NaNo Oh No!
Astute viewers may have observed a certain lack of blog posts lately… a dearth of content that started just before November and is now ending just after November.
Not a coincidence.
November (and sometimes July) is National Novel Writing Month, when thousands of writers around the world attempt to write the first 50,000 words of their novel in a month. It’s a glorious, unhealthy, stressful ride.
This year I wrote a game. It’s a magical murder mystery named “Death at the Rectory”. It’ll most likely be available via Choice of Games’s “Hosted Games” label sometime in 2019.
It’s set at a very real, very specific location: the 140 year-old rectory of St John’s Anglican Church in Gundagai. It’s no coincidence that my mother is currently the priest there (until the end of this year). Every time I go there I think how amazing it would be to have a writing retreat there (bags not organise such a thing, though) because of the history of the house and the ridiculously high number of external doors (8, almost all in bedrooms). And incredible views from a deck that wraps around three sides of the house.
The idea of doing a fictional writing retreat there percolated in my brain for a while, and now it’s a fully-written interactive fiction story. With murder. And magic.
(This is the church, which is even older than the rectory—and right next door, too.)
By “fully” written I mean there are over 50,000 words, the quality of which I cannot vouch for.
Zipper is doing just fine, for those who come here exclusively for the cat pics.
Felicity Banks 
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