Noiseless Chatter Archive

This week sees the release of The Lost Worlds of Power, Volume 0 as a Groupees exclusive. It contains a total of five stories, unique to this collection, and each with its own illustration. For that reason, this week will be given over to spotlighting one of the featured authors every day. Today, me. Philip J Reed, author of “Tetris.” I’ve talked a bit about how much of a fast-tracked labor of love Volume 0 was for everybody involved, so while I won’t rehash it too deeply here, I do want you to keep that fact in mind, so that you’ll understand how absolutely insane I was to also write a fresh story for it. Some background. When James Lawless (eventual co-editor) first pitched me the idea of writing Worlds of Power books, he pretty much leapt right for Marble Madness , and I just as quickly grabbed Battletoads . Then we opened the idea of a collection up to many authors…and potentially opened ourselves up to failure, as well. I can’t speak for James, but I was worried...

This week sees the release of The Lost Worlds of Power, Volume 0 as a Groupees exclusive. It contains a total of five stories, unique to this collection, and each with its own illustration. For that reason, this week will be given over to spotlighting one of the featured authors every day. Today, Lucas Hale, author of “Balloon Fight.” I currently reside in California at the far east of the Bay Area with my wife and doggy daughter. I have a Ph.D. and came to California to pursue scientific research. While I have about a dozen published technical papers, I’m thrilled to announce that this is the first time that a creative work of mine is being printed. A few years ago, I got the urge to do something creative to counteract the preciseness of scientific research and writing. My drawing is on par with a sixth grader and my wife has banned me from singing, so I took up writing. Most things I write are not worth sharing, as I get distracted easily from my hobby by thi...

  ALF Reviews: “Wedding Bell Blues” (season 2, episode 4) There are a few different things a scripted television show can do to keep you tuning in. The most obvious — and one that’s gained significant favor in recent years — is serialization, the idea that anything that happens one week will potentially affect the next episode, and even episodes that won’t air until years later.  Breaking Bad  obviously was a high-profile example of this, and one that kept juggling as many looming tragedies as it could from the very start. Pretty much any prestige drama qualifies. Another thing you can do is create a world, or a set of characters, that viewers want to spend time with. It’s not the storyline that keeps someone coming back so much as it is the chance to escape into that little universe. This is something  Friends ,  Cheers , and similar shows did quite well. Very little of the appeal was due to longform story telling; it owed more to the chance to be part of that ...

This week sees the release of The Lost Worlds of Power, Volume 0 as a Groupees exclusive. It contains a total of five stories, unique to this collection, and each with its own illustration. For that reason, this week will be given over to spotlighting one of the featured authors every day. Today, Chris Gomez, author of “Kirby’s Adventure.” In early January, two post-college friends, one having majored in Creative Writing, the other in Philosophy, convened at the latter’s house in San Francisco to declare a weekend-long “Writing Bunker.” They would not leave the house until Sunday night, in hopes that each would help motivate the other to finish his current project. With groceries stockpiled and a tight schedule typed up into Google Calendar, the two aspiring writers set themselves to the task at hand. I am the philosophy student, and “Kirby’s Adventure” is the absurd monstrosity I finished writing that weekend. I have no real formal training in writing fiction, but I...

This week sees the release of The Lost Worlds of Power, Volume 0 as a Groupees exclusive. It contains a total of five stories, unique to this collection, and each with its own illustration. For that reason, this week will be given over to spotlighting one of the featured authors every day. Today, R J Burgess, author of “Mario is Missing!” The first magazine I remember buying with my own money was called Total , a Nintendo-focussed monthly that ran for a number of years in the mid-90s. Overall, I have fond memories of it. It was funny and informative, packed full of content and with just the right ratio of images to text to keep my eight-year-old self entertained on many a long car journey. It wasn’t without its flaws, however. Take their review for Mario is Missing! Whatever schmuck reviewed that game ended up giving it a score of 92% out of 100. 92%! That was only 1% less than the score they’d given to The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past . It was 2% more than they’...

This week sees the release of The Lost Worlds of Power, Volume 0 as a Groupees exclusive. It contains a total of five stories, unique to this collection, and each with its own illustration. For that reason, this week will be given over to spotlighting one of the featured authors every day. Today, Robert Holt, author of “Ring King.” Hello, I’m Robert Holt, and I am a horror writer. My first novel is slated for release in June, and I have dozens of short stories out in horror anthologies, but I’m not going to try to sell you any of that. Instead, I am going to talk about my jaunt into this thrilling retrospective anthology of forgotten video games. I am excited to have been included in this preceding volume to the official book. My story, “Ring King,” was a natural choice for me. I have had a lifelong love affair with the sport of boxing, and a lot of it started when I was given Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! by my father at the age of nine. It was one of the most incredibl...

  ALF Reviews: “Take a Look at Me Now” (season 2, episode 3) Whew! Sorry for the delay, but either the  Gilligan’s Island  episode inspired me to hang myself by the neck until dead, or I threw everything aside to put together a fiction anthology. Whichever you prefer to believe is fine with me. Anyway, the episode opens with ALF examining avocados for worms. Brian gives him an avocado with a worm in it, but then ALF gets pissed because there is not actually a worm in it. Once that happened and an imaginary audience wet itself at this brilliant comic subversion, I figured the cold open was over. But, nope. Something actually does happen…and it’s a pretty big thing to happen: Mrs. Ochmonek sees ALF. That’s also the plot of the episode, and I do like that there wasn’t any needless buildup. It’s kind of nice that the episode begins, and then this immediately  happens . That’s about the only way you can pull something like that off and still have it be surprising, so I’m ...