http://archive.aweber.com/freenovelThe official Malinche Entertainment newsletterTue, 27 Mar 2012 18:55:36 -0400http://archive.aweber.com/freenovel/HhLHQ/h/Follow_Me_to_Free_Fiction.htm Follow Me to Free Interactive Fiction , Seven people who liked me on Facebook are really liking me now thanks to the free interactive fiction title they won in my Facebook giveaway that ended today. Did you miss out? If you did - Don't Panic! You can follow me to free interactive fiction by following me on Twitter. How? Follow me on Twitter and you're automatically entered in a random drawing to receive the interactive fiction title of your choice from my catalog. I'm giving away one Malinche interactive fiction book every day between now and next Tuesday, April 3rd. So go ahead and follow me. You'll be intrigued by where I take you with my daily tweets. Well, almost daily. I don't work on Saturdays. Implementor http://www.malinche.net Tue, 27 Mar 2012 18:55:36 -0400http://archive.aweber.com/freenovel/9jPtQ/h/Like_Me_and_You_Might_Like_Me.htm The Fantastic Facebook Fiction Free-For-All is On! , If you like me on Facebook you may end up liking me even more. Why? I'm giving away an interactive fiction title every day for the next seven days. How? Like me on Facebook and you're entered in a random drawing to receive the interactive fiction title of your choice from my catalog. I'm giving away one Malinche interactive fiction book every day between now and next Tuesday. So go ahead and like me. You may end up liking me even more! It's like, amazing, like you know? Implementor http://www.malinche.net Tue, 20 Mar 2012 19:08:33 -0400http://archive.aweber.com/freenovel/IObHA/h/The_Final_Countdown_12_Hours.htm Lost time is never found again. - Benjamin Franklin , With each passing minute, your opportunity to save 40% on all of my interactive fiction titles comes closer to oblivion. At the stroke of midnight, just twelve hours from now, the pricing on all of my full-length interactive novels becomes $49.95 per title. Why pay $49.95 later when you can invest $29.95 today and save money right now? Take your lunch break or just take the day off and go shopping now and save. You can pocket a $20 bill today or part with a $50 bill tomorrow and end up with the exact same book. Save an easy 20 bucks and order that Malinche fiction book you've had your eye on. Don't pay the procrastination tax - take out just two minutes from your day and order now. Carpe diem! Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:24:26 -0500http://archive.aweber.com/freenovel/PS8ZA/h/Seven_Days_to_Save_40_.htm , We all know that the sands of time stop for no one. In case it slipped your notice, the hourglass I turned over ago a few days back will run out of sand just seven days from now on February 1st. That's when our new pricing of $49.95 per interactive fiction title goes into effect. Now's the time to take full advantage of the opportunity to purchase as many of my titles as you like for just $29.95, a savings of 40%. Browse the entire Malinche catalog now and save today. Warmest regards, Implementor Wed, 25 Jan 2012 12:37:41 -0500http://archive.aweber.com/freenovel/OMQrQ/t/T_Minus_14_Days_to_Save_40_.htm, This is just a polite reminder that the price changes on my entire catalog of interactive fiction books goes into effect February 1st. That means you have 14 days to save 40% on all of my titles. Why pay more later when you can save money right now? Don't push this off and allow procrastination to rob you. Put an easy $20 bill in your pocket and own a Malinche original today. Shop online at http://www.malinche.net/store.html and ring up some serious savings. Stay frosty! Wed, 18 Jan 2012 20:37:46 -0500http://archive.aweber.com/freenovel/7RGSM/h/Play_Beat_The_Clock_and_Win_a.htm You Can Score as Many of These As You Want. Dear fiction enthusiast, First let me assure you this email is not a get-rich quick scheme and nor am I representing the Prime Minister of Nigeria recruiting you to help move millions of dollars out of the country. So how are you supposed to score a quick twenty bucks as many times as you like? Let me explain... I was sitting in Starbucks this morning crafting one of the most devious puzzles of my forthcoming horror novel Grand Damned when a thought hit me like a hard slap in the face. The Ford F-150 I'm writing into Grand Damned will take hours to finish... Let me answer that How is that possible? question hovering over your head. When an author writes he just writes. Like this: The shiny new Ford F-150 glimmers in the moonlight, the empty truck bed beckoning for cargo. OK. The author's done. Time to move on. But the Implementor of interactive fiction has just started. He (me) has a lot more work to do to make that truck come into existence. What if you, the reader, want to put something in the truck bed? What if another character in the story does? What will happen if you want to drive the truck? Do you have the keys? Can