I recently reviewed Echo’s Revenge by Sean Austin and I enjoyed it. After the review I was able to talk to Sean about the novel, his writing, and how a story can work with both a book and an online component.
Baldassbot (BSR!): Please tell me a little about yourself. Is The Ultimate Game (Echo’s Revenge) your first novel?
Sean Austin: This is my first novel. I’ve written a variety of scripts for Imax and other 3D motion, game simulations and produced a bunch of motion simulated experiences over the years, but this is my first novel. I’ve tried to take some of my experience developing new technologies and applied it to the (currently) fictional notion of creating sentient robots who participate in reality games. I’m almost done with the second novel and I have an outline for the third.
BSR!: While the book does tell a story from beginning to end, it doesn’t seem complete in itself. There is an interactive portion involved with www.echohunt.com. What are the challenges with creating a story that crosses media in this way?
SA: The challenge is keeping the reader engaged across a variety of mediums, and to do that you have to write differently and provide different assets at each venue. For example, a website needs interactivity and plenty of images, a compelling narrative (with perhaps less text), engaging links, and a social component. A novel of this type, while being connected to other media, still needs to hold up on its own. In the case of this novel, it was written specifically for gamers in a different style; specifically tailored to the gaming mentality. Gamers seem to enjoy the style. This novel is also unusual in that it is one perspective of the story- the experience of the gamers caught in a game gone horribly wrong. “The Other Side” (Book 2) tells the game designers’ side of the story, which is how Echo got loose in the first place, and why the designers couldn’t warn the gamers as they were being abducted. After reading the second book (currently in manuscript form), the reader comes away from the story with a much richer, deeper experience than one could with a single story line. It’s a different concept for a novel- like real life, when we experience something and then discover the full picture later, when we hear someone else’s take on the same event with a very different perspective.
BSR!: Sticking with cross-media questions, I don’t see something like this working 10 years ago. Is this the future of story-telling? Or just another tool for some and something to be ignored by others?
SA: We live in an extremely media-rich environment and are fortunate to be able to develop so many new ways of telling stories and communicating more complex experiences and ideas. I’m sure books will stand on their own forever. There’s nothing like spending time alone with a book; but story telling will continue to evolve because there are so many new, exciting ways to communicate with the internet, smartphones, new types of visual displays, and new social and gaming constructs. It’s particularly interesting to me that you can tell a story across multiple mediums and make it a more social active by allowing readers to post questions to the characters and each other at a book’s website.
BSR!: You share a name with one of the characters in the novel. How similar is that character to you? Which is really just a way of asking how much of yourself and your experiences did you incorporate into the story? I’m thinking specifically of Reggie’s realization that everyone has family problems, and that his relationship with Asa is unique but not unusual.
SA: The family difficulties I portray are purely fictional; however, the technical aspects of the game in Book 1, and especially Book 2 come from direct work experience. I’ve played different roles in various enterprises, some extremely fast-tracked and technically extremely complex. I tend to flex and become the personality that is required of me in whatever situation I’m in, whether it’s producing, writing, getting a crew over a mountain, or whatever I need to do. In this way I feel a little like Echo, morphing into what I need to be to accomplish my task. But ultimately I feel most like Sean because I have a similar personality- Sean is my alter-ego. He is my mouthpiece. We all have to take on different roles at certain times in our lives, and Sean’s attitude is one of contained outrage as he figures out what his role is when he sees his world of high-tech entrepreneurial experimentation gone horribly wrong. Sean tries to balance things out all the time, to create equilibrium, like when he tries to balance things out with Reggie after the focus group when HAkr makes fun of Reggie. But Sean can never fix everything. His circumstances are far too complex, so he can only keep trying to mitigate the folly of the humans around him. Joey knows this about Sean, that he’s trying to make things right, and is driven crazy by it because Joey is an extremist and wants to see what technology can really do. So Joey constantly pokes and jabs at Sean, and is a major pain in Sean’s neck whenever he posts on the website, just as he is in the book. I’ve incorporated a lot of my experience in the story by basing each game designer character on someone I’ve known and worked with in the simulation industry.
BSR!: Your target audience is gamers, primarily boys, aged 10-18. This seems oddly specific, yet it also seems like a market ignored by other popular fiction. Why this demographic?
SA: No one is writing for this group of guys, and yet we’re all complaining that gamers don’t read! What’s that all about? I want gamers to read and love reading for their life, so I’m just trying to balance the scale and give them a fair shot at being able to actually enjoy reading. There’s also incredible intelligence in a large part of this demographic that’s being wasted. I’m aiming for engagement and activation by gamers in the real world through a realistic writing style in a world of extreme hard knocks.
BSR!: A lot of BSR! readers are aspiring writers themselves. What’s your writing process? Are you an outliner? Do you have a set writing schedule?
SA: First, you have to have something to say. When you’re younger, it’s often difficult to know what you are going to write about, but you can work it out on paper in the form of an outline while keeping track of visual ideas and other inspiration I have along the way. It’s great to be outraged about something that’s personal to you, try to understand it, and then create a drama around it so you can develop a unique story. Writing is also much easier if you establish a rhythm to your work, like a certain number of hours at a certain time every day. I like to write from 9am – 2pm, then do what I need to do in the world while processing what I’ve written until I start again the next day. This way, there are always fresh ideas coming and the story gets richer with more twists. Then, rewrite many, many times. Ultimately, I never want my books to be predictable.
BSR!: How can our readers learn more about your writing and keep tabs on future projects? Are you on Twitter? Facebook?
SA: echohunt.com is a loose continuation of the investigation between novels and there is an excerpt from Book 2 on the home page. The social sites are Facebook: facebook.com/AAARealityGames , facebook.com/sean.austin.505 , twitter: twitter.com/#!/SeanAustinAAA , youtube (In works) youtube.com/user/EchosRevenge and finally, check in with the reality game coming up at aaarealitygames.com/. If anyone has questions about the characters, what they’re up to, or anything, they can ask on the message board at echohunt.com.
Echo’s Revenge is currently available in digital ($2.99) or print ($11.99) form from Amazon and other major retailers.
AAA Reality Games is a company dedicated to exploring the art of reality games through robotic engineering. AAARG is producing a series of game-related experiences, and is currently releasing the novel series Echo’s Revenge: The Ultimate Game as an ongoing investigation of Echo-7 through novels and website echohunt.com. Echohunt.com also provides STEM (Science,Technology, Engineering & Math) opportunities for 10-18 year-olds who are interested in STEM related areas of study. The Echo’s Revenge series is written specifically for video gamers ages 10+.