NIKA Interview with Game Designer Josh Raab (Tabletop)

Today's interview is with game designer and active member of the NYC gaming development community Josh Raab. Josh is currently running a Kickstarter to fund development of his tabletop game NIKA, which he describes thusly: "Command a Greek city’s hoplite soldiers. Push and rout enemy lines. Coordinate allied attacks to secure victory, but watch your flanks!"

Watch the video to learn more about improving Kickstarter success through building community before launch, the importance of playtesting, and thoughts on the creative process. I've included a partial transcript of the interview below.

Hope you enjoy!

Tell us a little about you and your game.

I'm a grad student at the NYU Game Center, MFA in Game Design. Studied Ancient Greek History in undergrad, which was the inspiration for NIKA. It's a game about ancient Greek warfare, where you have four Greek cities, two allied against the other two. You're basically trying to get one of your pieces across the board into your ally's territory.

Insomnium Interview: Zach Bonelli Talks Serialized Science Fiction Kickstarter Thoughts

In honor of Zach's continuing campaign to Kickstart Insomnium, here's another great interview where he delves into thoughts about the art and science of writing. Hope you enjoy!

Insomnium is Latin for a "waking vision." What interests you about blurring the line between dreaming and "real life," between consciousness and unconsciousness?

The main character of Insomnium, Nel Hanima, is in a place in his life where nothing is as it should be, nothing is functional. The worst part is that he has no idea how to move himself toward something better.

The dream forced upon Nel and his friends is an inverted wake-up call, forcing them to deal with their respective situations. I think that, when we peel away the surface layers of reality, we’re forced to ask ourselves really hard questions about who we are and what we’re doing with our lives. Nel can’t do this in his waking life, so the City of Nowhere comes to the rescue.

Your story deals with multiple characters in a dream-like scenario. One of the questions you ask is, "Who is the one actually doing the dreaming?" Tell us more about how this question ties into how much of our reality and identity is formed by our perceptions.

That is the big question for most of Insomnium. Whose mind created all of this? Could it be one of us? What does the dream have to do with us disparate people, who don’t even originate from the same universe?

Put differently: why are we here? Why are any of us doing what we do? Our answers define who we are as people and how we interact with the rest of the world.

The twentieth century has created some massive philosophical questions for humanity. What is the “right” way to spend our time on Earth? In many parts of the world, we’ve solved hunger and disease, but now that we no longer struggle to merely exist, what should we be doing with all of our time?

Finding answers to these questions, I think, is the key to our identity crisis. I’ve developed an answer for myself, which I think Insomnium will make clear, but I believe it is up to each individual to arrive at his or her own answer.

Insomnium by Zachary Bonelli Now on Kickstarter

I'm excited to announce the Insomnium: A Serialized Science Fiction Novel Kickstarter!

You might remember Zach from the terrific Google Hangouts interview he gave in April. If you haven't watched it yet, definitely check it out - Zach has some amazing thoughts on writing and creative and collaborative processes.

Here's a little taste of Insomnium to whet your appetite:

"Nel Hanima lives in Seattle of 2089, a citizen of the newly organized Western Union. Life has stabilized since his childhood, when he lived with his parents in the Queen Anne community bunker. Government has been reestablished, and order restored. Famine and disease no longer run rampant, and the economy has stabilized. But still, the trees and grasses grow browner. The Sound continues to rise, swallowing up neighborhood after neighborhood of Nel’s youth.

Even though life has never been better, Nel can’t help but feel his life is somehow worse, without purpose or meaning or hope.

One night, he falls asleep in his apartment and awakens in the City of Nowhere, an impossible conundrum world of inhuman citizens, where time and space are an illusion and paradoxes run rampant."

To find out more, check it out here, or by clicking the image above!

Writing About Crowdfunding for Authors with Buckell, Sullivan, Shvartsman, and More!

I recently received an awesome opportunity to share my thoughts about crowdfunding for authors on the SF Signal blog, along with some of the most interesting people currently pushing the boundaries of publication and promotion methods.

MIND MELD: What Crowd Funding SF/F Novels Means for Authors and Publishers

Excerpt:

"The introduction of crowdfunding is again upending the landscape, this time creating a natural vetting process; a success on a site like Kickstarter shows that an author is likely to have something other than the ability to type tens of thousands of words going for her. It’s never easy to judge how enjoyable a book by a first-time author will be, and crowdfunding provides a great tool to help good reads rise to the top."

