Tag: apocalyptic

Now Appearing at Story Time

“An author should always seek to engage their audience making them care about the characters and invest in the worlds those characters inhabit, be they current or future versions of our world or other worlds entirely. A good story relies on forming a connection with the reader that will make the conflicts expressed in the narrative mean something.

Story Time will try to take that engagement further, where readers decide how the story will unfold.”

That is how Story Time’s founder, Goran Zidar, describes this new serial novel site. Here, audiences are encouraged to read the opening chapter of a story, then become active participants in how it will unfold. Simply go to the site, select a story, then choose from a list of options. The votes are then tabulated, and the next chapter is created released!

This site, I should note, began as part of Writer’s Worth/Grim5next. Those who are participating are member, and as one such person, I myself decided to join. This I did partly for fun, but mainly so I could head up its Cyberpunk division 😉 The first installment in that division, and the third story to open on the site, is titled “Crashland”. This is a future-tale I just started, set in an apocalyptic near-future where a killer virus has struck and is crippling the world’s information networks, bringing civilization as we know it to an end.

I invite all people to come on by and be part of the creative process! I’m excited myself since this is the first time I’ve ever taken part in a serial novel. Follow the link below to find the story in progress!:

http://story-time.me/2012/04/19/crashland-chapter-1/

New Website: Grim5next!

collide_2Not long ago, I joined a new writing project, known as Writer’s Worth, which I learned about through Goodreads. At the time, I thought it might be a good opportunity to rub shoulders with other writers, get some promotional stuff going, swap ideas, etc.

However, in the few shorts weeks that I’ve been part of this group, I’ve found so much more worth than I expected (yes, that was a pun, my apologies!) For starters, we’ve commissioned an anthology project known as “Worlds Undone”. This book not only gave me a chance to write what I like best, dystopian lit, but also inspired me to explore the genre of dystopian sci-fi more fully.

And that, I am pleased to note, led to my being “freshly pressed” for the first time! Yep, it seemed that the first article in my dystopian series – entitled Dystopian Science Fiction – garnered some attention over at WordPress.com. As a result, I got more traffic in two days than I have in over a year. Or, to put it another way, I tripled my overall amount of hits. Went from just under 4000 views to just over 11000 in the thirty-six hours. Wow…

Inner_city_by_aksuYeah, that was nice. But not as nice as my new group coming together to develop this anthology. And since I have some experience with the self-publishing thing, I volunteered to tackle the dust-jacket design and produced some pretty kick-ass covers, if I do say so myself. But I can hardly take all or even most of the credit.

No, the real credit goes to the artists – Ashley Evans and Alex Popescu  – famed artists who agreed to let us use their cover work to fashion a decent cover. I also posted top contenders in a photoshare over at Shaw. However, the winner will be posted on the website itself soon, so feel free to come by and check it out. We could use some outside opinions, just to make sure we’re not patting ourselves on the back too much!

In any case, named in honor of our first anthology, the site is called Grim5next, since the anthology contains three categories: “Grim Futures”, “Last 5 Minutes”, and “What’s Next?”. It’s an exciting process, and I look forward to the end product! Stay tuned if you want to know how and where to get a copy 🙂

http://grim5next.blogspot.co.uk/