Jon Ingold's Page

Blog: Three Edged Sword

Fiction - Hypertext - Interactive Fiction - I7 Code Snippets - Cryptic Crosswords - Short Films - Film Reviews - email: jon.ingold, gmail.com


Fiction

Novels

Jazz, in Three/Four Time

Jazz, in Three/Four Time

Jazz, once the music of prohibition gangsters, is now the music of lifts and pizza restaurants. Phil White is a saxophonist and a born improviser, but in a world where all that matters is who you know, its a bad idea to fall in love. Worse yet, to do so three times.

Lauren is a brilliant French student with a glittering future just around the corner, who happens to know someone at a record label. Miranda is a trombonist with a jealous streak. Carlotta is an older woman with a secret.

Told in a cycle of interlocking chapters, by a narrator with an ear for rhythm and a habit of bending the truth, Jazz in Three-Four Time is a novel of modern love and modern London, set to a smooth soundtrack.

Jazz is available to download from Amazon as an ebook.

Others

I'm currently working on two more novels, Land, Bridge, Border, Flood, in which a group of four backpackers lose their way in a country in decline, and Blink, a near-future science fiction story.

Short Stories

How to Build an Impossible Staircase is my first story and to date, my most successful, being published twice.

Interzone #228

Interzone magazine, the UK's leading sci-fi print periodical, published The History of Poly-V in their March 2010 issue (#227).

  • Review at SFRevu.com: "Ingold expertly builds this story in a slow, subtle way and leaves us feeling very uneasy."
  • Review at Garbled Signals: "A smart story... Ingold takes an inherently surreal premise, and presents it as realistically as possible."
  • Review at Suite101.com: "Recommended."
  • It appeared in Rich Horton's Recommended Stories list in the July '10 edition of Locus.

The issue is available to buy as an e-book from Fictionwise.



Interzone #228

Interzone have published another story, Over Water, in their May-June issue, (#228).

  • Review at Suite101.com: "Hovering beautifully on the cusp of fantasy and SF until the final few revelatory pages, Ingold's marvellous use of language delights more and more with each page. Outstanding."
  • Review at Garbled Signals: "Ingold pulls together the narratorís coming of age and setting off from home, an invasion between islands, and a fantastic piece of world building."
  • Review at SFRevu.com: "There is a lot to his story... It is a rich and rewarding fantasy and a joy to read."
  • Review at Tangent: "What makes this tale rock for lovers of fantasy, of science fiction, and of horror, is its possibilities of supernatural goings on and its allusion to a post-apocalyptic world. Such a story is worth our time and our consideration."

The issue is available to buy as an e-book from Fictionwise.



A third story, The Times, They Are, is due to be published sometime in the new year.

Flash Fiction

A Single Star was written for the 2010 Interzone advent calendar.



Hypertext

I've been starting to work with hypertext after discovering the wonderful Undum framework by Ian Millington, that combines beautiful presentation with smooth, unbroken output. I've written two stories so far.

Shaggy Dog

A Shaggy Dog Story

A 4:00am phonecall, magic, hypnosis and a pet-shop: all the night before an interview. What could possibly go wrong?

Flaws

Flaws

Science fiction: an old soldier is brought before his Emperor to face a charge of murder. Flaws was written for the 2010 Interzone Advent Calendar of flash fiction.

Flaws is now available as an ebook for Kindle from Amazon.



Interactive Fiction

A full list of my games can be found here or on the IFDB (Interactive Fiction Database) here, both accompanied by capsule reviews.

Klockwerk: The Shadow in the Cathedral

The Shadow in the Cathedral

Gears and cogs, racks and pinions, wheels within wheels within wheels. This is the substance of life for Wren, a ward of the monks in the Abbey of Time. In the city of St. Phillip, everything runs by clockwork, including the government and the church. As Second Assistant Clock Polisher in the Abbey of Time, Wren is the smallest gear in the vast machine. But big things can happen when even the smallest gear slips out of place. Welcome to the world of Klockwerk.

The Shadow in the Cathedral is my first work of interactive fiction to be available commercially, courtesy of Textfyre.com. The design and story was by Ian Finley (Babel, Kaged). The standard version is available now and the Deluxe version, with illustrations and interactive map, should be along soon.

Shadow was nominated for 5 XYZZY awards: Best Writing, Best Story, Best Setting, Best Game and Best Use of Medium.

The Shadow in the Cathedral reviews on IFDB, SPAG magazine, and Play This Thing!

Game, Set, Watch ran a column focusing on Shadow's world-building and prose.

Play the demo online.

