Pirates Tag
You’re it!
Arr!
In celebration of the post-comp SCARLET SAILS being juuuuuuuussssssst about released into the world, I’ll be adding a “pirates” category to this blog.
I am SO SORRY there wasn’t one already. Very irresponsible of me.
The post-comp SCARLET SAILS app is twice as long as the (finished, and rather well-received) original, and it branches wildly from the first choice.
As soon as it’s released, it’ll be available on all the places you buy your apps. It’s fun, magical, sexy, and has plenty of rum and violence (often at the same time). In the post-comp version, you can choose what you wear and see the world differently depending on your chosen magical style.
I’ve set up just for piratical fun (of which, believe me, there is plenty to be had). It’ll be busy for the next few months, then much stealthier (until such time as the next pirate book comes out).
This photo is famous, not because I look so uncannily like Captain Jack Sparrow, but because this was taken the day I met and fell in love with my husband.
“Scarlet Sails” covers, redux
I wrote about designing the cover for SCARLET SAILS (aka my interactive pirate book….probably coming out within two months, yay!) over here.
The cover has to come in several versions, with very specific dimensions. So here’s what I have now:
All of the above (which I now realise should have borders so you can actually see the dimensions, but whatever) are the descendants of this lovely lady (below, with watermark to protect the artist), from Shutterstock.
You can see the changes I made (eye colour, feather, etc) for yourself. The middle image above is far too short and wide to have the same word-and-image-and-nothing-else design, so I went with a slightly different concept.
I think the key to this cover design is its simplicity, so I’m avoiding the temptation to mess with it too much. We’ll see how that goes.
I’ll be VERY interested to see how this book sells in comparison to “Attack of the Clockwork Army”, and especially what ratings it gets. I think I’ve grown as a writer (the book is longer, the backstory far simpler, and the setting familiar) but we’ll see!
And of course, I really like my covers. I’ll know if I’ve screwed up if people rate it badly based on their impression of the cover. Her prettiness probably suggests more romance than the book has, but we’ll see (allowing polyamory in the book is a treat for people who’d like to romance more than one character, but/and it was a nightmare to code).
HEART OF BRASS novel to be published May 2016
“Worst one I’ve played”: Reviewing the Reviewers
Or you can play directly through the publisher’s web site, here. That’s the simplest if you’re not tech savvy (although you’ll need a credit/debit card there).
On most sites, it LOOKS like the game is free, and has in-app purchases. This is just a backwards way of saying, “You can read the first bit before you pay for the rest.” It’s a one-off $5 payment.
I’ve started up a facebook page just for this specific gamebook (discussion, reviews and steampunk/Victorian-era fun), at https://www.facebook.com/attackoftheclockworkarmy/
The marching of metal feet
It’s been a long journey to publication (although laughably short compared to, say, STORMHUNTER) but ATTACK OF THE CLOCKWORK ARMY will be released very soon.
I am, naturally, delirious with excitement.
This is it! The steampunk Australia story I’ve been working on since before Louisette existed.
[The novel HEART OF BRASS is chronologically first in-world, but although I promise it will be available someday it’s still at least a year away from release. You can play with or without spoilers depending on what name you choose – the last name “Muchamore” means you are playing a character from the print book.]
The pictures above are strangely relevant. There is a particularly steampunk (and literally magical) hot air balloon in all three of the steampunk Australia stories I’ve written so far (the third is AFTER THE FLAG FELL). I used “research” as an excuse to go in a hot air balloon ride with my partner Chris years ago, and he loved it so much we later gave his parents a voucher for the balloon flight pictured above.
With the exception of a fanfic short story I wrote for friends some time ago, ATTACK OF THE CLOCKWORK ARMY is the first interactive story I’ve ever written. I set out to use the coding system of ChoiceScript (more on that system later!) to represent the emotional journey of a character in a novel.
A lot of interactive fiction features a protagonist who begins as a blank slate. This implies either a lack of agency or an inevitable “Mary Sue/Marty Stu” (boringly perfect, superpowered main character) but in fact the opposite is true.
I think of the reader as a co-writer. Would the protagonist be better played as a male or a female? What romantic relationship is the most interesting? Is the protagonist especially brave, skilled, clever, or kind – because it’s impossible to be all of the above at the same time? Is their family more important, or their patriotism?
Probably my favourite aspect of CLOCKWORK ARMY – other than the story and characters, which of course I’m in love with – is the fact that the protagonist has to choose a “fatal flaw” that has an effect on their abilities, experiences, and relationships. It is possible to overcome any of the fatal flaws, but it’s not easy to figure out how (each fatal flaw can be overcome in a completely different way). As far as I can tell with my noob knowledge, I’m the first person to do this in interactive fiction.
