A new year, a new you. New projects, at any rate. Here’s what I’m currently working on.
After Z
For the last few months I’ve been beta testing a website that gives writers a place to post and share branching narratives. A lot of what I’ve been doing is stress testing, and part of this has been posting a lengthy serial for a group of beta readers who provide feedback and make choices determining which way the story will go next.
In short After Z is an apocalyptic story about a fan of zombie media who believes his genre awareness will give him the edge he needs to survive. He’s right and he’s wrong, to the point where unfounded assumptions about the nature of the living dead will cause as many problems as they solve.
I’ll be cleaning the resulting story up and posting weekly chapters here for readers to enjoy.
I’m also going to try to get back to writing novels, at least to the point of getting a book written, revised, and released by the end of the year. This is more of a low-key desire, but it’s something in the back of my head.
Blown Cartridges
I started making retrogaming videos back before the pandemic as an excuse to hang out with friends and talk about old video games. Then COVID hit, making the idea of in-person recording a bit less appealing.
In 2022 I’ll be making videos on video game history, reviewing games that never saw a US release, and covering both romhacks and game mods. Not here, though – Blown Cartridge will get its own website.
Interactive Fiction Zine
Game writing is going to be one of my main focus in the year ahead, and part of that is going to be a choice-based interactive fiction zine. I’ll be posting stories/games on a regular basis – depending on my workflow and production scoping, but I’ll be aiming for a monthly release schedule. With sufficient interest I’d also like to produce occasional hardcopy stories as both paperbacks and PDFs.
As of January 1st, 2022, that’s the plan, but who knows what the year holds? We’ll revisit this in a few months and see how things are going.
Happy New Year.
