Lisa Brunette is an award-winning novelist, journalist, game designer, and longtime blogger. Originally from the Midwest, she spent 20 years in "outer space," otherwise known as Miami and the Pacific Northwest, but now she's returned to her roots... to dig in the soil and define good living for herself.
As part of a 200-hour yoga teacher training, I'm studying Mark Stephens' book, Yoga Sequencing: Designing Transformative Yoga Classes. Stephens’ background is not far from my own experience with yoga, as he comes from a decidedly West Coast perspective, as someone trained in and teaching in California, and my yoga practice was largely formed by the same influences. He references two Master Yogis I also know of, Erich Schiffman and Shiva Rea. As I've previously mentioned, Schiffman’s video with Ali MacGraw formed the basis of the beginning of my yoga practice in the 90s. I’ve also taken, I think, if memory serves me right, at least one class with Shiva Rea at the studio where I practiced Baptiste-style yoga in Seattle, Shakti. So even though it’s relatively easy for me to connect with this author, I’m still aware of his perspective, and even bias.
When I analyze a work of writing, I like to first make myself aware of an author's bias. This comes from years of teaching university-level rhetoric and composition; it's an exercise in critical thinking. We often use the word "bias" in a negative sense these days, but I don't mean it that way at all. Everyone has a particular bias, a way of approaching a subject that reveals a perspective or stance in relation to that subject.
Stephens' obvious bias is toward the art of sequencing. As someone who offers sequencing workshops and has written this book, he would definitely be biased toward "free-form," or crafted sequencing, for example, over practices that use set sequences, such as Bikram.
I can't fault him for this bias, as he has obviously wrestled with the question and come to a conclusion that crafted sequencing is better or at least preferred to set sequences, enough to devote his life to guiding others in the art of sequencing. But whether a set sequence or free-form is truly better is a worthwhile question, one I haven't seen tackled much in yoga circles. I'd like to explore it further with you.
First, let's look at what Stephens finds valuable in the set sequences of the Ashtanga and Bikram styles of yoga. Most importantly, in his opinion, is the "perfect mirror" the set sequence provides. While the yoga poses and the order they are done in never changes, the yogi does, he says, "making the experience of doing the sequence somewhat more a reflection of the person doing it than the sequence itself."
In my own practice, I can attest to this. From about 2002-2006, I was a devoted Bikram yogi, and over the course of that time, I witnessed dramatic progress in every single pose in the 26-asana sequence. Not only that, but I felt transformed in many other areas of my life as well. I put a suite of extreme allergic reactions into remission, I drastically lowered my alcohol consumption (not compatible at all with hot yoga!), and I felt a rare clarity of purpose, an energetic ambition to live well in the present and let anger and pain release into the past. A long sufferer of PTSD-related nightmares and insomnia, I finally experienced better sleep. Least importantly, I lost weight, and most importantly, I felt stronger, more flexible, and overall, healthier.
Now let's look at Stephens' argument against set sequences. He acknowledges that because the yogi always knows what the next pose will be, they can provide "a deeper absorption in what is happening right now." But he also points out that sets can make students anticipate the next pose too much, which "detracts from the experience of being fully present in the current moment in connecting breath, body, and mind."
It sounds like this is definitely the case with some yogis. But in my experience, if you get into what I call “yoga head space” and stay in the moment, you don’t think too much about the next pose. Not that knowing the next pose in your body is bad, either. A set sequence can remove the need to “prep” the body for a pose you don’t know is coming until it’s cued. So much also depends on how the sequence is cued. Changing sequences every class can feel really random and lacking in flow, the cues awkward. I’ve been much less likely to injure myself in set sequences.
I also want to say this: Each pose is like a universe. It contains within it millions of micro-adjustments, a vast space of exploration. You don’t really get the sense of this until you practice with set sequences. It’s one of the things I miss about the Bikram style.
Stephens' biggest argument against set sequences is "the potential strain caused by doing repetitive actions." The example he gives is from the primary series in Ashtanga Vinyasa style, which leads yogis through Chaturanga Dandasana more than 50 times. He says:
Even if one is properly aligned and engaging effective energetic actions, this can be a very challenging sequence that, done repetitively, can strain the shoulder and wrist joints as well as the lower back, knees, hips, elbows, and neck.