Unlike old-style Choose Your Own Adventure books, Choice of Games (the publisher, and the creators of the ChoiceScript program that I use) uses what they call “delayed branching”. Instead of numerous wildly different stories (most ending in startling death), the protagonist WILL make their way towards the same climax every time… but they will have a variety of different experiences there depending on their choices, personality, and skills (most of which are expressed through statistics, which you can click a button to check on, especially if you suspect a choice requires a particular ability).
So in the first chapter or two, you mostly get “free” abilities. As the game progresses, your choices are much more likely to involve success or failure depending on whether you’ve built up the right skill set to succeed in one way or another (eg if your swordfighting is rubbish but your chess-playing is masterful, then you really should choose the chess option to challenge your baddie). I like to have trickier choices at the end, where two abilities interact to decide whether your decision ends well or… not.
It’s possible to die in CLOCKWORK ARMY (in fact there are six different ways, I think) but it’s really quite difficult. So if you died, congratulations?
I find as a reader that I can ignore the statistics if I want, and simply make choices depending on my mood. I often play as a “nice” person, and the best interactive fiction I’ve read goes ahead and gives me a “nice” ending (say, befriending your enemies instead of killing them all).
A lot of interactive fiction is more about giving an experience (such as the experience of being mentally ill or transgender) rather than telling an action-packed adventure story. Not mine though – at least not yet. I just write adventures, like I always have.
If you like the idea of a steampunk romp set in Australia, you’ll love ATTACK OF THE CLOCKWORK ARMY.
Also, you can read it on your phone. You can even fight against the Australian independence movement if you like – just don’t tell the author. She might sic a pack of iron-fanged dingoes on you.
Interactive Fiction: My Shiny New Obsession
If you’ve set eyes on me for more than thirty seconds at any point this year, you know all about my shiny new obsession: interactive fiction. It’s the digital form of “Choose Your Own Adventure” novels.
As of seven minutes ago, my first publicly-available interactive fiction story is live (and also free… for now) right here – scroll down to the bottom of the linked page and click on this:
You don’t need anything more specialised than a computer, and you’ll read the book within a Firefox browser.
This particular story (which takes about twenty minutes to read) is about what happens when a two perpetual students fall through a portal into the magical, tropical world of Rahana. It’s a place where a pregnant queen’s island is under siege, and where a handshake can kill.
You, dear reader, are one of those perpetual students. You choose whether you’re male or female, happily single or crushing on your best friend (who just happens to fall through the portal with you – you also choose their gender). You decide whether you’re a natural fighter or a master manipulator; a doctor or a jack of all trades. When the battle begins, you can choose to kill or heal, to strategise or inspire. Even if you’re completely useless as a character, you get a good story out of it – and you can be someone completely different the next time you read it, too.
How does it work?
Funny you should ask.
As a player, it’s a simple matter of clicking your mouse (or in some cases your finger, since most interactive fiction can be read on smart phones) on the choice that looks best to you, then on the “Next” button to go to the next page. Your choices make a difference in various ways. Usually, choices change your statistics (for better or worse) – recording your personal traits, your relationships with others, and the skill/s you practise along the way. Later on in the game, those choices change your ability to succeed or fail in certain endeavours. You can check up on your stats along the way (there’s a button at the top of the screen), or ignore them and choose with your heart every time (that’s what I do, especially on the first read-through). I also like having “Achievements” listed as a tantalising hint of some of the story’s possibilities. There’s a button for achievements, too, but it’s not possible to gain all of them in a single play-through.
I really like the American company Choice of Games (yes, that’s why my spelling is suddenly non-patriotic) because they’re fun, non-graphic, and determined not to discriminate. In their games, it’s always possible (when relevant) to pick both your gender and orientation.
The lack of strong female characters in fiction magically disappears when a player chooses his/her own gender – and I love that!
So, that’s a lightning-fast preview of the big news I’ve been hinting at all year. “Down the Wombat Hole” isn’t even my first interactive novel…. but the details of the others will have to wait for another post! Let’s just say my days of steampunk and piracy are just beginning.
Oh, and by the way? It just so happens that “Down the Wombat Hole” is set in the same world as my print novel (coming out in 2016) “Stormhunter”. So if you’ve ever read a fantasy book and wished with all your heart you could visit it yourself, now is your chance.
Edited to add: “Down the Wombat Hole” is now part of a full-length collaborative game called LOST IN THE PAGES (with the new chapter title THE QUEEN’S CHILD, and no wombat).
And the small press Satalyte that was going to publish STORMHUNTER has stopped running, but Odyssey Books has just (as of October 2017) taken on the middle-grade pirate trilogy set in the same world, which suggests STORMHUNTER will sail again (it’s young adult, and set hundreds of years after the middle-grade trilogy, so it makes sense to publish the middle-grade trilogy first).
Supanova Sydney
Oh, wow. All the wows.
It got me when I found out Nathan Fillion would be there.
