Alex Hughes's Blog, page 4

Cover Reveal

We are just days away from the launch of Fluid, the Mindspace Novella #4.5! (Coming out in or around October 27th.)

To celebrate the launch, I’m thrilled to share the amazing cover of Fluid, designed by the incredible Scarlett Rugers. It’s a brand new look for the shorter works, but it harmonizes so well with the existing covers. I couldn’t be happier!

What do you guys think?

The post Cover Reveal appeared first on Alex Hughes - Author of the Mindspace Investigations series.

A New Plan

So as most of you who’ve been reading the blog know already, I’ve been having a rough time while pregnant, with sharply limited energy and brainpower. (Sadly. I walked into Panera the other day, gave the lady at the counter my Kroger card, forgot to pay her, and then ran into a wall. True story.) I’m learning to roll with the punches, and do what I can, when I can, but I’m falling more and more behind the goals I set for myself as far as the writing goes. Sigh. I keep getting up, and I keep writing, but it’s slow, and that’s the reality right now.

This week I finally realized that, while I might be able to get something out for Book Five by December, at this rate there’s no way it will be the quality that I’d like it to be. And there’s no way that I will release something low quality–you guys deserve better! And frankly so do I. Feeling bad or no, I’m not going to skimp on quality, especially now that I’m self-publishing and have the control (and the time) to do it right. So I’ve decided instead to change the milepost.

I’m sending the new novella off to the formatter today, and it will be out soon (within a couple of weeks!). I had always designed this novella to have a companion story from Cherabino’s point of view–she’s busy with her own tasks while Adam is working with the police in his case. And I thought, why not do that companion novella now? It’ll be another 20k, as opposed to 40k+ to finish the novel, and will be proportionally faster to revise, edit, and get out there. Plus my cover designer already has some great ideas! Plus we’ll all get a glimpse into Cherabino’s head right now, which will be incredibly fun after all this time with Adam.

So that’s what I’m going to do. Novella now, second novella December or so, and then Book Five will get pushed (so I can revise and re-work) until April or so next year. I’ll still get a draft or most of a draft done before maternity leave so I have it, and come back in late February or so with a revision on my desk. Rachel Aaron, who gave me some lovely advice on writing with a small child in the house, recommends starting back with a revision anyway, and she says it’s more interruptable. So there’s a plan.

I appreciate you guys being so supportive and encouraging during this time, and I’m looking forward to sharing the shorter works with you soon!

The post A New Plan appeared first on Alex Hughes - Author of the Mindspace Investigations series.

Letting Things Go

I realized on Tuesday, in the middle of a conversation with a friend, that I have two speeds: superachiever and yawn, why bother. I took 4 AP classes my senior year in high school, on top of a ton of family obligations. I decided last year to run a 5k, from ground zero, with asthma (read: a marathon, as far as my body was concerned). And I ran it (ran/walked, but still). I got the draft of Marked done from ground zero, in revised form and into the editor, in less than 4 months. That’s half of the time I had for Sharp, the second book. And I hit it. But I also go through long periods in which getting out of bed in the morning is a chore, and I rearrange the papers in my office, and try to figure out what’s next.

This year has been a year of the in-between. I haven’t been able to hit my big numbers in writing seemingly at all. I haven’t gotten over 5k in over a year, though I’ve been pushing 3k-4k sometimes, on good days, without a lot of trouble. On bad days it’s tortuous to hit 2. I’ve had to make a mountain of decisions, from what we’re going to do with the office and nursery, to how often do I go and check on the sick family member out of town, to how we’re going to handle everything from baby registry to hospital to birth to visits and maternity leave, childcare and working while pregnant (and after, when that happens). Oh, and how my career is going to work at this stage, without an agent or editor, with it all up to me. There’s no road map to this sort of thing, only decisions out into the wide blue sky of new territory, new adventures, and new challenges. I’ve also been tired–a lot. Tired to the point that reading a Dilbert comic seems like far too much work. Tired at a level I haven’t been in my adult life, not since I got pneumonia at 15, with similar trouble focusing.

