Friday, May 30, 2014

Bad news and good news

Hello gamebookers!

Today, I bring you some news about Lloyd of Gamebooks, which I have brought before, but not really followed through.

Here's the bad news - due to life changes, I am going to tone down my contributions to this blog.  There is just too much to do - I have a job and a family and as well as writing this blog, I have been contributing to Fighting Fantazine and writing actual gamebooks.  There are also plenty of other things that I cannot do that I wish I could.  I get people emailing me their gamebooks asking me to promote or give feedback on them.  I would love to do them all, I really would, but I can't.  So, I am going to post here maybe once a month from now on.  To be honest, I don't know how I have kept it up

However, here's the good news - there are plenty of people out there who love gamebooks.  Some have even started their own blogs and posted in forums.  In order to keep momentum going, I have invited people to write posts for this blog.  I don't want to lose the community I have built up here, so I thought, why not include it more?  I have noticed plenty of gamebook blogs where there are only a few posts a year and so the readership falls off.  Probably because these bloggers also have jobs, lives, families and/or secret crime fighting alter egos.  Blogs that don't produce much content will eventually lose their readership.  However, if the posts were all in one place, there would be plenty of content and plenty of people to read it.  In addition, I'm going to try to make sure that people know about the big gamebook community places so they can add their two cents.  I bet there's a lot of people out there with two cents and nowhere to put them, but if everyone gave their two cents, we would all be rich.  There are plenty of gamebook places out there, and I wanted to focus them all in, so that we know about all of them, and talk about all of them.

In addition, if you have sent me a gamebook to look at, I would love it one day, if there was a 'writing circle' in one of the forums where budding gamebook writers submit their work and get it critiqued (kind of like Windhammer, but all year round).  It might be a long way off, but a guy has to dream.

In the long run, eventually, this blog will change its name as it becomes an ensemble piece.  You will still be able to get to it from the old URLs so that no one will get lost - they will just be redirected to the new place.  I will also create a new Twitter account for me personally, so that my current one can be pure gamebook and then I will make a new contact email account for the writers on this blog, separate from my personal one.

It's been a great journey, ladies and gentlemen, but it is not over yet - it's moving on to a new phase - one that you could be part of, even if you don't think you can do it.  Remember, the whole reason this blog was born was because I wanted to write a better Windhammer entry, but then it just carried on from there leading to me meeting all of you great people.  Even the longest journey starts with a single step.

So there we go.  My dream is more conversation amongst the gamebook community.  It might be a long way off, but a guy has to dream.  And maybe you can help the dream come true...

If you want to contribute, email me at sl1605@gmail.com.

1 comment:

  1. Sorry to hear that Stuart, but family have to come first. Your ideas for growing (and centralising) the community sound very exciting. Wish you luck with it - I'm sure it will be a great success. Thanks for all your support over the years. Onwards and upwards!

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