2/25/10

I have to interrupt this backstory to bring you the news, relayed by a reader of Ho Springs, that the real Palm Reader shop in the real Hot Springs burned down.

Fiction writers often have the experience of things happening in life that they’ve only imagined, though before this event I hadn’t imagined Jimmie Sue’s Futureama burning down.

In fact, I’d totally invented Jimmie Sue’s Futureama.  I had no idea there was such a place as the Palm Reader’s shop in Hot Springs, though apparently it was a town institution.  The place even had a sign like the sign of the hand that Katie drew for the Futureama.

Also by chance yesterday, I was interviewed by Bradley Robb of Fiction Matters, who asked whether I was going to let readers’ comments influence the Ho Springs plot.

I told Bradley that I did not plan to let the comments influence the course of my story any more than I’d let my neighbors’ casual comments change my mind about where I worked or who I loved.

But then, curious after our interview about the overall subject of digital fiction, I went poking around online, something that, oddly enough, I hadn’t done at all before creating Ho Springs.  I figured if there was anything really innovative out there, I would have heard of it, and for the most part, I was right.

But I did come across a few really intriguing sites, including something called We Tell Stories that Penguin produced a few years ago.  Six fantastic writers and designers teamed up to create innovative projects, with a lot of technical flash — the reader can choose the direction the story will go in, in one case, and literally watch the story being written live, in another.   Gorgeous, much more expensive than anything a non-corporation like me could hope to produce, and inspirational.  Yet different, I was relieved to find, from what I’m doing and what I want to do.

Yet it made me think about different ways I could make full use of the digital format, and when the reader alerted me to the fire, I thought that this was something I needed to incorporate into my story.  Jimmie Sue’s must go.  I even know how it’s going to happen.  I can already smell the smoke.