The trouble with all of this is that I can’t comfortably settle into either of my two natural speeds. I just don’t have the stamina to manage overachieving. Some days achieving happens at half-speed, if it happens at all. And I’m too cussed stubborn to just phone in months of my life right now, so the why-bother speed isn’t happening either. So I’m stuck in this odd shuffle, this slow-motion push ahead that feels like walking backwards with both shoes on the wrong feet. I think this must be what real life is like. Real life is hard!

The good news is that I’ve figured out some things that help the exhaustion. Protein (as Sam puts it, I’m 3-D-printing a human being here and I can’t run out of ink), B12, and potassium seem to help a lot. Writing my outline and sticking to it has been immensely helpful. And I’ve found some great folks to help me get the book out the door–cover designers, editors, even the immensely fantastic people in my street team, who have been helping me pick up the slack. Things are happening. They’re just happening slower than I would like.

So I’m learning to let go. I fall down. I sleep. I get back up. I don’t give up. But I accept that life is a moving target right now. And I’m trying to let go. From what my friends who are parents tell me, rolling with the changes and getting back up are both going to be tremendously helpful skills when Pip arrives. She’s not going to be the same from week to week, and neither am I.

I’m sitting on the halfway point in the draft of Book Five. I’ve got a cover design coming for the novella. I’m starting to waddle a bit here in the third trimester, and to have days where I start feeling like a human being again. But I also have days where I stare at the screen and wonder where the story went. It’s all the thing. It’s all part of the process.

And I’m learning to let go. So if I haven’t spent a lot of time on the blog or the social media lately, if I haven’t gotten the kitchen scrubbed or the thank you notes written or a call returned, I am sorry. I’m afraid it’s likely to get worse before it gets better. But I am getting back up, and the words are getting written more often than they’re not. That’s a big victory in my book, and I’m proud of it

What are some of your victories lately? Any advice on learning about this third, “sustainable” gear? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

The post Letting Things Go appeared first on Alex Hughes - Author of the Mindspace Investigations series.

Talk Nerdy to Me: Jason Brick Talks RPGs

Note from Alex: Please welcome Jason Brick to the blog for today’s Talk Nerdy to Me post. Jason talks about one of the favorite geek past times: the ever-popular Role Playing Game. Take it away, Jason!

 

About a month into our relationship, the woman who would become my wife called me her “Boyfriend of Carrying” because I excel at lugging heavy objects around.

She then proceeded to explain a game called Dungeons and Dragons to me, and how a (Thing) of (Description of Power) was a common trope in that game.

Little did she know I’d been playing since my dad got the original blue boxed set for Christmas when I was in 2nd grade.   Since that day I’ve visited the Keep on the Borderlands and the Demonweb Pits, and died horribly and wonderfully in the Tomb of Horrors. I’ve played Star Frontiers, Top Secret, Dread, GURPS and Fate. I know that “Bree-yark” is not Goblin for “We Surrender!” and that The Computer is My Friend. As a grown-ass adult with kids (still married to the aforementioned lovely woman), I run a game each week and do professional work for a half-dozen tabletop RPG companies.

Even though I’m a passionate traveler and martial artist, tabletop role playing games remain my favorite hobby. I’ve spent thousands of dollars and tens of thousands of hours on the hobby, and am already midway through raising my kids to take them to the next generation.

Being a gamer isn’t just fun at the table. It adds a level of complex fun to most things. Visiting art or history museums, I can’t help but spiral out fictional worlds where that art or history would impact its inhabitants in this way or that. Training at the dojo, I think about whether this fight mechanic or another best reflects that reality of hand-to-hand combat. I once wrote a well-received essay on personal development based on the skill points system vs. the personal attribute system in GURPS. Much like my martial arts habit, RPGs aren’t part of what I do. They’re part of who I am.

In most important ways, it’s like being a writer.

