Hey! Hey! look at this!

I AM SO EXCITED!!

You guys, I had a lot of fun with the Five Words Fiction game for the Reading Until Dawn conference.  But these authors for Rust City are taking it up a notch and OMG THIS IS GONNA BE GOOD.

In the interests of keeping the Featured Author posts at a reasonable length, I thought I'd do a little introduction to the game here.

Basically, it's a fun progressive-fiction game where each author has to build on the previous story and use five challenge words chosen by the previous player.  For the kickoff posts, I gave out the challenge words.

Kickoff posts, plural? you ask? My, you are sharp.  Yes, since I'm getting a really early start on these features, I am changing the game up slightly from last time.  We'll be running three stories simultaneously, like last time we had two.  Last time, I gave each author the option of starting a new game or building on the previous ones, and no other guidelines.  I didn't know what they'd be giving me until I got it.  This time, I'm asking that each author choose in advance from one of the following three categories:

1. Straight contemporary: set today, no magical, paranormal, or supernatural elements.
2. Steampunk: set mid-nineteenth century, little or no magic, but alternate history without petroleum-fueled technology or electricity.
3. Time-travel/paranormal: pretty much anything goes here.

Having the three tracks will give me a little more scheduling flexibility-- and I gotta say, the entries I've received back are knocking this thing out of the damn park.  So come back this Thursday and every Conference Thursday to see what's got me posting gifs instead of words to properly express this level of WOW !!!