you find them? Are the keys anywhere around? What if you take a couple of good pulls from the bottle of rum you'll find in the title and THEN get behind the wheel? And so on and so on. At times it's endless. And I have to account for every single one of those possibilities. This is just the tiniest of examples which extends to other characters in my novels who can walk, talk, chew gum, try and help you or try or try to kill you as the case may be. Then there are actual locations to be considered; Can you walk through a wall? Will you make it safely up a rickety flight of steps? And if you don't, then what'll happen? I've said it a hundred times; authors have it easy. As an Implementor of interactive fiction, I have to master the impossible every time I sit down at the keyboard. There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed. - Ernest Hemingway To write interactive fiction is to bleed quite a lot and quite often. So I thought to myself; Since interactive fiction is so much harder to write, why am I charging so comparatively little for it? At our current price of $29.95 for each interactive fiction title we're in the same ballpark as a hardcover book. And not that much higher than a high profile eBook. Our asking price of $29.95 also happens to be 40% less than what Infocom charged for a single interactive fiction title -- 25 years ago. I'm going to borrow one of my own thoughts from the official Malinche FAQ: Back in their day, Infocom games sold for $50 apiece. Stop and consider this was over twenty years ago. Then consider that Malinche's titles are roughly three times larger than the interactive fiction titles Infocom were able to produce back then. Here's a neat formula to contemplate: $50 (Infocom Price) x 3 (Malinche game size increase) = $150. Compared to the interactive fiction titles Infocom published when adjusting for inflation and factoring in the free story hints and maps we give you (which Infocom charged extra for), Malinche's interactive fiction novels should be priced somewhere near $249.95 each. But they aren't. A fully interactive Malinche title can be acquired for just $29.95 - a tiny fraction of that price. All things considered, I must've been crazy to charge so little for so much interactive fiction. DON'T PANIC! I'm not raising the prices of my interactive fiction titles to $249.95 per copy. But I am raising the price to the same price Infocom charged for their titles 25 years ago; $49.95. These price increases are effective February 1st, 2012. So you know what that means. It's time to play beat the clock and buy as many copies of my interactive fiction titles as you like at the old price of $29.95 and pocket yourself an easy $20 bill every time you do. The clock is ticking and February 1st is right around the corner. Carpe diem! Wed, 11 Jan 2012 20:28:44 -0500http://archive.aweber.com/freenovel/7Fr3M/h/Golden_News_Before_Black_Friday.htm , I know you're gearing up for Black Friday so I'll keep this brief. Effective immediately all of my interactive fiction titles are certified to run on Windows Phone 7. If you already own a Windows Phone or plan to buy one then you have the green light to proceed; every one of my interactive fiction titles will load on your Windows Phone flawlessly on top of every other gadget, gizmo or computer you can think of. Read all the news here. Carpe diem! Tue, 22 Nov 2011 19:51:43 -0500http://archive.aweber.com/freenovel/9PeOc/h/The_1_Day_11_11_11_Sale_Get.htm Malinche Entertainment $11 Off Every Interactive Fiction Title - 1 Day Only! Dear , Thank you for helping me win the How many 1s can you put in the subject line of an email contest. Now let me explain what that subject line means. Tomorrow is November 11, 2011. That's 11/11/11. And that's cool. It's so cool I decided to run an 11/11/11 sale . On every interactive fiction title you purchase between now and TOMORROW ONLY I'll personally see to it you receive a rebate of $11 off every book giving you an easy 35% savings on every title you purchase. No limits here so feel free to add all the interactive fiction books you'd like to your library and save money on every one of them. This special offer turns into a pumpkin at the stroke of midnight tomorrow so don't put this off - go shopping now! Browse the Malinche Interactive Fiction Store Enjoy this numerically historical day! Just forward me a copy of the sales receipt you'll receive in email and put the coupon code at the top of the email and $11 of each title you purchase will be returned right back to you. Coupon code: Give me some 1s back Thu, 10 Nov 2011 20:22:49 -0500http://archive.aweber.com/freenovel/MsxuE/h/Four_Badges_Launches_Today_.htm Dear , Just a few minutes ago, I opened the latest and last entry on my Four Badges designer blog with the most appropriate quote I think I've ever found: I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by. - Douglas Adams If you're a newcomer to the world of Malinche interactive