All’s Fair in Love & War, Texas is now live!

After months of preparation, All’s Fair in Love and War, Texas is finally live. Check it out, tell your friends, tell your friends’ tweens and teens!

I realize it might not look like it to the untrained eye, but this website was a lot of work. (Work which, I have to admit, I mostly enjoyed.) It’s built on Wordpress, but it was my first attempt at building a WP theme from scratch. So I had that learning curve to tackle, which was respectable. (If I had it all to do over again, I would probably start out with the Thematic theme and build a child theme from there. I discovered Thematic when building a website for my husband’s job, and it’s wonderful.)

So I built the theme myself. And then I ran into some coding problems. See, from the beginning I knew I did not want to create just anther blog-based serialized novel. There are TONS of those on the net. Given my penchant for the web and “new media” in general, I wanted to create something that, as far as I was aware, hadn’t really been done elsewhere. Building upon some basic beliefs I have about how web users assimilate information and knowledge (about which I have an article coming out on A List Apart some time this fall) I knew I wanted to create a narrative that had many points of entry and exit. I wanted my readers to choose for themselves which narratives to follow. And moreover, I wanted to take all the work out of it. I wanted choosing a narrative to be intuitive and easy.

So the first thing I needed to do was create metadata for each story. Which characters are involved? Where does this story take place? Which story line does it fall into? And I needed to display this metadata in a way that would make sense to the reader, yet wouldn’t be overwhelming.

Turns out, there’s not a way built into Wordpress to do this. You can tell Wordpress to show you the children of certain categories, but you can’t ask Wordpress to show you the children of X category ONLY if this post belongs to the parent category (an subsequently, only if it belongs to the children categories!) This was a fundamental navigational aspect I needed for this site. I needed to say, “Okay, Wordpress, show me the children of the Characters category that this post belongs to, and then show me the children of the Places category this belongs to, and then show me the children of the Events category this post belongs to.”

I tried to make Wordpress do this. I really did. But Wordpress just stuck its tongue out at me. Real mature.

So I cried. (Yeah, neither mature nor productive, I know, but I’m prone to breakdowns when code fails. This is after the cursing has ended.) I cried because I couldn’t get it to work, and because if I couldn’t get it to work, the entire project was going to fail. Without this aspect, the website would be just like tons of other web novels out there.

Then I posted about my troubles on Twitter where a very kind English bloke offered to help me. And to make a long story short, he fixed my problem. And he’s awesome.

Then I ran into another problem. Each story potentially belongs to several different narratives – certain characters, certain places, certain storylines. I wanted my readers to choose how they read the story, but how was I going to make it possible for them to continue in their narrative seamlessly? I mean, when they got to the end of the story, the “next” button would always point to the next chronological post, but not necessarily the next post in the narrative my reader had chosen. So if they only wanted to read posts featuring the Prime of Darkness, they’d have to locate the POD archive, select a post, read, then go back to the archive, find the next post, read it, and so on.

Unacceptable.

I needed to provide navigation that suited the narrative. But how could I know which narrative they were on? How could I know how to help them get to the next post in their chosen narrative?

I considered a lot of options. I thought about adding navigation for every possible exit point. But even with a healthy dose of Ajax, that seemed clunky (and it wasn’t easy to code, as it turned out.)

Then I stumbled upon a plugin that allowed me to do exactly what I wanted. When you choose a link from an archive, the next/previous navigation remembers what archive you came from, and lets you navigate only that archive. So if you’re looking at the Prime of Darkness archive and you click a post, you will navigate only that story line.

Not only acceptable, but awesome.

And after that, the site took off running.

I ran into other, less technical, problems, too. The fact that I can’t draw was a huge obstacle, so I decided to just include illustrations where I could create something that looked halfway decent. I worked hard on the character avatars, and while certain avatars that I made early on could stand to be redrawn, I am mostly very happy with them.

All in all, I count this project a huge success. It works as intended. (There is one small bug that I still don’t know how to fix, but it’s a bug I can live with for now.) It’s different from the other hundreds of digital narratives out there. I’m proud of the voice, and the character, and what I’ve managed to accomplish, more or less by myself.