The list of co-authors on the article really demonstrated how small the crowdfunded science fiction/fantasy author space is at the moment. I've actually been chatting with three of the eight other authors on the list, including...

Michael J. Sullivan, who recently concluded a thrilling Kickstarter campaign for his book Hollow World during which he raised more than 10 TIMES his funding target of $3,000 and blew through his stretch goals as if they were planets at the mercy of a Superlaser.

Link Roundup April 24: Phantom Tollbooth Documentary, Transcribing Interviews, and More

Just a short post for today, wanted to share some of the links I've been collecting recently. There's some useful info here for putting a recorded interview into written form, videos comparing and describing the various self publishing platforms, exciting news about a classic children's book, sweet pics captured during my Mechalarum costume promotional event, and a great forum post with tips about using Kickstarter. Hope you enjoy!

How Do You Transcribe Recorded Interviews?

Self Publishing Video Tutorials

Phantom Tollbooth Documentary Coming This Summer

Meet Emma Larkins on Take It Easy Tiger

Forum Post About Kickstarting Board Games

Interview with Alex Shvartsman on Community Days

Welcome to another great Community Days interview!

My guest today is Alex Shvartsman, a writer and game designer from Brooklyn, NY. He's sold nearly 50 short stories since late 2010, to such venues as The Journal of Nature, Intergalactic Medicine Show, Daily Science Fiction, and Galaxy's Edge, among others. He's best-known for humorous short stories.

In 2012 Alex edited and published Unidentified Funny Objects -- an anthology of humorous SF/F which featured stories by Mike Resnick, Lavie Tidhar, Jody Lynn Nye, and Ken Liu, among others. It was well-received by readers and critics alike. Alex is running a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the second in what he hopes will become an annual anthology series: Unidentified Funny Objects.

Tell us a little bit about your inspiration for the Unidentified Funny Objects collection. How did it reflect your previous experience as a writer and editor?

Much of what I write is humorous science fiction and fantasy short stories. I submit them to what markets appreciate that sort of thing, but there are many established and well-respected magazines and anthologies that do not. So it cuts down the list of viable professional markets from over a dozen to just a handful. I always found this frustrating and wished that somebody would create a regular outlet for SF/F humor (I firmly believe there are plenty of readers interested in such stories). So you could say that I was inspired to create the market I always wanted to exist. And when I researched humor anthologies, I found that nothing similar to Unidentified Funny Objects had been published, at least not during the course of the last decade. I became even more convinced that there's a niche need that my project could fill.

Mechalarum Kickstarter Project SUCCESSFUL!!!

It's been an amazing ride, everyone! I'm eternally grateful to all of the amazing support I've received along the way. Looking forward to bringing an amazing novel to life :)

Kiellen Art Revealed, Less Than 12 Hours to Kickstart, Progress, Party!!

Wow, so much has happened over the last day or so, I'm not sure I'll be able to fit it all into one post!

First of all, I've been coordinating with the ever-talented, super-responsive Swasana Adinugraha (with help from the always-awesome Richard Laufenburger) to put together some artwork for the Mechalarum cover. He went above and beyond my wildest dreams in drawing Kiellen in her flying suit, especially given the fact that I've had trouble communicating exactly what it is I want (mostly because I couldn't come up with a solid picture in my mind). That's what visual artists are for, right? Us lowly authors just can't do it on our own :) There are still some tweaks I want to make, but I think this does a great job at getting across the idea of the suit, and how it's slowly starting to eat away at Kiellen's skin.

Second, there are less than 12 hours to go on the Kickstarter project! If you haven't shared yet, please do so. And if you have a dollar or two to spare, every little bit helps :)

Third, here's a quick update video on my progress so far. The handy-dandy Mechalarum chart keeps getting fuller and fuller!

And fourth, I'm co-hosting a party in NYC tonight to celebrate the (hopeful!) success of my project. If you're in the area, feel free to stop by!

Event registration for Super Double Secret #WhiskeyFriday & Mechalarum Closing Party! powered by Eventbrite

Wandering Around NYC In My Mechalarum "Flying" Suit

Building the helmet and the rest of the mock-up of the Mechalarum flying suit was fun enough, but then I got to actually put all my hard work to good use.

