Whyyyyyyyy?
It’s taken a few days for me to get my head together enough to blog again.
Louisette is slightly bewildered by all the people who have given money to charity because of her generosity. She knows she’s done something special, and as far as she’s concerned life is normal now (even if she’s going without her allowance for a while). Normality means watching “Peppa Pig”, asking me for lollies every few minutes, and hiding her brother’s favourite toy under the couch.
Lucky she’s cute.
Some reassuring news: It’s very clear from statistics in places like this that the majority of Trump supporters are old white men (shocking, right?) and in fact the majority of votes from people under 45 years old were for Hillary (let alone the overall majority of voters, altogether).
This is not because people over 45 are intrinsically bad. The simple fact is that white people like myself are the majority in the Western world, and can have a happy fulfilled life without once giving a thought to the life experiences of people who have a different skin colour. Anyone living in the Western world with darker skin will not be allowed to go through life without being reminded constantly of their skin colour and how it makes their life harder. So we live parallel lives; same place, different experience.
White people, as the more powerful majority, have to make an effort if they want to to understand racism. That knowledge is unpleasant, and it just goes on and on. I only learnt in my 30s that “watermelon” and “African American” is a symbol for “African Americans are lazy”. (It’s really not a thing in Australia, but we have plenty of racist symbols and ideas of our own.) Now that I know about watermelons, I have to be careful that when I’m writing a story that happens to have an African American character in it, he or she must never eat watermelon. Ditto Fried Chicken. And a whole list of other things. All accompanied by both an inherited and a present guilt: inherited, because the simple fact is that (regardless of my own genuine and painful struggles) my life is better because my white ancestors destroyed the first residents of Australia (in ways that are still destroying lives today); present, because while I eat raw cookie dough and watch “The Flash” (true story) other people are starving. For the price of my cable subscription I could literally save lives.
My comparatively-pleasant life is built on generations of racism and greed. That’s not an easy truth to live with. White people who make an effort to actually understand what racism means tend to work hard to get to a certain point of understanding, and then stop. If you fought and risked your life to abolish slavery, abolishing the n-word seems like an incredibly minor quibble. So don’t hate the older people for having a less-nuanced understanding of racism than younger people, who had a much better starting point (thanks to the work done by those same older people).
Having said that, racism is racism. A lot of people didn’t vote Trump BECAUSE he’s openly racist (many certainly did), but everyone who did vote for Trump decided racism was no big deal. And they were so, so, wrong. As expected, incidents of racism, sexism, homophobia and religious persecution immediately rose after Trump’s victory.
John Scalzi explains non-deliberate racism neatly here.
There is a bit of genuine stupidity mixed in, too. Trump was popular among the rural poor because he is a symbol for success*, for “saying it like it is”*, for destroying the political elite*, and for “making America great again”*.
*He has declared bankruptcy several times and run several business ventures into the ground and/or based entire businesses on fraudulent schemes (such as the infamous Trump University).
*He lies constantly.
*Did I mention he was born rich?
*America actually IS great, in so many ways, but YES the rural poor get ignored and things have been going downhill for a while. Great article here. So a lot of the “burn it all down” attitude to politics comes from a place of desperation. But the saddest thing is that Trump is going to reduce affordable health care and give tax breaks to corporations, while Hillary was going to close corporate tax-dodging loopholes. So Hillary would have helped—a little—but Trump will actively make things worse for those who most need help.
So, in conclusion, Trump is bad news on a fundamental human level. I’ll leave his economics and the possibility of war for another day.
If you’d like to mourn, here is one man’s letter to his wife, and here is the song echoing around the world this week.
Regular readers are already aware that my knee-jerk reaction to this awful news is to give to charity. It’s an excellent knee-jerk reaction, and many other people are also giving right now.
Here’s a great list of charities that support all the groups Trump hates (including environmental groups). Trump is, in his own way, incredibly inspiring.
