I did it. I finally dared to launch a Kickstarter! There are several reasons as to why I wanted to do this, and I want to share a bit of the behind-the-scenes and all the preparations that went into it.

The Reasons

Incredible as it sounds—in other words, time flies—May 2025 is the second anniversary of Unearthed Stories and we wanted to celebrate. For those who don’t know, Unearthed Stories is a joint venture between my significant other (the developer behind Prowess Games) and myself—and so it is quite an special app. If you want to know more about it’s origins, I did a written interview on Jam Reads which shares a lot of how the app came to be.

Regardless, we wanted to do something special, and I knew there are several of the book-with-choices I wrote for Unearthed Stories that I’d love to novelise–and that was how the idea came to life!

I chose Dance With Me for two important reasons:

First, Dance With Me is one of the first set of stories that published in Unearthed Stories when it released for the first time in Android only; the others were Restorers, Mien, Potions Shoppe, and Drifting Tavern. This also means that Dance With Me is among the first group of interactive fiction I ever wrote–I actually finished it in 2022! As I saw it, I thought it fitting to novelise one of those first five stories for this second anniversary.

Second, I write with purpose—for the themes, not the tropes. When I was experimenting with that first batch of stories I was in quite a dark place. Depressed, burnt out by work, unable to see a path ahead, and trying to heal. When my significant other offered me to create Unearthed Stories, I leveraged all the imagery I was using to explain my self-perception and poured it into the allegories composing Dance With Me.

Dance With Me is one of the most personal stories I’ve written¹, and so it was fitting it became a beautiful book.

The Behind The Scenes

Truth be told, novelising the interactive version was not as straightforward as I imagined. If you’re thinking (as I wrongly did) it’d be just a matter of keeping some paths and deleting the rest… well, that was just the beginning of it.

Technically, there are things I do in the app that do not work in a book. For example, although the choice text (which appears as buttons in Unearthed Stories) feels part of the story while in the app, that same text felt too spontaneous and unconnected in the book… and so I had to weave that in by paraphrasing, adding context, or even reshaping the sequence.

I also wanted extended scenes with the secondary characters, and so I had to alter entire interactive conversations to bring more elements onto the novelisation. For example, in the interactive version, you may speak to Sougo and be offered to ask him one of three questions; in the book, Lyra (the main character) ends up asking all three and, with some characters, has new dialogue not present in the interactive version. That quote-on-quote ’extension’ required me to alter the flow of some conversations, the knowledge Lyra had, and cascade that into the future scenes.

Then, I also had to deal with alternative and conditional text that appeared based on prior choices in the interactive version, and ensure it was actually coherent in the book narrative.

Translating the Choices

To me, interactive fiction is not just about giving the reader-player the opportunity to somewhat direct the story—to me, it is about leveraging the fullest expression of the medium to create an experience in which the mechanic of the ‘choice’ becomes something more—something richer that can evoke (aka, ‘show’) emotions in a way a book cannot.

Therefore, one of the most difficult bits was translating Dance With Me’s unique mechanic. To give you some context, this story is about depression, and one ugly bit of it is that sometimes you really want to do something but the depression won’t let you… and so, in the game, when you take some choices Lyra simply overrides your decision. In those cases, the chosen text either disappears, or Lyra strikes-it-through (like so) and does the exact opposite. It is frustrating as few things can be, and it was wholly intended; I wanted the reader-player to somewhat experience how that ‘override’ felt to me.

Suffice to say it was a bold move of me to attempt such a thing in my first batch of games. Spoiler alert: I only got bolder².

Design, Artwork, and Narration

Once I had the book done, having an audiobook was a must. I have always been an audiobook listener, and I really, really wanted one… but I was also worried. I needed someone who would be able to do British and French accents, hopefully Japanese, do some weird stuff for Margot (one of the secondary characters), and help me translate the strike-through text into an audio-only format.

It was not an easy search, but I found an incredible narrator: Alison Phoenix.

I won’t bore you with the details of the process; instead, I’ll offer you to listen to my podcast, since I invited Alison for a Guest Talk. We covered every strange character and effect, her beginnings as a narrator, and even advice for writers and narrators. Listening is a must; she’s amazing!

In its interactive version, Dance With Me was beautifully illustrated by graphite artist José Arturo Bustamante, and we contacted him again to add two new illustrations. The artwork is just stunning, and I find that the graphite style works just so well; it adds magic to the story!

Then, we also have the design—and you saw a bit of that at the start of this post. I actually did all the internal setup myself, including the headers for the chapters. I also designed the paperback cover, the hardcover’s dust jacket, and naked case.

Why?

The simplest (and most shallow) answer is: because I can. I have learnt a lot from doing all the graphic design for Unearthed Stories; I have done all the headers for the app, and most of the covers as well. Several of the stories (Restorers, Reflections, Herald, Static Signal Living Legacy) have illustrations made by me (Herald’s are actually made in watercolours, you can read more here). Lately, I have begun learning digital painting³, and illustrated the covers of the latest invited stories. I even did the cover design and inner design for my other book, The Genesis of Change. As you can see, I’m a (mostly) one woman-army.

However, the most honest and truthful answer is far more personal: because I put so much of me in this story that I wanted it to be perfect and exactly as I envisioned. I had imagined little details for it for months (like the ballerina silhouettes on the hardcover’s chapter titles), testing things in Vellum just to see if they were workable/achievable (like having a different image per chapter page), and more. I invested hours into nailing the design, tweaking the smallest details and finding a nice blend of what my skills allowed and what would suit the story.

I poured my heart in that story, and also on its presentation.

By now, you can imagine something else: I did every single image in the Kickstarter page. All the graphic design, all the renders, everything. I learnt, and I also got to create something I’m incredibly proud of.

Another Story

But this is the second anniversary of Unearthed Stories, right? I couldn’t celebrate only with Dance With Me!

Truth be told, I had another allegory dancing (pun intended) in my mind since I wrote Dance With Me, and I thought this was the perfect opportunity to use it in a book-with-choices. This is how Our Own Rhythm begun.

Our Own Rhythm is a standalone in the same universe as Dance With Me, but it follows a completely different cast; you can read it without having read the other. In this case, you play-read as Nina—a wooden doll that awakens, enchanted by fae magic, to tap-dance for her owner. In this case, the central themes are around surviving bullying, dealing with anxiety and depression, and the beginning of the journey afterwards.

Just like its sibling story, Our Own Rhythm is derived from the imagery I used when thinking about how I felt. It is also incredibly personal, but although it keeps the fairytale feeling of Dance With Me it is a bit darker—not too much, though; this is still clean fantasy.

Our Own Rhythm will be available through Unearthed Stories only (for now, fingers crossed) and it is illustrated by mixed-media artist A.A. Chernyshov. His no-sketch, pen-only illustrations are just mind-blowing. Look at that cover!!

The Hopes

That’s the gist, isn’t it? We humans tend to do a lot of things out of sheer hope. My greatest one, in this case, is for Dance With Me to reach its audience so it can help others as much as writing it helped me.

I also hope for Our Own Rhythm to find its supporters—it wasn’t easy to write, and I think its depiction of anxiety truly helped me understand myself. Hopefully, it can help others understand it as well.

And finally, I have one last hope. To do well, so that next year (or the other!) I can novelise another book-with-choices. Who knows? I’m crossing my fingers.

Over To You

Would you read Dance With Me? Or Our Own Rhythm? Would you support the Kickstarter? Take a look at the campaign, and decide for yourself. Whatever you choose, thank you for reading all of this and for your interest in my work. It means the world to me!