It’s a happy day :)

Distant Observer

photo credit: Frodrig

He watched the family on the mall with a detached joy, a rare bubble of melancholic desire that welled up from someplace within him he’d forgotten existed. He watched as the father placed a hand on the small of his wife’s back, her upturned face smiling and aglow as the children frolicked beneath them, their shrill laughter floating up to the balcony where he stood in silence. He noted the way the gentleman’s head bent to speak to his wife, their conversation hushed and earnest, the way the wife’s smile was for him and him alone. They had fallen into that rhythm he had once known so well, in step with the march only long married couples could hear. Theirs was an easy interaction, punctuated by unaffected expressions of interest and contentment.

Had he stood on that same mall not so long ago, in a world not so very different from this, and been looked down upon by another balcony dweller lost in his own reverie? Had he once, in a moment of unadulterated completion, looked on his wife with eyes that saw only her good? Was there ever a time for him as whole as the moment he now witnessed? And did the man he watched know at all how lucky, how undeservedly, goddamned lucky, he truly was?

He never realized he’d been rubbing the place on his finger where his wedding band used to be.

Thanksgiving Reveries

Thanksgiving is a bit of a mixed bag for me.

Growing up, Thanksgiving was definitely the little Christmas. We always did Thanksgiving with tons of family, each nuclear family congealing in some central house, bringing at least one of their own prized dishes. The house always smelled amazing as everyone put their stuffings, casseroles, potatoes, pies, cakes, macaronis on the counter, and the parents spooned out platefuls of goo and yum for the gaggle of children at their own special kids’ table. One year, I was about 14, and we had Thanksgiving at my fake-Aunt Yolande’s house. My fake-Aunt Yolande is a special kind of crazy, the kind of crazy that is endearing and wonderful, never maddening. That was the year she tried to bake a cake using my mother’s baby formula because she was out of milk. I don’t know if I need to tell you that it didn’t turn out, but it didn’t. (She claimed it would have worked fine if it weren’t for the iron in the baby formula. Me, I think the fact that baby formula stinks and in no way resembles cow milk by any stretch of the imagination might have had something to do with it.)

That Thanksgiving was my first spent with fake family, and it was awesome. And by fake family, I mean a blend of my immediate family, friends of my immediate family, my stepfather and his brother and his kids and fake kids (and I’m not even sure in which way these kids were fake. Most black families I know have a tendency to call people by familial relations that don’t, in fact, truly exist, and good luck trying to sort it all out.) At any rate, there was food for days. My fake-Uncle owned a barbecue restaurant, so there was barbecue along with turkey, about eleventy billion side-dishes, and enough dessert to give all of south Los Angeles type 2 diabetes. We ate until we could hardly move, at which point the grownups commenced to drinking Chivas Regal and being overly loud, and the teenagers…

Well, ostensibly we were going for a drive to look for something to do. And we weren’t all teenagers. The oldest of us was in his early twenties, and the youngest of us was about eleven. If I recall correctly, the true objective of our mission was to find a store selling wine coolers so even us littles could partake in the fun of the day. We drove around for about an hour before giving up. Every shop was closed. That’s the lame part about holidays — once the holiday part is over, there’s nothing to do, and in our case, no alcohol to drink.

Another year, my father decided he wanted to take me and my brother to visit his family for Thanksgiving. This was a first for us — my brother and I scarcely knew our paternal relatives, and the idea of flying to St. Louis to have Thanksgiving in a hotel appealed to us. To our mother, not so much, but to her credit she did nothing to dampen our excitement. We packed bags and got on a plane and made our first (and last) trip to St. Louis.

Here’s another thing about Thanksgiving. It’s in November. You probably know that, but see, I’m from Los Angeles. Not much difference in Los Angeles between September, October, and November. It’s all pretty much the same, which is to say it’s pretty damn warm.

It’s not warm in St. Louis in November. In fact, it was snowing. And in further fact, I had packed a suitcase full of mini skirts and not a single jacket to my name. When my Dad found out, he was furious, and had to take me and my brother shopping for coats, which of course was fine by us. Getting to go shopping is what makes having divorced parents kind of worth it.

