The Barista

Interactive Suspense Fiction

Coming Soon

You're a top-notch CIA field operator suspended and forced to take some paid vacation as the powers that be in Langley decide your fate as they  investigate your most recent actions that were deemed to be "too successful."  Some of the powers that be in Langley want your head on a platter.  Others are quietly cheering for you as they silently work on your behalf behind the scenes at CIA HQ.

Your vacation to the Punta Cana region of the Dominican Republic was intended to be a relaxing distraction as the political, paper-pushing procedures are followed to the letter back in Langley.  Within minutes of checking into your penthouse suite at a five star resort in Punta Cana, you're plenty distracted by an international cartel operating at the resort itself giving you no relaxation at all as you're pulled into the middle of a human travesty you're hell bent on stopping.

December 27, 2012

Forging Ahead.

I know it's been a while since I updated this pseudo book blog about the latest addition to my collection of interactive fiction books but never doubt I've been hard at it.  Not doing much writing in The Barista but hard at many other thing nonetheless.

I picked up the pace with writing this week and have my mind made up on the outline of the beginning, middle and end. 

Like always, The Barista will touch on a very real present day situation and drop you in the middle of it all to see what you're made of.

I've got a June release in mind.  Let's see if 2013 is kind enough to me to make that happen.

Happy new year!

May 25th, 2012

Field Research is Hell.

I planned our vacation to Punta Cana many moons ago with the (naive) intention of having Grand Damned finished and shipped to market if not well on its way through the beta test quality control process.

Close counts, right? Writing good fiction books is a lot like playing horseshoes after all.

Well Grand Damned was just about but not quite finished as we boarded the airplane to Punta Cana for some much needed rest and relation in the form of rum, cigars, gambling, dolphin swimming, sand, surf, pools with swim up bars, palm trees and sensational food delivered in unlimited quantities morning, noon and night.

I had the intention of finishing Grand Damned on the combined eight hours of flight time and daily early-morning writing sessions as my six year old daughter and wife slept soundly.

Wifey attended the meetings and was on board with daily late sleep-ins.  My little Milana missed the memo.  She woke up seconds after I did demanding my attention making it impossible to write.

Did any writing get done? Not hardly.  But plenty of reading and lots of relaxation along with plenty special moments were easy to come by.

Let's not say I didn't get ANY writing done.  I did manage to sneak in some time downstairs each of the many bars on the property to get down important notes, key impressions and keen observations for The Barista set in exotic Punta Cana.

Not a syllable of new work got done in Grand Damned, though.

This won't be the first time I juggled two interactive fiction projects at the same but I sure hope it's the last.  Shifting gears between horror fiction and suspense fiction in the same day if not the same hour is a tricky business.

Without further ado here some glimpses of the arduous field research I conducted in the Dominican Republic:

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Pop Quiz - Can you spot the Implementor and the Implementor' s daughter in the above pictures?

The stage is set.  It might an exotic tropical place but there's just as much energy and suspense here as anywhere else in the world.  I'll prove it to you in the months ahead.