This is a strong observation, and in my own experience with this particular pose flow, I can say that Mark Stephens is absolutely right. I've seen the toll that Chaturanga takes on me and on other yogis, particularly women. Generally speaking, female biology puts our strength and center of gravity not in the upper body where this pose flow demands emphasis - but lower, in the hips, butt, and legs. When friends of mine try yoga and pronounce it's not for them, it's usually because of discomfort or even pain in this particular flow.
But is this the fault of set sequencing - or of specifically Chaturanga Dandasana (especially done 50 times)?
I argue it's the latter. There is no Chaturanga in the 26-pose Bikram sequence, and after four years of frequent (5-7 days per week for 90 minutes per class) practice, I did not feel the pain that comes from repetitive strain. However, I did feel it years later, after practicing Baptiste-style vinyasa, where no two classes were ever the same. The problem, in my opinion, was that Chaturanga Dandasana was a core element to the style, so most classes drew heavily on it.
Therefore, the problem isn't with "set sequence," but with the way sequences are designed, whether set or crafted.
And that brings me back to the phenomenal value of Stephens' book. Despite my disagreement with his argument in favor of free-form sequencing, an argument I don't think he needed to make, I'm absolutely jazzed to learn how to sequence yoga poses. It seems like the Holy Grail of yoga. I've always either attended yoga classes, where a teacher is there to guide me, or when at home, used a book or DVD or my memory of the Bikram sequence, for example, to provide a structure. I've never felt really comfortable designing my own flows. But this book is already changing that. If you're a yoga teacher, you should definitely get a copy, and it's helpful for anyone with a home practice, too. It's also on sale right now through Amazon.
So far, Yoga Sequencing has provided me with some techniques for initiating the yogic process, which is the centering step at the beginning of every yoga class, and I've gained a good introduction to the idea of warming and awakening the body. A lot of this is also building on and giving specific explanation to what I've intuitively picked up through thousands and thousands of hours in yoga classes over 25 years. For example, I've long understood that there are types of poses grouped by major aspect, such as standing poses, back bends, hip openers, and inversions, just to give three. I did not know that "standing asanas are the safest family for warming and opening the entire body in preparation for more complex asanas," but on an intuitive level, it makes sense to me.
Beyond that, though, there is MUCH more to learn. Take the issue of externally- versus internally-rotated hip movements as just one variable of caution within the standing asanas alone. Stephens says not to move back and forth between these types of asanas and to instead separate them, always placing the externally-rotated poses before the internally-rotated ones. Whew, there are a lot of rules for me to master here!
For the teacher, there is plenty to consider both in teaching a set sequence and in designing one anew. For the student, it comes down to what feels right in your body. While I had no pain with the Bikram sequence, someone else might. And while I did have chronic pain from years of Chaturanga, and it is a common complaint especially among female yogis, there will always be those who embrace and love that flow.
My advice? Listen to your body, not your ego. After I'd been practicing Bikram for four years, I decided to try vinyasa flow, and this "dancing on your mat" captivated me enough to keep me for a decade. As I aged into my forties, however, the practice no longer served me as well, so I tried something else. And something else... AND something else.
There's a lot out there for you to explore in the yoga realm, so don't give up if a sequence or class or teacher doesn't seem right for your body. Something else will.
Now tell me your thoughts. Are you pro-set sequence? Or do they bore you to tears? What yoga style do you love?
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My yoga practice began 25 years ago - with a yoga video tape I played on a VCR at home.
Imagine what St. Louis, Missouri, was like in 1994. There were no yoga studios to speak of back then. The only yoga I had ever encountered was on PBS, in the form of a super-slender woman in leotard, with a long braid running down her back, who led you through a series of bendy, twisting poses. She was like the Bob Ross of the yoga world. Yoga was something that people who followed gurus did.
But then I read a glowing review - printed in the back of a women's magazine - of a yoga video. I'm not sure what it was that convinced me, maybe the white sand dune setting in the marketing image, or the fact that the yoga guide in the video was actor Ali MacGraw. But I went right out and bought it, back when you could go to an actual store, look for a video on a shelf, buy it, take it home, and pop it into the black box under your TV.
