Visit the website and share it with a friend: www.enterdarkeden.com

Take the fear test, it will show you what you’re really afraid of (seriously!) www.thefeartest.com

Join the Facebook fan site, updates daily: www.facebook.com/enterdarkeden

Order the book (author smiles!): www.enterdarkeden.com/get/book.php

And read the DARK EDEN interview below!

Come join me in DARK EDEN, where fear is the cure.

Patrick

Dark Eden Interview

How did the idea of DARK EDEN come about? Was there extensive research regarding the symptoms and emotions of teens going through the process of overcoming their phobias?

One of my best friends also works as a counselor for teens and adults. We were on a long drive, heading to Montana for some R and R on a river, and we got into a long conversation about the physiology of fear. Interesting things happen to us when we’re afraid beyond just ‘fight or flight’. That got me thinking about people with extreme fears who live otherwise ordinary lives, and how a villain could take advantage. For almost a year after that, every drive we took to a river included this topic. I had lists and lists of unusual phobias and fears, and we had some fascinating conversations.

Which character do you relate to most? Least?

I relate to Will Besting most, probably Kate Hollander the least. I grew up in Will’s kind of environment – a brother, a lot of video games, a fascination with music and sound. And I, too, would have rather watched than participated in the things that went down at Fort Eden. With Kate, I’m just not an alpha personality. I’ve been around people like that my entire life (haven’t we all) so I understand how they operate when they enter a room. But it’s not generally the company I keep, so she was a tough one to work out.

What fears and phobias, if any, did you have when you were a teen? Do you have any now?

I am mortally afraid of being home alone late at night, always have been. Waking up after midnight is especially troubling. I hear things in the house, people walking around upstairs. I am cursed with a vivid imagination after the sun goes down. As a teen I feared the usual: asking girls out, dances, acne, grades – those kinds of fears overshadowed any other one’s I might have had.

If you could have immortality, would you take it? Why?

No, I wouldn’t. Tuck Everlasting was an important book for me, because it explored this idea in a way that made me understand the cost of living a very, very long time. Everyone I loved would grow old and die. I’d have to start over a lot (the older I get the less I like that idea). For a guy like Rainsford in DARK EDEN, immortality is an elaborate trick. He’s figured out how to jack the system, and we get a sense of what kind of person it takes to pull those levers. I’m in no rush to die, and there are mysteries there that can haunt me late at night. But I think we’re going somewhere, not nowhere. I am ever hopeful it will be someplace good.

Did you learn anything while writing/revising DARK EDEN, and if so, what was it?

I learned about a lot of unusual fears people have, and that turned out to be more interesting than I expected. I also have a habit of connecting older books to what I’m writing, partly because it’s a chance to re-introduce those books to new readers, but also because I want to re-examine them myself. With DARK EDEN, I went back to The Pearl, The Woman in the Dunes, and The Masque of the Red Death. DARK EDEN has a strong class underpinning, and all those stories dealt with class struggles: trying to move up a level in society, feeling superior, feeling trapped. Those themes run through the story, and I learned a lot about how to write them in a way that will make readers think about them.

If you had to do it all over again, would you change anything?

I’m happy with the book, it’s what I wanted to write. And really, once a book is printed, I’ve let it go. DARK EDEN is what it was meant to be.

What was the book that most influenced your life, and why?

If only there were one book that influenced me most, that would be nice! I’d just read it over and over again. I can’t answer this one with even ten or twenty books. It’s a list, books get added. Just this year I had to put The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall on the list of books that deeply influenced me. This question of books and their influence has a lot to do with seasons in one’s life. There were books early on – Dr. Suess, Where the Wild Things Are – that I know had a profound effect on my habits as a visual thinker. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nymn, the Narnia books, everything by Roald Dahl showed me I could escape completely into worlds that were not really there. Edgar Allen Poe and Mary Shelley showed me so much as a young writer. The Brothers K (David James Duncan), The Grapes of Wrath, Catcher in the Rye, Ender’s Game – the list is much longer than this, but all these books influenced me in ways that make it impossible to pick one. And there will be many more, I’m sure.