Yesterday, I suited up and ventured out into the city with my awesome friend Nancy Quan by my side to capture my antics in both video and photo form. We got stares, smiles, and photo requests from both tourists and hardened New Yorkers alike. I did my best to illustrate the fact that my suit *should* be able to fly, and if nothing else, it was thoroughly entertaining for everyone involved.

So without further ado, here for your viewing pleasure are the results of my latest foray into craziness!

Only a couple of days left! Check out my project on Kickstarter.

Friday Roundup: Crowdfunding Thoughts, As Seen Around the Web

Call it laziness, or call it industriousness, but today's post is going to be a roundup of some of the stuff I've been spreading around the web recently :)

The View From Inside the Kickstarter Trenches (on the Knodes blog): I started writing about my experiences with the project to date, and it turned into a surprisingly personal take on the whole crowdfunding process. Great if you're looking for some real-time insight into my frazzled brain!

Crowdfunding for Writers: Which Platform Should I Choose? (on Bibliocrunch): You've heard of Kickstarter, but what about Pubslush, Unglue.it, or Pave? Before you commit to a platform for your writing project, make sure you do your research!

7 Writing-Based Ways to Fund Your Fiction (on Rob D. Young's blog): There's a whole spectrum of ways to get paid to write fiction; traditional publishing and self publishing are only two discreet points in the array. For example, ghostwriting and grants can both help to juice your creative writing coffers.

5 Reasons Crowdfunding Is Hard (And Why To Do It Anyway) (on the Knodes blog): We're developing products in the crowdfunding industry, so we certainly don't want to turn anyone away. Still, the more people get burned out from the process, the harder time we'll have trying to promote it.

6 Ways Authors Benefit From Crowd Funding by Emma Larkins (on Writer's Fun Zone): It's not all about the dollars and cents. Nurturing reader and writer relationships, generating buzz, and other great perks await the successful crowdfunder.

Telling My Story Better: Updated Kickstarter Video for Mechalarum

Finding the best way to brand your book (and yourself!) can be a repetitive process, so I hope you're bearing with me.

In this latest video, I've taken a slightly more personal approach, getting at some of the reasons that reading and writing is so important to me, and why I want to bring this universe and these characters to life.

I really enjoyed making the original interpretive dance version of the video, and I learned a lot from presenting the vision of my story in a new medium (not to mention about filming in general!) With each new version, I'm digging deeper into my universe, and getting better at speaking to my target audience.

If you have any thoughts, feel free to share in the comments below :)

Like what you see? Check out the rest of my project on Kickstarter!

Also, here are some of the wonderful Tweets that I'm receiving in response to my project. Thanks guys :D

@emmalarkins Mechalarum still up for funding. Very promising project! Check it out @ the Indie Spec Fic Fund. fuzzyhedgehogpress.com/indie-spec-fic…
— Zachary Bonelli (@ZacharyBonelli) March 20, 2013

Help fund a cool indie sci-fi book on Kickstarter: Mechalarum by Emma Larkins (@emmalarkins) kck.st/XaEM0D #books
— Ramsey Isler (@ramsey_isler) March 20, 2013

Recent Mechalarum Kickstarter articles:

Mechalarum Shoutout on Fuzzy Hedgehog Press! (And Announcement)

Interview with Tobias Buckell: Kickstarter Success Story and More!

Working on a New Kickstarter Video

Interview with Tobias Buckell: Kickstarter Success Story and More!

I usually do these interviews on Community Fridays, but running the Kickstarter project has messed a bit with my schedule. So here ya go, a special Community Monday interview! Community is great, so what's wrong with having another day of it?

Today's interview is with Tobias Buckell. I originally contacted him to learn more about his thoughts on using Kickstarter to fund his novel The Apocalypse Ocean, but I learned a lot of other interesting stuff about him in the process. For example, it turns out that he's had TWO successful Kickstarter projects, and that he's taking the interesting hybrid approach (more and more common these days) of combining crowdfunding and traditional publishing.

Find information about his Kickstarter projects here and here, and don't forget to stop by his website and follow him on Twitter!

You departed from the world of traditional publishing to self-publish Apocalypse Ocean. Why?

