I am considering my romance novel game Click Here if You Love Me to be done, for now. I've labelled it "beta .9", with just sound score creation for the animations left on the To Do List. I even updated my LinkedIn profile to show that Click Here if You Love Me is my current project...maybe someone will notice?
Here's how I decided it was "done"... I've been distracted by ideas for a new novel game and have begun the research. I'm pretty excited. It's back to the lovely early days of mulling over the story, working out all the details, dashing out little notes and diagrams. All the fun of dreaming and none of the drudgery of writing! But before I go into that, I want to share some of the reading I did to inspire Click Here if You Love Me. And I did read this somewhere, perhaps it was advice from Shirley Jackson or M.F.K. Fisher? or maybe it was an interview with a best-selling romance novelist featured in the Costco catalog, I really can't remember, but their tip for successful writing was to read.
First, Shirley Jackson. The Haunting of Hill House is one of my favorite books, ever. I reread it in preparation for writing about the spooky "Trapper's Mansion" featured in Click Here. Then, to feed my fourth rewrite, I read Jackson's novel The Sundial. It's marvelous. Creepy like The Haunting of Hill House but also whimsically funny, eccentric and dreamy. It's a story about the supposed end of the world and a group of wealthy people who lock themselves up in a palatial mansion to try and survive the end of days event. One elderly (well my age!) aunt is particularly nuts, gets lost in a maze and a crumbling folly by a swan infested lake, sees visions of her long-dead father.... An interesting bit involves an ingenue peering into a mirror laid flat on a table top with oil poured over the surface. There she sees images of the paradise-like future that awaits them all after the deluge.
To finish the prizes for each chapter of Click Here if You Love Me, I read M.F.K. Fisher. There are a lot of her books that I would like to get to, but the local library just had A Stew or a Story, An Assortment of Short Works by M. F. K. Fisher. These were fascinating, gracefully written and tasty to the imagination. Also did a lot of wikipedia reading about Fisher's life, and her various husbands and lovers. An extraordinary life...I want to read more. She was very beautiful, lived in Europe, left one husband for another who died of a horrendous illness and suicide. Had two daughters but never identified their fathers. I was blown away by Serve it Forth and How to Cook a Wolf. She writes about food and love and life, history and survival.
Then I dove into Patricia Highsmith. A collection of her later short stories, Little Tales of Misogyny was awesome. Creepy, chilling and darkly funny. I skimmed throught the Ripley books. Perhaps the movie ruined them for me, though I remember liking the movie. They are extremely well-written, but I just can't stand spending that much time with an anti-hero. I need to read more of her work and her life. She wrote comic books! I'll visit Patricia Highsmith again. Sometimes you just aren't ready for certain books until another time. I hope if you visit my site http://www.romancenovelgame.com/ and don't like it at first, you'll come back later for another look.
In the same stack of books was Isabelle Allende's Daughter of Fortune, which gave me the courage to write about California in the 1800s. It also reminded me to write about flowers and food and their wonderful smells. I'd read the novel before, and enjoyed it again. And finally, I turned to The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood. I was pretty sure I'd read it before (skimmed it anyway), but the first few pages didn't ring any bells. I love Margaret Atwood and haunt the "A's" section in the library, in case a new one turns up. That's how I discovered Kate Atkinson...anyway, The Robber Bride was great fun, with luxurious detail and as I was reading it, my mind let go of my first romance novel game, and started to percolate on the second one.
My newest stack of books from the wonderful public library (everyone, go to your local library now and check out some books!) includes: Kiln People by David Brin, Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott, Trouble with Physics by Lee Smolin, and Warped Passages - Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions by Lisa Randall, Parallel Worlds by Michio Kaku. The stuff for another novel game!
Here's how I decided it was "done"... I've been distracted by ideas for a new novel game and have begun the research. I'm pretty excited. It's back to the lovely early days of mulling over the story, working out all the details, dashing out little notes and diagrams. All the fun of dreaming and none of the drudgery of writing! But before I go into that, I want to share some of the reading I did to inspire Click Here if You Love Me. And I did read this somewhere, perhaps it was advice from Shirley Jackson or M.F.K. Fisher? or maybe it was an interview with a best-selling romance novelist featured in the Costco catalog, I really can't remember, but their tip for successful writing was to read.
First, Shirley Jackson. The Haunting of Hill House is one of my favorite books, ever. I reread it in preparation for writing about the spooky "Trapper's Mansion" featured in Click Here. Then, to feed my fourth rewrite, I read Jackson's novel The Sundial. It's marvelous. Creepy like The Haunting of Hill House but also whimsically funny, eccentric and dreamy. It's a story about the supposed end of the world and a group of wealthy people who lock themselves up in a palatial mansion to try and survive the end of days event. One elderly (well my age!) aunt is particularly nuts, gets lost in a maze and a crumbling folly by a swan infested lake, sees visions of her long-dead father.... An interesting bit involves an ingenue peering into a mirror laid flat on a table top with oil poured over the surface. There she sees images of the paradise-like future that awaits them all after the deluge.
To finish the prizes for each chapter of Click Here if You Love Me, I read M.F.K. Fisher. There are a lot of her books that I would like to get to, but the local library just had A Stew or a Story, An Assortment of Short Works by M. F. K. Fisher. These were fascinating, gracefully written and tasty to the imagination. Also did a lot of wikipedia reading about Fisher's life, and her various husbands and lovers. An extraordinary life...I want to read more. She was very beautiful, lived in Europe, left one husband for another who died of a horrendous illness and suicide. Had two daughters but never identified their fathers. I was blown away by Serve it Forth and How to Cook a Wolf. She writes about food and love and life, history and survival.
Then I dove into Patricia Highsmith. A collection of her later short stories, Little Tales of Misogyny was awesome. Creepy, chilling and darkly funny. I skimmed throught the Ripley books. Perhaps the movie ruined them for me, though I remember liking the movie. They are extremely well-written, but I just can't stand spending that much time with an anti-hero. I need to read more of her work and her life. She wrote comic books! I'll visit Patricia Highsmith again. Sometimes you just aren't ready for certain books until another time. I hope if you visit my site http://www.romancenovelgame.com/ and don't like it at first, you'll come back later for another look.
In the same stack of books was Isabelle Allende's Daughter of Fortune, which gave me the courage to write about California in the 1800s. It also reminded me to write about flowers and food and their wonderful smells. I'd read the novel before, and enjoyed it again. And finally, I turned to The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood. I was pretty sure I'd read it before (skimmed it anyway), but the first few pages didn't ring any bells. I love Margaret Atwood and haunt the "A's" section in the library, in case a new one turns up. That's how I discovered Kate Atkinson...anyway, The Robber Bride was great fun, with luxurious detail and as I was reading it, my mind let go of my first romance novel game, and started to percolate on the second one.
My newest stack of books from the wonderful public library (everyone, go to your local library now and check out some books!) includes: Kiln People by David Brin, Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott, Trouble with Physics by Lee Smolin, and Warped Passages - Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions by Lisa Randall, Parallel Worlds by Michio Kaku. The stuff for another novel game!