Alex and her other guests will report almost identical experiences with their writing and their lives. About how it’s almost impossible to travel anywhere or do anything without something sparking an idea for a story. Both game creation and novel writing stem from the same creative urge. They just look different when they’re being consumed.

As a writer and an RPG fan, I’m incredibly excited about what’s happening in both industries now that the Internet has democratized everything…and I mean everything.

E-readers (especially Kindle and Amazon’s support via KDP) democratized distribution
Social media and review sites democratized publicity
Crowdfunding democratized production money

It’s a brave new world. Look over on Kickstarter and you’ll see 20 or more novels and 3 or 4 tabletop role-playing games up for funding right now. Go to DriveThruRPG and you’ll find self-published game title galore from Big Names to little guys. Amazon has acres of self-published titles in every genre, including role-playing games.

Since everybody can make and distribute a role-playing game, the trick for folks who’d like to is knowing how to do it well. I’m not Monte Cook or Dave Arneson or Wolfgang Bauer, but my series of RPG books Random Encounters keeps hitting the Top Ten in Amazon. Plus I keep getting gigs from some of the bigger publishers, so I guess I’m doing something right.

When building a game adventure – whether for publication or for your gang’s gaming night – I recommend the following steps.

Step Zero – Carry a notebook (or use your phone) all the time. Like I said earlier, everywhere you go you’re apt to get ambushed by an idea. Have a place to capture them. Use it early and use it often.

Step One – Review your notes. Both the notes in your idea catcher and the notes of what’s happened in your game so far. Review the sheets for the characters who’ll participate. Focus on some events, images or themes that (a) capture your imagination and (b) focus on the abilities or storyline of one or more characters in the game.

Step Two – Write the crux. In broad terms, this is the biggest, baddest, most epic moment or scene of the story. Make it as vivid as possible, and take some notes about what the various characters are apt to do. The crux is usually also the climax or finale of a storyline, but doesn’t have to be.

Step Three – Get them there. Figure out the other events, obstacles and encounters that both impede the gang from getting to the climax and lead them ultimately in that direction. Some players prefer a game that’s more open-ended, and that’s okay. You can still build this storyline and see what happens around it.

Step Four – Turn it all up to eleven. Go through every scene you’ve made and add five small details plus one piece of unmitigated awesomeness. It doesn’t matter how awesome it already is. Make it awesomer.

Step Five – Crunch all the numbers. Building games includes interacting with the rules, which means math. Doing the math is a lot like proofreading a manuscript – it’s time-consuming and detail-oriented, so you shouldn’t to it to anything you’re sure you’ll keep and not change.

Yep. It’s a lot like writing.

 

Jason brick is a gamer, martial artist, traveler, writer, husband and dad. To find out more about his take on tabletop RPGs check out Random Encounters or look for his work with publishers like Paizo, Green Ronin, Steve Jackson Games and Modiphius. He also blogs at brickcommajason.com

 

The post Talk Nerdy to Me: Jason Brick Talks RPGs appeared first on Alex Hughes - Author of the Mindspace Investigations series.

The Right Kind of Talking

Over the last few weeks, as an experiment, I’ve been talking to a writing coach, specifically, Cathy Yardley of Rock Your Writing. I started out just wanting some accountability, you know, I will get this thing done by next week. Then next week comes and she asks me, “Did you get this thing done this week?” Knowing the question is coming can be incredibly focusing for me, and my online writers’ group is evolving away from that sort of thing, so that alone was worth it to me. I do more, especially when I’m feeling not-so-hot, if I know somebody will care if it doesn’t get done.

But then this unexpected thing happened. Cathy kept asking questions about how I feel stuck, and getting me to talk through how to move forward. She helped me talk through how I wanted to revise the novella, helped me sort out a couple of sticky spots in re-plotting Book Five, and generally was a great sounding board. And I got recordings of our conversations! So I could go back a week later, or two weeks later, and make outlines or plot charts point by point based on our conversation. That was amazing. I’m seriously considering recording my brainstorming calls with friends when they happen (with their permission) so I can do the same.