How and when did you come up with the idea for DARK EDEN?

One of my best friends also works as a counselor for teens and adults. We were on a long drive, heading to Montana for some R and R on a river, and we got into a long conversation about the physiology of fear. Interesting things happen to us when we’re afraid beyond just ‘fight or flight’. That got me thinking about people with extreme fears who live otherwise ordinary lives, and how a villain could take advantage. For almost a year after that, every drive we took to a river included this topic. I had lists and lists of unusual phobias and fears, and we had some fascinating conversations.

You have written many books, what can you say is your favorite topic or genre to write about?

All of my books are mysteries, and I’m especially fond of writing a story that has a surprise ending. So while I like to jump from genre to genre – thriller, fantasy, adventure, sci-fi, realistic fiction – all my stories are rooted in mystery.

If you had to step into one of your seven characters in Dark Eden’s shoes which one would you pick and why?

Will Besting. I’d much rather not know the cure is coming. And I’m an observer, so what he’s doing fits with my personality. I’m very happy sitting in a café watching people go about their lives and trying to guess what they’re up to. Also, he falls in love, which is an enjoyable experience.

Would you say your book is scary? And if so, to what extent?

I think DARK EDEN is more of a psychological thriller than a horror novel. I’d compare it to Shutter Island, with a similar surprise twist ending.

What else would you be if you weren’t an author?

I love all kinds of storytelling. I think if I weren’t a novelist I would work in movies, television, or video game development. A great story is a great story, I’m not hung up on what the delivery method is.

You are undoubtedly the innovator in multi-media/interactive novels and I love the DARK EDEN app! Why does DARK EDEN work so well with multi-media?

Thank you! The truth is, I never know how the multimedia aspect of a project is going to work until I get pretty deep into the woods (publisher cringes). I wrote DARK EDEN twice – once as a straight up book, again as an immersive multimedia app – and then re-wrote the app as we moved through development. Many things come into play: what the app will look like and how it will operate, hiring actors, editing scenes, recording audio diaries – there’s just so much that goes into these things. Along the way my team helps me make the right choices, many of which are made only days before sections of the app go live. We’re dialing this thing in right down to the last second!

What led you to start developing stories in this non-traditional way?

School visits top the list of reasons why some of my projects include multimedia. I’ve visited over 1300 schools in the past decade, and every year students get more and more distracted. It’s a highly entertaining world they live in, and for a lot of readers, they need a lifeline back to books. Projects like DARK EDEN are designed to blend in with the technological world many teens have become immersed in. My hope is that DARK EDEN is an opportunity for some of our most jaded readers to build some confidence about reading, then move on to a more traditional book.

I read that there will be an enhanced e-book version of DARK EDEN for Nook and Kindle. Will the e-book experience differ from reading the printed book in conjunction with using the DARK EDEN app?

Actually, the printed DARK EDEN book is totally stand alone and does not interact with the app version. The printed DARK EDEN novel is designed for a traditional reader, words only (and some amazing illustrations). The app is the same story told in a multimedia format (words, videos, maps, audio diaries). Nook will have the full app version of DARK EDEN. The enhanced ebook will include around ten of the 100+ multimedia elements.

What other projects are you working on at this time?

DARK EDEN II! Also, a YA trilogy I’m not at liberty to talk about yet, and the second FLOORS book, my current middle grade series for Scholastic. And if you want something really different, check out www.315stories.com, the short story re-imagined for modern teens.

In honor of Halloween, tell us your best/scariest Halloween memory.

We used to play this old record on a turntable with all kinds of scary Halloween sounds, then hand out candy and scare all the kids who came by. We were moderately famous for it in our old 1970’s neighborhood. That was some fun!

Dark Eden is one of the only two “YA-Centric” projects to win the award.