Buy the full game (Windows only, for now!).


Make It Good

Make It Good

"Mr. Ingold has created a well-written, cleverly designed, technically proficient, devilishly hard work which, by dint of sheer over-arching competence, participates in the ever-rising standard of expectations for top-tier IF. Yes, heís gone and made it harder for everyone else." -- SPAG review.

"Brilliantly conceived and ambitiously executed" -- Emily Short

You're a dick, called to a plush house in the hills. A murder. Some dead guy splattered across the carpet of his study. They've given you one day - your last one day - to make a decent bust or you're going to be out on your ear, and that's bad news. One of the faces inside that house had better be guilty... but which one?

Written over the course of nine years, Make It Good features a twisting plot and five interactable NPC suspects to intimidate, interrogate and outwit.

Make It Good was nominated for 5 XYZZY awards: Best Writing, Best Story, Best NPCs (for characters), Best Individual PC (for the narrator) and Best Game.

Download the z8 story-file.

Play Make It Good online using Parchment.

Make It Good was featured on jayisgames.com.

Reviews and Ratings: IFDB, Emily Short (mild spoilers), Play This Thing! review, Massimo Stella's blog, Francesco Cordella (in Italian, second half has strong spoilers), SPAG (some strong spoilers).


All Roads

All Roads

Morning in Venice, and you are about to hang. But for a man like you - someone special - escape is never impossible. You are a thief, an assassin - but who are you?

All Roads is a complex and puzzling story. It won Best Game, Best Setting and Best Story in the 2001 XYZZY Awards and was placed in the top 5 modern IF games by AdventureGamers.com.

All Roads was mentioned by the Guardian's GamesBlog, who wrote "The best of these manage to be both literature and game".

It was also listed in the New Scientist's top 5 e-lit works in its Storytelling 2.0 blog article.

Download the z5 story-file.

Play All Roads online using Parchment.

A full walkthrough is provided here.


Insight

Insight

This is a room in which people talk. Sitting across the table from you is Mars' first murderer, quaking with fear in six times the gravity he's used to. You need a confession - but for a man with your particular talents that shouldn't be too hard...

Insight is science-fiction, set on a Mars colonised - and fractionalised - by genetic engineering. It has a few surprises up its sleeve, too - if you get stuck, don't be afraid to start over and try again...

Read the review from SPAG.

Download the z5 story-file.

Play Insight using online Parchment.


Dead Cities

Dead Cities

Arkwright's strange and crumbling house, in which the old man lives surrounded by his rotting treasures: his books. You have come to value him, but his most valuable book is also his most dangerous...

Dead Cities was written for the Lovecraft Commonplace Book exhibition. It took Best in Show in the Interactive Fiction category and was on display in MusÈe de la science fiction, de l'utopie et des voyages in Switzerland (October 2008).

Play Dead Cities online using ZMPP, a Java-based interpreter. (Note: it's a little slow on first load.)

Download Dead Cities as a gblorb game-file (for which you will need a Glulx interpreter program).


Fail-Safe

Fail-Safe

A distress signal is received. A ship, spinning out of control, heading for the Moon's surface. Its pilot barely audible has only minutes to live...

Fail-Safe uses an innovative approach to IF, framed as a radio-conversation with the game's protagonist. It was nomiated for Best Non-Player Character on its release and has received several 5-star reviews.

Fail-Safe was featured on jayisgames.com.

Read the review from SPAG.

Play Fail-Safe online using Parchment.


Till Death Makes a Monkfish Out of Me!

Till Death... Today is your crowning achievement: you are to step into the cylinder and be transported, in the swish of a fish-tail, back to the surface, away from your undersea hell. But unfortunately for you someone has thrown a spanner in the works... Till Death... is a sci-fi B movie: mad professors, crazy experiments, and a giant squid. It was written with Mike Sousa, and took 2nd place in the 2002 IF competition.

Download the executable file.
Hints are included in-game, type HELP at any point.




Cryptic Crosswords

I've compiled the following cryptic crosswords: And the following for scifi-themed fanzines:

Short Films

The Music Box

The Music Box

"Trumpets and accordions, they're all just prototypes..."

When Mr Russell's mysterious music box finds it way into the offices of a troubled record label it seems the perfect solution to their problems. But all is not quite as it seems.

The Music Box was filmed over two weekends in 2007, and starred Steven Woodhouse, JP Turner, Louise Bolton and Alex Babic.

Watch The Music Box.



Film Reviews

For the last two years I've been edited the film section over at musicOMH.com. Below is a list of some of my reviews.

Good Films
Mediocre Films
Bad Films


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