And this last week we talked about career, and marketing, and how to judge success as I jump out into this crazy world of self-publishing, especially with the extra pressure of a kid on the way. This was the most amazing conversation ever–though a lot of it may be that I was ready for it. I’ve talked to many writer friends from a variety of perspectives about the topic, and everybody seems to have different advice. I should reboot my series. I should write a new series. I should shop the new series with an agent. I should self-publish it. What about serial projects? What about novellas? Plus, you know, the email newsletter I’ve been neglecting and all the “stuff” that goes along with the life of a novelist. (Hello, social media!) Cathy helped me talk through the parts I agreed with and had questions about, and offered some great advice from her own perspective.

I have literally a pile of proposals for novel projects left over from last year, when I was still trying to shop another series to Penguin, and then from when I was trying to find an agent (thus far unsuccessfully, though I haven’t looked that hard lately). Trying to figure out which, if any, I should write for a new series has been hard. At the end of our career talk, though, I came to a real decision about next steps. I’m going to work on the [super secret] thriller series project after Book 5 and I’m excited about it. HUGE weight off my shoulders, to have a plan, and a way to measure whether the plan succeeded with Book 5 and onwards. So good things.

I’ve also discovered something very important about myself along the way: my best way to process questions and stories and emotions and plots seems to be out loud, in a conversation. Talking it out with somebody who gets it is a freakishly useful thing, and faster than just about any other method I’ve tried. Me and the whiteboard works. Me and the charts and graphs and “morning pages” works too. But not as well as a conversation.

So, yeah :). Turns out I’m a talker.

What about you guys? What helps you get through a block or difficulty on your end?

The post The Right Kind of Talking appeared first on Alex Hughes - Author of the Mindspace Investigations series.

A Great Week

It’s been a great week.

I finished revision on the Mindspace novella on Friday and sent it to my editor! I will pause while you rejoice with me

I got Jesse Feldman, my old editor from Penguin who is now a freelance editor, to agree to edit both the novella and Book 5! So they will be just as kick ass as they have always been in this series.

We are on track for a end of September / beginning of October release of the novella, now tentatively titled Fluid. Thus far we are also on track for an early December release of Book 5, currently untitled. I’ve just reworked the plot (about the tenth time) to something really, crazy awesome–or at least I think so. For the first time in a long time, I’m excited about it.

I talked to the cover designer who will be doing the novella and my short story collection in September. She’s awesome.

The formatter I used for How to Drive Yourself Crazy as a Writer is totally available for my other projects.

And – I got my first look at the finished cover illustration for Book 5 from Rupy Bhogal, the amazing artist behind Lueler.com. It is *amazing,* guys. There’s still some work to do on title and layout before it becomes a real cover and I can show you guys, but it’s a crazy awesome thing. Even better, I found the artist because a fan pinned his work to a Pinterest board about the Mindspace series, so it’s all due to you guys.

In other words, after the long tough winter and a slow spring, I’m finally getting my mojo back, and it feels really damn good.

The post A Great Week appeared first on Alex Hughes - Author of the Mindspace Investigations series.

Exhaustion & Updates

So I’m coming up on the halfway mark for this whole gestating-a-human-being thing, and I’m learning (slowly and painfully) that I can’t do quite as much creative work as I would like to do at any given time. Pregnancy is exhausting, for one. Bone-crushingly exhausting. I literally spent ten minutes this afternoon fantasizing about taking a nap. (I reserve the right to take one later, if I get my work done). There’s also a TON to do to get ready for Pip when she arrives. The nursery is still in shambles. Closets are still full of things that we probably don’t need, and are empty of baby things we will need. And I have a strong hormonal urge to Nest. In my case, that means going through old financial records and closets and drawers, getting everything in order and shredding / donating the unnecessary. I’ve been to drop things off at Goodwill twice already, and am about to run a load of books to the library. This is very strange. I’m exhausted–I mean, really, crazy exhausted, even now in second trimester–and yet I’ll get up to clean closets. Holy crap. Weird.