“We consider the QED the ‘Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval™’ for ebooks – a mark of quality that publishers, authors, and content creators can proudly bear to assure readers can buy with confidence. Ebook sales are growing dramatically and readers need to know what they’re buying will render well regardless of device – tablet, e-reader, smartphone or PC – before they buy. It’s really gratifying to see that so many publishers across a range of genres are producing ebooks of the highest quality now.”

Well, 2012 has arrived and the world isn’t quite like I imagined it would be.  Instead of flying cars we’ve got iPads, smart phones, and Top Chef. Pretty good, even if none of those things can fly me to the moon or distribute free candy when I demand it. Even books have turned out differently than I thought. I never imagined things like Skeleton Creek, 3:15, Trackers, or Dark Eden when I was ten, but I’m glad there’s room in the modern world for many kinds of reading experiences.  Heck, I’m just psyched we’re still reading!

2012 will include the totally traditional second Floors book, so you’ll be able to discover what happens to Leo and Remi in the Whippet Hotel through words, words, and more words. And Eve of Destruction, the next Dark Eden project will be headed your way before summer. It’s an exciting time for books, both traditional and Transmedia. And I’m beginning work on a new traditional YA trilogy – top secret! – so stay tuned for news on that.

Here’s wishing all of us a great 2012, even if cars can’t fly.

Patrick

Patrick Carman’s “Dark Eden” is a multimedia offering, but even in its simple print form it is a compelling read about seven terrified teens in a backwoods adventure.

Illustration from the book “Dark Eden” by Patrick Carman. (Patrick Arrasmith, Harper Collins)

By Susan Carpenter, Los Angeles Times
November 13, 2011
Dark Eden

A Novel

Patrick Carman

Katherine Tegen Books: 316 pp., $17.99 ages 13 and up

The seven video screens in the new young adult thriller “Dark Eden” flicker in black and white — not only as described in the book’s text but through an accompanying downloadable app that plays out the story’s action in video snippets viewable on iPhones, iPods, iPads and Android devices. The back cover of the latest multimedia creation from bestselling author Patrick Carman also incorporates a QR code allowing potential readers to watch the ominously creepy “Dark Eden” trailer.

Is it a book? A film? An audio book? “Dark Eden” is all three — an effort on the author’s part to encourage reluctant readers to embrace the written word through technological enticements. But even in its humble print form, without any of the bells and whistles and gadgetry, “Dark Eden” is a compelling read that transposes the best aspects of classic horror storytelling onto a modern backwoods adventure reluctantly experienced by seven terrified teens.

Each of them suffers from a fear — of rabid dogs, rickety ladders, kidnapping. None of them understands why they’re so afraid, despite years of psychotherapy. So their doctor corrals them together, driving them deep into a wooded area somewhere on L.A.’s outskirts and dropping them off on a dirt trail, saying only, “A cure is waiting for each of you down that path.”

Their doctor refers to them as “The 7.” All of them are 15 years old. They’re a mix of hormone-addled boys and girls, some of whom are inevitably romantically involved. None had met before being packed into their doctor’s van. They’re panicked to discover their cellphones are out of service range and even more freaked that the first person they meet after an hour’s walk is Mrs. Goring — a crotchety old woman of indeterminate age whose first words of advice are: “Act like grown-ups and I won’t spit in your oatmeal.”

Mrs. Goring is one of just two people living at Fort Eden — a compound that consists of buildings notable only for their bunker-esque architecture and sturdy iron doors. Dr. Rainsford also lives on the premises, perfecting his cure for fear, though the details of how he does so are unclear.

Faced with looming darkness and a lack of survival skills, six of the kids venture into the appropriately named Fort, but Will Besting stays behind. Will, it turns out, is scared of people and finds comfort in technology, specifically the vintage video games he plays at home and the audio recording device he brought with him. The Recorder, as he calls it, was cobbled together from old iPods and digital cameras he bought on Craigslist and reassembled into a device he uses to record audio and video.

