Wow, full disclosure: I totally underestimated how long it takes to write interactive fiction. Last week, I said I’d post The Haul Monitor this weekend, but that’s feeling less and less feasible as I stare down midnight on this fine Saturday evening. In case I don’t manage to post it tomorrow, here’s an update—and a peek behind the curtain.

In October, I discovered Twine when I wrote a virtual murder mystery for a group of friends. I tend to be pretty visual, so I loved the mind-map format. I ended up with something like this:

I had a lot of fun with it, so I decided to create other interactive stories on Twine. Using an old vignette as inspiration, I started The Haul Monitor. It quickly grew way beyond the murder-mystery file; at the beginning, I give readers a choice between three characters, and then each of those characters has different choices to make. So that’s how this happened:

Ultimately, I’ll be glad I’m letting readers choose between three perspective characters—and it’s definitely been a lot of fun to play with the different voices—but man, my brain is fried.

Just trying to keep track of all the different “realities”—for lack of a better word—has me feeling frazzled. I don’t want to keep kicking the can down the road, but I don’t want to post half-baked nonsense either. I need to take some extra time to make sure each pathway makes logical sense.

In the meantime, here’s a sneak peek: