Stefan Gagne's Fiction Factory

25+ years of novels, games, and other creative fiascos.

Archives for March 2013

winding down, incoming polls

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The City of Angles Kickstarter is coming to a close soon, with this coming Thursday as the final bell. I can honestly say it’s exceeded all my expectations and thankfully I’ve survived the exceeding of my expectations. Provided nobody pulls out or there aren’t any Amazon payment bungles, we will be fully funded, have all stretch goals, be able to afford the reward tier fulfillment, and have enough left over for a bag of nachos.

I may issue a backer update with a photo of the bag of nachos. They are OUR nachos. We achieved them together.

Kickstarters sometimes pick up steam at the tail end, so by all means, keep spreading word; at this point any additional backers are delicious gravy, and good for promoting the stories.

So, what’s to come? In April I’m going to be working with the artists (Allison and Zack) to get the art arranged for the book and the website extras. I’ll be wrapping preproduction work on volume 002, with the survey I sent out weeks ago guiding me towards what stories you want to see. (Don’t worry, I’m using it as a guideline, not a rule.) And you get to make your final say regarding art and other sundries.

I’ll be issuing polls to all backers, from the $1 level and up, after the Kickstarter closes. These polls will determine what characters are drawn by Allison for Character Art Wave #2 and the Couples / Altposes Art Wave. If you want to have a say in this, keep an eye out next weekend for the polls; I’m going to need to close them pretty rapidly so I can get the art orders in. Make sure you jump on them once available!

(If you aren’t already a backer, but would like a say in picking the art… go back the project! Any amount from a buck and up will get you a ballot!)

After that I’ll be issuing backer updates as backer-specific material starts coming in (bookmark fun pack previews, wallpaper, art sketches, etc.) and will be working on volume 002 with posts on the public blog for all readers. Basically, gonna be a lotta stuff.

My goal is to have volume 001 in paperback form and out to backers in September. This is a guesstimate, though, since I’ve never attempted something on this scale before. I appreciate patience in advance as I sort through the redonkulous pile of tasks ahead of me.

See you on Thursday!

pax east 2013

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Up front, let me share some City of Angles news:

  • The Kickstarter is now in the black; I have enough money to cover all the stretch goals AND all the tier fulfillment. Anything extra will go into a fund for future creative project costs. I’d still love to get more backers, even at the lowest tiers — it’d show there’s a wider audience for City of Angles than ever. You’ve got until April 4th to stand and be counted!
  • Preproduction on volume 002 is taking some time, as I try to come up with tales which will mesh well with the survey results and craft the overall narrative of the entire volume. I’ll likely start writing mid-April. Thanks for your patience.

So! I’m back from PAX. And as all the best teachers say, “Show your work.” I intend to do just that. Here’s a rundown on the most notable things I saw over the course of my weekend, which was fraught with freezing cold temperatures and constipation and overpriced food that I will not go into detail on.

THE BAD: Panels and Big Budget Games.

Indie Game Writing Panel. First panel I attended, which was staffed by five random guys who do indie games and did not really have a lot to say about narrative. The basic point they made was “Indie means freedom and flexibility!” to which I say “No shirt, Sherlock” and then they proceeded to plug their generally uninteresting games over and over for the rest of the hour. Ick.

Harmonix Rock Band Panel. I love Harmonix and I love Rock Band, and I loved this peek behind the curtain… but I can’t help but feel a bit heartbroken, seeing prototypes and game pitches that went absolutely nowhere and showed what Could Have Been for music games if the genre hadn’t been nuked from orbit by Activision and music labels weren’t a legal hellscape. The animatic for a proposed but rejected Led Zeppelin game was particularly beautiful and agonizing to watch, knowing it was never going to happen. It seems like Harmonix wants to run far, far away from the Rock Band franchise and never return given all the trouble it gave them — and while I can understand that, it’s very disappointing.

Watch_Dogs. I am super stoked about this game. When I saw a line stretching around the Ubisoft booth and back just to get in and see it, I was ready to give up. Fortunately one of the Frag Dolls spotted me and offered to let me cut in, since my disability support scooter couldn’t do the line! Yay! But… once I got in I got a 3 minute boring prerecorded hype interview, and the SAME 3 MINUTES OF GAMEPLAY shown at the PS4 presser with new and very redundant narration. That’s it. I felt genuinely sorry for anybody who actually waited in line for that. AAA titles need to bring their AAA game to PAX, especially in light of the next items on my list…

THE GOOD: Indies! Indies! Indies!