Readers can hear and watch what he’s recorded through the “Dark Eden” app, the first episode of which consists of shaky video footage of the teens’ walk through the woods and audio files of the seven’s psychotherapy sessions that Will surreptitiously downloaded from his doctor’s computer. The first episode is free. Subsequent chapters can be purchased for 99 cents apiece or in their entirety for $9.99.

While “Dark Eden” is written in a visual manner that easily conjures images on its own, experiencing the story through Will’s eyes and ears heightens the fear factor in a way that words alone cannot. It’s chilling to watch Will observe the treatments, which are conducted in basement rooms with metal helmets that wouldn’t be out of place in Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.” Hearing the seven’s interactions with their doctor makes the characters and their fears feel more relatable and real.

As befits a story taking place outside of L.A., all of the characters in the app are Hollywood-slick. And so are the video and audio production values, which amplify, rather than detract from, Carman’s inventive storytelling. “Dark Eden” is a fast-paced thrill ride that ends with big reveals about why the seven were taken to the Fort and subjected to Rainsford’s immersion therapy. Readers will need to wait until the second, and final, book in the series to find out if the fear cure actually works.

By Dennis Abrams

Patrick Carman is a traditional storyteller — the author of the bestselling YA series The Land of Elyon and Atherton, he’s also the creator of the popular and innovative 3:15 website, which uses a variety of media to encourage young readers to become interested in reading short stories.

And in his latest novel, Dark Eden, published this month by Katherine Tegen Books as an app for the iPad, Carman again pushes the boundaries of YA fiction by using text and video to tell the gripping story of seven young people forced to face their deepest darkest fears. Looking backwards, with references to Edgar Allen Poe, John Steinbeck and Kobo Abe, while exploring the future world of transmedia, Carman is very much a writer of and for our time.

I recently had the opportunity to interview Patrick via email, where we discussed transmedia, the desirability of book apps, and whether multimedia publishing can eventually lead young readers to Charles Dickens.

PP: Assume I’m a complete tech idiot — explain to me how the whole multimedia aspect of the book works and why I would want to do it.

PC: Dark Eden is designed to reach different kinds of readers. For traditional readers who prefer to read words, the book will give them exactly what they’re expecting (plus some amazing drawings from artist Patrick Arrasmith, who we were very lucky to have on the project). But I’m also interested in finding new ways of reaching very wired teens. And let’s be honest. Most of today’s teens are jacked in, wired up, and buzzing on tech throughout a normal day. The Dark Eden app tells the exact same story as the print edition; it just does it in a totally different way. With the app version, a participant enters into the story through a series of maps. Within those images are numbered icons that must be opened in order. There’s no way of knowing what’s behind the curtain of each number until they’re tapped, but every icon unlocks one of three things:

• An audio diary. With these, participants listen in on conversations taking place in the world of the story.
• A video, allowing participants to see firsthand what’s happening to certain key moments of the narrative.
• A journal entry. Taken directly from the book, the journal entries provide bite-sized reading segments.

I’ve had a lot of email on the app, and the overall viewpoint has been something along the lines of the following: I don’t know what I just did, but I liked it. So the Dark Eden app is extraordinary in that it’s a new palette. No story that I’m aware of has ever been told this way. It’s not a novel, it’s not an audio book, andit’s not a movie. It’s all three at one time. For some teen readers – the one’s publishing has lost in a rising tide of video games, movies, TV shows, the Internet, and cell phones — this is the kind of experience that will help them enjoy reading again. It’s a lifeline back to books, if you will. For traditional readers, it’s a new way to imagine what reading can be.

But given that, is there a risk that even though using multimedia encourages reading, it will lead to eventual disappointment when everything isn’t multimedia? Will going from you to, say, Dickens, be a letdown?

