"According to Cain" placed #1 on Winter is Coming's "The 10 scariest free interactive fiction games to enjoy this winter."| Jim Nelson
“No English, bro.”| Merlin Mann
The audiobook of A Man Named Baskerville is now available at Apple Books, as well as Audible and Amazon.| Jim Nelson
You'd think, wouldn't you, that the US governmental Food and Drugs Administration would be tasked with giving the public information based on rigorous and robust science. Sadly, you'd be wrong. This week - in the face of hysterical panic about youth use of e-cigs - they have produced a poster which they will be sending to every High School in America to be put up in school bathrooms. Now, let's put aside for a moment the laughable idiocy of showing kids the new risky fad that many of their pe...| Dick Puddlecote
The final two books in the Bridge Daughter Cycle, Hagar's Mother and Stranger Son, are now on Kobo.| Jim Nelson
Update on the audiobook of A Man Named Baskerville, and the hardcover edition is about to be released.| Jim Nelson
Bridge Daughter and In My Memory Locked now on Kobo.| Jim Nelson
The audiobook dropped this week on Audible.| Jim Nelson
Why I'm publishing my back catalog to Kobo, and why I've put off doing it for so long.| Jim Nelson
I'm beginning to add more of my back catalog to Kobo, starting with Edward Teller Dreams of Barbecuing People. More titles will follow.| Jim Nelson
Today’s newsletter is a bit of a change of pace, a guest article from Kris Longfield of Fanthropology on the romantasy genre, a genre I’ve had my eye on for a while. Full disclosure: I’ve done some consulting work with Kris. As she says at the end, she’s running a seminar on Romantasy later this morning, 11:00 AM PST on 5-Feb, with replays available after. Check it out! You may ... Read MoreRomantasy, a Genre That Lives Up to the Hype?| Entertainment Strategy Guy
Pre-orders for the special hardcover edition of A Man Named Baskerville are now available.| Jim Nelson
And that's a wrap—MX Publishing's Kickstarter for A Man Named Baskerville closed earlier today with 81 backers pledging £1,842 (USD$2,241) toward the upcoming Special Edition hardback. Learn more about A Man Named Baskerville on my web site.| Jim Nelson
The Kickstarter for A Man Named Baskerville: Special Edition has raised nearly $1,700 in two weeks, and great donor rewards are still available.| Jim Nelson
MX Publishing's Kickstarter fundraiser is underway to launch a special hardcover edition of A Man Named Baskerville and an audiobook. Donors can receive rewards like signed copies and exclusive megapacks. Contributions will cover production costs. Please share the campaign!| Jim Nelson
Some time in early 2025, you should expect to see a new hardcover and audiobook of Baskerville. I'm especially excited about the audiobook, as this will be the first one produced for my novels.| Jim Nelson
My Interactive Fiction Competition entry Under the Cognomen of Edgar Allan Poe was reviewed by Justin Kim at The Final Arc. Highlights: On one hand, it’s a game about dealing with the duality of superficial popularity vs meaningful respect as a career writer. On another hand, it’s a mystery about the last days of famed […]| Jim Nelson
Today is the start of the Interactive Fiction (IF) Competition 2024, which includes my latest IF title, Under the Cognomen of Edgar Allan Poe. Over 67 titles are entered in the competition this year. The great thing about IF Comp is that anyone can play and be a judge.| Jim Nelson
On the Interactive Fiction Community Forum, author Brian Rushton has been at work completing his series reviewing every game to win the XYZZY and IF Comp awards. He recently posted his review of According to Cain, the most recent game to win the XYZZY: Your game, the player’s, while fraught with occasional physical danger, is […]| Jim Nelson
Forgot to mention it here—a couple weeks back, I was interviewed by otistdog (“Mad Scientist”) at the Interactive Fiction Community Forum about According to Cain. Sample from the Q&A: Q: What was it about the Cain and Abel story that attracted you as a subject?JN: Two brothers fighting over the affection of their parents and […]| Jim Nelson
When I started this blog years ago, I made a private agreement with myself: I would avoid writing topical political content. Substack, social media, and the blogosphere is saturated with political commentary, providing lots of heat but little light. I don’t like trafficking in outrage, which is the fast-track to success in political blogging. However, […]| Jim Nelson
This slipped by me in February, but today I learned A Man Named Baskerville is reviewed positively at Melisende’s Library: This is the much needed backstory of the character of Stapleton from Conan Doyle’s “Hound of the Baskervilles”. It is exceedingly well done and in keeping with Conan Doyle’s original story. … Heartily recommended for […]| Jim Nelson
Yesterday, the 2022 XYZZY final awards were announced. If you don’t know, the XYZZY Awards are given yearly for interactive fiction. They’re sometimes called the Academy Awards for interactive fiction. I was blown away to learn that According to Cain won Best Game and Best Implementation for 2022. Cain was also nominated for Best Writing, […]| Jim Nelson
If you’re a NetGalley member, my Sherlock Holmes-inspired novel A Man Named Baskerville is now available for download and review. Baskerville is my take on the Arthur Conan Doyle classic. Told as a journal penned by the original’s villain, it relates his life story from a pauper’s childhood in the Empire of Brazil to life […]| Jim Nelson
The 2022 XYZZY Awards for interactive fiction is now accepting nominations. The XYZZY Awards is one of the oldest video game award on the books. It first started in 1997 and has been held yearly since. It’s often called the Oscars for interactive fiction. If you’ve played even one interactive fiction game first released in […]| Jim Nelson
Ben Davis of artnet news reports a story that sounds all-too-familiar these days: A little more than a week ago, I wrote a review of an art show by the artist and TikTok sensation Devon Rodriguez, best known for live drawing subway riders. He is, by some measures, the most famous artist in the world, […]| Jim Nelson
This morning I learned that my interactive fiction game According to Cain was selected for the 2023 Interactive Fiction Top 50. This is a poll run by Victor Gijsbers every four years since 2011, and generally attracts interactive fiction enthusiasts and authors (most of whom gather now at intfiction.org). The goal of the poll is […]| Jim Nelson
Will Blythe at Esquire asks, “In the golden age of magazines, short stories reigned supreme. Has the digital revolution killed their cultural relevance?” Wearily, I started his essay expecting more of the same, and lo, finding it: Computers and the Internet, he contends, has done much to destroy literary fiction. By this point, I’m surprised […]| Jim Nelson
The recorded video of my NarraScope 2023 talk—”According to Cain: From concept to completion”—is now up: Or, watch it on YouTube. Published 29 August 2023. Last updated 28 August 2023.| Jim Nelson
Kat Rosenfield at Unherd claims she knows why men are no longer wild: “Our sense of adventure died with Chris McCandless.” I last wrote about the mythology around Chris McCandless and Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild in 2015. Rosenfield’s article motivated me to survey the situation once more. I won’t summarize here Krakauer’s book or […]| Jim Nelson
I drop by the show to talk about CSS updates and news on container queries, rolling out cascade layers, `!important` things to remember, custom properties, exit animations, CSS functions, state queries, and more.| Miriam Eric Suzanne
I'm still getting used to this| Miriam Eric Suzanne
CSS Container Queries promise even more powerful styling approaches, but… what the heck are they? How do they actually work? Miriam joined Jason to teach and explore Container Queries in live code.| Miriam Eric Suzanne
