Hello all, today I am going to introduce author Jillian Abbott who has just released a multi-media story called “Air Quality.” You just won’t believe it when you see it for the first time, but I’ll let Jill tell you all about it.
1.Jillian, today we are going to talk about your newest project which I find nothing short of amazing, but before we get to that could you tell us a little bit about your personal and professional background?
Thanks Terrie, I really appreciate your interest.
I’ve been writing since I was a kid, all sorts of things, novels, short stories, opinion, features, profiles, screenwriting, travel, food, you name it. As an adult I became a full time reporter and I developed a good understanding of how and why images illustrate a story.
I have three children who are the most important part of my life. I’m a dedicated writer but nothing could ever approach my commitment to them. This has brought great rewards in terms of living a meaningful life, but it has also come at great cost to my career. And because I moved back and forth several times between Australia and America, it was difficult to become established. The main thing is I kept writing and learning, and it all seems to have come together over this project.
In retrospect, if I’d stayed in one place it’s possible that someone else would be creating prototypes of multimedia interactive books. Every set back, while painful at the time, was a step toward “Air Quality.”
2. This is a very exciting time in the book industry with constant changes in how work is presented to the reader. Could you describe your new project?
I took the model of an illustrated book and kicked it up, way up. “Air Quality” is a short story inspired by the struggle my father went through to give up smoking when he was diagnosed with emphysema. Instead of having the story illustrated by an artist or by photos, I added video, music, sound effects and spoken dialogue. For example, the protagonist describes a kid’s drawing on a doctor’s wall. The picture is there, but more, when you tap the drawing, an actress reads the caption. At one point the character remembers singing a WWII song to his daughter. Tap the picture and you hear the song. Instead of leaving a gap between sections, I inserted a video of smoke wafting through the air. There are sound effects and photo galleries that when tapped pop out to a full page. I picked ways of illustrating the story that drove the narrative. My other goal was to keep people reading.
Interactive, multimedia works are rare, and much of what’s around has moved away from actually reading text. There’s a fun book, where you have to go to the corner of this and that street and when the GPS in your reader registers the location a clue is revealed. Instead, I wanted to replicate the intimacy of a reader curled up in bed, alone with her book and its story world. Yes, it’s an enhanced experience, but I love books and reading. I’m not looking to replace them, just to deepen the experience for the reader.
3. With a background that includes so much writing, could you please tell what moved you to look into the technical arts part of what came to be the project?
There were two forces at work. I have always been a storyteller first and a fiction writer second. I told stories as journalist and columnist, and I’ve written a screenplay and a children’s television story. I adapted the screenplay to a novel and ended up with something that was the same, but different. In all this I developed skills of illustration. I’m conscious of how music works in a film, of how an actor’s accent helps create the characters, and the power of sound effects to move the plot and create mood.
Around the time I started teaching at CUNY, I tried to write an essay on Facebook using songs and images to advance the narrative, but it can’t work because the reader doesn’t receive the posts in the right order, also other posts get in the way. CUNY pushes technology pedagogy, and I started being trained in a bunch of instructional software. iBooks Author, the program I used for “Air Quality,” is designed to create nonfiction and textbooks. When I saw what it could do, I was so excited I couldn’t sleep. Most of the work in making the book was in wrangling iBooks Author to fit the needs fiction. I’m always hoping to meet the right coder, until then I’ve figured out how to make this work.
4. What do you see as the future for this kind of combined media?
I think we’re at the beginning of a revolution and the possibilities for storytelling are endless. Every day the technology gets better. I’m confident this is the wave of the future. I’m finalizing the paperwork on my own company to adapt and sell stories to this format.
It’s so interesting to watch people read “Air Quality” for the first time. The reader’s eyes light up like a chiilds. Usually it’s the first sound they hear that delights them, and then they just keep tapping and watching and listening. It’s fun.
Of course, it’s not the best medium for all stories. The process changes the story, and many writers aren’t comfortable with this concept. I think mysteries work well because the drama and conflict aren’t as likely to be interior as with a lot of literary fiction. That said, “Air Quality” is an interior monologue written in the second person. I was able to adapt it because I was okay with it changing. For example, I added spoken, (not written) monologues from the wife character and the daughter character. This really opened the story up.
I think we are a ways off from this being self-publishable, the technology is hard. I had two universities and two technicians helping me and it was still one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done. This 31 page book took about 17 months to create. But the technology improves every day and the possibilities are expanding.
I started my company to “publish” others because most writers aren’t and don’t want to be producers, composers, actors etc. That means building a book like this is collaboration, and many writers are happy working alone with just words.
5. Most importantly, where can folks buy a copy so they can see this modern wonder for themselves?
As of now,”Air Quality” can only be read on an iPad and is available in the iBooks store.
Thanks so much Jillian Abbott for your great explanation of the kind of multi-media books we can all expect to see more of in the future. And, dear readers, I promise that as Jill’s work is available in more venues, we will let you know with an updated post here on Women of Mystery.
Terrie
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