About half the books I write include zero multimedia, and that’s by design. My follow up to Dark Eden will be a traditional three book series for teens. If someone has experienced the Dark Eden app and liked it, maybe they’ll want to read the more traditional follow up by the same writer. So there is a strategy at play here, and its goal is to bring jaded young readers back to books. Having said that, in today’s kinetic tech culture, I think Dickens is a challenge for any teen reader. I’m not saying that’s a good thing, but I’m convinced it’s the reality we faced as publishers, writers, and educators. Saying it’s not so won’t make it true, and we have to evolve in order to survive. Think of Dark Eden as a bridge to contemporary YA. The bridge to Dickens is a bit longer, but for some readers, that first step might lead to the streets of London in due time.

Given how Dark Eden changes what “reading” means, how does it change the writing process for you? Which comes first — the writing or the app?

I wrote the Dark Eden book first, but while I was writing, I was thinking about how it would become something else. When I finished the book, I worked with my director and writing partner to re-write the entire story for the app version. I’ve done this before with other projects like Skeleton Creek and Trackers and 3:15, and in every case, it’s a somewhat terrifying process to go through. The final document for the Dark Eden app was three inches thick, encompassing about 100 different assets that needed to be created. The hard thing about starting at a document like that is the uncertainty of it all. I stared at that binder of paper for a long time and wondered if it would all come together and form an experience as strong as the traditional book. There’s no way of knowing when you’re doing something that no one has ever tried. The only way out is to keep going, keep building, and always keep the basics top of mind: is this clear, is it compelling, do I want to follow these characters? I think the Dark Eden app works, I’m satisfied. Time will tell us whether participants feel the same way.

I downloaded the app for 3:15, and was fascinated by the way in which you transformed the basic short story into an audio introduction/text middle/video at the end experience. Can you tell me a little about it came about? And again, are you concerned that readers will grow up expecting all their texts to be like this and won’t be satisfied with simply reading a story?

The strategy with 3:15 is the same as everything else we’ve been talking about here. I love short stories, but they’re not very popular among teens and pre-teens (and actually, not very popular among adults, either). I was reading a short story a year ago by Flannery O’Connor and when I got done, I was a little bit angry. Why don’t more people read this stuff!? Why is this powerful experience being missed? 3:15 came out of that frustration as I began thinking about how short stories could be re-imagined for a new readership. The Twilight Zone informed the structure, because I thought having a host for a series of stories would help draw young readers into the experience. It was shortly after that I decided that it would pull in readers even faster if they could actually hear the host introduce the story, and thus Paul Chandler was born. At this point I’m hoping I’ve earned ten minutes of reading out of a twelve or thirteen year old, because I’m also offering a payoff — they get to watch how the story ends. All of this thinking came together perfectly in the series title, 3:15. The three stands for listen, read, and watch, and you do it all in fifteen minutes or less. For a young reader, this is an enticing bargain, but again, the endgame isn’t 3:15. My desire is that they move on to Chris Crutcher, Holly Black, Jonathan Strahah, and a host of other writers creating traditional short stories for teens.

How did your desire to go multimedia start?

Ten years in advertising and five running an internet start-up in the first .com boom certainly played a part. I was hard-wired to break the rules before I showed up in publishing. My experiences in those industries had a lot to do with making new rules in order to be heard, noticed, and taken seriously. I side with the late Steve Jobs here: the people who are doing things no one else thinks will work are taking the biggest risks and have the best chance of creating real change. I’m not a genre-maker or a category builder — vampires, dystopian, what have you — I’m a palette changer. I’m watching where kids and teens are going and building new storytelling methods that will meet them where they’re at. The ultimate goal is to discover ways to make reading relevant in an increasingly noisy world. But to be clear, I don’t think all books should be brimming with multimedia. That would be a tragedy! These projects are designed to re-introduce reading to an audience that doesn’t think reading fiction can be enjoyable. In a perfect world, a teen experiences the Dark Eden app and it puts them back in the reading for pleasure game. The next story they pick up, I hope is in the form of a traditional novel. Last disclaimer: there are plenty of teen readers reading normal books. Bravo, young readers! But let’s be honest with ourselves as adult readers and writers: there are a lot of teenagers who simply do not read for pleasure. It’s off their radar. I’m trying to win them back.

