Step Forty

"Fiction edged its way closer to a digital incarnation with the publication this week of an interactive visual version of John Buchan's classic thriller, The Thirty-Nine Steps.

     Publisher Faber&Faber announced that it had up with two software publishers and a developer, The Story Mechanics, to create a 'fully playable, fully immersive product' which it believes breaks new ground in digital reading.
     Published originally as a serial in Blackwoods magazine in 1915, The Thirty-Nine Steps was the first of five novels to feature the 20th century's earliest and most famous action hero, Richard Hannay, a man constantly on the run.
     Buchan described the novel as a 'shocker' – an adventure so unlikely that the reader is only just able to believe that it could really have happened. A number of film and TV adaptations, beginning with Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 version, have taken the book beyond the printed page, but Faber promises another step beyond Buchan's original storytelling."
— Claire Armitstead, The Guardian
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Source image: lost.net

Master storyteller Alfred Hitchock knows that books, like movies, must draw the viewer/reader into the fictive dream with deft pacing, flawless characterization and an engaging story.
     But a plot can twist and happy endings can turn on a heel into tragedy and disappontment.
     As far as the Elora Writers' Festival is concerned, Mr. Hitchock has left nothing to chance. His dinner tickets are already reserved—in fact, he booked them weeks ago—and as Sunday, May 27 draws nearer (only five days to go) dinner tickets are becoming as scarce as bird's teeth.
     To guarantee a place at the table, call now: 519-843-4391