I'm convinced that purchase changed my life.
It's a beautifully done video, now a classic in the yoga world. The setting is gorgeous, and the soundtrack - by the band Dead Can Dance - became the rhythm of my breath and movement, weaving itself into my muscle fiber and psyche. While Ali MacGraw acts as your guide, Master Yogi Erich Schiffmann is the teacher here, and his calm, meditative voice is still with me at times when I practice:
Ujjayi breathing is the most important single element of our practice.
If you start to sway, don't give up. Trees sway, get more grounded.
As first yoga teachers go, you can't get much better than Erich Schiffmann, and although I've never met him in person, he narrates so well in Yoga Mind and Body that I feel like I've taken his class, in real life.
The video holds up really well after all this time, with its cast of yogis - diverse both in terms of age and ethnicity - and the distilled elements of what is yoga at its heart. MacGraw's opening profession of wanting something more than a workout, something to "still the chatter" in her mind, captures what makes yoga so transformative. It was for me then and continues to be.
My yoga practice has changed and evolved as I have over the years since that initial connection. By 2002, I had migrated out to the West Coast, where you can't throw a rock down the street without hitting a yogi. (Not that you should throw rocks at yogis!) My first in-studio yoga experience was Bikram's now-infamous hot yoga - the same 26 poses done each time in a room heated to 104 degrees. Bikram is a powerful, disciplined practice, and I recommend every yogi try it at least once in their lives. My teacher was a gentleman I knew only as Scott, who taught nearly every class I took, sometimes seven days a week, at Bikram Yoga Tacoma. The studio closed a while back, but the lessons Scott imparted are still with me. He taught me to focus on my own mat and ignore what's happening on my neighbor's, and he taught me to take Child's Pose when needed, but not for too long.
When I moved to Seattle proper, I continued to practice that style at Bikram Yoga Seattle (which has now morphed into Sealevel Hot Yoga). I'll never forget yoga teacher and owner Kevin Cooke calling out in his characteristic accent, "Ahms back, ahms back," to cue a standing backward bend. A line in a poem in my book Broom of Anger is inspired by moments in class when another teacher there told students to "look back with your eyes."
In 2005, I discovered Baptiste-style vinyasa flow, and that was it for me for the next decade.
Vinyasa style is free-flowing, like dancing on your mat, and the funky, cool studio where I practiced in Seattle often had music. Sometimes live music - more than once, we practiced with Steve Gold performing in the same room. Shakti was a lively, energetic, fun place to practice, and it was there that my practice reached its peak, at least in terms of the range of more difficult, challenging poses I could do. I was very lucky to get to practice with teachers Lisa Black (the studio's owner), Scott Simon, Eric Elven, and Jodi Boone - all very good guides.
From there, I tried acrobatic yoga, Pilates, a dance style called Nia, and even trapeze.
My husband was a brave partner for acroyoga, with my stepson joining us occasionally as well. We took classes taught by two fabulous sisters, Angela DiMario and Jill Baumgardner, both owners, for a couple of years at Kula Movement. Through acroyoga, I learned to fly, and finally I could practice inversions confidently. Kula is right in the heart of Ballard, and we would practice on market days in front of a big window of onlookers. For the first time, I didn't mind.
Trapeze is another story: It put me in touch with my intense fear of heights, and I came to quickly accept the limitation. I have a newfound respect for trapeze artists, who make something look so easy that is actually quite demanding on the body.
Pilates is great for your body, but it's very expensive and rare to find the one-on-one Reformer classes that have the biggest impact. Mat Pilates didn't quite do it, not when I can do yoga instead.
I practiced a somatic dance style called Nia for two solid years at Embody, a studio that became a sort of second home to me. Owner Christina Wolf is a fantastic teacher with true-blue leadership skills, and it was an honor to learn from her and her crew of fellow teachers, especially Rachael Prince (Nia, barre) and Greg Bowles (yoga). There I earned a white belt and a Moving to Heal certificate, which meant I could teach the dance style in both its more energetic form or its slower, more healing-focused pace. But life had other plans...
Now I find myself back in a transformed St. Louis, where there are three yoga studios within walking distance of my house, let alone in the city as a whole. And at the closest one, I've found the perfect place to take my first teacher training.
