I have been an electronic literature writer (aka a hypertext addict) for well over three decades now. Now that I have retired from a 30+ year stink (I mean stint, silly slips) of government writing about decisionmaking under deep uncertainty, climate change, water management in the Western U.S., and other simple topics, I am dedicating my free time to getting others hooked on elit as well.
What the hell am I talking about? What is complex and deeply intertwingled writing, anyway? Well, like any drug, this has a long and complicated history, bearing many names: new media writing, digital storytelling, electronic literature. And a lot of controversy about what this substance actually is. In short, this stuff is any literature that uses another element as an integral part of the story. These elements (like games, video, VR, XR, AR, images, sound, navigation, structure, links, social media, etc.) can't be printed out. So if you can print it (like that ebook), it ain't my drug of choice.
My first experimentation into the deeply intertwingled complexities of this intoxicating brew was Marble Springs (now in 3.0), where I had strung out poem cards on a railway bed, connecting stories of women who might have (but probably hadn't) lived in a Colorado marble quarry town from the early 1800s on to about 1950. This obsessive work was in the late 1980s, and my logic professor introduced me to HyperCard, which is the absolute best program bar none ever written. I still think this. I got my Masters at the University of Colorado based on this wor and interviewed the gang centered around Eastgate Systems. But Marble Springs got badly out of control (it still is, you can go write in it right this very moment if you want to). And so I started in on a long series of structured works, starting with Samplers at Eastgate and continuing to this day with Entanglements (with Bill Bly 2023) and on and on and on. I now have over 50 works that you can have fun with.
Why should you join in and take a stride on the tangled, wild side of writing? Mostly because its fun. Other than that, there are things you can say in complex ways you can not reduce down to ink and dead trees. There are experiences to be had here. And the world needs this kind of writing to convey the increasingly complexity and multiplicity and duplicity of today's world. So, as I say in the first line of my online mystery novel, Disappearing Rain, come on in, the water's fine.
So, join the fun (we have monthly meetings and then there are conferences and projects galore), explore my works, and give me a holler if you want to collaborate.
Soooo...Explore my elit works and Join the elit fun