I’m also figuring out, that despite all good intentions to the contrary, I’m good for a half day of creative work at best. Then napping or cleaning has to happen. Preferably napping then cleaning then more napping. Sam, friends, and all have been very, very supportive, but while my mother claims she could take on the world in second trimester, I am not having this experience. Working half-time is about as good as it’s going to get right now, I think. Which frustrates me on several levels, as I need to Get Things Done. Seriously.

But I have been moving forward, if slowly. How to Drive Yourself Crazy as a Writer, my awesome satirical how-to writer’s book, is coming out on Tuesday. (Preorder at Amazon, Kobo, or Barnes & Noble.) I’m very excited about proud of this one, since I wrote it during the middle of my very tough winter, and laughing really helped me.

I also figured out this past week that I had one too many subplots in Book Five, so I decided to spin one of them off into a novella. Since my writing progress has been a little slower than planned these last few weeks (and it looks like it’s going to be late November or early December before I can get Book Five out), I thought I’d go ahead and get the novella done and release it earlier to give you guys something to read from Mindspace in the meantime. Currently halfway done on the writing piece and feeling good about it.

So, to recap: Book Five will be out late November / early December, it looks like, and you’ll get a 15-20k novella from me earlier (hopefully in late September or early October). 

I’ve also accepted that I probably won’t figure out how to record and stream video for the blog to answer the amazing questions you guys asked me a few months ago. The learning curve is just a little too steep for me right now, apologies. I will gladly answer any questions you have at our next Facebook chat (focused on Sharp & Payoff but open to others) on August the 8th at 1pm CST / 2 pm EST on my official Facebook page here. I’d love to figure out video at some future point but it’s not going to happen now

My planned short story project and Mindspace Extras book are also going to the backburner. They will happen when they happen. If I can only work half days at most, I’ll need to focus all of the time I have available on Mindspace. You guys have been extraordinarily patient with me, and I want to make sure I release something great without making you wait too much longer. I am so grateful to you guys, the fans, for reading and for all your encouragement in these last months.

I’m tired, but very grateful.

The post Exhaustion & Updates appeared first on Alex Hughes - Author of the Mindspace Investigations series.

Returning to Odyssey

I was fortunate enough to be asked to return last week to teach at the Odyssey Writing Workshop, my alma mater, four years after I graduated in 2011. It was an incredible experience to see the workshop from the other side of the table, to interact with the students, and to see student critiques. The people there are so bright, so motivated, and so willing to learn. It’s an incredible energy to be around them, and I wish I could be a part of that energy far more often. Writing can be a lonely affair, even at the pro level when you aggressively make writer friends, and Odyssey was–and will likely always be–one of my touchstones, one of the communities that makes this worthwhile. It was incredible to meet the new crop of Odyssey folks, and to share what I’ve learned in the last four years.

That was my primary goal in going this time–to share what I’ve learned, what I wish someone had told me when I sat on the other side of the table as a student. I taught a class called “Productivity for Writers: Practical Steps to Write More,” which was one part habit formation and three parts bouncing back from the inevitable challenges of life. I warned folks about the potholes in the writing road they’d inevitably encounter: the one-star reviews, the rejections, the occasional lack of respect and money, getting dropped by a publishing house. Then I told them that the industry was changing, and that even though this led to a lot of challenges, it also led to great opportunity: everyone here, after a little research and thinking, was as qualified as any so-called expert to make the decisions about their own career, to publish or self-publish, to market, and to reach readers. I had them read aloud Victoria Schwab’s amazing post Just. Keep. Writing. And then I talked about how to get unstuck when the world is crashing down around your ears, or your characters won’t talk to you, or your plot has holes you could drive a truck through. I made them promise to keep writing, no matter what. Because if you write, you have options. You have product. You have something to sell, something you control and something that’s yours. If not, you don’t. It’s that simple.