My second reaction is to gather together my potentially-vulnerable friends (women. Muslims. Non-Caucasian people. LGBTIQ people) and ask what I can do to help. I’ll be having a house party on the weekend Trump becomes president, and hopefully drowning out some of the hate with ice cream and scones (keeping in mind that public transport will be riskier than usual that weekend, because a lot of nasty incidents are happening there, or at petrol stations, or workplaces or anywhere that vulnerable people might be alone in public). I’ll be wearing a safety pin, since that has become an easily-recognisable way to say, “I am a safe space. If you need help, I’m here.” (Keeping in mind that there is a small number of people wearing a safety pin deliberately to help them find victims for their hate. Also keep in mind that if you’re wearing a safety pin you need to be prepared to act if someone is in trouble.)
Here’s an illustrated guide to helping someone facing an Islamophobic attack.
Some people are urging others to argue with their racist (etc) relatives and friends. Arguing rarely brings about kindness, so I think the better move is to find common ground. Keep in mind that very few people set out to cause harm in the world, and even the horrible things people say come from their own sense of vulnerability.
The Bible says that perfect love drives out fear, which is an extraordinary concept. Psychology says that when we meet people from a different social group, we rapidly grow to like and understand them (ie when we love them, the fear goes away). Right now I feel pretty unimpressed with anyone that voted for Trump—which means that I don’t truly understand what they love and care about and fear. I bet we have a lot in common… and the fact that I found that sentence so hard to write explains why I’m part of what’s dividing people. That needs to change. I need to change.
Four years
I’m crying, but it’s not sadness.
My husband Chris and I have been following the US election with increasing horror today. We both chose not to speak openly in the car on the way home, because our kids were with us. We exchanged a few careful words, and I asked Chris to drive. He knew without asking that I was too upset to drive safely.
TJ fell asleep.
Louisette is four years old, a pre-schooler in a Peppa Pig shirt and a baseball cap. She picked up on the vibe and asked, “What’s wrong?”
Chris looked alarmed as I opened my mouth to explain today’s election: “A country a long long way away has just chosen their President. I don’t think they made a good choice. He’s… mean. I think now he will be able to be mean to more people.”
Louisette was silent, thinking.
“It’s a very very long way away,” said Chris.
Damage control.
“Yes,” I said. “On the other side of the world. And there are lots of other politicians who will also be making the laws and all that kind of thing. The whole system of government is designed especially so that if someone mean is the president, they can’t do too many bad things.”
“A long, long way away,” said Chris.
“That man doesn’t hurt people on purpose,” I said. “But when people ask him for help, he says no.”
“That country is all the way on the other side of the world,” said Chris. “Really super far away.”
“And you know what?” I said. “I bet all the kind people in that country—and even us, right here in Australia—will be extra super kind and we will look after all the people who need help.”
“How?” she said.
I’d just received a “Really Useful Gifts” magazine in the mail. They have a wide range of physical items—a goat, a well, a school—that are labelled with prices eg for $50 you can buy a goat so a family has a source of milk, cheese, and future income (if they have a boy and a girl goat…).
When we got home and sorted out the inevitable chaos of bags and drinks of milk and the parental win of transferring TJ into his bed without waking him, I showed Louisette the magazine.
Louisette has an allowance of $1 per week. Sometimes she buys a 50 cent lolly. A lot of the time she saves it up. Sometimes she dips into her savings and buys herself a toy.
I steered Lizzie towards the things she’d understand best in the magazine: A school. Chickens. A vegetable garden (she always claims to love vegetables, although when we put them on her plate she says things like, “I meant in Summer I like them; not today.”)
She was excited that she could give these presents to someone she’d never met. I told her she had $20 saved up, and that she could spend as little or as much of it as she liked. I told her I would put in the same amount of money that she did.
We kept coming back to chickens. And a small business. And a pre-school. And adult literacy (she was shocked at the concept of someone who was all grown up but still couldn’t read. Reading is hard). And a vegetable garden.
I warned her that if she got all those things her money would be gone. All of it.
“What about my flower?” she asked.