I feel really self-conscious telling people I've been practicing yoga for 25 years. Inevitably, it raises the expectation that after all these years of practice, I should be able to flip around in handstands with ease, twist my body into a pretzel shape, or even levitate.
But I can't do any of those things. I realize we're conditioned - especially by inexperienced yoga teachers - to believe that over time, any depth or achievement in a pose is possible, as if yoga can be represented as a line graph, the arrow soaring upward and to the right over time. Truth be told, my yoga trajectory looks more like a bell curve.
And that's OK. Because of a lifetime of car accidents and a 22-degree scoliosis S-curve, I have pain in my left shoulder and right hip that has signaled to me it's time to recalibrate. Here in my late 40s, my body craves a slower, more contemplate practice. Fortunately, the teacher training I've enrolled in fits with that recognition exceptionally well. You can tell by the fact that my fellow students range in age from their 20s to age 70, encompassing a wide variety of yoga expressions. Our teacher espouses the snowflake principle - no two yoga poses are ever alike.
The teacher training also includes private lessons. During my first one, the instructor expressed delight with what she could see in my practice as evidence of a long history of good training. That's part of why I decided to honor my past teachers in this post. I thank them deeply for sharing their lessons, helping to calm and center my mind and make my body stronger and healthier. They have been amazing guides, and I will endeavor to continue their examples.
Wish me luck as I begin my yoga journey anew, and tell me about your experiences in the comments below. How long have you practiced? How has your yoga changed with you?
Last year was an epic one for me personally, with the launch and steady ramp up for Brunette Games. I like judicious, nimble startups, testing and tweaking as I go, which is why I didn't opt to spend a lot of resources on flashy things like a new web site and branding last year. Since I found myself knee-deep in inquiries without those things, I thought it best to focus on what makes a business successful: its people. And I'm glad I did. I'm smack dab in the Midwest quietly building the best narrative team in the casual game business ;).
But now we're at that flex point where the original blog, Cat in the Flock, can no longer contain Brunette Games. So it's time to split the sites.
As you can see from last week's countdown of the top 10 blog posts of 2018, our game content is popular--but so are our lifestyle stories, such as the ongoing saga of Dragon Flower Farm. We can see the quirky connections between these two topic areas, as I tried to articulate last week:
...the real-world design play we engage in with the farm mirrors the virtual farms and gardens of the games we love to play and design, such as Gardenscapes, Matchington Mansion, My Beauty Spa, FarmVille 2, and more. One inspires the other.
This cross-inspiration is really me. I'm a total generalist with a lot of varying interests and an abiding curiosity about SO MANY THINGS. I tend to resist compartmentalizations.
HOWEVER, we admit it's a bit of a leap to put the two disparate worlds of gaming and lifestyle together (unless you've practiced D&D-themed yoga?). Some readers might just want advice on how to craft better game storylines, without the updates on how the farm is doing. Other readers have been with me since the Dreamslippers days and are only mildly curious about my game work--bless you for your loyalty and ongoing support--but I don't want to inflict you with a lot of game industry stuff if that's not really your jam.
So... On to the nitty-gritty.
We have a new site for Brunette Games. It's a work-in-progress for now, but the aim is to showcase the studio's activity as a whole and give insight into the team's background, projects, obsessions... anything that has to do with our game writing and design. A new company logo is in the works, designed by Monika Younger, the same brilliant artist who created the covers for every book in the Dreamslippers Series. (Speaking of that book series, it may reappear on Brunette Games if we adapt it to the interactive novel format.)
Supporting the site are a new Instagram account (@brunettegames) and Facebook page. We will also send out an email digest for readers who prefer to get their blog content in one monthly wrap-up. Here's the really important part:
We will migrate all Brunette Games clients past and present to this list, along with anyone else who looks to us like obvi gamer types. If you don't think you fall into those categories and would like to sign up for the Brunette Games list anyway, please do so here.
