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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 they 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.
 
The clock is ticking and February 1st is right around the 
corner.
 
Carpe diem!