I remembered it well: A little plastic thing with a smiling face that bobbed back and forth. It was the first toy she bought for herself with her own money.
“Actually,” I admitted, “that’s broken. It cost $3. So if you bought all of these things, you would have to wait three weeks with absolutely no lollies or buying anything. Then you could buy a new flower.”
“Okay,” she said. “Then I will buy no lollies for weeks and weeks, and I will buy this”— A school building—”and this”—a clinic—”and all those other things too.”
That’s when my eyes started to mist over. I counted up the cost. $80. Every bit of me wanted to buy it all with my own money, and let her keep her allowance. “That’s a lot of things, Louisette. You’d get no allowance at all for weeks and weeks and weeks.”
She nodded gravely. “You’d get no money at all—not even one single dollar—for weeks and weeks. Not until your birthday.”
An unimaginable distance.
“Yes,” she said. “That’s what I want to do.”
A lot of people feel scared of a lot of things right now. We feel helpless.
I can’t change the world, but I can change it for a few of the people who need it the most. I can be kind. I can learn about other cultures and get to know people who aren’t exactly like me—Mexicans. Homosexuals. Muslims. Trump supporters.
I can find out what we have in common, even if it takes some digging sometimes.
I can change an entire village in another part of the world by giving it a school, clinic, small business opportunity, and chickens.
I can teach my children to respond to fear by being more kind, by making more friends, and by giving more of whatever we have to give.
Four years feels like a long time. For my daughter, it’s a lifetime. But in a world that seems to be getting darker and meaner… there she is. There I am. There you are.
The world is a beautiful place.
If you’d like your money to be more effective where it’s needed most, skip the charity gimmicks and give money to a reputable company like World Vision or Oxfam.
Same story but without the Trump stuff (so it’s more shareable):
My four-year old daughter Louisette was thrilled to discover that she could use her allowance to buy presents for people she’d never met—and her presents could help them have better food, water, and jobs!
Her allowance is $1 per week and she’d saved $20. I told her that I’d give the same amount of money she did, and we looked at the “Build a Village” range and some other things that made sense to her, like chickens and adult literacy. She is learning to read and she knows it‘s hard work but super important… especially with a mother who’s a writer!
We had to choose so carefully. She paused and asked me about a toy she wanted to buy. I told her that it cost $3 so if she wanted to give her whole savings away she would have no money at all for three whole weeks and then she could buy the toy.
“Well,” she said. “I want to buy the school, and the clinic, and the vegetable garden, and the chickens, and the pre-school, and the one that teaches a grown-up to read. So if I have no money at all for weeks and weeks and weeks, can I do that?”
“That would be a very, very long time,” I told her. “All the way to your birthday… with no money at all.”
“And then I can give them all those things?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Then that’s what I really really want to do.”
Louisette loves to dress as SuperGirl, and pretend to help people. Today she made a difference to people in the real world. https://www.usefulgifts.org
Romance stats from “Choices”
My day job is writing for Tin Man Games. I’m co-writer on “Choices: And The Sun Went Out” and writer on “Choices: And Their Souls Were Eaten”.
They are both serial/subscription phone app stories (with the banner name of “Choices: And The Sun Went Out” on itunes and Android), that release a new piece of story roughly once per week.
One of the cool things about the app is that each arc (that is, four weeks) the players get to actually see how many other players are on the same path they are.
Spoilers from “Choices: And The Sun Went Out” coming!!!!!!
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In “Choices: And The Sun Went Out” there are two possible love interests (both bisexual; the protagonist’s gender is never specified).
Sharon is a blonde Australian taxi driver with an adult daughter. She uses a bunch of Australian slang, drives like a (talented) maniac, and is addicted to danger.
Etienne is a Canadian Park Ranger of Middle Eastern descent. He’s a pacifist with a philosophical bent, and he can handle himself in a fight (…when he has to. Which is often).
Over time, the player was given several opportunities to flirt with each potential love interest, and we kept track of whether players chose to flirt or not (and how often).
