Dev Blog 7: A Look at What's Inside Episode I
We are now officially one week out from the release of Engines of Extinction: Episode I -- The End & The Means. It's a pretty significant milestone for me as this project has been in gestation for an extended period (to put it mildly), and it's very rewarding to see it all come together.
Of course, it's only just the beginning as The End & The Means merely marks the first of six monthly episodes. And, hopefully, those six episodes collectively only mark a larger beginning.
Anyway, I figured it would make sense now to give you a brief overview of what you can expect to find when you so generously plunk down your $2.99 and crack open Epi I one week from today.
As far as my work goes, the episode is more or less complete, although I'm still doing just a bit of fine tuning. Since it's an ebook and each individual reader can mess with font style, size, etc., there is no "actual" page total. However, Amazon estimates a number based on standard fonts, and it claims that Epi I weighs in at 158 pages. That's a tally that's unlikely to change by more than a page in either direction prior to release.
I'd like to think that's pretty solid bang for your (three) bucks. Actually, I'd say it's fair to consider the first installment a double-sized episode as I'd expect future releases to come in around half that size.
As I've explained before, it's designed to offer a modular reading experience. If you only chose to read the primary narrative in Episode I, that would be closer to 60 pages, which is about right since it's effectively the opening 1/6th of a larger book. The remainder of the Epi content you can flip through or study carefully depending on your particular interests.
Obviously, there's a lot of material there beyond just the top-level story, so what exactly are you going to find inside? As I explained in a previous dev blog ("Leaking Secrets -- EoE's Format Exposed"), Engines of Extinction is structured as a series of emails sent from an inside source to you, the reader. Each episode (email) lays out the narrative in the email body and then backs it up with evidence, which is included with the email as attachments.
I was thrown for about 15 seconds when I first realized that Amazon requires that every ebook include a table of contents. But it quickly dawned on me that an inbox is basically your email's table of contents, so we're good to go. As an ebook designer, you're rather limited how extensively you can format ebooks, especially since you need the ebook to work across a wide variety of readers, old and new, complex and simple. As a result, I had to implement a rather rudimentary inbox/toc, but I'd like to think it think it gets the point across.
At the top of your inbox, you'll find a new message. Click on that and you'll be introduced to your new "friend" and the story he's selling. Tied that email you'll find eight attachments, which range from an image of a short newspaper article all the way up to a 20+ page classified document.
Here's a break down of those attachments:
- 12/17/14 Wire Report
- 12/22/14 Web Article
- Virginia Beach Incident Investigation Excerpt
- National Intelligence Estimate
- Presidential Finding
- Presidential Policy Directive/PPD-22
- Bax’s Memoir (Rough Draft)
- The Visual Evidence
These attachments not only provide more detail about what's being discussed in the email body, they also, in many cases, provide a different point of view and/or hints of what's to come in future episodes.
The memoir is a perfect example of the modular reading experience. It's an autobiography focused primarily on the narrator's military career that he was working on before he got sucked into all this craziness he's contacting you about now. In all, it's about 50-60 pages worth of material that'll provide you with a great deal of depth concerning his life, military history, and point of view on a number of issues. It'll also introduce (and flesh out) a number of concepts and characters that'll play roles of varying importance as the primary narrative develops. I hope people dig it, but it's completely optional reading. I think it'll really appeal to military-minded readers who have enjoyed my nonfiction work, along with books like No Easy Day and Kill Bin Laden. But if you're here more for the sci-fi elements and not as into all that stuff, you can feel free to skip it and still not feel lost.
The National Intelligence Estimate is a bit of a behemoth in its own right. That's a 'page through it or study it carefully' report depending on your personal tastes. There's a lot to be gleaned from it, however, there's some pretty heady technical stuff inside (albeit designed to be read by the layperson).
Also, I wanted to make special note of the visual evidence attachment. That's a collection of photos, the final seven of which are courtesy of Ben. In the first episode, their function is to provide clues as to what's coming in the months ahead. They're not only a small teaser of the upcoming book content, but also of Ben's work, which will really be put on display in later episodes when we don't have to be quite so cloak-and-dagger about these things. It's gonna be fun.
