J P Smythe’s Website.

So, as I’ve bleated on about already, We Tell Stories has a secret seventh story that is, essentially, an ARG. What I didn’t realise is that I am actually a character in said ARG. Check out this email I got sent today by Eli from over at Novelr:

Also found a comment from a Dr. James Smythe on the Penguin Blog and followed it to his blog. He mentions a novel he wrote and gives an email address for anyone who might be interested. I sent him an email. Waiting for reply. THat blog has several posts and I think they are clues but I haven’t figured any out yet. The picture there is a mystery. He mentions that he doesn’t like the layout and will be changing or erasing everything…

Alice’s blog mentioned deleting messages too.

That was written by somebody called Nara at the Unfiction Forums. Now, how did I hear about the Alice story?

This was me, here:

I can’t be sure, but the other day I got an email, unsolicited, saying “hi, tell me about your work” and I occasionally get these, so I thought nothing of it. However, it also asked if I had heard of Alice, and the seventh story. Well, I’m pretty sure this is a ‘secret’ part of that penguin project that I spoke about a few posts back.

So, this person thought I was the ARG, and I thought that they were. GENIUS. It is both testament to a) the cleverness of launching the game so secretively and b) the chaos inherently involved in launching such a game that we both feel for it, but, regardless, at some stage I have been seen as part of something bigger, as part of something far, far grander than my own little world actually is, and, in many ways, this ‘Dr Smythe’ character is someone totally other than myself. It makes me want to play along, to try and enhance the game, to make it a game-within-a-game, almost.

I think this sort of unplanned, chance encounter is what will drive ARGs forward, what will make them something that we eventually end up taking for granted. It is almost like a midway point between something utterly contrived, like Perplexcity, and something more user-generated, like PMOG. As soon as ARGs stop being the realm of marketing speak, we get into the stories that they can tell, the places that, imaginatively, they can take us, and the ways that we, as readers, can help generate what we read, playing this gigantic living-theatre that actually tells us all a story depending on how far we want to take it.

It’s brilliant, and this time it isn’t Penguin that have done the brilliant bit: it’s the readers. Well done, everyone.

{BTW, I can’t help but wonder if any of you think that this is part of the ARG as well. It wouldn’t shock me: That would be one heck of a double-bluff.}

I’m so sorry, if you are still hanging in there, waiting for my Lazarus-style return.  Things that might be of interest:

- Becoming Dr Smythe hasn’t changed me.

- My novel is being sent off LITERALLY AS I WRITE to agents.  It’s a sprawlingly epic family saga, set over hundreds of years, and covering topics such as family history, illness, sex, death, infidelity, murder, torture, three different wars, insanity, oranges, newspapers, and fate.  It’s called Hereditation, and is – if I say so myself – technologically bleeding-edge, designed to be completely readable both on the traditional printed page and in digital form.  If you know anyone who might be interested, please send them my way: jp.smythe@gmail.com is the best way.

- This website needs a revamp and a rethink.  I’d like to start presenting something more current, more daily, with links to competitions and online fiction and stuff that writers – and readers – would like to know, but I feel that I haven’t the time.  I don’t want to do it half-arsed, so I am putting it on the back-burner until the Summer, when my teaching at Uni finishes and I have nothing on my plate for 3 months.

- So, until then, I have set up jpsmythe.tumblr.com.  I love tumblr. This will exist as my personal blog, with updates and links and silly things and really useful things, as often as I can find them.  I’m not saying I won’t be posting here – don’t delete this from your readers or anything! – but I won’t be making any promises, as I haven’t been able to keep them to you lot lately.

So, that’s your Lazarus, and he doesn’t amount to much, I’m afraid.  But he’ll be back – and he’ll bring that much-touted redesign with him.