I sat down with my editor to talk about how my book series had been doing up to that point, and what we felt the chances were for book four. We both felt that while sales would hold steady, due to bookstore orders decreasing with each book and sales online ticking up to match it, I was sort of stuck where I was with only tiny growth in readership from book to book. So we decided to stop doing the series and start fresh with a book, that just came out recently, called Arctic Rising. Near future instead of far future adventure. But as time ticked past core readers and fans of the first series kept asking if I'd continue writing the two books I'd planned to wrap it all up. After a while, I started eyeing the idea of crowdfunding the book, as I'd know then before I started it whether I'd gotten enough readers on board to make it a doable project.

Working on a New Kickstarter Video

One of the most exciting things about running a Kickstarter project is getting feedback to make the project - and the final product - much more awesome than it would be otherwise.

I've gotten some feedback that my original video wasn't conveying the message of my novel well enough, so I'm working on a new version. Here's what I've got so far:

Would love to hear what people think of this version compared to the one on the Kickstarter page! Comments welcome :)

Shooting the Video for the Mechalarum Kickstarter Project

Helping to create the video for my Mechalarum Kickstarter project was the first time I'd been involved in creating a visual experience to get people absorbed in my fictional universe, so it was quite an interesting experience! Sure, like pretty much everyone nowadays, I'd messed around with taking video with my point-and-shoot camera, and laughed at how goofy my friends or my dog could be. But that hardly qualifies me as an expert in communicating through a moving picture medium.

Luckily, I had a connection through my roommate to videographer Bryan Swormstedt, who had worked on four Kickstarter videos in the past. I wanted to do something a little different with my Kickstarter video, and he really helped me bring my vision to life.

I didn't want to have people simply acting out a scene from the book, as it might give the impression that I was creating a movie, instead of a novel. And I wanted to get viewers engaged with the visceral emotions of the struggle to join with a symbiotic mechanical/organic being.

However, it turns out that the actual act of capturing moving images on camera is only a little sliver of putting together a cohesive video!

Above, you can see one of our actresses Sylvana Tapia helping set up the lighting for the dance scene. Since the first part of Mechalarum is set in the desert, we wanted to get a warm tone (and also wanted to dim the insanely bright halogen lamps I picked up at Home Depot for the purpose). You can see how the lighting really created a completely different atmosphere, even though we shot in Bryan's living room!

$1000 Goal Reached, New Art, Article Announced

Happy dance time! So thrilled to announce the reaching of a milestone amount: $1000! Thank you so much to everyone who pledged, shared, and gave me your support :) Also, just goes to show how well goal-setting works!

AND if that's not cool enough, I have some awesome preview artwork for the jewelry reward level that I'll be offering:

AND I've got an awesome new post up on Rob D. Young's blog called 7 Writing-Based Ways to Fund Your Fiction. How much awesome stuff can happen in one day?

Hope you like :) Don't forget to check out my Kickstarter page for more info!

Want to read previous updates? Check out:

Gunning for $1000 Milestone!

Mechalarum Kickstarter Launch Party Was a Success!

Gunning for $1000 Milestone!

Wow, things are going great with the Mechalarum Kickstarter project! I'm already up to $975, and need just a little bit more to push it up into the quadruple digits.

It's important to have mini-goals to work towards when you're trying to reach a really big goal - otherwise, the really big goal can get overwhelming! That's why I've set a target of reaching $1000 by Friday. Every little bit helps :)

Another important goal-reaching technique is to create visual aids that will reinforce the vision of success in your brain. So I decided to mock up a little progress chart for my project. Of course, I couldn't just draw a regular ol' thermometer-type design, so I went ahead and used my (somewhat limited) artistic skills to create a Kiellen-like character flying up into the sky, with some little swirls of flying-ness radiating out below her.

Here's how far we've come in only a few short days!

Mechalarum Kickstarter Launch Party Was a Success!

First things first: my Kickstarter project is live! You can see all of the lovely details here:

Mechalarum: A Science Fiction Novel (on Kickstarter)

I can't believe that I raised more than 10% of my goal on my first day! Can't wait to see who is going to push me to the $800 mark.

I want to give a big thank you to everyone who came out to the project launch party! I was honored to see how many wonderful people I've met over the last year. It's hard not to get a little teary-eyed when I think about how amazing everyone in NYC has been to me.

