[Author’s Notes / Story Q&A]

Thank you so much to everyone who played, read, or otherwise peeked in on Crafting Love! As always, I had a lot of fun writing it, and I hope you all enjoyed reading it as well.

The final length of this story was 52,200 words (around 125 pages in gdocs)! It feels truly incredible—it was NaNo in October! If and when you want to reread it, you’ll be able to find this story linked from my Interactive Fiction page. Feel free to check out some older interactive stories there too!

If you enjoyed the story and are looking for ways to support me and my work, you can learn more about and pick up my books over here. Read some already? Leaving a good rating or review on Goodreads or Amazon can make all the difference. I’ve also got a tip jar over at Ko-Fi! And please, feel free to follow me on social media to see what I’m up to: Twitter and Tumblr.

Okay, business aside—let’s do a story Q&A! Feel free to ask me anything you want about the story, what my writing process was, things people may have suspected but not had confirmed, other ‘routes’, etc. Wonder what would have happened if you’d done X instead of Y? Ask it here! (Lurkers are totally allowed to ask too!).

Here’s some starting information: I originally wrote up the idea for this about 5 years ago under the working title “Bootycall of Cthulhu” (it was much more about dating Great Old Ones in its first iteration), and started to script it up in the Failbetter Games engine before that was taken down. I wrote the ‘pitch’ paragraph for the current iteration about a year and a half ago, with the basic idea that the characters in this were each living out their own horror story, and it would be up to the player to intersect with those stories as they saw fit.

Thank you once again… and happy Halloween!

[Ask Me Some Questions, I’ll Tell You No Lies]

[Previous post: Conclusion]

[Conclusion]

Jay sat obligingly, watching her putter around in the kitchen. He didn’t really even have to think about his answer. “I think I’ll stay,” he said. “I mean, it’s nice to have your permission if I end up changing my mind sometime, but… it’s a weird town, Kingsport, but I like it so far. I’m making friends, and… I mean, I think I can see myself having a future there. I’ll have to figure out some of the more mundane details, but I want to stay.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” she said, running the water to fill the kettle. “I wouldn’t want to think I stuck you with nothing but that awful mission. It sounds like it went okay?”

[Please read the instructions before jumping in!]

Jay closed his eyes, drawing in a deep breath, and for a moment, he let himself just feel his wants. He didn’t have a choice whether or not to feel them, perhaps; they were washing over him unbidden, a deep hunger, every frustration and longing welling up from a bottomless pit he’d kept deeply stoppered for so many years—but he let himself think it was a choice regardless.

He wanted to save the world, of course, that was his most immediate thought, and the biggest contradiction with the flute, the thing, the creature in his hands, begging him to play it. He knew he could save the world by giving the flute up, returning it to its proper place with the blind god in the center of the cosmos—but he knew, too, because it told him, that he could save the world by playing it. If he conducted those masses of amorphous gods elsewhere, they would not be free to roam into his reality, except in the ways he let them.

But then, it wouldn’t be his reality any longer. The gods would come with him, and he would need to leave to keep the world safe.

[Please read the instructions before jumping in!]

Jay forced himself to breathe, pushing the panic off. He didn’t have time to panic. Every moment he took to panic was a moment one more thing could go horribly, completely wrong. He had to act.

He dug his toes against the damaged hardwood floor, pushing himself slightly under the bed, feeling wood splinters stinging his flesh. He didn’t let himself hesitate, arm outstretched as he squirmed in the narrow space until he felt the ominous weight of Nyarlathotep’s ankh and grabbed it in one hand. His fingers curled around its cool, curved shape.

[Please read the instructions before jumping in!]

Still staying as quiet as he could, Jay grabbed Louis’s wrist. He didn’t grab hard, didn’t grab like he was trying to make Louis drop the knife—just getting his attention, looking up at him with wide, alarmed eyes, and giving a quick shake of his head.

Louis seemed to frown at him, brows drawing down visibly under the eye holes of his mask, and he gestured at Dr. Archer with a quick, irritated gesture.

Jay nodded, then sort of shrugged helplessly. Even if he could talk now, he wasn’t sure what he’d say. He’d heard just enough about Louis’s past to begin to put together a truly horrible image of Dr. Archer as the likely source of Louis’s scars—physical and emotional. Everything Louis had indicated about his predecessor painted the picture of a sexual sadist and abuser of the power he’d held over Louis. Jay couldn’t exactly blame Louis for wanting to kill him.