Book progress and a new version of storytelling

“Don’t tell me what happens – la la la la la.”

“I’m not going to tell you. I’m just organizing the order of events. That’s all I’m saying.”

That was my hubby’s response when I talked about the progress of the third book in my trilogy on the weekend.

Writing Book 3 – News Flash: the official title is Out of Time – has been slow. It’s very different from putting out the first book, Through the Monster-glass, which was an experiment in whether I could assemble an entire novel out of all the ideas I jotted down over many years.

Book 2, Into the Forbidden Fire, was a complete joy to write. I had the success and excitement of my first book launch to give me energy, knew exactly where the second book was headed, and felt secure in my writing ability.

With the third book, I’m very conscious of finishing the story in a way that satisfies my readers’ expectations. I’ve invited them on this amazing journey, and I don’t want to disappoint them. I can tell you my one guiding principle: everything that happens is authentic and has a purpose. There’s not a single detail or event that was put in just for effect.

Without giving anything away, I can tell you that things are not going to happen the way anyone expects. Many ends will be tied up, but there are others that won’t – not because I’m leaving things open for a sequel, but because that’s the way life actually is. Not all mysteries get explained, and I love that.

I’ll be publishing Book 2 soon – readers are practically banging down my door, I’m delighted to say But there are pesky things like Income Tax and a crappy Kitchen Aid gas cooktop (we’ll never buy one again) to deal with – life has a persistent way of intruding on the delightful fantasy worlds we’d much rather immerse ourselves in.

In the meantime, I’ve been looking into a new storytelling format available for smart phones that combines short stories with animated visuals to enhance some of the scenes. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s called Storiaverse. I saw an ad for it in one of the literary newsletters I get, and was intrigued enough by descriptions of some of the stories to check it out.

The first one I watched, Blood Moon Curse, was set at Halloween on a college campus, with a scary urban legend, so right up my alley Storiaverse works with writers of short stories, and a coterie of animators who create short video clips to illustrate certain parts of the plots. Each story you access has blocks of text interspersed with videos and music. I was curious as to how well the various media were going to meld.

At first I found the rapid animation of this story a little disconcerting, but once I got into it, I found myself looking forward to the next segment. The free app is easy to use, and you can scroll back and forth between parts of the story if you missed something or want to rewatch a video. I thought the striking visuals enhanced the story, providing a creepy atmosphere (in this case) to a good but not complex horror tale.

The Storiaverse site calls its format “Read-Watching”. They elaborate: “We’ve created a new patent-pending format that redefines storytelling. Designed to pull you deeper into plots and characters, ensuring every story not only looks visually distinct but delivers a unique and engaging experience.”

The stories aren’t lengthy – it probably took me about 15 minutes to scroll through Blood Moon Curse. The preferred genres you’ll find are those that work well with visuals, i.e. Horror, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Mystery and Adventure, but the site states that story submissions in all genres are welcome, so do check out their Stories tab. Just browsing quickly through it, I found categories for War, Magic, Comedy, Western (with a creepy twist)…

Not all the stories are well-written (I got through just a couple of minutes of The Tarot Card before bowing out), but the overall format is engaging and I look forward to exploring more titles.

Will you ever find one of my stories on there? Short stories aren’t really my forte, but I thought the format was quite engaging, so you never know, maybe I’ll try submitting something one day

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