[Personally] I’m inspired by great stories, and I’ll admit to not caring what form they take. A season of great TV (Mad Men, The Good Wife, Battlestar Galactica), a riveting movie (The Matrix, Shine, Good Will Hunting), a video game (spend four bucks on LIMBO in the X-Box arcade and prepare to be wowed by a brilliant narrative), or a really good read (recent loves include The Lonely Polygamist and Freedom). It doesn’t matter to me. If I’m swept up in the world of the story, I’m pleased.

And this get to a bigger point I’d like to end on: no amount of tech wizardry will turn a bad story into a good one. My stories have to hold up, because a video might get a young reader in, but they’ll cut and run as fast as they can turn a channel on a TV if the story isn’t any good and the characters are flat. In fact, I think the stakes are even higher with multimedia. Who of us have not seen a special effects powerhouse that we forget ten seconds after leaving the theater? The palette may have changed in some cases, but the job is still the same. Dark Eden, whether it’s consumed as a traditional book or a multimedia app, has to deliver on the promise of a great story. I hope I’ve succeeded on both cases!

Ages: 13 and up
Illustrated by:
ISBN: 9780062009708
Price: $$17.99

Published By HarperCollins Children’s Books

Read The Original Post

Originally posted at www.publishersweekly.com

By Sally Lodge

Seven teenagers with crippling secrets and phobias travel to an eerie, mysterious place in hopes of finding a cure in Dark Eden, a novel and multimedia app by Patrick Carman. Published by Katherine Tegen Books on November 1, this psychological thriller was launched with a fittingly fright-themed marketing campaign that involved a “Fear Test” for teens to assess the source of their fears. The multiple-choice test is available online as well as on a CD-ROM that was distributed—along with other branded giveaways—at such venues as haunted houses, corn mazes, family gaming centers, and bookstores during the Halloween season. Pre-pub buzz for the novel was also generated by a 20-site blog tour, on which Carman offered guest posts and sneak peeks of Dark Eden’s multimedia components.

Patrick Carman. Photo:
www.kimberlyink.com.

Carman, whose earlier projects combining print and digital content include Skeleton Creek and 3:15, notes that Dark Eden offers teens the chance to experience the story in two distinct ways. “The idea is to reach every kind of reader,” he explains. “The book itself is a straight read, with no technology involved. If another kind of reader wants to experience the story through the multimedia app, they can unlock journal entries, audio recordings, and videos that tell the entire story from beginning to end in a different format. It’s kind of like having the book and movie come out at the same time.” Dark Eden‘s digital components are compatible with the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, and Android-enabled devices.

Released with an announced first printing of 100,000 copies, Dark Eden has been named a Winter 2011-2012 Kids’ Indie Next Pick. Katherine Tegen, the novel’s editor, calls the multimedia app’s combination of a game with short segments of text from the novel, “innovative and brilliant,” and the ideal way to snag today’s teens, who she notes “live on their phones. Teens who like to read—and teens who don’t—will be totally hooked by the app. Even though I know the story extremely well, every time I watch a segment of the app, I am totally transfixed by the multimedia experience of that same story.”

Branded banners were distributed to venues
nationwide, such as this haunted house in Seattle.

The publisher and Carman’s PC Studio joined forces to create what Tegen labels “the best viral campaign I’ve ever seen,” noting that the blog tour, organized by HarperCollins’s publicity department, resulted in “a stunning number of amazing blog reviews and online buzz.” She says that the haunted house partnerships and the Fear Test developed by PC Studio “like the app, employ real guerilla marketing tactics to reach teens where they live. Patrick deployed his ardent teen fans across the country to tag public places with “thefeartest.com” stickers. The teens were encouraged to take photos of their tags and five teens won prizes—signed books by Patrick—for the best photos.”

