“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.
Braaaaaiiiiinnnnsssss!!!
A little while ago I had an MRI (to investigate possible causes of migraines and confusion). Other than not having brain cancer, the best part was the pictures.
Update
For those stumbling across this (retired) site, I’m at felicitybanks.wordpress.com
Space! Etc!
I promised to post a link to STARSHIP ADVENTURES when it was a fully-functional gamebook. It is now… go play!
It was written by five people, including me, and is a cheesy sci-fi romp through time and space. You can choose to be male, female, or of a non-specified gender, and you can choose to be an awesome jetpack-wearing hero or a hard-nosed space captain wearing a unitard (or any combination of the above). Just watch out for brain leeches, nanobots, and carnivorous plants.
At the moment it’s easy and free to play it online through the link above AND editorial comments can still make a difference… so if you have any issues with it, tell me!
The enormous and impressive Interactive Fiction Comp is now online… and you can help judge all the entries!!
The Windhammer Prize is also open, and you can judge that too!! People new to IF can start there, because the stories are short and they’re in the form of ordinary documents, like old-style Choose Your Own Adventure (you’ll likely need pen and paper, however, as they do have some kind of game mechanics – each game will teach you from scratch how to play it).
Full confession: You don’t actually have to judge any stories in either of these contests (and you need to rate several for your vote to count, which helps to keep things fair)… you can just read them for free.
NB Please DON’T try and judge in such a way that you give my stories an unfair advantage – firstly because these are not popularity contests, and secondly because I believe my writing is good enough to do well on its own.
The Chocolate Race
I like taking salted gourmet nuts and putting them in a bowl with other lollies so the salt spreads throughout, accenting all the flavours.
So sure, I tried the new Cadbury Vegemite chocolate. This is how it goes:
- Cautious bite.
- Hey, it’s just like a strongly salted caramel. It’s really not baaa—-
- Aaarrgghh!!!!! Vegemite!!!! WHYYYYYYYYY!!!!????!?!?!??!?!
- Eat something else to get rid of the taste.
- Think, “I do like salted caramel. Maybe it wasn’t so bad. I should give it another chance.”
- Return to Step 1.
Today I’ll be comparing the classic “Picnic” bar and block versus the new limited addition “Pretzel and Peanut” block. All are Cadbury products.
The Picnic bar has wafer, peanuts, and caramel. It’s tricky to eat (peanuts and chocolate fragments tend to explode everywhere with each bite) but it’s delicious. “Picnic” is an appropriate name, because it’s genuinely filling (thanks, peanuts). It’s famously knobbly in appearance, and to the best of my recollection gets advertised in a “This is yummy” fashion rather than a sexy fashion, which is both excellent and a wise choice for the product.
The block version is completely regular in shape. There’s no caramel and the wafers have transmogrified into crisps (a fair trade, except in the bar they feel like a necessary stabilising element that also adds texture, whereas in the block version they mostly feel like filler). It’s a lot easier to eat, but has much less charm and taste. Don’t take my caramel, people.
The Peanut Pretzel block is a new favourite of mine. It has just a hint of salt (because pretzels) and that makes it incredibly compelling. It doesn’t have any caramel either (but I never missed it until now), and feels like it has more chocolate per piece than the picnic version.
Nice work, Cadbury. Send me review copies of your latest work anytime. I’ll be here.
Deadlines
I love deadlines.
That’s not sarcasm. The writing life consists largely of sitting alone in a room (or worse, sitting in the same room as young kids who I desperately hope are sufficiently distracted by the blaring TV) scowling at a screen as I invent worlds and people that absolutely no-one cares about except myself. Deadlines give me a sense of urgency and excitement that is sometimes sorely lacking. When a deadline is approaching I feel stressed, but (unless something else comes up and sends me hurtling over the edge) it also gives the sense that someone is waiting for that piece of writing – and that it matters.
Whether writing “matters” or not is a can of snakes that I won’t get into today. But, I do like deadlines.
At the moment I have four and a half deadlines coming up in the next month. Wheeeee!
One is for a novel submission that I promised someone I’d send in September (ish); two are for interactive fiction contests that are ending soon; and the other one and a half are for collaborative interactive fiction pieces (one of which I’m running, and the other of which I’m mostly acting as cheerleader while also writing a significant section).
Before I stumbled across the glorious cornucopia of interactive fiction (think “Choose Your Own Adventure” stories but better), I was going to make 2015 the year that I wrote a novel slowly. It would be an experiment in writing against my usual nature, and perhaps discovering that my writing was much better if I was less manic about it. Then I found interactive fiction, and by the end of September my total IF word count will be around the 150,000 mark (two large pieces, two medium, and two collaborations). So I’m not exactly writing slowly, particularly since that’s roughly three times my usual annual output.
A funny side effect happened due to the fact that when Choice of Games – absolutely my favourite IF engine and company (and they pay well too) – is considering taking on a project for its premier label, they require a detailed outline first. Those outlines always run over 5000 words, including loads of choices and their consequences. To put that in perspective, the last book I wrote was based on a story told to me by my then 2-year old. I did some googling, scrawled a map and a chapter outline (maybe 200 words) and was writing the book within three days. I finished it a few weeks later.
But the interactive piece I’m working on most at the moment – a fantastical pirate adventure called SCARLET SAILS – has a proper Choice of Games outline. And because I was waiting to hear back about a different project, I had to let it sit for a long time – which also meant I could discuss the basic plot with some intelligent people and discover major plot issues BEFORE I’d written a 50,000-word novel. So interactive fiction distracted me from slow writing, then brought me back to it.
