Hmm, a cursory glance suggests I have about three "bubbles" between player choices (although often I don't actually give the player a choice, or it's just a choice of tone...mainly more or less sarcastic :) ), with one or two being "long" bubbles of maybe 4 sentences. There's a lot of banter happening, since it's basically all SMSes between friends. I'm not at all sure if this is good or bad. Maybe we should wait and see which styles are more popular, or maybe different channels will just have to have a different rhythm to them.

Oh, Sword of Shannara... my old frenemy.

Right now I'm reading "Black Wolves" by Kate Elliot. It had some long rambling scenes at the beginning and I thought, "I wish I was the kind of person who could more easily give up on a book" but now the characters are doing wonderful and interesting things, and there's an especially fascinating arranged marriage which I just love. (I have a friend with an older sister who's happily married by an arrangement set in place when she and her husband were kids).

I'm saddened when the real world freaks out about really minor things like who has which private parts, so I really enjoy it when I read books where no-one seems to care much about sexuality. This is one of those - a funny coincidence, since I just finished reading Tania Huff's "Quarters" series which does the exact same thing.

I love fantasy, especially the more fast-paced young adult stuff. Some of my favorites are Pamela Freeman, Garth Nix, Sandy Fussell (she actually writes children's books), and Scott Westerfeld. Oh, and Catherynne M. Valente.

I'll start: I've found (via other people's comments) that point-and-click IF often has a kind of rhythm to it. There's a reasonably similar amount of time between each interactive moment. In IF, that's considered a good thing.

Coming from the world of novel-writing, I've been taught to deliberately vary things like paragraph length in order to keep the reader on their toes. Being consistent in timing (for IF) feels more like essay-writing (which actually is something I also really enjoy).

What a great mix of familiar and unfamiliar faces! So delighted to see all of you, and I can't wait to read your stories!

I'm from Canberra, Australia and from the world of novel-writing - I just discovered interactive fiction this year and now it's my whole life. My first story is a steampunk Australia adventure called Attack of the Clockwork Army and there are a LOT more gamebooks in the works. My channel here is the paranormal romance "Enchanted". Those who know me from this year's IF Comp forums will already know forums are my favourite mode of procrastination.