fiction you might wonder at my odd choice in quotes. If you're a long-time fan you're chuckling at the truth of that statement right about now. First I set a release date of Spring 2011 which is tangible enough to give me something to shoot for while being vague enough to give me the wiggle room I knew I'd need. I always encounter curve balls that seem to come at me at full speed, as if thrown by a professional baseball pitcher at a screaming 110 MPH. Identifying the complexities present in this, my latest murder mystery, forced me to push back to July 1. Implementing interactive fiction is always a complicated affair. That's because the intricacies of writing interactive fiction which is totally non-linear (you don't read page one, turn to page two, then page three, etc.) which gives you, as the main character in the book, the freedom to go almost anywhere in the mystery novel at any time and try almost anything you can imagine as you interact with the story in a very real and very personal way. Crafting all this is a mind-blowing task of balancing the logic and reason of computer programming with the art and craft of writing truly compelling prose. Now let's amplify that angst by some 500% given the different crimes to be solved, all of the possible pieces of evidence, the long list of other characters you can meet and talk to and the occurrence of other events in the story that run parallel to the murder case you're trying to solve. And let's not forget the four unique perspectives you get with Four Badges; your starting point can be any of four possible points with one of four key pieces of evidence. Each time you start Four Badges, which one of the four badges you'll be wearing is randomly picked for you. Even with all these challenges, July 1 seemed a very fair and very realistic push back date. And I almost made it. Until the bug reports started flooding in. Logic errors leading to impossible-to-overcome conditions. Mislaid locations. Invisible prisoners talking to you from seemingly empty jail cells. I soldiered on and cut through every bug report and fixed every single one. Fast forward one week to July 8th. My 42nd birthday. The title is ready. It's been proofed and proven. It's ready. Let's give Howard a sweet birthday present and launch... ... and just like the very last space shuttle launch on that very same day, a last minute complication delayed lift off at T-Minus 31 seconds. Space shuttle Atlantis took off a few short minutes later giving us all a picture-perfect performance as she set out to serve humanity one last time. Interactive mystery Four Badges couldn't follow in those fantastic footsteps that day. The last-minute discovery that a key component to our brand spanking new web server was missing made deployment of Four Badges on Friday impossible. So here we are. July 10th. And here it is. My latest work of crime fiction is ready for you. Murder mystery fans are in for a real treat as you're confronted with a work of crime fiction with more to it than meets the eye. Much more. There are surprises at every turn and a mystery wrapped within a mystery that will sorely tax the suburban never-saw-a-murder-before detective you are supposed to be in Four Badges with a timely message everyone can identify with in these challenging times of economic uncertainty. Once you start your investigation you'll see what I mean. Set your summer reading list far apart from the ordinary and treat yourself to a copy of Four Badges today. Order your copy of Four Badges here. Doing so will give me a belated birthday gift. Belated, yes. But that would be no fault of yours. Sun, 10 Jul 2011 15:31:57 -0400http://archive.aweber.com/freenovel/1NEC6/h/One_Mother_of_a_Murder_Mystery.htm Dear , Before diving right into blatant self promotion let me wish all mothers and grandmothers a very happy Mother's Day! To celebrate the day Operation: Spoil My Wife and My Mom is well under way with flowers, cards, cheesecake and other tasty victuals on the menu. G-d made His contribution through absolutely beautiful, perfect weather here in New Jersey. To capitalize on all these warm and fuzzy feelings I rolled up my sleeves and finished Four Badges today AND selected the edgy cover art you see above. If you haven't already, I invite you to visit my Four Badges blog and read all the blow-by-blow details. First thing tomorrow morning Four Badges goes into beta testing. Would you like to help me out and volunteer? Please do! You'll pay for your copy of Four Badges like everyone else BUT you'll earn my eternal gratitude for helping out AND be immortalized in the CREDITS screen of the title itself giving you all due thanks for helping me work out the bugs and bring Four Badges to market. My goal is to release Four Badges the last week in May so long as it passes through my vigorous quality controls without hitting any speed bumps. Celebrate today in some form or fashion. Carpe Diem! Sun, 08 May 2011 15:07:02 -0400