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Yesterday, I posted a long walkthrough for the solution to the Chronicle of Sorrows game.  Today, over at 3232 Design, Richard—the designer of the game, as well as the man behind this website—has posted a more extensive “behind the scenes” look at the game’s development.  

Down near the bottom of his post, he’s gone one further.  He has issued a challenge.  And there’s money on the line.

Well, since the prizes have been awarded, it seems like maybe it’s past time to provide a walkthrough to our Chronicle of Sorrows game.

The game itself will stay up indefinitely.  So, if you’d like to take a crack at it by yourself, or if you’d like to play along with the walkthrough, feel free!  The links above provide some useful tips for getting started. 

You’ll notice that appears to be a broken link.  It points to this website’s 404 error page.  It also happens to reveal part of somebody’s journal for 4 April (4/04) 1919.  You’ll probably also notice that below the missing pages, the phrase chronicle of my sorrows is emphasized.  If you ask the homunculus about this, he’ll give you three of the missing pages.  This is where the game begins.

The rest of the missing journal entries are arranged into three separate threads, one for each of these journal entries.  Below the cut, I’ll describe the path through the game for each thread.  I’ll also try to mark things clearly, so that people who need a hint but don’t want the entire game spoiled for them can scroll through to the troublesome journal entry.

Last summer, I posted about my contribution to the upcoming anthology After Hours: Tales From the Ur-Bar.  Back then it seemed like the release date was forever in the future.  But it’s less than two months away!  The Ur-Bar opens its doors on March 1. 

And to celebrate, our inteprid editors have been working like crazy to spread the word.  (Have I mentioned the personalized M&Ms at World Fantasy?)  Below the cut, lots of links and signing madness.

Now this is cool: an orbiting gamma-ray telescope has detected the creation of antimatter by earthly thunderstorms. 

This is strange and delightful.  I’m a little taken aback that people apparently predicted this quite a long time ago.  (And it’s in the literature, so they really did.)

Since I spent my graduate student days thinking about high energy radiation processes, I can’t help but speculate about this.

Well, so far 2011 is off to a nice start.  Even if nothing else happens this year, at least I can say I made one sale.

Late last year I wrote a relatively short piece for a new DAW anthology edited by Jennifer Brozek.  I’m happy to be able to say that “The Mainspring of His Heart, the Shackles of His Soul” has been officially accepted into the forthcoming Human For A Day anthology.

It’s a story of tulips and alchemy, clocks and human rights, slavery and unconsummated love.