Transistor. From the makers of Bastion we have a superbly executed action/strategy game, one which handles better than Bastion did, especially for disabled gamers. Less reliance on chording and dual sticks, more reliance on planning out your move at your own pace. Amazing atmosphere and story and I waaaant more.

Contrast. A puzzle platformer where you hop in and out of shadows on the wall in a decadent Parisian atmosphere. I got hands on with this one — I couldn’t handle the controls due to chording, but the experience was still amazing. The developer said they put in Y-inversion for crusty old 90s gamers like me (and him!) and that I’d be able to monkey with INI files to rebind things if a rebinder isn’t in. Good to see some nods to disability to support and this is shaping up to be a great game.

Dungeon Hearts. A pretty generic title for a really interesting game; a hybrid of RPG and match-3 puzzle with juuuust enough timing-based action to keep it interesting without being overwhelming. I got hands-on with it and really enjoyed my time. I could see it getting a bit crazy at higher levels; hopefully they have a way of letting people progress even if they hit a skill wall.

THE REST: Interesting Stuff.

Magic the Gathering Online. They were offering free demos of their latest version of MtGO. If you’ve been following me on FB/Twitter you’d know I was agonizing over whether I wanted to sink money into virtual cards I could play with anytime, or paper cards I’d get to play with once in a blue moon. Turns out the answer is “Both, because I can afford to.” But my first MtGO session went well; my very, very, VERY badly drafted Boros deck won against a much sharper Orzhov/Dimir deck thanks to the high speed play of Boros and some luck.

Slam Blot Scrappers. It’s been an indie darling on PS3, now it’s on Steam. I can only half-recommend it. Clearly it’s crafted with love and piles on the innovation, being a weird mix of Smash Bros, Tetris, and Tower Defense… but no network play means I’d basically never get to play it, and the crazy frenetic pace of the action is really not my cup of tea. If you like what you see in the gameplay AND you have local players to play it with, though, it’s definitely worth it.

…overall I had a ton of fun at PAX. It’s pretty clear that the indie scene is becoming a force to be reckoned with; unlike past shows every single game I saw had someone playing all the time, with no games being completely overlooked in favor of the latest modern military shooter. If anything the AAA presence felt obligatory and splashy with little actual substance to it; everybody saving up their best material for E3. That’s a downright shame, but hey… more fun for the little guys.

pax weekend and minecraft

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There won’t be a City of Angles update this weekend, because I’ll be up in Boston for PAX East. If you spot me there and want me to sign a book or anything that isn’t a body part, feel free to flag me down! I’ll be the only short guy on a motorized scooter with a shiny metal walker bungee corded to the back. Makes getting through crowds a pain, but hey.

I’m working on a Minecraft map for City of Angles. It’s coming along great; you take the role of a new import, arriving in the Sideways in the middle of a bit of a crisis. The storyline won’t be canon since I need to repurpose a villain, but it does link in with the tales, and takes place between vol//001 and vol//002. Should be fun for fans of the series or fans of Minecraft or both!

Not much else to report on at the moment — we’re fully funded (although some extra to help cover shipping costs would help) and odds are we won’t see any more push until the end of the Kickstarter. These things tend to bell-curve, high at each end and low in the middle.

If you’d like to follow my shenanigans, catch up with me on Twitter. I’ll be posting random musings and Vines there during the weekend.

See you after PAX! City of Angles vol//002 starts sometime in April, as does the huge pile of work ahead of me to get the book together!

new vip story: dogs of war

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It’s time for your news roundup!

New VIP Story!

All VIP subscribers and all Kickstarter backers now have access to Dogs of War, a story suggested by backer Wender Wu. He kicked this sucker up to the highest tiers of awesomeness, which earned him the right to tell me to go forth and craft his tale. Did he wish to read an epic adventure, a tragic romance, or a legendary yarn for the ages? No, he wanted something about a hot dog vendor. And his wish is my command!

Read “Dogs of War” now! (NOTE: You must be a member of the VIP club to use that link. Kickstarter backers, I’ll be sending your backer-only link soon.)

I welcome feedback about this story; I suggest emailing me directly, though, instead of posting on the blog. Spoilarz, and all.

Kickstarter Progress!

