Buy it…?

16 year old Nick Seche is a gamer, a nerd. It's 2024 and Seche wins a beta trial of a new tech, sensory-immersing gaming unit and program from innovative gaming guru, Daichi Arata, head of Phantom Gaming. It's a game apparently locked in the mundanity of small-town USA but Arata's game promises so much more. It goes way beyond the virtual and plunges Nick into a world that becomes scarily not at all everyday. Via the game’s sensors and lightspeed technology Seche lives and breathes his character, Norman Mene. And things in his own world (Sydney Australia) begin to resonate with the world of Burris (the small mid-west town where the game is set); the game spirals out of control, Pleasantville meets Gremlins - hackers made substantial, gamers intruding on game space and politics out of control in downtown main street. In the meantime, back in Sydney, Seche is contacted via a strange entity he dubs the voice. Via the voice he is led to believe that the game is a simulation environment which allows sinister background entities to data mine players. It may be gaming but the stakes are real world - and Nick Seche is a guinea pig.

Malleable…

The paperback cover. I am not (as should be evident) the world's best (or even 1.5 billionth best) graphic designer but I think this one works, at least a little, at getting across what the book is about. Hints of games, playing with dice and gambling, algorithms, and the fluidity of data.

An alternative truth

The opening of a novella about this pandemic; just set somewhere else entirely.In a world with alternative truths what we would perhaps prefer is an alternative world on which to trial them. Part 1 - Beginnings December 13 Nahuw, Anihc Moon is about to place an Uggo piece into what he hopes will be a … Continue reading An alternative truth →

Review of Tom Strelich’s novel, Dog logic

Dog logic; it makes sense Some stories remind us not to take ourselves too seriously, to curb our hubris; perhaps remind us how invidious we can be. ‘Dog logic’ is dystopian, sort of, a book about a man, Hertell, wounded by the now (wits scrambled, wife left, career in ruins) and out of sorts. He … Continue reading Review of Tom Strelich’s novel, Dog logic →

Homage to a big hearted river

Part 1a Alex slowed the car coming into Abercrombie. 80, 60… Ahead was the general store, built in the 1920s, white weatherboard with faded pale-yellow trims and an awning. He didn't want the store and drove around the corner. Parked. The letter was on the passenger seat beside him; addressed to Michael. He'd left … Continue reading Homage to a big hearted river →

To keep politics out, or not?

Should a writer avoid the topical, particularly the political, given that it dates work or that politics and the topical is considered by many to be as dull as dishwater. Take TRUMP. (Please take him and put him away somewhere dark and silent.) Given that he is at the forefront of our world's conscious, it … Continue reading To keep politics out, or not? →

Or the cooling…

Novella with 10 short stories published.

Sendak on the artistic process

Interesting take on the artistic process by Maurice Sendak, the author/illustrator of Where the wild things are, among other texts: "This dual apperception [of self as adult and child] does break down occasionally. That usually happens when my work is going badly. I get a sour feeling about books in general and my own in … Continue reading Sendak on the artistic process →

The zoo speaks

An excerpt from the novel called Kidnapping Douglas Adams - a kind of homage: Tralfamadore is not so much planet as spectacle. Its whole landscape has become, indeed, the universe’s zoo; where planet begins and zoo entertainment ends cannot be unravelled. The place where Felix had put them down (un-intercepted, much to Douglas’s surprise) was … Continue reading The zoo speaks →