Everyone who attended was awesome, but I have to give a special shoutout to the Astoria Newbies for pretty much being the life of the party :)

Lots of Great Crowdfunding/Writing Goodness

I've got some great new publication news to share! Read on if you want to learn more about crowdfunding, crowdfunding for writers, and a great place for general fiction writing tips.

First up is an article that I recently wrote for the Knodes Knows blog called 5 Reasons Crowdfunding Is Hard (And Why To Do It Anyway). Yeah, it's kind of a funny title as we're trying to ENCOURAGE people to use sites like Kickstarter and Rockethub. At the same time, I discovered a lot of pain points during my last couple of months spent researching the industry. I wanted to address them so that I could give people a better idea of what it takes to succeed.

Next is Crowdfunding for Writers: Which Platform Should I Choose?, which I wrote as a guest post for the great folks over at Bibliocrunch (a site for connecting self-published authors with editing, design, art and other professionals). This comparative look at the platforms from a writer's point of view is a good resource for sorting out which site will work best for you - an important early step in the crowdfunding process.

And finally, I'd also like to give a shoutout to the "Prentious Points" section of the Awkward Pegasus blog. Funnily enough, I met the owner of this blog at a New York Gaming Meetup, and he provided some fascinating insights into the similarities between storytelling for games and storytelling for, well, stories. I've been following along for a while now, and I always find tips that help me in my own personal fiction-writing journey.

Image source: Flickr.

Mechalarum Kickstarter Launch Party Scheduled!

Have some free time on Monday, February 25th between 6:30 and 9:00 pm? Live in or around the New York City area? Like to hang out with fun and interesting people, especially if it means getting out of the cold and enjoying a good beer?

You're invited to the launch party for my Mechalarum Kickstarter project! I've also got a special guest author friend who will be relaunching his novel, so there will be plenty of opportunities to learn about crowdfunding, writing, and the ins and outs of self-publishing.

The event is free and open to the public, and will be held at Chelsea Manor in Manhattan. For more info, check out the Eventbrite invite, or use the widget below!

Online Ticketing for Emma Larkins Kickstarter Launch Party (w/Special Bonus Guest!) powered by Eventbrite

My Goals for Early 2013 and a Great Goal Infographic

Well, now that I've let the cat out of the bag with my big self-publishing/Kickstarter announcement, I'm excited to share my rough overview for the year. It's always interesting to post these things publicly, and then to come back and see how time and work reshape them.

Without further ado, here are my Goals for 2013:

1. Get better at recognizing (and accepting) failure. In the past, I've been scared to admit when something doesn't work out according to my plan, instead hoping that no one will notice. But you can learn a lot by owning up. I've already got a start on this - last summer, my ambitious Prancing Laggard video game humor project fizzled unceremoniously, and I'm working on passing on the reins.

2. Get better at celebrating (and rewarding) victory! Success is great, and sharing it with the world makes it just a little bit sweeter. The people in my life WANT to be a part of my big wins. I should let them!

3. Give - and accept - help. I've been pretty good at lending a hand when asked, but when it comes to my own projects I sometimes try to go it alone when working with a team would make things so much better. I want to not only accept offers of assistance where it makes sense, but also take initiative and ask for a hand.

4. Crowdfund and self-publish my first novel, Mechalarum. This one will involve a billion and one mini-goals and mini-steps to achieve. It's daunting to even try and keep the whole thing in my brain at one time. But as long as I keep focusing on one little piece at a time (like, say, this blog post), I'll continue to make progress.

5. Make wonderful products with the Knodes team. Writing fiction is awesome, and I'm excited that I'll be bringing my novel into the world soon. But that doesn't mean that I want to give up my inspirational, new day job. I have a sneaking suspicion that I'll always have more than one big thing going on in my life. It's invigorating - and overwhelming - to have so much going on at one time.

6. Figure out how to maintain a healthy lifestyle while living in the city. This might be the hardest resolution of all to keep. I do get some exercise just by walking around the city, but it doesn't quite balance out all of the time I sit staring at a computer screen. I'd love to multitask some of my socialization time to make sure this gets done.

7. Have fun!

I like that I have a mix of concrete tasks and conceptual goals to work towards. However, this only covers what's going to happen until around June - after that, I have no idea where my life will take me.

And finally, here by way of OnlineEducation.net, is a great infographic for helping you work on your goals. It's a great representation of why writing your future vision down is so important.