What I found most amazing about reading the critiques and talking to the students about their work is how far I’ve come. I remember reading other student critiques during Odyssey and knowing that something wasn’t quite right… but having no idea why. Or I’d love a particular piece, but Jeanne would eviscerate it. Or I’d write something that I thought was pretty good, and everyone in the room thought it failed. Now, on the other side of the fence, after four years of reading and writing in the industry and having a chance to absorb craft from Odyssey and a lot of other areas, I get it. I can see the things that I couldn’t see then, and while my critiques don’t always line up with Jeanne’s in every particular, they do on a huge percentage of issues and stories. That is incredibly validating. I can finally see what my favorite teacher was seeing. And I finally feel like a pro.

So, to the students, and Odyssey, to Jeanne Cavelos, the superhuman woman who can teach amazing lessons on no more than 3 hours of sleep, and to the writer community who has nurtured me over the last four years–thank you. It was awesome to be back. I hope that you will invite me again.

It was an honor to be there.

Talk Nerdy to Me: James Knapp Talks Text-Based Video Games

Hi All,

Please welcome James Knapp to the blog. He’s here to talk about the nerdiest of nerdy video games… the text based ones

Oh, and he has a new book out called Alice in No Man’s Land – with a giveaway! So check out his site for details.

Thanks for joining us for Fun With Nerdy Things.

Alex

___________

From the moment I first played Space Invaders, I knew I loved video games.

Back when I was a lad if you wanted to play video games you had to go to an arcade and I went as often as I could, pumping quarters (then later tokens) into machines you’re most likely familiar with like Pac Man, Donkey Kong, Galaga, and Defender, but also a ton of games maybe not so well remembered like Crazy Climber, Jumpman, Wizard of Wor, Gorf, and Qix but while they were fun distractions none of the truly got under my skin. It wasn’t until later, when gaming consoles began to make an appearance alongside the early personal computers, that I found my first true video game love – the text adventure game.

The very first text adventure I played lived on a mainframe at our local college where my friend’s father worked. It was called ‘Colossal Cave Adventure’ (launched by entering the command ‘advent’) and in it you used simple commands like ‘north’, ‘east’, and ‘get sword’ to navigate rooms that were only described in words with no visuals whatsoever:

The goal of the thing was basically to find and collect a series of treasures, and then bring them back to the building where each new game begins. That’s it.

It was amazing. There were magic words, treasures, twisty little mazes, snakes, giants, dwarves, and puzzles…so, so many puzzles. There was no instruction manual – it would dump out a paragraph or so explaining basic syntax if you answered YES to the question in the previous screenshot, but you were pretty much on your own. There was no internet then (certainly not as it exists today anyway) and so there were no walkthroughs, no forums where you could get advice, there was just you trying to figure out how the heck to get past the snake in the Hall of Mists. The deeper into it you got, the better it got. It was amazing.

My friend and I spent hours playing it but while he eventually tired of the thing I never did. Years later when my father brought home a Commodore 64 computer with a 5.25″ floppy drive, I discovered a game called Zork I which was basically a retelling of the original Colossal Caves adventure but with a better parser:

I played it, and was hooked. The game was released by a company called Infocom, and I quickly became a borderline obsessive fan. I played Zork I, Zork II, Zork III, Enchanter, Sorcerer, Spellbreaker, Starcross, Suspended, Planetfall, Stationfall, Cutthroats, Seastalker, Deadline, The Witness, Suspect, A Mind Forever Voyaging, Trinity, Infidel, Ballyhoo, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Bureaucracy, The Lurking Horror, Borderzone, Moonmist…heck, I even played through Nord and Bert Couldn’t Make Head or Tail of It. I loved those games. I understand why they aren’t popular these days with games like The Last of Us being released, but back in the Infocom days they competed with games where the player was generally represented by a handful of cobbled together pixels. By just ditching graphics altogether and letting the player use their imagination, they weren’t just as good as the graphical games of the time, to me they were better.