It got me when I found out Dr Karl would be there.
It got me when I saw a pack of medieval cosplayers, with enormous weapons, at Sydney Central.
It got me when I asked at Central how to get to Olympic Park, and the guy said, “For Supanova, you go to… ”
It got me when a fairy and a sith lord recognised each other from online photos, and started chatting on the train.
It got me when I saw the line: a thousand strong when I arrived on a weekday, moving quickly due to clever organisation, and more entertaining to watch than a marching band.
It got me when I saw faces coming out of a man’s chest.
It got me when I saw two people riding dinosaurs.
It got me when the automatic announcement said that weapons check-in was next to first aid.
It got me when I saw Weta Workshop’s Gollum-with-his-fish.
It got me when I couldn’t actually see the other end of the dealer room.
It got me when I saw the Tardis.
It got me when a pint-sized Wonder Woman got to meet a perfect Queen Elsa.
It got me when I ran into Keri Arthur, and Tracy M. Joyce, and Kevin J. Anderson, and Donna Maree Hanson.
It got me when the pink Deadpools started dancing.
It got me when a lady who custom-makes corsets for Gallery Serpentine said she’d love to host an event for my book in Melbourne.
It got me when male Loki bowed to female Loki.
It got me when I saw the weapons booths.
It got me in Artist Alley.
It got me when I saw Kaylee in overalls.
It got me when I saw Kaylee in That Dress from “Shindig”, sweeping the floor as she came.
It got me when Darth Vader and Queen Elsa wandered by, chatting.
It got me when John Jarratt hung out in the booth across from mine (my booth is 133 with Satalyte Publishing).
It got me when my publisher wandered off with the intern and left me to run the booth solo.
It got me when I bought a drink and they called me “Jack Sparrow”.
Oh, Supanova, how I love thee.
Saturday begins in an hour and a half! It’s super cheap to just show up!!
Do Pirates Squee?
This one does.
Fifteen – yes, fifteen – years ago I invented a fantasy world called Rahana based on Indonesia (I was sitting on a folding chair in a concreted Indonesian room attempting to listen to a sermon at the time). My idea was that if I had a rich and complicated world I could base a whole lot of books inside that world.
I was sick of white men dominating. . . everything. . . so I wanted a fantasy world that, to me, felt female. And non-white (much as my own heritage is Omo-white for generations). So I created a tropical world where there was enough magic that physical strength wasn’t necessarily important to gain power, and where art and storytelling was considered to be the most valuable (and best-paid) type of skill. People looked Indonesian, and people and place names were based on Indonesian words.
Soon after that, I began writing a young adult trilogy set in that world. Then I wrote a middle-grade trilogy set in the same world. Altogether so far I’ve written around half a million words and received seventy rejections just for this series.
Every time a book was rejected I asked myself, “Why was it rejected? How can it be better?”
The first book of the young adult trilogy has been edited so dramatically and so often it barely resembles the original draft (which I wrote in three weeks). Eventually, gradually, it became a good book. The simplest way to describe it is in three words:
Narnia with pirates.
A few days ago I received an offer of publication for that book – my paper baby – STORMHUNTER.
It’s really happening. My first book is going to be published. I can’t believe it. . . this is so great. . . I’m going to tell EVERYONE EVERYWHERE. . . pirates are so cool. . . this book helped me meet my husband. . . I’m going to sign books, and do conferences, and schmooze reviewers!. . . What the. . . has it really taken FIFTEEN YEARS!?!?!?!?
I won’t actually publish this blog entry until I have the green light to do so, but I thought I’d better write it now (Easter Sunday 2015). At the very beginning. [Observant readers will notice that I accidentally posted it at the time, then deleted the content. . . but left the tags, which are pretty awesome clues.]
Anything could happen from here. Ninety percent of published books flop. . . but I’ve come this far, and I intend to keep going. Ninety-nine percent of books don’t get published at all, so I’m doing pretty well 🙂
This is a picture of some of my pirate research – aboard the Young Endeavour sail training vessel at the tender age of twenty-three. That was ten years ago, and I was doing research specifically for STORMHUNTER. I guess it paid off, huh?
Some of my main audience wasn’t born when I came up with the idea for the world of Rahana. In fact, the middle grade readers weren’t born when this picture was taken five years later. What were YOU doing in the year 2000?
STORMHUNTER will be released in both print and digital formats in 2016, by Satalyte.
If you’re interested in writerly stuff, stick around and/or like my facebook page. TJ turns one in less than ten days, and after that this blog will be much more about writing (and piracy, and reading) than it has been for a long time.
If you want to know major announcements only (but reliably – unlike facebook), send me an email at fellissimo[at]Hotmail.com and I’ll add you to the official mailing list, which will average less than an email a month (including info on conferences I’m attending and book signings etc).
Squee!
Felicity Banks 