My Associates Part 3

Here's another round up of other interactive fiction titles. There are more at part 1 and part 2.

Maureen McGowan's Twisted Tales are fractured YA fairy tale romances. 3 layers of choices, 8 endings.


Liz Crowe has an erotic romance series called Brewing Passions. She came out with one of them as a choose your own romance.


 
The Adventures of Whatley Tupper by Pitts and Kerkhoven. Not really romance, with 37 endings it's geared for cyoa fans more than anything else. Authors have another book, not a sequel.

Holliday's High Noon Honeymoon (Happily Ever Afters)  by A. Porter It's got a shit cover and the opening chapter is straight historical western cheese (and nothing wrong with that). Not sure why he had to advertise the Christian.


Christian teen romance where I'm sure you're punished for every risky decision:
Nicole O'Dell Scenarios

One of my fav authors who writes in the awesome futuristic urban fantasy series Crimson City and for the short-lived Shomi line, Liz Maverick, has a YA-geared title in an intriguing "active fiction for Kindle" imprint. To be a series.

Another title in this same mode is by Heidi Kling.

This one is more suspensey. Kira Snyder.

And Tawna Fensky purports to write the next installment based on reader data of which choices were most popular. Adding a serial to cyoa MYSTERY is going to be crazy hard. It's getting more attention than the other 3.

Travis Sentell seems to go in a more scifi direction.

Here's an indie erotic-romance that isn't character-centric. I'm not sure how this works, but apparently you answer a survey first and then they give you the story that matched your preferences... clearly trying to go toward the Choice Of... crowd, I'm not sure how they'd work this technology in an ebook and I'm going to try it!

How To

as a sort of summary to several ideas I explored here, I wrote an article at Author Rescue that reviews my experiences and offers some suggestions. If you are interested in trying interactive fiction, check it out!

Another Collaborative CYOA

Found another way people are collaborating and sharing new cyoa's. iStory uses Google App ability to share a doc, but also has elements of popularity and quality control. From ridiculous to mundane there's all different kinds of stories here. It's not a very active site in terms of new content, but the coolest feature is that their software, Story Forge, creates an iphone version. It's also graphically friendly.

Here's another downloadable cyoa game back from the day: Romance in the Caribbean!

See also January's Infinite Story and March's cyoa Wiki.

Authorial Jealousy

There's a group of authors with a progressive story with the best title ever. Nine Naughty Novelists decorated their blog with terrific spoof.

I bet a lot of people have heard of the Harlequin Title Generator that builds similar fun for you. This blog has given me a terrible, terrible plot bunny. I'm totally jonesing to create a interactive romcom/homage along these lines. Talk about taking an already narrow audience and limiting it further. I'm going to be writing in a micro-genre before long. The Mayan Merchant's Feminist Virgin is the latest title the generator handed me, but I really really want to use the Nine Naughty Novelists' title. Fanfiction is worthy of a free read, isn't it?

Adult Wiki Swim

I found another community of CYOA stories online. The twist, unlike with Infinite-Story, is that it's a wiki! Take the complexity of a CYOA and times it by a progressive authorship. Holey Peep-Toed Pumps that's weird. The Adult page features a whole array of fanfiction and genres. I'm less fond of this model. I guess I am too bossy to share my stories with the world and watch them get stranged by others.

Instead of unique programming like at Infinite, these texts use basic internet hyperlinking to present the choices, with each chapter its own wiki page. Ah, the good old days of Hyperstudio call to me!

Associates Part 2

I found more modern riff's on cyoa's. Some aren't romantic or sexual, but I thought it would be nice to feature them, not that I hold a candle to Demian, who I'll blog about later. For my first collection of some modern cyoa's go here and for part 3 go here.

This is a YA social adventure with a sequel as well. The series is called "Do-Over" which I think is perfect.

This series is called a Date With Destiny and obviously wants to be considered a cyoa with hilarious covers. This one is a romcom.

Here's one that might have some romance in it. It too has a sequel, and a NY pedigree that should guarantee some quality. The series is Miss Adventure. *cute*

This series calls itself Just Make A Choice, and heads into comedy territory. His endorsement quotes are from names in the entertainment industry.

What a horrible subtitle: An Adventure Where You Decide The Outcome. Seriously? Why don't you just subtitle it: On Page 12 You'll Get To Choose What the Main Character Does And The Story Will Change.

