It's been months since the last post, so I feel I owe you an explanation. I have been designing a walkable puzzle adventure for Ellicott City, MD.
I've seen city-wide treasure hunts, and while the idea is fun, it feels only available to the most experienced and clever teams of puzzlers. I am creating mine as a casual walk-about, with prizes for all finishers. However, I want it to go beyond a simple scavenger hunt or downloadable PDF with a fill-in-the-blank solution. You know me. I want strange padlocks, auditory and olfactory clues, the dopamine Ah-ha moments that quality escape rooms offer. And I want to integrate the real-life dynamics of a location steeped in history and culture. Right now, all I can say is that big things are coming. I'm building a team of supporters, from non-profit directors to business owners to Girl Scout troops. Everyone I speak with jumps on board. Look out, Ellicott City. "The Missing Treasure" is going to be something special.
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Who blogs anymore? Who reads blogs?
Since launching The Armillary Papers in summer 2023, I've searched for the right niche of readers that would enjoy the book. Admittedly, it's a lot to manage for a novelette: novel-in-verse, the found concept, layered narrators, AND the puzzle elements. I've found that I don't favor publicity, but I do love when I find a reader who is just strange (or obsessive or insane) enough to dig into the book. Maybe as part of my distancing from the promotional side of things, I find myself needing a break from writing poetry. I've taken an interest in horror fiction recently. Writing casually, without the density of poetry, feels a little unnatural still. But I like the challenge of the new style. Plus, I get to do research on interesting things like "plucking out human eyes" and other incriminating search history tidbits. Just for fun, here's the intro to one of the horror pieces, titled "The Silent House." _________________________________________________________________________________________ People disappear on occasion–to violence, to accident, to age. A quiet street like Amity was no exception. But in time, the world coughs back the bodies. With a dime-sized hole from the bullet trail, or leathered by sun and natural decay. Even in pieces, the bodies return. In this, Amity Street was an exception. It didn’t always return its bodies. Ms. Vina Greymarr lived alone in a cubed-shaped house with the same pattern of four windows on each side, like a die with four fours. The street number was 116, and a clever neighbor might have found a happy coincidence in the number and the windows, but no one knew her house by the address. To the residents of Amity Street, Vina lived in the Silent House. Like all good monikers, its origin was sprinkled with facts and speculations, the one undisputed truth being that Vina was mute. She carried a small window set in a thin wooden frame in her shoulder bag for the occasion she would have to communicate. She’d write on the glass with a black marker, and erase it with a handkerchief–always tattered, crumbs of dry erase soot and rusty dark stains. Back into her pocket went the kerchief, and the window tablet into the shoulder bag, oversized and swaying as her little hunched frame hustled on. Nondescript as she was, there was a jitteriness to Vina, in how her jaw moved, and her restless fingers. Like she was listening to every conversation in the grocery store or the bus simultaneously, and her fingers unbraided the voices like fine threads. |
Scot
The writer of all this. ArchiveCategories |