Over the past decade, I’ve effectively had my feet in two quite separate camps when it comes to writing and reading.  As well as writing, publishing, and editing novels and short stories, I’ve also been involved with creating and publishing works of digital fiction online.  By ‘digital fiction’ I mean works of fiction that depend upon the computer to exist, works that blend text with other media, including images, sounds, music, animation, video, and games; by ‘digital fiction’ I don’t mean ebooks, or enhanced ebooks, or books-as-apps.  While works of digital fiction are increasingly high profile and popular, the two worlds – traditional publishing and digital fiction – remain remarkably immune to each other’s charms. 

Two of the most high profile works of digital fiction I’m involved with – both of which are ongoing projects, and both of which are included in ELC2 – are Inanimate Alice and Flight Paths: A Networked Novel.  ‘Inanimate Alice’ is the story of Alice, a girl who wants to be a games designer when she grows up; in the existing four episodes (six more are planned), the level of interactivity in the story increases as Alice’s own skills as a game designer increase.  ‘Flight Paths’ is the story of what happens when two lives – a Pakistani man who has stowed away on an airplane, and a London woman – collide rather dramatically in the parking lot of a supermarket. 

‘Inanimate Alice’ is used in schools and universities around the world as a tool for teaching both digital literacy and new ways of telling stories using the new technologies.  There’s a very active international pedagogical community around the stories; if you are interested in this, the best way to find out what’s going on is to join the ‘Inanimate Alice’ Facebook group http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/InanimateAlice or to follow @inanimatealice on twitter. 

I’m passionate about the possiblities for literature in the digital age.  We live in a time of great change – the way we read is changing, the way we write is changing, literature itself is changing.  But our deep need for stories will never go away. 

And I have to say that I’ve found the transition from reading pbooks to reading on it pretty seamless.

The fact that this particular device offers a wealth of other entertainment opportunities hasn’t worried me too much.  I bought a novel on it, and I read the novel.  It wasn’t a particularly good novel, but it still held my attention throughout, even when I was in the midst of my worst spell of Angry Birds fever.  Doubtless I’ll buy more.  The temptation to buy stuff for this device, from books to content of all kinds, is huge:  really, it’s the ultimate consumer device as the way to get the most out of it is to buy more and more stuff to consume on it. 

It’s pretty.  It’s shiny.  The issues I mentioned in that earlier post still remain true.  But now that I have it, for me the biggest concern will be trying to figure out which books to buy for it, and which books to buy in hard copy.  If anyone has a formula, or a set of guidelines, for figuring out that one, please tell me. 

In other news, I posted a tweet the other day saying ‘Maybe someone will enable Flash on apple devices while Steve Jobs isn’t looking.’  A little bad-tempered joke on a Monday morning (and of course not unrelated to my new reading device).  This tweet was RTed, and then RTed some more; then William Gibson RTed it, and it got RTed more and more.  A tiny moment of twitter sunshine.  Then the darkness of broken web browsing closed in once again. 

‘Lifelines’, the digital fiction project Chris Joseph and I created for educational publisher, Rising Stars, has been nominated in the category of Secondary, FE, and Skills Digital Content.  The other projects look great.  But fingers crossed!  It would be great for Rising Stars, and for us, to have a win. 

In advance of the award ceremony, there’s been two pieces about my work in the papers of late:  an interview in the Independent on Sunday, ‘Brave New World:  Writers Will Have to Change Their Attitude if They’re to Catch Up with the Videogames Industry’, and a Comment piece in the Guardian’s Classroom Innovation supplement today, ‘Educators Need to Utilise the Explosion in Digital Writing’. 

I’ll be giving a seminar at BETT on Friday. 

There’s been a few good reviews already - the links are in the Press section of the website.  The US market seems huge and totally foreign to me, so fingers crossed that my novel finds its way.

Just before Christmas the enhanced audio edition of the book created by McArthur & Co, CBC Books, and myself for the Canadian market was released.  It featured on the homepage of the iBookstore for a while, which is great.  If you’ve seen the edition, I’d love to hear from you - I have yet to see it myself, as getting hold of it outside the Canadian market territory has proved difficult.  I hope that readers like it. 

As well as publication day, this is my first day back at work post-holidays - very tough getting started on life and work once again.  But I’m looking forward to 2011, and having my novel come out today as well is a great boost, and very exciting!