MA: What lead you to start writing transmedia novels? (Also, is there another term you prefer for the format?)

PC: I’m just going to come right out and say it at the top: Transmedia, as a unifying term, is beyond lame. And it points to a challenge we’re facing in this space: coining a term is a tricky business. What the heck do we call what we’re doing? I tried vBooks (also lame), others have tried Diginovel, iStories, Vook, cross-platform – the list goes on, and I think they all fail to inspire at a level that will bring everyone under one tent. You guys did better with ARG – Alternate Reality Game – it stuck. How’d you do that?

To our credit (and by ‘our’ I mean everyone trying to explode books into the 21st century landscape) we’re talking about a brand new way of telling stories. We’re probably supposed to fumble around in the dark for awhile, but I think we’re getting closer. My two cents as of today is that we’re basically talking about something that’s been around for a long time, namely multimedia. And really, that’s a pretty good term to describe what’s happening to with these books; they’re becoming something broader, encompassing different medias. It’s interesting that movies and TV shows and web sites don’t have the same challenge. Creators of those mediums aren’t sitting around debating what they should call something when a movie has an ARG and spawns a TV show. It’s simply multimedia. The difference with a project like Skeleton Creek or TRACKERS is that I’m committed to a simple premise those other examples aren’t interested in: for me, the destination is always the book. That means the videos, the games, the web sites – they have a job to do, which is to get young readers turning pages. At PC Studio, where we make all these assets, a video is only as good as the pages it pushes a reader to turn.
Long winded already and I haven’t even exited question number one. The short answer is MULTIMEDIA. That’s what it’s called, that’s what it is.

Read the rest of the interview at – www.argn.com

We have released a mobile version of www.TrackersInterface.com.
You can now enjoy watching the Trackers and Skeleton Creek videos anywhere.

Mobile Sites

These sites have been built specifically for the iPhone, iPod Touch and the iPad. But we have also tested Google Android phones too. We weren’t able to test the videos on every phone available, but many newer mobile phones and devices should play the videos just fine.

The mobile version of sarahfincher.com also received an update. We added support for the iPad and many other mobile devices.

iTunes

If you have a video iPod or you want to watch the videos without needing wi-fi, you can get the videos in the iTunes store as a podcast. Just search “Skeleton Creek” or “Trackers 1″ and start downloading videos!

Check out the gallery below for some more pictures of the mobile site.

Prolific middle-grade author Patrick Carman is famous for The Land of Elyon series and last year’s techno ghost story, Skeleton Creek. Now he’s back with another print/internet hybrid tale called Trackers. It’s the story of a group of tech savvy kids that get in over their heads when they start tracking a high-profile cyber criminal.

The team prides themselves on being trackers — able to find anyone or anything, online or in the real world. Adam, the leader, is a computer genius with a photographic memory. Lewis, the analyzer, is the cautious one who keeps the rest in check. Emily is the levelheaded one with nerves of steel. Finn is the brave and occasionally impetuous one. The actors recruited for these roles are engaging and likeable. The actor playing Finn does a particularly good job.

Read the rest of the review at The-Trades.com

The follow up to the multimedia ghost story Skeleton Creek is finally out! TRACKERS is a high-stakes game of cat and mouse with the world’s most dangerous hacker, and in this story, you get to watch all the most action packed scenes in the TRACKERS Interface. The story is full of twists and turns, cool gadgets, and tons of high-tech fun for summer reading. If you liked Skeleton Creek then you’ll love TRACKERS – more video footage, cool puzzle games, an online GPS to track everywhere you’ve been in the story, and online missions that take you deeper into the action. TRACKERS is a book, a movie, and a game all at one time.

Here are some great places to check out the goods and connect with Adam, Lewis, Finn, and Emily, the four TRACKERS on the trail of the worlds greatest hacker:

www.trackersbook.comYou’ll find the TV spot, the trailer, and links to missions and games.

www.facebook.com/trackersbookJoin the TRACKERS Facebook community for tons of behind the scenes footage and a first hand look at the making of the project.

Thank you for spreading the word about a new kind of reading experience! I couldn’t do it without you,

PC

I am a huge fan of Skeleton Creek and so are many of the 5th graders at our school. It isn’t so much the genre or story. I liked those though. But I am a fan because Patrick Carman has tried something new and powerful with books for kids. In Skeleton Creek and Ghost in the Machine, he embedded video in the book so that the text told part of the story and the video clips online told the other part. This was done in a way that worked–the two parts of the book worked so well together and I could see how motivating this could be for kids. So, I was happy to see TRACKERS, another series by Patrick Carman, that did the same thing. (I am imagining books like this on things such as the iPad where the video can just play at a certain point in the book. I am starting to understand the whole concept of this type of reading so much better thanks to Carman.)

Trackers is a thriller/adventure/science fiction story about 4 kids who are trackers. They are pretty much spies with very cool gadgets that they’ve created and perfected. This may sounds Spy-Kid like and it is but it is intended for a more sophisticated audience than Spy Kids. My thinking is 5th grade and above. There is a lot of technical “stuff” that kids need to semi-understand in order to understand this book.

Adam, the main character in the book, has created a space for himself that he calls “The Vault”. His father owns and operated a computer repair shop and since he was little, Adam played around with gadgets, etc. When he turned 9, his father gave him a little room in the back of the shop for him to fiddle around in. The room is an amazing concept and one that hooked me into the book immediately. A kid who has a place to play and create and figure things out on his own. He is quite the little prodigy.

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