The promotional partnership with haunted houses and other Halloween-themed attractions enabled Carman and his team “to get the book in front of a lot of teens at one time,” he says. “Teens are really into haunted houses this time of year, and we pretty rapidly got a number of venues on board. It was a win-win situation, since we were able to draw teens into the world of Dark Eden, and the haunted houses were able to offer teens something that others were not.”

Two of the haunted houses that participated in the project are owned by Clear Channel Seattle, and each is sponsored by one of the company’s Seattle radio stations, KUBE 93 and 106.1 KISS FM. “Kids ages 13 to 15 make up the sweet spot demographically for these haunted houses, and that is right on the money in terms of Dark Eden’s target audience,” explains account executive Casey Anderson. “We integrated some pretty creative elements into our haunted houses, including stenciling scenes on the wall that related to the book. To pique curiosity for the book, we also handed out wrist bands and CDs, and ran some 15-second radio spots the last two weekends in October to tie it all together. It was a great strategy, and we feel good about the positive connection to reading.”

Fear Test stickers were sent to fans with instructions
to tag and photograph their handiwork.

Through these seasonal attractions and bookstores, 40,000 CD-ROMs featuring the Fear Test and some 100,000 wrist bands touting Dark Eden have been distributed to teens. Other giveaways include lanyards and bookmarks. HarperCollins, which has created a Web site for the novel, continues its marketing campaign throughout November with online consumer advertising for a total number of 2.4 million impressions, as well as mobile advertising at MillenialMedia.com.

Carman’s follow-up novel, Eve of Destruction, will be released by Katherine Tegen Books in May and will also have a multimedia app component. With its multimedia platform, this two-book series embodies Carman’s mission as author. “This orientation is crucial to me,” he says. “I’ve visited more than 1,400 schools, and of course there are always plenty of kids who read, but the percentage is not very high. If there is any way to throw kids a lifeline to reading, I am always looking to do that.”

by Patrick Carman

Whenever I speak to a group of middle school students, I run the same simple test. I ask the audience to think about the day before I arrived. Only that one day. Then I have them count on their fingers each of the following things they did the day before I got there:

• Used a cell phone
• Used a personal device to listen to music (iPod Touch, smartphone, tablet, etc.)
• Watched TV
• Played a video game
• Went online

Then I ask if anyone in the audience can give me a high five.

What’s astonishing to me is the regularity with which I find at least 70 percent of the audience laughing and waving back at me, all five fingers splayed out so they’re sure I’ll notice (Who says girls don’t play video games? Farmville and other social games like it have made sure they do). When I ask for a high four, I’m getting better than 80 percent participation. Three fingers gets me to 99 percent.

I keep asking myself a question in these situations (I hope the librarians and teachers in the room are asking it, too): when these kids leave school, are they also reading every day? And if they are, how big would the reading slice of pie be compared to, say, posting on Facebook, listening to music, and texting their friends? I’m increasingly convinced that I’m staring at a pie where 90 percent of the slices are cut up into non-reading forms of entertainment and social media.

When I started touring in early 2003, the only people at middle schools who had cell phones were the adults. I had the advantage of being on the ground at hundreds of schools, day in and day out, at the beginning of a sea change: I could see the wave building and feel the power of what was about to crash onto school campuses. Today the vast majority of middle school students carry mobile devices, and not just phones; iPod Touches and laptops have also become commonplace among tweens and teens.

At some point—I think around 2007—I found myself standing in too many gymnasiums talking to kids who were spending far more time consuming entertainment through technology than they were reading. And the really big wave hadn’t even hit yet.

After years of serious contemplation on the road (and an entire set of Michelins for my Camry), an answer—at least my answer—began to form: stop trying so hard to stand out. It was a scary conclusion, one that would require a completely new way of thinking about what a book could be. What many ultra-wired kids needed was a pathway back to books. They needed someone to take two steps toward them before they could take one step in the direction of reading.