So, what happens to Cat in the Flock? I'm rebranding her as the lifestyle blog she always dreamed of being. If you click back through the content, you'll see lifestyle has been a constant theme throughout, whether that's pointing out the virtues of native plants or giving wellness advice based on a longtime yoga practice. The seeds of this go back REALLY far, as I once handled all the lifestyle content for the Northwest news site Crosscut, and I have always really loved gardening, yoga, and interior design. "Cat in the Flock: Lifestyle with Teeth" will cover these topics, with a few other lifestyle themes woven in as well. My author Insta account will continue to serve Cat in the Flock, as will the Facebook page. The newsletter will continue to go out as it has, minus the game content. So if you're on the list and want to stay on the list, don't do a thing! We'll take care of you.
Thanks for sticking with us through this exciting time of growth and change for me personally and for Brunette Games. We can't wait to share more!
Last week I wrote about my dramatic transition from professor to CEO over the course of 2018, so by now you've got a sense of how epic the year was. But in addition to working on nine different games for six different clients, the Brunette Games team also managed to bang out a blog post each week. You might be surprised which ones rose to the top. We were! I'm particularly excited to see one of my team members' game reviews rise to the #3 spot, as it shows there's readerly interest in the full range of voices that make up Brunette Games. I look forward to bringing many more posts from Dexter, Elisa, and Tamsen to you in 2019. Now on to the list.
...Drumroll, please... These are the top ten, in reverse order. You know, like a countdown.
This one surprised me, as it seemed hyperlocal on two levels, first because PixelPop is a relatively small (but growing!) game con, and second because of my indulgence in alma mater nostalgia with the SLU bit. But it was gratifying to showcase some up-and-coming developers here, and the popularity of this post is testament to their growing platforms.
During the spring and summer, I created two presentation workshops and presented at four different events. One of the workshops was on the why and how of game storytelling, and I broke that into two posts for the blog, which came in here at #9 as well as #6. I was really glad to find both of these in the top ten, seeing as how designing game storylines is why we even exist.
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the top ten list is that two of the posts here are about my side project, Dragon Flower Farm. I had no idea whether or not anyone would want to read about this quarter-acre urban farm experiment. But our struggles with privacy fencing and eradicating invasive plants really resonated with readers. To me, the real-world design play we engage in with the farm mirrors the virtual farms and gardens of the games we love to play and design, such as Gardenscapes, Matchington Mansion, My Beauty Spa, FarmVille 2, and more. One inspires the other.
Speaking of which, this post about our deep eradication of a massive overgrowth of honeysuckle vine is actually one of my favorites. I kind of let myself loose on this one, and I think it shows. It was also great to spread the love to both the St. Louis Audubon Society and Horstmann Brothers Landscaping, which helped us so much in planning and pruning.
We're back to my two-part series on game storytelling, with this one on "why" doing a couple of notches better than than the other one on "how." That's interesting, since you'd think the question of why story matters in games would be put to rest by now, BUT APPARENTLY NOT.
One of my favorite classroom activities was inspired by a romance story I wrote for a bingo game. Yep. I believe the quirky fun of this one drew readers in, especially since it's a bit outside genre for me, after focusing for years on mystery games and books (although the Dreamslippers enjoy their share of romance).
In a year of exciting announcements, this one was really up there. While it's fun to hear about a solo creative act, following a TEAM of creative acts is even more fun. I'm glad you agree.
In the intro above, I mentioned that one of the top 3 posts of the year was written by someone else on the team, and that's Dexter Woltman, whose brilliant review of Lifeline: Crisis Line proves that high-quality content will find an audience. I also think that the intersection of mystery novel and game here naturally appeals to an audience many of whom have been with me through the Dreamslippers days. I love Dexter's thoughtful voice, which is part of why I hired him, and I can't wait to see what else he can do.
The first post of 2018 occupies the number two spot on the list, and that surprised me, too. Maybe y'all just like a year-end recap, or maybe the dramatic 'end of the dream' headline made you click. Either way, it's always hard for me to write these more personal reflections on my work life, and I had to fight cringing when I saw this one's ranking. It is really something to read it in light of last week's post on my transition from professor to CEO, though. As a writer, I've weathered some shifting winds, that's for sure.
And NOW... for the top of the top blog post in 2018...
...
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...wait for it...
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Yay! I was so psyched to see this get the top spot, as it's pretty much the most exciting collaboration of my game design career. This mystery-themed, interactive, story-driven series takes all of the elements of narrative and game and combines them into one super project. I can't wait to share more.