Finally, in Arc 13 (yep, that’s thirteen months into the story!) we finally let the romance go ahead… if a player had been sufficiently flirtatious. We also let the player say no to romance if they wished.
We were dying with curiosity about which one of our love interests proved more popular. And the winner is…….
Well set me on fire and call me barbie… it’s Sharon!
The lovely Sharon walked off into the sunset (and by sunset I mean “hail of bullets” because the story’s climax is happening right now) with 45% of players.
Etienne snagged 30%, and the remaining 25% opted out of romance this time.
Do we have more male players than female? No idea. More males play video games, but more females play phone games. (Looking at public reviews, it looks like almost twice as many males are leaving reviews, but there are a lot of things that could be skewing those results.)
At present I’m writing the “China” side of the story. 42% of players are with me (and the other 58% are in Russia).
Here’s where it gets even more interesting.
In Russia (written by Alyce Potter, who created the character of Sharon), 67% of characters fell for Sharon, while 14% fell for Etienne.
But in China, 50% of characters fell for Etienne and 19% fell for Sharon.
I confess I have my own bias: Although I usually prefer women in fiction, Etienne (written by KG Tan who later surrendered his side of the writing to me because he has so many other jobs to do for Tin Man Games) is my favourite in this story.
It seems our natural biases worked for us… but how? We’ve been building up the romance for months across storylines that meandered all over the globe. Is there some third factor that drew players (and myself) to both China and Etienne or to both Russia and Sharon?
Statistics can’t answer that one…
Conflux 2016
Conflux is Canberra’s speculative fiction conference. It happens every year on the October long weekend (even when that means starting in September, like in 2016 and 2017).
Each year features guests of honour from around Australia and the world; panels on a variety of topics (including deliciously blatant fanfests); workshops; book launches; pitching sessions; a dealer room; and opportunities to hang out with like-minded people (some of whom happen to be authors with varying degrees of fame). A few people do cosplay, which is always fun.
The reason I’m able to handle conferences when I can barely handle dropping my kids at school is simple: adrenaline. I’m generally moderately with it as long as I feel like I’m performing.
In 2014 TJ was a teensy baby and I had a sudden thought: I hadn’t finished a full original novel since Louisette was born in 2012. Had I lost the knack?
At around the same time I noticed there were five possible pitching sessions at Conflux: A large publisher, three smaller publishers, and an agent. I decided to pitch to every single one with a different book. That meant writing a brand new book in a couple of months (which I pitched to the agent, so I had time to edit it before any publishers saw it). That book is “Flight of Fancy.”
Satalyte accepted my pirate young adult fantasy novel “Stormhunter”. For various reasons it hasn’t been published yet, but it’s going to be published eventually. I love doing pitching sessions with publishers, because they’re always nice people and they like meeting authors.
In 2015 I pitched “Flight of Fancy” and “Heart of Brass”. Odyssey Books ultimately accepted “Heart of Brass”, which meant that this year I FINALLY had a book to actually sell to people!
This year at Conflux I ran an interactive fiction workshop (lots of writers attend the conference every year), assisted with several panels (especially the steampunk ones), actually attended one session (very rare for me, since I get sore sitting in chairs without masses of adrenaline helping me out), and spent hours hanging out in the dealer room (mostly on the Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild (CSFG) table rather than the Odyssey table, because there were four other Odyssey people there and it was crowded). The familiar tension of, “Why am I talking on a panel when I don’t even have a novel published?” was gone (it’s worth pointing out that I haven’t gotten any smarter or more interesting than last year – panellists should be readers, but their writing life is almost always irrelevant), and I enjoyed the new tension of, “I’m absolutely trying to sell my book here”.
Our family car died suddenly the day before Conflux, so travel was complicated (especially with the uncharacteristically vicious weather), which complicated matters. My interview on interactive fiction at the local ABC 666 radio station was an unexpected bonus.