The other interesting side effect of IF is that suddenly I’m collaborating. I’ve done that exactly once before, when I wrote a one-page play in high school. It barely counts as collaborating, since my (undying, I’m sure) prose wasn’t edited in any way except by the nature of performance. (I do remember one friend saying, “So I’m playing God? Mm’kay.” which was most definitely a positive comment on my casting choices.) I write because I LIKE sitting alone in a room inventing worlds and people out of nothing… and I like being the international expert and ultimate authority on every single aspect of my work. Like my actor friend, what I really want is God-like powers and unquestioning obedience.
But I also love a deadline. (I may have mentioned that.) So when someone on the IF forums at Choice of Games suggested some kind of game-writing jam, I leapt at the chance. I specifically said that I thought collaborations were a bad idea, and so naturally a few days after that I volunteered to lead what ended up being a cheesy 50s-style space adventure collaboration (and then someone asked me to whip their multi-genre bookshop collaboration into shape, and I gleefully did so).
And it is so. much. fun. It helps that everyone involved seems to have figured out that I will work very very hard to earn ultimate power, and so they say things like, “Go ahead and edit my bit however you like” which I’m pretty sure means I just became a benevolent dictator (and I LOVE it).
I will of course post an easy-to-play link here when the game is ready. It’s turning out surprisingly well (and the editor is fantastic). But here’s the front cover just to tease you.
Credit for the space background: http://palnk.deviantart.com
The Amazing Reverse-Goldilocks Belly
So.
Last post I wrote about how the surgeon I saw about the gap in my abdominal muscles was probably too small to be covered through the public health system. “My hands are tied,” he said. “Although you certainly need the surgery.”
I had a CT scan that revealed (among other things) the gap in my abdominal muscles is 9cm wide.
Yay.
Went back to the same surgeon with the CT scan results. “Ooh, that’s much too big,” he said. “This hospital isn’t equipped for such a major surgery,” he said. “My hands are tied,” he said.
So.
Another hospital, another waiting list, another surgeon.
Medical Drama of the Week
A few months ago I had post-partum surgery #1. I wouldn’t call it a success, exactly, but things did improve – so much so that I returned to work after a year and a half of unpaid sick time.
I didn’t return to my old work (there’s a long and fascinating story there which I do intend to tell someday), but to a brand new private babysitting gig. It’s a very easy job, and is JUST within my capability at the moment. I’ve completed three weeks with no dramas, and I’m starting to feel vaguely competent. Also, I really like the family – and I get to take my kids along some of the time too. I adore watching kids interact with each other, so taking my kids along is much more than convenient – it makes the job glow.
About a month ago I saw a surgeon for post-partum surgery #2. He was a stranger to me, and I hoped going into the appointment that he’d be going over surgery stuff (fasting, etc), and giving me a bunch of pamphlets to read over. Instead he told me that although I certainly needed surgery, my GP might have misdiagnosed me (with a large gap in my abdominal muscles – a common post-pregnancy thing) and the public health system would therefore not cover me. He sent me to get a CT scan.
The CT scan was cool. I lay down on a table experiencing wacky effects from the contrast injection, all while alone in a giant room as the mechanical table passed me back and forth through a large ring, and a mechanical voice told me periodically to hold my breath. The ring part reminded me of Stargate.
The results were sent to the surgeon and to my GP.
My GP knows my entire family (four generations of us!) and I have so many medical dramas that I just keep a list of non-urgent things and then when someone is properly sick (eg Louisette had bronchitis last week) I take them all in to get sorted out. I went in for something else and asked for the CT results.
It turned out that why yes I DO have an abdominal gap…. of nine centimetres. So my guts are literally hanging out. (The abdominal muscles separate in every pregnancy, but generally go back together – or at least within a couple of centimetres.) This is brilliant news, because it means that I can still get the surgery I need, plus I feel like way less of a wimp now.
The CT also revealed two other things. One is a minor thing, but will probably require preventative surgery all the same (I’m hoping that it can be done at the same time as my stomach, but we’ll see – I’ll ask the surgeon on Thursday, when I next see him). It’s interesting mainly because I went to two different doctors a couple of months ago because of intense pain in my side. After googling, I figured it was appendicitis. They both said it was “yeah I dunno” and the pain faded after a few days, leaving me feeling kinda dumb. Actually it’s a splenal hemangioma – which sounds bad, but it basically just a benign lump – but one that’s big enough (2.2cm) that it really should be chopped out. The funny thing is that I would have come across splenal hemangiomas in my googling, and dismissed them for being too rare. Presumably this also means that I’m infested with dozens of fascinating diseases that haven’t yet been seen in Australia.
The other thing revealed by the CT scan is damage to my spine – damage that is degenerative.
The up side is that I feel a lot better about all the times I’ve chosen not to lift a kid/stand up/help someone/change a nappy/etc because of my back. The down side is that bones are a bit tricky to fix. Also, I’m not sure if it’s degenerative (that is, getting worse) because of the stomach stuff (which will be fixed), because of my usual bad posture (which is not an easy thing to fix, especially when everything already hurts), or because of my body just being annoying/aging.
And a big part of my post-partum depression has been fear of further injury due to picking up/playing with my kids. That fear had been fading, but now it’s been given a new lease of life. Congratulations?
Again, something to talk to the surgeon about.
And here’s TJ in his best suit, because why not?
My love affair with the em dash
I love using dashes – as I’m sure you’re already aware – and my level of addiction only hit me when I had to alter the style in a 60,000-word document. I was able to use find/change but had to check each one.
Wow. There were a lot.
And then I read this article about using less dashes. It makes a lot of good points, but I still use a lot of dashes. Hopefully I can cut back.
Felicity Banks 