So... we'd love to hear from you in the comments below. Did anything on this list surprise you? What were your favorites? What would you like to see in 2019?
A few weeks ago, I was sitting in an office at the back of a bank in Kirkwood, Missouri, talking to a mentor assigned to me by the organization SCORE. Funded in part by the Small Business Administration, SCORE provides free guidance to small business owners. My mentor, Ray Edwards, is an executive consultant in addition to serving as a SCORE volunteer, and his resume includes a list of impressive ownership and leadership positions at various corporations. When I told Ray that I gave up a tenure-track position at a well-regarded university to pursue running my own company, he smiled at me and said, "You're a born entrepreneur."
I hadn't really thought of myself that way before, though I admit it does seem pretty obvious, when viewed from Ray's perspective. Not many people would give up the chance for a college teaching post, especially after moving clear across the country to take the job. When my husband and I pulled up stakes in Washington state in 2017 and set down roots in Missouri, it was with the full intention that I would stay on with Webster University after the one-year "visiting" post ended. However, the fit just was not there. It's tempting to grieve the change in plans, but that's what a visiting professorship is designed to do: both parties assess fit, and if it's not there, no harm done. I formally withdrew my candidacy for the tenure-track position in March. It was an agonizing decision, and I know so many wanted me to stay, but I also know this was the right move. At the same time that I came to the realization about the lack of fit at the university, I had some major successes in the game space that garnered an avalanche of attention, pulling me in another direction entirely.
The first was Sender Unknown: The Woods, a game I wrote and designed from scratch in collaboration with my longtime friend and colleague Marianna Shilina Vallejo, who heads Daily Magic. The game was groundbreaking in the area of interactive fiction, and it received awesome critical attention. It was nominated for an International Gaming Award, and GameZebo called it "the next leap forward in mobile." For me, it proved I could write and design a new game style myself, drawing on all the experience I'd gained before that, which included: working on Wii and DS games, consulting on PC games in the HOPA genre, self-publishing three novels in two years, and spending a year researching and experimenting with the interactive novel format.
The second success was Matchington Mansion. For this game, I designed the narrative, consulted on character design, and wrote all of the text for the launch build. Matchington blew the doors off mobile and continues to dominate App Store and Google Play charts worldwide. It has also created a larger recognition of the role of narrative in mobile casual games, which is something I'm very glad to see--finally.
What's funny about all the attention that Matchington Mansion has received is that by the time the studio doing business as "Firecraft" approached me to consult with them on the narrative for that game, I'd been working for months on a narrative Match-3 that had already released. Survivors: The Quest had gained enough traction to warrant getting a dedicated game writer on the project, and G5 found me.
G5 was the first studio to snag my services when my one-year no compete with Big Fish expired, so I'm coming up on my two-year anniversary working with that company's awesome creative team in Kaliningrad. I'll write more in the coming weeks specifically about this project. For now I'll just point out that it has all the things I look for in a casual game: a diverse cast of characters; story at its core; fun, engaging gameplay that is well-integrated with the story. It's been a terrific opportunity and challenge to write the stories and design the locations and quests, and I'm grateful for G5 giving me the responsibility.
It's a lot of work to take over the writing and design of a big, endless free-to-play game like Survivors, and as I mentioned previously, I was getting a ton of attention due to the success of the other two games. While on winter break from teaching, I wrote a love story for a bingo room as well.
After that game released in February, the floodgates opened further, and my head began to spin with the opportunities. A Danish game studio flew me to Copenhagen for a weeklong brainstorming session. An exec from a prominent West Coast company flew here to St. Louis to take me to dinner. A handful of other small game studios and large corporations kicked up a bidding war for my services. This all happened while I was still teaching full-time.
Saying no to a lot of cool projects, I fulfilled my commitment to the university, finishing the semester in May, and then jumped feet-first into the fray. "Brunette Games" was official.
In June, a game I'd written the script for in 2017 had its worldwide release on the highly popular Choices app. Veil of Secrets was my second interactive novel, and my first foray into writing specifically for women under 35. It was a huge adjustment in tone and intention for me, but a great experience, overall. I have tremendous respect for Pixelberry Studios.