I loved them so much that I eventually sat down in front of a Commodore 64 and attempted to come up with a simple text adventure game like the Infocom games that I had grown to love so much. However, I only got a few rooms into it before I realized on some level that I didn’t really have the tools I needed to make it work the way I wanted it to. Not that it couldn’t necessarily have been done in Basic (maybe it could have), but at the time I didn’t understand the concept of ‘classes’ and ‘objects’ and so everything was just one long spaghetti string of if/then clauses that didn’t take long to become a tangled mess. I saved the final copy to a cassette tape, and shelved it. For those of you too young to know, cassette tapes were once actually used to save computer data. For those of you too young to have ever encountered a cassette tape, they came after LPs but before CDs. If computer technology had advanced slightly faster than it did then who knows, maybe I would have saved my games on an LP.

Much later, after text adventure games more or less went the way of the dodo, I found myself in a job where I did a lot of scripting (mostly in TCL/Tk) to run automated tests against data switches (exciting, I know). It marked my first foray into programming, and so when I learned that there were still people out there writing text adventure games (now given the moniker ‘Interactive Fiction’) using a fan-created toolset similar to what the folks at Infocom had used, my curiosity got the better of me. I followed the links, downloaded the tools and manuals, and got to tinkering.

In a way, the game that resulted was the first computer program I ever wrote. It used a language called ‘Inform’ rather than C++ or Java or something like that, but it did use a computer language that then compiled into a runnable program. I called my game ‘And Ye Shall Find’.

And Ye Shall Find is not a great game – I’ll be honest about that right up front. It’s probably too large, certain things are kind of broken, and all in all it was my first attempt at a real game. I was so excited about the possibilities this new language offered that I spent more time coming up with cool things to interact with than I did worrying about the rest of it (including proofreading – if you’re brave enough to get maybe a quarter of the way through the game, you’ll find a ‘canister’ and a ‘cannister’ literally in the same room together) but man was I having fun.

To give you an example of what I mean there are lots of gadgets in AYSF (teleportation pads, matter transmitters, syringes with drugs, a two-way radio, a personal library terminal, etc) but to start with, in the different living quarters units it made sense to have things like a bedroom with a bed, and a bathroom which of course meant a toilet. Since objects in the game world are only as interactive as you make them, this meant I actually had to come up with a working ‘toilet’ class that I could use as a base to populate all of the game’s bathrooms. Now, this might seem like an inconsequential game object but remember – I was giddy with power. I began to think of all the things a player might try to do with a toilet beyond just the obvious. I figured it had to open, close, and flush but what else? Would people try and put things in it? Flush things down it? Drink from it? I came up with a template for a ‘space-age’ toilet with three buttons, white, blue, and green (which you’ll find throughout the game), and the end result ended up looking like this:

And of course controls for the fancy toilet:

You may notice there is not mention of water in the TOILET class, and that is because water in the game is its own class. During initialization, all of the toilets (and everything else containing water) get filled with an instantiation of the water class, so that you can fill, say, a drinking glass with toilet water if that’s your bag.

And that was just the toilet, something you don’t need to interact with at all in order to complete the game. Other things were more difficult, like the ‘mind-reading gun’. Did I mention the game has a mind-reading gun?

Unlike the toilets, you *do* need to use the mind-reading gun to complete the game. It’s useful for gathering certain information from people (or animals, or aliens) who can’t otherwise speak to you:

I feel like the game is probably way too hard, too, but if you get stuck there’s always the hint system:

Basically I was like a kid in a candy store, who got locked inside after hours. At the end of it I was discovered lying on the floor in a near diabetic coma, sporting a five-o-clock shadow made up of pixie stix dust. I created, debugged, and created until the itch had been at long last scratched. Later I would try and make another, much smaller game called ‘They’re Everywhere’ which consisted of a house, shed, and surrounding woods. The idea was that there would be six additional NPCs who used a very rudimentary intelligence to move around and act every turn that you did. Over the course of the game several timed disasters (all of which were purposely overused tropes) would strike – first a mind-controlling parasite, corrupt Men in Black coming to cover it up, then zombies, then finally an alien invasion. I wanted the game to be different every time (all six NPCs could be transformed by the virus before the MIB ever showed up, or some might actually survive all the way to the invasion to help you) but alas, it all proved beyond the capabilities of the text game engine. I shelved it, and got back to writing novels like a responsible writer (when I wasn’t playing Morrowind).

