The Demon Tide Puzzle
With this new series, I wanted to spice things up a bit. Not in a romantic way, necessarily, but more exciting. How do you make a book more exciting than it already is? Well, first of all, you can turn it into a series and release it little by little. Kind of like a TV show that you wait for on a weekly basis.
I did that with Demon Tide. You can read each episode as it is written, raw and unedited, released on a (mostly) bi-weekly basis. Currently, there have been two episodes (chapters) released already, with more to come. Click on the button below if you’d like to read now and head over to Kindle Vella.
If you are the binge-style reader and don’t want to wait for episodes to be released, however, you can always wait until the full first book in the series is published late this spring.
There is one more way an author can make a book more exciting, and that is to make a story more interactive. The ‘Choose your own adventure’ stories comes to mind. With Demon Tide, I wanted to make the story more interactive somehow by engaging readers in the real world. To do that, I had to think of something different, something over-the-edge crazy.
Introducing the Demon Tide Puzzle. Actually, it is more of a treasure hunt, to be exact. Deep in the story I will be building a puzzle hidden among the pages. When it is solved, it will give the solver the location of a treasure, an actual treasure–buried somewhere.
You heard it right, I am making my very own treasure hunt that leads to a real treasure.
It makes me excited to think about it! The inner adventurer in me screams to gather up supplies and run out into the wilderness with a treasure map and a shovel. If I didn’t go to school to become a history teacher, I may have well launched out on a career of professional treasure hunting.
The Demon Tide puzzle will not be easy to solve. It will involve critical thinking skills and perhaps some good old research. Tough puzzles, however, should involve good rewards. When the treasure is buried early this Spring, I estimate it will be worth over $500!
The puzzle is still in progress, and clues will begin to show up in emailed newsletters early in 2022. More details will come out soon, so keep watch!