I began working for a large, very successful company around that time--the one that won the bidding war. We danced together all summer, and I'm proud of my contribution to a high-profile licensed title I can never name. But ultimately, it wasn't the right fit, either. By fall I decided to focus on three things: my work for G5, a new collaboration with Cherrypick Games, and growing my team.
The collaboration with Cherrypick Games is one of the things that excites me most about owning my own studio. Over the summer, CEO Martin Kwasnica approached me about designing an interactive novel series themed specifically on the mystery genre. It's called Crime Stories. I am consulting on the general series design, and I've just finished a draft of one of the books as well. Woman on the Bridge will be my sixth book-length work of fiction and my third interactive novel. I can't wait to see Crime Stories release.
In light of the opportunities on the ground, I decided to bring two former students into the Brunette Games fold. The seed for this had actually been planted in the classroom, where I felt a craving to give students real-world experience on game projects. Two students in particular stood out to me as capable of handling both game design and writing--a tricky pairing of two skills not commonly found in one person. Dexter Woltman and Tamsen Reed REALLY impressed me. I can't even tell you how AWESOMELY SATISFYING it is to give these Midwesterners writing, designing, and editing credits on some really top games in the casual space, something they can't easily get as students anywhere, let alone here in St. Louis. They've worked on Homicide Squad: Hidden Crimes and Jewels of Rome for G5 and My Beauty Spa: Stars & Stories for Cherrypick, as well as pitched in on an unannounced gamification concept project.
One of the game projects I couldn't take on when I was flying solo was one for Mitosis Games: Millionaire Mansion. They came to me because of my work on Matchington Mansion, but I knew just the person to recommend: Elisa Mader. I had hired this talented game writer/editor as a freelancer when I managed the narrative team at Big Fish, and I'd hired her again to edit my own Dreamslippers novel series. Luckily for Mitosis, she was available when they called. She's still working on Millionaire as an independent, but in late November of this year, I brought her on to join Brunette Games as well. She's our Seattle-based contractor, and more importantly, she's taking over design and writing of Survivors: The Quest in addition to editing Jewels of Rome and pitching in on other projects.
I'm really proud of the team and can't wait to see what we can all accomplish together in 2019. Judging by how this past year went, the sky's the limit! Here's Brunette Games in 2018, by the numbers:
At times I miss the classroom, but one thing I've learned over my 25-year career is that the world always needs teachers. If you have the skill and interest, there are innumerable opportunities to exercise it. Since leaving my teaching post in May, I've spoken to audiences at the St. Louis County Library, the St. Louis Game Developer Co-Op, College Bound, and PixelPop.
Longtime readers of the blog might be wondering if there's anything in the works when it comes to books. This year marks the fifth anniversary of the publication of Cat in the Flock, the first novel in the Dreamslippers Series. There will be some buzz around that anniversary later in the year. I've also been in talks with potential partners about adapting the series to the interactive, choice-based, digital format. It's an important IP for me personally, and I want to do it right. So we shall see.
Other book possibilities include adapting Woman on the Bridge to a linear, book format and finishing a work-in-progress I stopped writing when I left Chehalis in the summer of last year. That's where the book is based, but its people and landscape continue to live in my memories.
Where does Brunette Games go from here? We'll continue to serve our existing clients to the high level of quality they have come to depend upon. We're looking at new collaborations with past clients, and there are a good number of new, potential partners we've been talking with over the past few months. We've clearly established an expertise in 1) interactive game novels and 2) narrative puzzle and builder games, and I suspect demand for our services will continue in the new year.
We'd love to hear from players of our games and readers of our words. What's your favorite Brunette Games title? What brings you back to the blog? What would you like to see us do in the future?
Happy New Year!
Survivors: The Quest - On the App Store - On Google Play
Homicide Squad: Hidden Crimes - On the App Store - On Google Play
Sender Unknown: The Woods - On the App Store - On Google Play
Matchington Mansion - On the App Store - On Google Play
Bingo Bash - On the App Store - On Google Play
Choices: Veil of Secrets - On the App Store - On Google Play
My Beauty Spa: Stars & Stories - On the App Store - On Google Play
Brunette Games Teams Up with Cherrypick on Interactive Novel Series
From Mystery Novels... to Interactive Mysteries
The Rock, Paper, Scissors Phenomenon