So that’s my tale of one of my nerdier pursuits over the years – if you actually want to play the thing you can; I dusted off what was the latest version and recompiled it using the latest version of Inform. To run it, you’ll need to also install an interpreter (called Glulxe), which you then launch and use to open the .ulx file (the game file). I’ve included both on my site, and you can find them here:

http://www.james-knapp.com/aysf.html

The .zip file contains the interpreter installer, as well as the game file (aysf.ulx). Since the .zip file in the download contains an .exe (the Glulxe installer) your browser may throw a warning so just be aware. If you’d prefer to download it yourself you can find it at this address:

http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-a...

Even if you aren’t interested in playing AYSF you might find it interesting to download the interpreter and go online to find other (better) IF games that have been written by enthusiasts over the years. If you’re an older feller like me it will take you back and if you were born into a world that already contained this new-fangled internet, you might find a little gem from the past that you enjoy in spite of its low-tech origins.

 

Talk Nerdy To Me: Featuring Eric R Asher

Before we had “Revenge of the Fallen”, “Dark of the Moon”, and “Age of Extinction”… they were simply “More Than Meets The Eye”…

TRANSFORMERS

by Eric R Asher

When they killed Optimus Prime in the 1986 Transformers movie? Quite possibly the most traumatic moment of my childhood.

It all started back in 1984. My parents came home with a Bumblebee Transformer, and that was that. I can still remember their old basement, with classic 1960s wood paneling and a thin orange and brown carpet you’d only find in an outdated office today. Birthday presents for the next three years would be Transformers, and I’d eventually wind up with Shockwave, Optimus Prime, Wheeljack, and a host of others.

A few years later, after I’d “grown up” a bit, everything Transformers related in our house left in a garage sale. It wouldn’t be until about 1998 that the nostalgia bug struck. I found a Snarl dinobot figure at a flea market, and having just found out about that newfangled eBay thing, I managed to buy all the parts he was missing. Then I found more, and I bought collections from friends, and my nostalgia bug turned into a storage bin full of warehouse shelving filled with Transformers and their parts.

You can show me a 3 inch chunk of plastic, and I can tell you what figure its from, whether its counterfeit, and what its going price is. This is a fabulously useless skill to list on your job application. It was the mid 2000s when I learned about the Japanese exclusive Transformers. These were some of the greatest figures from the entire toyline, only ever released in Japan. Vintage exclusives were rare, expensive, and I spent quite a few years hunting down my favorites, going to the national convention, Botcon, several times and eventually amassing enough to qualify myself for a collector skill level of “obsession.”  You can always count on us Transformers collectors to discuss—at GREAT length—the mythology and nuances of every new generation that comes along.

Further down the line, I realized I wanted to publish a book, but publishing costs money, but toys sell for money! Sometimes logic wins out. I ended up on Travel Channel’s Toy Hunter with Jordan Hembrough—which was a blast—and I sold several pieces to some wonderful collectors. Some of my collector friends ask if I regret selling any of those collectibles. Of course not, I have Worribles to fill the gaps. (That’s a whole OTHER post!)

Eric R Asher is the author of the urban fantasy Vesik series, featuring a necromancer who gets dragged into a centuries old battle for power. The third book in the series, WINTER’S DEMON, was just released in audiobook.

Eric is a former bookseller, guitarist, and comic seller currently living in Saint Louis, Missouri. A lifelong enthusiast of books, music, toys, and games, he discovered a love for the written word after being dragged to the library by his parents at a young age. When he is not writing, you can usually find him reading, gaming, or buried beneath a small avalanche of Transformers.