When I was the right age for reading junior fiction, one of my favourite types of books was the Choose Your Own Adventure series published by Bantam. I’d use multiple bookmarks through each story thread so I didn’t miss any possible endings. You can imagine how excited I was last year when I found out about the live action version you can do here in Brisbane! All you need is Mum or Dad’s (or your own) smartphone or tablet and the Story City app which you can download from www.storycity.com.au. Get Mum or Dad to take you and your phone to the location where the story starts and begin your adventure.  You have the option of either reading or listening to the story, and at the end of each section, you make a choice about where to go next and the adventure continues. (In the first one of these I did I was killed by birds and had to retrace my steps several times until I reached a happy ending.)

Then things got even more exciting when I got the opportunity to apply to write my own adventure. I chose a nearby park and originally planned a story that would be fun but also had subtle messages of how to care for the environment. However, when I did a proper research trip through the park I realised it was rich with military history, so my story idea changed a lot. The producer liked my application, but there was one problem. The park I had set my story in was earmarked for another project called Outdoor Reads, so I had to wait a few months to apply again.

Luckily when the producer read my application for Outdoor Reads she still liked it, and I got invited to a workshop to learn all about writing locative fiction: stories designed to be read in the place where the story is set. Just like the original Choose Your Own Adventure books, the stories are written in the second person:

You look across the street and see a winged reptile dive-bombing you. Do you A. run down the alley to your left? or B. put up your umbrella and hope for the best?

Some stories require you to solve puzzles to reveal where the next location is. Some get you to draw a picture in the sand or build a little sculpture from natural materials, which can be quite cool when you see other sand pictures or sculptures so you know you’re following in the footsteps of other reader adventurers.

For Outdoor Reads, two other writers and myself wrote 3 stories each: 1 set in 7th Brigade Park, Chermside, 1 in Hanlon Park, Greenslopes, and 1 at Mt Coot-tha. Our stories are now awaiting final approval, but in the meantime if you’d like to do a live-action CYOA there are heaps of stories to choose in Brisbane City, Southbank, Sandgate, Woolloongabba and Dutton Park, and even Adelaide and the Gold Coast.

As they say at Story City, the city is full of adventures. Choose yours.

School holidays are almost over, and this time round I’ve had the pleasure of holding Kitten Kaboodle spy workshops at some of the Brisbane City Council libraries. The library staff have all been wonderful, arranging rooms, printing out templates for the spy gadget belts, wristbands and collars and supplying craft materials to decorate them with. I’m particularly chuffed that they ordered in extra copies of both Kitten Kaboodle books, and most of these are not currently on the shelves in the library but on bedside tables, bedroom floors, or safely in library bags of the library members who borrowed them.

But of course, the most inspiring aspect of the workshops was the fabulous kids who came along! These spies-in-the-making came up with amazingly cool gadget ideas: underwater breathing apparatus, invisibility mode, forcefield maker, hypnosis function, flight mode, rainbow creator, flower thrower, burrito button, walk-through-walls mode (quantum tunneling perhaps?) and gravity-modifying boots that let you walk up walls. One bunch of secret agents, who will be known here only as N.E.M.A., even brought their fluffy animals along and made gadget collars for them! I was also particularly excited that one of the attendees came dressed in cat ears. Everyone worked very hard on making their own unique spy gadgets – even the folks at ASIO would be impressed!

If you missed out on the workshop and would like the template for making your own spy gadget belt/wristband/collar, then contact me and I’ll send you the template.