The Kickstarter’s going great; we’re fully funded now, although by fully funded I mean “a few hundred in the red” due to reward fulfillment costs. Printing and shipping books costs money, yo. Hoping we’ll get a few more backers to help offset the costs, and eventually start adding towards future projects.

What you can do to help is spread the word about City of Angles itself. I know I’ve said this several times, and I apologize if it feels like high pressure sales tactics or anything like that, but word-of-mouth is basically the only good way to get a web novel promoted. Even if we don’t get backers from it, if we can get more readers in general, that’ll help me going into the future!

eBay Auction!

I’ve got an eBay auction up for a rare misprinted version of Anachronauts: Stars Fall! It’ll be autographed and dedicated, too! Right now it’s going for less than an actual copy of Stars Fall, which is a real steal for this is a one-of-a-kind item. Who will be the one to outbid the dread lord of the Sith, Darth Wiggles? Anachronauts calls do you. Don’t deny its call.

TVTropes!

We’ve got a TVTropes page now! There’s not too much there, so I welcome any tropers who want to take a poke at it and add a few things that were missed. Same goes for adding City of Angles to other trope pages, linking back and forth.

TVTropes is responsible for quite a bit of traffic to the anachronauts site, so if I can get a healthy page going for CoA, it may bring in more readers!

Survey Says…!

I’ve collected 21 surveys from the volume//002 survey. Here’s the interesting bits.

Ratio of Returning vs. New Characters: Between 50/50 and mostly returning. So, I’ll be focusing largely on returning, but I do have plenty of new characters who will be dropping in to say hello.

Major Character: Kelsey Jones beat out the others, which is nice since I wanted to do more with her in vol//002. There’s also a lot of love out there for Hollister, who hasn’t been the star of the show yet… maybe I can do something about that. The Wei sisters got very little support so I might keep them on the backburner for now, depends on if I can find a compelling plot for them.

Minor Characters: Grandma Scarlett ran away with this one, which is surprising since I was figuring her story was over. I’ll have to see what I can think of for her; I can’t promise anything since I have no idea what else could be done with her. Next up though are Lucas and Milly, everybody’s favorite suburbanites, and I absolutely want to revisit them.

City Aspects: A wide variety of responses, here. The top ones were Sideways Signals (great for a Kelsey chapter), independent mappers (maybe a new character?), and the various weird areas like Sideways, Endless Highways, and Undefined Spaces. Near the bottom were Salvagers, but I have a story involving them planned out already. I think you’ll find it worthwhile given WHAT they’re salvaging, though…

I’ll be talking more about my vol//002 plans in April. For now, we’ve got a new VIP story, we’ve got the Kickstarter, and we’ve got time to push awareness of City of Angles to the moon! Thanks for all your support!

misprint… or RARE GET?

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So once upon a time I released a book called Anachronauts: Stars Fall. It took quite some time to get it prepared for retail sale, and in the process, I made a teeensy weeensy error of oversight known as “Oh crap I forgot to include every inline image in the entire book.” Didn’t even notice it until after I’d ordered the author’s proof copy.

Since then I’ve fixed the problem, and the version you can get from the Anachronauts book store is A-OK. However, that leaves me with this pristine copy of the book which has placeholder text for all the spell words and the special graphic from Carrie Lane’s chapter.

What should I do with it? Toss it in the trash? Heck no! I’mma auction that thing! It seems the lulzy thing to do.

Here’s your chance to bid on a rare misprint version of Stars Fall, with author’s autograph, on eBay.

I’ll sign and dedicate it however you like. I’m starting the price at ten bucks and normally it goes for seventeen, so hey, ground floor bonus! Hopefully it goes over seventeen eventually though, because the proceeds from the auction will go into the overall creative project fund that the Kickstarter’s pumping too.

In Other News:

  • Tune in tonight (Wed 13th) at 8pm Eastern for a livestream of the Walking Dead, in which I will take every jerkbutt response the game lets me take. Fun stuff!
  • This Sunday, I’ll be posting the first Kickstarter-backed VIP club story! All backers will get access to the tale, as well as VIP club members.

kickstarter week one wrap-up

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(Okay, so it’s not a complete week, but I normally update the website on Sundays so I’mma do my wrap-ups then. Cool? Cool. These updates will be crossposted to my blog and to the Kickstarter update system, so you can read them wherever you prefer.)