It was definitely fun chilling out with friends (Odyssey, Satalyte, CSFG, and others) and I think I recognised about 60% of the people. Conflux is my “home” conference, and the CSFG (which runs it) is a truly excellent group of people.
I enjoyed taking stupid pictures of my book, too.
This year people walked past the bar/restaurant on the way to the conference, so there was plenty of hanging out over food/drinks which was really excellent too.
This Saturday I’ll be at the Book Expo in Parramatta (Sydney), which I’ve never been to before. It’ll be interesting to see what it’s like!
Tick Tock
The mechanical spider was built by Justin Gershenson-Gates at A Mechanical Mind. The image was used with permission (Image 2 is filtered).
https://www.facebook.com/amechanicalmind/
https://www.etsy.com/shop/amechanicalmind/
I’m figuring out images for my newest interactive story, “Stuff and Nonsense”. Images are easier if they’re linked to a url. So this entry will continue having pics added.
“Stuff and Nonsense” cover
I’m learning Twine while writing a game for the IF Comp. If I want to put an image into the game, the simplest way is to link to a url. Specifically, this one. Probably. If I’m doing this right.
Photographer: Jody Cherry (Exposure Studios)
Hair & Make-up: Jody Cherry (Cherrish Hair & Make-up Artistry)
Model: Amelia Brown
Cropped to fit and text added (with permission) by Felicity Banks
And from The British Museum’s AMAZING collection of historical images:
And some pictures of a pocket watch that I just took:
Weak Words
I haven’t posted any writing advice in a while, possibly because a lot of my work is out there now and anything I say is likely to be hypocritical and I’m scared of people pointing that out.
But here is a great, simple, well-explained infographic on words that should be dragged out and shot. Take a look!
Adventures in Melbourne
Last Friday morning I flew to Melbourne, meeting my Tin Man Games workmates in 3-D for the first time. I flew home Saturday night.
On Saturday I ran a social meet-up before the Participatory Storytelling Panel at the Brimbank Writers and Readers Festival.
I’ve been wanting to go to Melbourne for a while, and it was the Participatory Storytelling Panel that gave me the excuse I needed (thank you to Phil Minchin, on the left in the above photo, for all the hard work you do—and for this panel in particular).
I also took the opportunity to deliver 35 copies of “Heart of Brass” to a whole bunch of bookshops, starting at Dymocks Watergardens and including Dymocks Geelong, Geelong Market Square, Knox, Prahran, Southlands, Camberwell, and Doncaster, as well as Andrew’s Book Store (Ivanhoe).
The Watergardens books are signed.
So.
How was Melbourne?
Rainy. It rained all day Friday, and loomed all day Saturday. I spotted small patches of blue sky after the panel was finished (as I was on my way to the airport). It was raining again by the time my plane boarded. (Do I even need to mention that every second person I saw told me how stunning and downright summery the weather had been just before I arrived?)
I really enjoyed the way so many of Melbourne’s central buildings were highlighted in brilliant colour, looking bright and beautiful even in the Melbourney weather. The buildings also worked incredibly hard to be any shape but rectangular. Some created optical illusions with paint. Some were actually curved. Others had random geometric shapes sticking out. The great thing about all the crazy colours and shapes was that they made excellent combinations when viewed from a range of different angles. You’ll have to take my word for it, because I didn’t take a camera (with over 40 books in my suitcase, I was keen to cut down on luggage).
Someone on a bus gave me their seat, presumably believing I was pregnant (absolutely worth it, for once). On another occasion two men got into a punch-up while I sat waiting for a taxi outside a shopping centre. It was terribly exotic, but not exactly a great advertisement for Melbourne.
How was travelling?
I was super, super excited about staying in a hotel. A clean room, AND a room I didn’t have to clean after myself or anyone else? A whole night without anyone screaming at and/or near me? A bed with only my own limbs to injure myself on? Waking up to the sweet tones of my phone alarm instead of spending the first ten seconds of my day immediately dealing with more urine and more screaming? Walking to the bathroom without noticing ten things I should probably fix/clean/move along the way?