My “blending in” experiment began with Skeleton Creek, a project that started simply enough: I would make a book and a movie at the same time. I’d ask tweens and teens to read 20 pages, then I’d send them online to unlock a video that would deliver part of the story. Back and forth we’d go, nine times in total, and at the end they’d have read 200 pages.

“I’ve heard the same statement in one form or another from hundreds of different teachers and librarians when they talk about the emergence of multimedia books: kids who weren’t reading are reading again. They’re coming back.”

I soon discovered that innovation is a messy business filled with long stretches of doubt, countless false starts, and a constant black cloud of indecision. There was no road map to follow, no guarantee that a story told this way would result in anything more than a pile of broken parts. All I could do was hold onto the same question at the start of every day and hope it would guide me to the right decisions:

What will make distracted kids turn more pages?

Well, I think I may have gotten a little bit lucky. I still believe the entire story could have gone off the rails at any moment (it sure felt that way right up to the end). But 10 million videos watched by over a million different kids has me convinced that we can win back lost readers if we make the critical decision to meet them halfway.

I’ve heard the same statement in one form or another from hundreds of different teachers and librarians when they talk about the emergence of multimedia books: kids who weren’t reading are reading again. They’re coming back.

But what are they coming back to? Is it reading or something else? To answer that question we need a definition for transmedia, a buzzword catching on across all entertainment media.

Transmedia, as I define it for the work I do in publishing, is a project that uses multiple platforms to create one seamless story through: the written word, video, audio diaries, illustrations, websites, apps, and social media. But transmedia is an evolving concept. It can just as easily describe a book series that’s been made into a movie or a TV show. Or maybe the series simply has a really cool website.

In case those of us in publishing are interested in how Hollywood defines it, I asked Nick Harris, co-head of media rights at ICM, the big talent agency. “Transmedia,” he responded, “must utilize different media to create a single universe in which multiple storylines and characters can exist and evolve for an interactive audience experience.”

While it may be a difficult thing to pin down, one thing’s for sure: transmedia by any reasonable definition will play a critical role in the future of books.

As a storyteller, I’m enjoying the move to less traditional methods of finding readers, in part because—I’ll be honest—it’s kind of fun doing creative stuff with other people. Writing words is a magical, solitary pursuit, but there’s a lot to be said for building a story in tandem with a director, actors, programmers, game designers, and artists.

So where does the path go from here? I’m happy to say it leads in many directions. More and more writers are starting to experiment with different ways of reaching into a wired world and reconnecting kids to books. The 39 Clues blends adventure, trading cards, and online games into a jet-fueled reading experience kids are embracing. That series alone has brought nine bestselling writers under the multimedia tent, including Rick Riordan. And notable authors like Jon Scieszka and Michael Grant have also created multimedia reading experiences that are picking up steam.

As for me, I’m actively forging ahead into more uncharted territory. With www.315stories.com I’m attempting to re-invent the short story for distracted readers. I’m asking young readers to listen, read, and watch in 15 minutes or less. Are they going to listen to a one-minute audio introduction? I think they will. Are they going to watch a spooky two-minute video at the end? Totally. But the story won’t make any sense if they don’t do the important part in the middle, which will involve reading for 10 to 12 minutes.

I’ve also just released Dark Eden, a traditional YA novel for teens who love a big, dark, paranormal world. But if they’d rather experience the same story in the form of a multimedia app, they have that option, too. The app version of Dark Eden tells the same story through words, maps, audio diaries, videos, and slide decks. Crazy? Probably. But I’m convinced we should be creating books for every kind of reader—traditional, ultra-wired, and everything in between.

I spend about half my time writing conventional novels, the other half exploring new ways to engage a different kind of reader. So I guess, in a sense, I’ve answered my own question.

Can reading make the top five every day for every kid?

It can if we spend a little less time trying to stand out and a little more blending in.

Author Information

Patrick Carman is the author of many acclaimed bestselling series for children and young adults, including Skeleton Creek, Trackers, Thirteen Days to Midnight, and Dark Eden.