P.D. Allen's Blog, page 27
August 12, 2012
Dynamic Center
Quantum Meditation #1604
The Moment of Awareness
Quantum Meditation #1602
Time Will Ever Be
Quantum Meditation #1601
August 11, 2012
August 10, 2012
Going the Distance
Quantum Meditation #1599
August 9, 2012
August 8, 2012
Into the Night ~ The Original Emotobook
Emotobooks is a term coined in 2011 by Grit City Publications founder, Ron Gavalik, to promote their line of multimedia fiction. Quite simply, it is an illustrated story, with pictures — often of an impressionistic or abstract nature — placed at key points in the text to heighten the emotional impact of the story. Usually, the images are not a literal illustration of what is happening in the story at that point, but rather an artist’s depiction of the emotional state of the characters and/or reader.
When I heard about emotobooks recently, I was quite interested in them. Having grown up on a diet of comic books, Mad magazine and Creepy and Erie magazines, and later Heavy Metal magazine, I have long been aware of the potential of the illustrated medium. As an adult, I am a fan of the graphic novels of Alan Moore, particularly V is for Vendetta and the Watchmen. And I have read several issues of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. And the illuminated print of William Blake has been a major inspiration in my own work.
But what really struck me about emotobooks was that they were very similar to an experiment I tried at the turn of the century. For that reason, I consider Into the Night to be the original emotobook. This multimedia presentation was first created long before kindle and the other ereaders popularized ebooks, over a decade before the term emotobook was coined.
At the turn of the century, this presentation was formatted as a webpage. In its early form, the text and smaller images flowed over repeating backgrounds taken from Hubble telescope images. The form was a little chaotic, and somewhat cluttered as well.
Image software and my know-how have both improved a great deal since then, allowing me to crop and otherwise alter the background and images in the current version. Yet some of the chaos is intentional, and so I have no desire to completely tame and homogenize this work.
My original inspiration was the illuminated print of Blake, where images and inscriptions might not directly illustrate the story, but intuitively lend to the air of the piece.
The text was written in 1996, as I finished long years of college study, and turned from my science degrees back to my true calling: being an artist, a poet and a writer. This was the first piece I wrote after several years away from my muse. It pretty much wrote itself. I have published the narrative section both in a book and in a literary magazine. But this work has never been published in its entirety, beginning with the Nonconformist Manifesto — that is, except as a multimedia presentation on a webpage.
Here are two samples from the book. The first is the introduction to the Nonconformist Manifesto, a poetic diatribe attempting to reconcile science and spirit, and finally proclaiming the nonconformity of the artist. This is followed by the opening section of the narrative story, where the reader is introduced to the poet, on his quest for the darkest shadow of the night, and the door that will lead him behind the stage of reality.
Welcome to the first emotobook ever produced, and welcome to a surrealistic adventure beyond your dreams.
You can find the entire book at Amazon, for kindle: Into the Night.
For the entire book on Kindle, click the following link:
Eternal and Infinite
Quantum Meditation #1598