Food delivered to my room, where I could eat in bed and watch TV, all without interruptions AND in my PJs??
I stayed in a hotel without room service (WHY EVEN BOTHER TRAVELLING?), that was so small I kept bumping into the walls. But it had a TV and a bed and an ensuite, and that was awesome. And I didn’t hear any screaming, and no one peed on me. So that was special.
Melbourne trains don’t go to the airport, which is stupid. Getting to and from airports is often surprisingly complex, so I picked a hotel with a shuttle bus—which turned out to mean catching the skybus from the airport followed by a “loop” bus that goes to a list of hotels. It wasn’t a fast or pleasant process, but it did eventually get me there. I left home at 7am for an 8:30-9:30am flight, and arrived at the hotel around 12. After five hours of travelling I was pretty tired, but I prettied myself up as much as possible in a short time and took out my home-printed google maps to make sure I got to the Tin Man Games office, SMSing as I left the hotel to let them know I was close by.
And so it was that I walked half an hour through steady rain to the place Tin Man Games used to be located, many years ago. I was exhausted, sore, sweaty, and in precisely the wrong direction.
From there I caught a taxi, and reevaluated my abilities—both physical and mental. Everyone does dumb things sometimes, but that was me at my best. I prepared for weeks. I was careful. I had backup plans.
I missed so many things, and made so many mistakes along the way… and I’m going to keep making bizarrely obvious mistakes for at least another couple of years (while my brain recovers from a long period of daily migraines). The simple fact is that I’m not mentally or physically capable of basic functionality outside of my own carefully-constructed routine.
From then on I didn’t really travel alone. People looked after me at various points, and the rest of the time I relied on taxis. Taxis are stupidly expensive, and they often don’t come when/where you need them most. I can’t rely on them to help me.
So I need to have a serious think about whether I can do that sort of thing—independent interstate travel—ever again.
On the other hand, although I’m a bit stiff and sore, I’m incredibly refreshed and optimistic. There’s something about travelling that refreshes me from the inside out. So I need to think about that too.
Professionally…
I very much enjoyed hanging out with my Tin Man Games people. They really are exactly as smart and funny and chilled-out in real life as they are on skype. The up side of networking is that people in the same creative industries as me are often really fun to talk to. We actually ran into a few other people at lunch, which was a nice bonus.
The official IF meetup was small but high-quality, with exactly one person representing almost every single facet of my interactive fiction life: a young adult fantasy author, a Choice of Games writer, a Tin Man Games writer/programmer, the organiser of the Participatory Storytelling Panel, and a coupla randoms. Most of us went to the panel too.
I had thought the panel would feel long, at 1.5 hours, but it didn’t. Each one of us could have easily talked the entire time, because we love our subject manner and spend a large chunk of our waking hours thinking about it. It may well have been the best panel I’ve ever been on. The audience was cool too—smart and thoughtful and involved.
Professionally, the trip was a raging success. I also had a great time in between the travelling parts.
The gentlemen pictured are Wade Dyer, inventor of the tabletop role-playing universe Fragged Empire, and Phill Krins, who is one of the organisers of the spectacular Swordcraft live-action games.
I hope someday we meet again.
Drinks with umbrellas in them
The other day I saw a random stock photo of people sitting on banana lounges by a pool sipping tropical drinks from pineapple halves.
I don’t have a bucket list (the last thing I need is another to-do list) but I immediately tweeted that my life was incomplete because I’d never drunk out of a pineapple.
So today, our shopping list included two whole pineapples and a coconut. Chris has long since learned to obey strange requests, so he bought them without comment (he does the shopping).
Here’s what I made, adjusted from here since I’m incapable of just following a recipe (but if you want a proper one with measurements and stuff, go there).
Step 1: Freeze milk into ice cube trays. You will use half of one normal-sized tray.
Step 2: Gather ingredients:
-Milk frozen into cubes (as above)
-2 pineapples (For me, the edible parts added up to about 500g including juice.)