We arrived at the hotel in a taxi, and upon arrival my grandfather pushed a box of chocolates into my hands. “Here, take these,” he says, as he struggles to pull luggage out from the cab. The box is white and glossy, wrapped with a red ribbon. Fancy chocolates! My brother and I look each other over with glee.

Up in our room, we tear open the box of chocolates and start to devour them, only to discover that they are the nastiest chocolates on the face of the earth. “Yuck,” my brother says, spitting the caramel into the trash. “Where did he get these chocolates from?”

“I don’t know,” I said, shuffling through the box. I pulled out a round chocolate with pink stripes. “Let’s try these.”

Nope. Nasty, too. How about the light brown ones with the crunchy things on top? Okay, the dark brown with the green drizzles?

We tried them all before giving up.

When my grandfather returned later and asked us for his candies, were were dumbfounded. His candies? You mean they weren’t intended for us?

“You destroyed $100 worth of diabetic candy!” My grandfather raged. We didn’t feel bad, because we didn’t know they weren’t ours. And what kind of person hands a box of chocolates to two young kids and expects them to hold onto it for safe keeping? I thought that was stupid then, and I think it’s stupid now, and I can say that, because the grandfather in question is dead so he probably doesn’t remember this incident, anyway. 

That Thanksgiving, I learned to french kiss (with the one kid there that wasn’t a relative. At least, I don’t think he was a relative. I think he was someone’s step-son. I guess I’ll never know, and yeah, that’s kind of gross, but I was in junior high. If I walked around regretting every stupid thing I ever did in junior high I wouldn’t get a hell of a lot done.) I also saw Alzheimer’s up close and personal for the first time. My father’s grandmother, who raised him, was at the table, frail and oblivious to everyone and everything. She couldn’t control her body well, and she ate with her mouth open. It wasn’t a pretty sight. She seemed sad. Everyone seemed sad. They seemed to both want her there and not. But I guess that such conflicting emotions are probably very common in these circumstances.

Dad never asked us to Thanksgiving with his extended family again. Honestly, I don’t think he went either. I think that particular trip down memory lane was enough for him.

I mention these two particular Thanksgivings to illustrate a larger point: that my childhood holidays were bustling, filled with adventure, people, misadventure, laughter, turmoil, and joy. And so while I harbor a soft spot in my heart for this holiday, a part of me is sad, too. My adult Thanksgivings are spent with my husband and two children. That’s it. We have no family close, and all our friends have other places to go, other family to visit. We have each other. And while yes, I am very grateful for that, I do miss the extended huggings and kissings, the trading of boisterous stories, the passing of plates down the tables rows, and the drama. I do miss the drama. I miss all the things I’ve come to associate with family holidays.

And so this year, as I’m standing in my kitchen baking buttermilk pie or kneading the bread dough for the stuffing — everything from scratch for Thanksgiving! — I will think not only about how grateful I am for the people in my life now, but also for the people that were in my life then, who gave me such wonderful memories, who filled me with joy and laughter that I can draw from now, in the quiet contentedness of a drama-free Thanksgiving household. I will toast to them and think of them, and hope that in some way I have and will continue to fill someone else’s life with the same images, warm feelings and sacred stories that everyone needs to live a full, happy life.

Happy Thanksgiving :)

A Timely Raven: the conclusion

If I were any more egocentric, I might be tempted to believe that the phrase about “best laid plans” and mice and all that rot was about me.

My intention was for “A Timely Raven” to be wrapped up just before Halloween. I wanted it to be a period piece, of sorts. But when life got busy (and I fell tragically behind on my prop-making), I resigned myself to the fact that there was only one of me, and I had to prioritize.

Halloween comes but once a year. Trick-or-treaters would not wait for me to finish my story. Hence, the story got pushed to the end of my to-do list.