The Kickstarter’s going great. Better than great. Honestly it blitzed right out of the block and sailed past all my expectations. I know I have a small readership that I can count on four or five hands, but I didn’t realize how jazzed they were about dropping large sums of money in a single burst. We are now nearly out of stretch goals, as a result.

The upside of all this is that the City of Angles Kickstarter is now more of a “Stefan’s Books Kickstarter.” We’ve got the funds to proof, cover, and publish Unreal Estate. We’ve got the funds to proof, cover, and publish Second Age. We’ve got art funding on top of art funding. We’ve got ad campaign funding which is if not Wall Street level, is at least Baltic Avenue level. In short, we win everything, forever.

So, if we’ve conquered the mountain one week in, what’s left?

For starters, publicity. We need a breadth of backers now — new readers who didn’t know about CoA before, but are ready to step up and grab one of the low tier options or even just start reading for free without backing. I’m pushing on all fronts and researching new fronts to push on, but the primary means by which web novels make the magic happen is word-of-mouth. You’ve shown your dedication quite nicely so far. I know I can count on you to carry the flag. I am REALLY piling on the metaphors today. That’s what I do when excited.

For this week’s bonus item (to make up for a lack of new story) I wrote up a Fiasco playset based on City of Angles. Fiasco, which you may have seen on TableTop, is a simple set of rules for a storytelling game where anything that can go wrong will. The CoA playset is less focused on wacky crime and more on tangled psychological issues in the middle of strange places. …so basically, it’s City of Angles. I haven’t playtested this thing so any suggestions are welcome.

Bonus Item: City of Angles Fiasco Playset

I’m pondering bonus items for future week wrap-up updates, and am open to suggestions there. I know next week I’ll likely be providing you with a preview of the author’s annotations that are exclusive to the book.

Other news…

Next week on Wednesday the 13th at 8pm Eastern I’m planning to do a livestream playthrough of The Walking Dead. There may be a CoA-related prize giveaway, and it’s going to be an amusing time regardless, so tune in! I’m hoping to do video game livestreams every Wednesday going into the future.

Lastly, I’m going to be at PAX East this year, so updates may slow around there. Expect me to livetweet the zaniness, mind you. If you’re at the show too and want to flag me down to say hi or sign something, feel free — I will stick out like a sore thumb being the only dwarf on a motorized scooter with a walker bungee corded to the back of it.

See you next week. If you want to contact me for any reason… questions, comments, knock-knock jokes, etc… drop me an email at stefangagne@gmail.com. Always got my ears open. Later!

city of angles on kickstarter!

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It’s time! It’s time! We are GO!

Behold the City of Angles vol//001 Kickstarter!

Sound the trumpets and strike up the band, because it’s time to rock, etc, etc. This is a big moment for me — and for you, the readers who have been with me so far. This will help determine the future of this and other writing projects.

This isn’t just about money, it’s about growing my audience and getting the work in front of people on a popular crowdfunding site. It’s half funding and half promotion. All important. …maybe 65% promotion and 35% money. The exact ratio is not an exact science. Point is, we get dudes, we get power, WE GET THE WORLD.

I’m going to need your help. This is a good entry point for the series, something people are familiar with, something that’s hot-button right now. Pass the link around. Tell your friends. If you’re in any book discussion groups or communities, let them know.

We’ve got one month to blow the roof off this thing, to carry on the concert metaphor while embedding it in a metaphor about unstable structures. Let’s get OSHA-noncompliant.

In other news: This Wednesday’s planned wacky video game stream’s cancelled due to Twitch.TV going down for a few hours, and I’ll continue to be providing blog content every Sunday, even if City of Angles itself won’t resume until at least April.

Also, if you haven’t already, it’d help if you filled out this survery about vol//002. It’ll help me pick what stories to write!

24.5 hours to reach minimum safe distance

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Kickstarter’s approved my Kickstarter!

The official launch time will be 9pm Eastern, Tuesday, March 5th.

Get ready — make sure you can use Kickstarter, for starters. It uses Amazon Payments, so you’ll wanna set up in advance if you haven’t used it before. Here we go…

delay of game

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Oops.

Okay, my bad on this. I was planning to launch the Kickstarter today, but forgot that I’d made changes to it since I submitted it for review to Kickstarter’s higher-ups. I had to resubmit for a re-review.

It’ll be up within a few days. I’ll make sure you have 24 hours notice before it goes live; be sure you keep an eye on my Twitter/FB/blog, whichever you prefer.