Thanks again for reading the dev blog, and I hope you all enjoy Episode I when you finally get to check it out. We'll find out soon enough!
Of course, it's only just the beginning as The End & The Means merely marks the first of six monthly episodes. And, hopefully, those six episodes collectively only mark a larger beginning.
Anyway, I figured it would make sense now to give you a brief overview of what you can expect to find when you so generously plunk down your $2.99 and crack open Epi I one week from today.
As far as my work goes, the episode is more or less complete, although I'm still doing just a bit of fine tuning. Since it's an ebook and each individual reader can mess with font style, size, etc., there is no "actual" page total. However, Amazon estimates a number based on standard fonts, and it claims that Epi I weighs in at 158 pages. That's a tally that's unlikely to change by more than a page in either direction prior to release.
I'd like to think that's pretty solid bang for your (three) bucks. Actually, I'd say it's fair to consider the first installment a double-sized episode as I'd expect future releases to come in around half that size.
As I've explained before, it's designed to offer a modular reading experience. If you only chose to read the primary narrative in Episode I, that would be closer to 60 pages, which is about right since it's effectively the opening 1/6th of a larger book. The remainder of the Epi content you can flip through or study carefully depending on your particular interests.
Obviously, there's a lot of material there beyond just the top-level story, so what exactly are you going to find inside? As I explained in a previous dev blog ("Leaking Secrets -- EoE's Format Exposed"), Engines of Extinction is structured as a series of emails sent from an inside source to you, the reader. Each episode (email) lays out the narrative in the email body and then backs it up with evidence, which is included with the email as attachments.
I was thrown for about 15 seconds when I first realized that Amazon requires that every ebook include a table of contents. But it quickly dawned on me that an inbox is basically your email's table of contents, so we're good to go. As an ebook designer, you're rather limited how extensively you can format ebooks, especially since you need the ebook to work across a wide variety of readers, old and new, complex and simple. As a result, I had to implement a rather rudimentary inbox/toc, but I'd like to think it think it gets the point across.
At the top of your inbox, you'll find a new message. Click on that and you'll be introduced to your new "friend" and the story he's selling. Tied that email you'll find eight attachments, which range from an image of a short newspaper article all the way up to a 20+ page classified document.
Here's a break down of those attachments:
- 12/17/14 Wire Report
- 12/22/14 Web Article
- Virginia Beach Incident Investigation Excerpt
- National Intelligence Estimate
- Presidential Finding
- Presidential Policy Directive/PPD-22
- Bax’s Memoir (Rough Draft)
- The Visual Evidence
These attachments not only provide more detail about what's being discussed in the email body, they also, in many cases, provide a different point of view and/or hints of what's to come in future episodes.
The memoir is a perfect example of the modular reading experience. It's an autobiography focused primarily on the narrator's military career that he was working on before he got sucked into all this craziness he's contacting you about now. In all, it's about 50-60 pages worth of material that'll provide you with a great deal of depth concerning his life, military history, and point of view on a number of issues. It'll also introduce (and flesh out) a number of concepts and characters that'll play roles of varying importance as the primary narrative develops. I hope people dig it, but it's completely optional reading. I think it'll really appeal to military-minded readers who have enjoyed my nonfiction work, along with books like No Easy Day and Kill Bin Laden. But if you're here more for the sci-fi elements and not as into all that stuff, you can feel free to skip it and still not feel lost.
The National Intelligence Estimate is a bit of a behemoth in its own right. That's a 'page through it or study it carefully' report depending on your personal tastes. There's a lot to be gleaned from it, however, there's some pretty heady technical stuff inside (albeit designed to be read by the layperson).
Also, I wanted to make special note of the visual evidence attachment. That's a collection of photos, the final seven of which are courtesy of Ben. In the first episode, their function is to provide clues as to what's coming in the months ahead. They're not only a small teaser of the upcoming book content, but also of Ben's work, which will really be put on display in later episodes when we don't have to be quite so cloak-and-dagger about these things. It's gonna be fun.
Thanks again for reading the dev blog, and I hope you all enjoy Episode I when you finally get to check it out. We'll find out soon enough!
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