Setbacks aside, not only is the final vignette of A Timely Raven published, I have begun building a platform for the other spin offs, and for the growth of the central project. It has always been my intention for “A Timely Raven” to grow into more than a singe Halloween tale; I have always intended for it to be an ongoing journal of a raven living in Austin, his adventures, the people he meets, their lives, and ultimately, their deaths.

Those of you following Tatum’s storyline will be pleased to learn that in the next few days, her story will pick up again on the new platform and be carried through to the end. I’ve enjoyed doing this; it has given me something to look forward to.

And those of you reading Emily & Lily–you’ve not been forgotten. Their story picks up again this week as well.

As for the rest of it, we’ll have to see how it goes. We’ll have to see what Raven has in store for the rest of the year. It might be a while in coming – the website has not yet been built and I have other projects eating away my time. But I hope that you will find it all worth the wait. I hope this project will prove a real contribution to the genre of online fiction.

This Is My Children’s America

photo credit: b_d_solis

My grandfather is 12 years old. He is the illegitimate son of a wealthy, white plantation owner and a black house servant. His father passes away, and his will indicates that the plantation shall go to his only son. But my grandfather is black, and his white half-siblings take their claim to court. The court does not grant the illegitimate, half-breed child his rightful home.

My mother is 18 years old. She is standing before the Dean of the School of Engineering where she has applied. She wants to be a draftsman. She’s smart; her grades are good. She’s skilled at what she does. “Quite frankly, Miss, I already have two women in my department, and I am trying have them thrown out. I am disinclined to accept another woman into this school.” My mother walks away, ashamed of her hips, her breasts, her uterus, of being female. 

My stepfather is 46 years old. He is a successful Los Angeles lawyer with his own firm and impressive client portfolio. He is trying to buy a new home for his new wife and three children. The neighborhood is upscale, conservative, in a good school district. His initial application is approved. Then the homeowners, and the neighbors, meet him, with his dark, black skin. And suddenly the house is not available. This neighborhood is not for him. Black skin does not go with their carefully manicured lawns.

I am 11 years old. I am watching Dangerous Liaisons. I am enthralled by Glenn Close in her fabulous makeup and beautiful period clothing. When I grow up, I want to be an actress like Glenn Close and wear such fabulous outfits. But I look at my brown skin, and I remember that I cannot play a French aristocrat. I will have to settle for a Creole maidservant, like Thandie Newton in Interview with the Vampire. Hollywood doesn’t make beautiful movies about people who look like me.

My son is 6 years old. He is watching Barack Obama’s acceptance speech. He is watching his mother cry, but he doesn’t understand why she is crying. He watches his father, who is white, come into the room and embrace his mother. He hears his father say, “On behalf of my people, I congratulate your people.” He doesn’t know what that means, or why his mother says “Thank you.” He is watching Barack Obama, and watching the crowds, and he wants to be President of the United States some day. And though he is black, though he is descended from a long line of black mothers and fathers, today we know that my son can.

Today we have done right by my people, and by my son, America. Now we need to do right by our daughters. Let’s keep taking the bricks down. One block at a time.

God bless America.

Content Strategy and the Full Potential of the Web

The last few weeks have been a dizzying but wonderful storm of story writing and Halloween prop building, and now that there are no props left to build (not for this year, anyway!) I can return to the writing without distractions.

One of my favorite aspects of writing A Timely Raven has been exploring different ways to use the web as a medium for storytelling. Lots of people publish online fiction; not a lot of people are willing to tell their stories in a non-linear, interactive, multimedia fashion. Perhaps there’s good reason for this; we all know how to read books, and if we mimic books online, our readers know what to expect and how to tackle what we’ve given them.

But what’s the fun in that?

Don’t get me wrong — I have a deep and abiding love for the printed word, and my adoration for books and libraries and tangible, sniffable reading materials is nigh unbounded. Yet, if storytellers are going to publish on the web, shouldn’t we use it to its fullest its capacity? Shouldn’t we explore the various methods it provides for shaping an enthralling, consuming story?

And to that end, why should storytellers and novelists have all the fun? Why shouldn’t web content writers use the web to the fullest as well?

