Branching Plot Books

The Crawl Space is a ghost story you steer. Three bullies get stuck in the school crawl space they used to threaten other kids, and every few pages you decide what they do next. The pages don't all end the same way. Built for readers 10 to 18.

Full post on The Author's Desk: https://www.branchingplotbooks.com/blogs/the-authors-desk/the-crawl-space-interactive-ghost-story-for-ages-10-18

The Crawl Space The Crawl Space is an interactive teen horror novel by Arthur Mills with 24 choices and 11 endings. Your decisions determine if they survive the haunted school.

Friend or Foe came out in 2015. One version, one ending, and I knew which side I was on the entire time I wrote it.

This new interactive edition has three endings. Five chapters in, the story stops, and you pick the winner. Chipmunks. Jays. Or the deal nobody wanted.

I had to write the one where the side I like less comes out on top, and make it convincing. You can't hand a character a weak argument in chapter five and then win with him in chapter nine.

Read the article on The Author's Desk.

https://www.branchingplotbooks.com/blogs/the-authors-desk/friend-or-foe-writing-a-political-fable-without-a-winner

In 2008, I ordered 500 copies of my first book. Half went to media outlets and professional reviewers. Half went to coworkers, family, and friends. The media half put me on podcasts and the evening news. The personal half returned three Amazon reviews from 250 books, and a lot of careful avoidance in the hallway. I tried the same setup again with my second book and got the same result. The new post on The Author's Desk is about what those two experiments taught me about who actually builds an author's career.

Why Strangers, Not Friends, Build an Author's Career In 2008, I printed 500 copies of my first book. The media half-built the career. The personal half returned three Amazon reviews. Here's what that taught me.

A café worker saves a burning skyscraper. An eight-year-old runs surveillance on a vacant lot. A husband investigates his wife's ghost romance from the lake house. None of them have the training. All of them think like they do. After thirty years in intelligence analysis and investigations, that habit followed me into my writing. The new post on The Author's Desk is about why.

Read the full post:

https://www.branchingplotbooks.com/blogs/the-authors-desk/how-i-write-characters-who-think-like-an-analyst

The Author's Desk is back, with every old post wiped. Candle Face Chronicles has its own home now at www.candleface.com, so this blog shifts to my full catalog, the writing process, and the intelligence and investigative fields behind all of it. Those three threads run through every title I publish.

Link in comments.