping write some of the dialogue for a retro-styled videogame, 'Rambros'. It's an all-American co-op shooter designed by the unfairly talented Paul Greasely and it ROCKS. If you've ever wanted to kick ass and enforce freedom on behalf of the greatest nation in the galaxy then this will be the game for you. It's due to be released in a few weeks but in the meantime its progress can be followed here. And if you're still not feeling AMERICAN enough, here's a picture of Macho Man Randy Savage to help you out:

Interview with the Zombie/Ninja

Smokelong Quarterly #36 went online today, featuring my story 'Zombie Vs Ninja' and an interview conducted by Dave Housley, who also selected the story. It was a thrill to be interviewed, and not just because he posed a question I've been waiting to be asked since I was about seven ("Who would win in a fight, a zombie or a ninja?") but also because I've just finished reading 'Ryan Seacrest is Famous', Dave's first collection of short stories, and he is so gifted it's almost vulgar.

You can read my interview here. How did I do?

Please read Dave's stories here. You won't regret it.

Strike a light!

It fills me with a great and terrible pleasure to announce that 'Pop Fiction', a collection of song-inspired stories which is already available in paperback, was released on kindle this week. It showcases some great work by authors I really admire and even finds room for two of my own stories - 'The Other Side', based on Bowie's 'Heroes' and 'Let's Get Physical!', based on 'Let's Get Physical!'. Here are the first few paragraphs of the latter, in case they tickle anyone's fancy:

How great is this? We’re just two guys getting fit together, hanging out and working on our bodies. Who knows, maybe we’ll have some fun while we’re doing it! People sometimes say to me "Herb, what would it take for you to make me a competition-level bodybuilder?" Well, my answer never changes, and it’s the same one I gave to you earlier. "Just turn up in your shorts," I say. Nine out of ten people never take that advice, but you’re the ten percent that makes my job worthwhile.

Let me start by explaining to you what your muscles do and why you need them:

There are more than six hundred muscles in the body. If you worked intensively on a different muscle each day, it would take you almost two years to get through every one of them. Two whole years, almost. To be honest, though, that’s not the ideal way to train.

The ideal way to train is to do exactly what we’re doing now. Find yourself a partner, someone you can trust and have fun with, and push each other to higher and greater things. My old training partner Raoul used to say it’s like a see-saw, only you’re both going up at the same time...