Yo, readers!

  Welcome to our 3rd Detective Sunday! Our growth is getting better and better every week; let’s keep it up. There a few things we need to go over, and I’m sure it’ll be important moves for Detective Diaries; however, I also have news about my past success. I had recently graduated from high school, so I’ll be able to put more time towards my dreams and my future college. So, you guys will have me full-time until my summer classes start up in July, but I may get a small job just to pay for things, such as a car, or for tuition. I’ll let you guys know about that later on, but now, let’s talk about the future for our book.

  So, I had browsed through the forums a while back, and noticed there was a thread labeled Draft Fest. I decided to go ahead and get involved with that since Detective Diaries is kinda new and still is in drafting phase. The Draft Fest period will be lasting from May 30th-June 5th. Apparently, it’s a co-hosting event between Drinkshares:Last Call and Inkshares, and I believe this will all be taking place on Twitter. Excuse me if all the bold letters are not to your liking; just pointing out the important details. Also, this will be a great thing for Detective Diaries, for we could gain more readers and recommendations that could help us in the long run. I aim for the 750 goal because I’m all for challenges, and I want the world to read this.

  Next up is our destined last chapter. On Wednesday, you all will get the last chapter I will be posting on Inkshares. The chapter will be titled: Chapter Four: The Society. Now, a big thing about this chapter is that it will be a long one, and it will connect the majority of the problem surrounding the Twilight District. I’ve been pretty big on dialogue between Rice, Amani, and Carbine, but there’s a reason for everything they say. Oh, and I will introduce you all to a small amount of new characters that you might like.

  Lastly, we will talk about the date for when I will launch the pre-ordering phase. I’m considering starting it two weeks from now, or possibly three. I was talking to an author on here recently, and he told me some really important tips when transferring. I shouldn’t rush the process, and I need to reach out. Those two things I will prioritize because there’s no need to rush this, and I will need all of my readers to help make this a reality. I don’t know if I have said this before, but I love Inkshares because it prioritize a reader’s opinion, and they help the authors become known. There’s nothing better than that. An author should know that your book will only matter if readers desire it. It’s a tough competition, but I’ll take it head-on!

  Thanks for reading, and enjoy your morning/afternoon wherever you are.

  Until next time, Sixth.   

 Hi everyone, just wanted to provide an update as the campaign to fund The Battle Within hits 2 weeks left. That’s right, 6 Jun 16 - the end of the campaign - is coming up fast, so this is really the final hoo-rah to gain the necessary pre-orders to meet the funding goal. Please find a new video on the funding page, enjoy some pictures which are blasts from the past and thanks for all your support so far! Also, if you know anybody who’s sitting on the fence or just haven’t gotten around to pre-ordering, please let them know the end of the campaign is coming and their support would be much appreciated. Thanks again!  

Alastair Luft

Earlier this week, Geek & Sundry posted a very cool article about how Dungeons & Dragons was successfully being used in social therapy. In The Punch Escrow, I predict that games will replace therapy as we know it in the future.

Here’s an excerpt from the chapter Hiraeth:

In 1979 Edward Packard published the first commercially successful novel in what would become a very popular 20th century series of books called “Choose-Your-Own-Adventure.” In many ways this was a bridging of the worlds of interactive games and books (they didn’t have coms at the time, so they just wrote stuff down on paper), because the reader would play an active role in the narrative by choosing what the protagonist did next from a series of options. Rather delightfully, at least one option usually led to instant death.

"The Cave of Time" was the title of the first adventure published in that series. It was an imaginative story that took its readers on a journey through several real and fictional periods of time, from the end of the entire universe to the days of Camelot and the round table. The story’s mechanism for time travel was rather brilliantly not some fantastic device invented by a Vernian mad professor, but rather a series of tunnels that transported the reader through time, depending on which tunnel they chose.

Sometime in the early 22nd century, with the ubiquitousness of virtual reality and immersive gaming, a team comprised of cognitive neuroscientists and gaming technology experts created a psychoanalytical game based on The Cave Of Time. The virtual-reality game sought to help diagnose individuals with mental conditions, ideally with the aim of identifying such ailments before degeneration took effect. Using real-time analytics of eye movement, heart rate, neural activity, and facial expression, the games provided players with the opportunity to practice engaging in realistic social situations all in the context of a choose your own adventure scenario. The choices people made were helpful in establishing their mental state and whether they suffered from any psychological irregularities. The game itself eventually crossed over into the mainstream when modifications enabled players to edit content and endings. People would record their travels through the caves, personalizing outcomes. The caves became microcosms of their own universe and timelines.

After the Last War, many attempted to play out alternate strategies and endings to the war in The Cave of Time. Eventually it became common wisdom that the Last War would have taken place regardless of what was done in the immediate years preceding it, the prevailing common wisdom was that the clockwork which led to the war’s advent was put into action thousands of years ago. Still, to this day people still try to go back in time through the caves in search of answers.