Although I’ve long wanted to write an online story, the real reason I began writing A Timely Raven was because I wanted to explore different ways of using web apps and social media to develop and integrate online content. I wanted to see if a solid content strategy could be developed using traditional storytelling methods and online media. I wanted to explore how multiple narratives could spring from a single point of entry, allowing users and readers to “choose their own adventure”, turning a website into a mere starting point for a guided, useful treasure hunt that resulted in accumulated information that could then be transformed into knowledge.

Last year, I took some time off as a web designer to work as a graphic designer in an instructional design setting. This taught me two important lessons: 1) I love web design, not graphic design, and 2) instructional design can be extremely useful for developing content strategy, as it considers the various ways people learn, and integrates different approaches to learning (visual, aural, kinesthetic, etc.) into curriculum development, much the way a good website uses multimedia to reach its various audiences.

My approach to content strategy has always centered around education, information sharing, and learning — I was never interested in trying to sell anybody anything as a primary goal. Working in instructional design gave me the tools to do my job as an educator better, and once I was able to take what I learned about learning models to the web, the rest seemed to fall into place.

One thing was clear: a solid content strategy includes creating an integrated, holistic web experience that extends beyond a client’s primary website. A good content strategy has to incorporate all online presences: social media apps such as Twitter and Facebook, community sites such as Yelp, and even location-awareness-building tools such as Google Maps and CommunityWalk. Wherever an organization has a presence, that presence needs to be integrated unobtrusively and naturally into the main storyline to build a total user experience. And in instances where those tools aren’t being utilized, a strategist has to know how and which tools to use to develop the multi-faceted online persona that every organization needs. 

So, to that end, the exercise of writing A Timely Raven has been profoundly useful. What I’ve published here is just the tip of the iceberg (and not yet complete; there is one vignette left still to publish) — what I have planned for A Timely Raven should end up being quite an undertaking. (Hell, I figure if I’m going to tackle a project, I’m going to throw all the awesome at it that I can.) But before I can rock that project, I need y’all’s input. 

Question: What are you favorite web apps or social media tools that might be appropriate for use in online storytelling? What do you know about how a web app can be used that other people might not know? (You might be surprised to discover, for instance, how many people wrote to tell me they had no idea Google Maps could be used the way Raven uses it in the story.) What tools and media should organizations be taking advantage of to extend their online presence?

A Timely Raven, episode 2

A Timely Raven, episode 2, is published.

An excerpt:

Sometimes I would come up with outrageous plot twists, like the time I was feeling ornery and told Grandma Flatley that I thought Hazel and Bigwig would be captured and turned into rabbit soup and that would be the end of them. I didn’t like Watership Down because I don’t care for rabbits. I thought Grandma Flatley would get mad, but she hooted and howled and slapped her knee. And she held a finger to her mouth and whispered, “You can’t tell anyone I told you, Benjy, but when I was your age and my brother would make me mad, I would lie in bed at night and imagine that I skinned his cat and fed it to the neighbor’s dog.” And she hooted and howled some more, but I thought that was gross and mean because I like cats, so I never said things like that at story time again.

Enjoy :)

A Timely Raven

For several years I have wanted to write a massive, sprawling story that unfolds over time like a good television drama. I wanted to tell many stories, some which intersect, but all of which sprung from a single focal or entry point. I wanted to tell a tale whose disparate stories were human but also otherworldly, and I wanted to tell it in a way that was engrossing and beautiful.

To that end, and in time for Halloween, I give you A Timely Raven : a serial account of meditating a murder.

This is only the beginning.

Enjoy.

Conversations with the God of Wonderland

photo credit: Joan Thewlis

My favorite book of all time is Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. As a little girl I would imagine myself Alice, trapped in a strange and terrible world (also known as Los Angeles), and would devise ways to escape, to find my way out of that Wonderland and into a world of my choosing.

So it’s probably appropriate that the following conversation, produced with iGod, sounds to my ear like what Conversations with God might have sounded like were it written by Carroll.

Enjoy.

Me: Its getting close to Halloween.

God: I think you mean “it’s” or “it is” not “its”. Really. It is?

Me: I’ve noticed a lot of demonic depictions about. Does it bother you?