-Milk from one coconut (roughly 200mL) or a can (400mL)
-Natural, vanilla, or coconut yogurt
-A pack of those teeny paper umbrellas
-Straws (plastic or metal can stand straight up in a pineapple cup, but you’ll need to be careful to clean them immediately after drinking or they’ll get super gross).
Optional:
-Some banana (but be cautious; the drink needs to be able to get through a straw if you don’t want to eat it with a spoon).
-Grated coconut (possibly fresh, if you’re up for it)
-Ice (again, keeping in mind that one can’t drink from the rim of a pineapple so you’ll probably have to use either huge large blocks that stay out of your straw’s way, or crush your ice VERY finely).
-A thermomix. Thermomix smash!
Could be interesting/awesome:
-Other tropical fruits (mango?)
-Avocado
-Sweetened condensed milk
Step 3: Extract most of the pineapple from your pineapples without stabbing them through (or stabbing yourself at all).
I used a large knife to cut them in half (making four “cups”) then made a cross-hatch through the fruity part (like a noughts-and-crosses board with the pineapple core in the centre). Then I used a metal spoon to scoop out various bits, sorting them into fruit and core and cutting again as needed (I took the good fruit out first, then cut a + into the core so I could take it out in pieces). Every so often your “cup” will get super juicy – just pour it into your blender and keep going.
Leave plenty of pineapple in the “cup”.
Step 4: Get the milk out of the coconut. I stabbed it with a skewer and then drained it through a strainer (to catch any random bits from the outside of the coconut) into a bowl. (It works better if you stab more than one eye; for me only one worked. I ended up standing over the sink shaking the coconut until it was empty which took a couple of minutes and was actually kind of fun.)
Step 5: Thoroughly blend pineapple chunks, coconut milk, your frozen milk cubes, and four good dollops of yogurt.
Step 6: Check the taste and texture, and adjust if necessary.
Step 7: Pour into pineapple cups and (if you have time) stick it in the fridge for up to an hour and/or add ice cubes. Leftovers will need a jug or something.
Step 8: Add straws, metal spoons (enthusiastic people can manually extract more pineapple from their cups), and (optional) grated coconut to garnish.
Serves four, including multiple refills.
Choices: And Their Souls Were Eaten
I’ve been working very hard on this story app for Tin Man Games all this year, and I’m incredibly proud of it.
The beginning is free, and the rest costs a few dollars (or a LOT of ads if you choose that option on Android).
It’s a subscription story that releases a new section each week. There are between 2 and 7 strands happening at any one time, with both delayed and instant branching.
Some of you are already subscribed to the award-winning “Choices: And the Sun Went Out” (I’m a co-writer there). In that case, you’re already subscribed to “Choices: And Their Souls Were Eaten”. (Congratulations!)
The original story, the near-future scifi game “Choices: And The Sun Went Out” will end in December this year. The second story, “Choices: And Their Souls Were Eaten” will be “medium-length”. Ultimately it’ll work out to be around half a million words.
On Apple, a subscription to either story gets you a subscription to both.
You can choose to have certain character/s speak to you through your apple watch, if you have one. (That, the music, and the sound effects can all be switched on or off – I like the music off but the sound effects on.)
On Android, you can buy (or earn by watching a LOT of ads) Story Passes, which can be spent on either story.
“Choices: And Their Souls Were Eaten” is my project from the start; a steampunk adventure set in 1830s Europe when Queen Victoria was a teen princess and strange monsters roamed Europe. It uses the same magical steampunk universe as my novel “Heart of Brass2” and the ChoiceScript game “Attack of the Clockwork Army” but there aren’t any spoilers.
One of the features of the subscription system is that the writers (I have paid editors who happen to be excellent writers as well, and I encourage them to add cool bits) can adjust the story based on suggestions from readers. I’ve been known to add pirates, name characters after fans, and so on—all based on what people seem to like.
Place your random requests here, if you like!
Felicity Banks 