Why You Need an App to Understand My Novel

I began Arcadia – a novel conceived and written for an app – over four and a half years ago when a lot of people were musing about digital narrative. After working my way through three publishers, two designers, four sets of coders and a lot of anguish, I am no longer surprised that few others have done anything about it. I also understand why the NHS database could go five times over budget and not work. What should be a simple task – write story, create software, publish – turns out to be anything but in practice.

I do not even have any natural enthusiasm for computing, which now perplexes me even more than it did when I began, and I certainly did not want to thrust myself into the vanguard of digital innovation.