I suspect only FUBAR stories will come from a series called Choose Your Own Mindfuck.

Now here's a GENIUS series title: ChooseOMatic. The very positive reviews this landed on Amazon should be taken with a grain of salt. Zombie fans are rabid. (pun intended.)

There are 2 in this series, this one was ranked higher. I don't know how I feel about putting the series title so prominently. It's almost like the story doesn't matter, he's selling the experience. True, that's what will make it different, but the story should still be strong.

Now for something completely different. This promises a mashup of several Austen novels, but the reviews indicate mixed success. Points for the fanfic idea though! How about they make it a series and do Dickens next?

"Pick Any Path" gets the prize for most choice insanity. 3,856 story possibilities!!! This is both a graphic novel and a cyoa. It's being marketed to tweens and I think they missed the boat. It belongs to YA manga fans with the sophistication to handle both the design and content. Highly recommended!

So Who Are My Associates?

I'm proud of myself for trying something "out there" but I acknowledge that I'm not such a Special Snowflake to be a pioneer.

So I went looking for others who are writing interactive romance right now. I found this YA series Choose Your Boyfriend. I prefer my romance to have a little more action in it. Of either variety, if you know what I mean. And what's up with the "20+ endings" statement. Count them already! Inquiring minds want to know. 21? 29?

On the other end of the spectrum is this pure erotica title by M. Wilson. Use Amazon's delightful Look Inside feature. It's sadly hysterical. You see, The first "chapter" or story introduction is only one page long. (And written in traditional second person!) So when I'm presented with my first choice, I cannot read on because I'm directed to page 113/118. *giggling* Woops! There's a small issue with chronological excerpts.

Color me bowled over to find a NY backed CYORomance. It's co-authored with a m/f pair and sets up a gender choice at the beginning. Whatever You Want looks really fun. Written in 2nd person and with 39 endings! I really adore their use of the (commented) end, and how there is only one (Perfect) End. That's another future blog topic of mine. I can't wait to read this!

This one looks more of a lowbrow romcom, and I can kind of tell from the blurb that it's written by a guy. My romance expectations lower, but it still looks nifty. It's also been turned into an app. *jealous*

Christina Crooks, an author for Aphrodisia, had a short story collection of CYORomance for sale. I've found mentions of it around, but its Amazon page is 404. Color me disappointed, because it looks like she explored several genres, like I do. Update: She's posted it for free on her extras page.

And I suppose I should mention the self-publishing god Konrath's foray. He took a minor character from one of his series and put him into an "experimental" book. Even the fans admit there's not much story, but apparently there's sex and a lot of silliness. 

Feb update: Here's a sexual adventure with a multi-cultural flair.

I'm really glad these other people are out there, because it makes my idea seem concurrently a valid option and something new. Here's to niche writing.  

Update: I found even more, so hop to this post or this post.

Infinite-Story.com

I found this site when I was researching CYOA games. It isn't quite CYOA, but it sure is interactive fiction! Their google title is "Never Ending Story" but the site is labeled Infinite Story. There is a subforum for romance. Here you can read a whole bunch of CYOA stories, some erotic, some horrible, some fun.

I tried to create my own but the programming is not wysiwyg. I figured it out, but had no interest in plowing on because, well, I'm happy with MS Word and hope to get money for my stories. Each chapter is called a "room" and you can create up to 5 choices. You can also upload, but not link, your own images. I enjoyed exploring here. I think it's a really neat community with terrific creative potential.

What is interactive fiction?

Interactive fiction is what they're now calling stories with embedded links and/or choices. It has also been called maze fiction, tree literature, branching path books, or gamebooks.  Most famously, it is the type of story exemplified by the Choose Your Own Adventure series. It is also what publishers call tactile board books for babies where they can move the stuffed animal to bed or stick their fingers through the holes. While fun, that's not the kind of book I'm exploring. (Never say never. I can think of some fun uses for cutouts in sexy interactive fiction, but the eformat currently limits me.) There are still a lot of interactive books being directed at kids, but I'm more interested in the adult aspect of choice and giving readers the power to explore, reread, and die. It's my belief that ebooks are perfect for this genre.

This little blog details my journey into writing an adult (really adult) interactive story. The reader will have choices, danger, adventure, passion, and consequences. Hope there's other weirdos like me out there.