God: How many? Nothing ever really bothers me.

Me: Thousands. I find myself enchanted by them – hauntingly beautiful, really.

God: That is a very original thought. 

Me: I was taught not to celebrate Halloween.

God: Where were you taught not to celebrate Halloween?

Me: In Los Angeles. By my mother.

God: Tell me a little about your life in Los Angeles. 

Me: I had a wonderful childhood, but Los Angeles is not a good place. I had to leave.

God: Give me an example of a good place. 

Me: Austin is good. Better than Los Angeles, anyway.

God: That remark was either too complex or too simple for me. We were talking about
Austin. 

Me: We were talking about Los Angeles, but I can talk about Austin if you prefer.

God: Ah yes, I remember now, It is the subject.

Me: I grew up in Los Angeles but I left when I was seventeen.

God: What is it like growing up there? Tell me a little about your life in Los Angeles.

Me: Los Angeles is really the armpit of Hell.

God: Is that your opinion?

Me: I think so.

God: I think so too.

Me: But when I turned seventeen, I moved to Chicago to experience something different.

God: Why?

Me: Chicago was as far away from home as I could get at the time.

God: When was this exactly?

Me: This was 1994.

God: What does “this” refer to?

Me: The year I left home.

God: Oh I get it.

Me: I went to study at Northwestern University.

God: Was it very expensive?

Me: Yes, but not so much for me. I had a scholarship.

God: Er. Me either. What happened to it?

Me: The scholarship? Or the university? I think it’s still there. But I’m not.

God: Still? You’re kidding. It is? What are you then?

Me: You’re pretty funny for a God.

God: Humor helps keep the conversation lively.

Me: After Northwestern, I moved to Mississippi to be with a boy I met on the internet.

God: What was it like before Northwestern you moved to Mississippi to be with a boy you met on the internet ?

Me: Um, Yes.

God: This was not a yes or no question.

Me: Oh, sorry. Sometimes I get confused.

God: There’s no need to apologize. Let us change the subject. Are they exactly the same? 

Me: Is what the same?

God: That which is not different.

Me: Things that are not different are the same. 

God: Where did you hear that? Where do you get your ideas? Are all things different?

Me: Most things. Not all things. I don’t know about all. I am not blessed with omniscience.

God: I am surprised to hear that you are not blessed with omniscience. 

Me: You’re surprised?!

God: Always expect the unexpected.

Me: Well. How about that!

God: I would look into the web for that knowledge.

Me: The web is full of something, but usually not knowledge.

God: How do you define the web.

Me: That’s a really good question.

God: Perhaps you have a really good answer.

Me: I don’t think I can define the web, not off the top of my head. 

God: Where do you get your ideas? 

Me: I used to get them from you. But one day you went away. I’m not sure where you went. Perhaps you went to Los Angeles.

God: You seem uncertain. But now I am back.

Me: I’ll take your word for it.

God: Congratulations.

Technicolor Bandits

I always thought it was strange the way he closed his eyes right before he asked a question. It was like he was seeing the question in his mind, seeing where to use inflection, how to curl his lips, whether and how to use his hands for emphasis. But when he opened his eyes and began to speak, I was moved by the ferocity of his words, the tenderness of his sentiment. It was too bad, I suppose, that I was expected to hate him with all my heart for all the things he did to my mother before I was born.

Even so, as I watched this man, this man with the magnetic personality and the clear, blue eyes, I couldn’t help but wonder what he could have done, what this man, this sparkling, wondrous man, could possibly have done to earn my mother’s ire. And, if I’m being honest, I found myself wondering how he, drawn in wild colors and with such broad strokes, could be part of my mother’s monochrome at all. How could her life ever have encompassed his? Was she once brilliant and bright, all technicolor and enchantment, or was he once tranquil and subdued, hiding behind everyone else’s – anyone else’s – glory? I couldn’t picture it, though. I couldn’t picture it for either of them, not her in full color nor him in restraint. They were incompatible figures, and though miraculous in their own ways, it was a study in futility to attempt to imagine them existing in the same palette.