Erin Roberts is a mega-talented author of short stories in the form of speculative fiction, science fiction and long-form narratives. You may have heard of the popular workout app Zombies, Run! Yeah, she’s part of that. She’s also successful with her non-fiction work. She’s a recipient of multiple writing awards and commendations. She has an MFA from the University of Southern Maine. Basically, she’s a badass.

I sat down with her (via Skype) last month for one of the best conversations I’ve ever had. She’s super relatable, down-to-earth and funny. We talked about her panel, How Books Are Fighting Back in the Digital Age, which she is presenting in conjunction with Kate Pullinger, Tea Uglow and Akala. We talked about video games, some of her previous work and even Netflix’s interactive smash hit Bandersnatch.

So first of all, do you want to tell me who you are and what you do? Just as a person.

“I’m Erin, I’m a writer. I write a bunch of different types of things. I think which just one of the reasons that I’m on this panel. I write short fiction. I’m probably most known for writing just regular short, speculative fiction, so science fiction and fantasy short stories. But I also do work for Zombies Run!, which is this audio exercise game, like long form narrative. And I’m a staff writer for them. I work with Choice of Games on a choose your own adventure games. So that’s like another form of writing that I do. I’ve written some nonfiction essays and reviews, and I’ve written some short interactive fiction. So, basically, I write all the time. And when I’m not writing for creatively, I am a communications consultant for nonprofits and other organizations. So, basically, when I’m not writing, I’m writing.”

You kind of told me already what genre you kind of write for like you write, but what kinds do you prefer to read?

“I mostly write speculative fiction, so sci-fi fantasy horror, and so that’s most of what I read. Like 90 percent of what I read is science fiction, fantasy and horror — which is a large genre, but that’s the majority of it.”

This quote from Thanks For The Memories: “A woman is speaking to me. Her voice sounds…wrong somehow, but something about it makes my neck shiver, like she is licking her way up and down a part of my back I can’t quite reach.” Is that neck-shiver, licking sensation something you want to try to re-create in MR?

“Oh, that’s interesting. So when I originally wrote those lines, I thought of this is sort of a, I’m going to say, more romantic kind of sexual moment, and I remember posting it on Twitter on a “what’s the line from your work in progress?” And everyone was like, ‘That is the creepiest thing I’ve ever read.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, obviously my ideas as to what the emotions are in my own writing, and when other people are students they are wildly off. Like I’m like, ‘Isn’t that kind of like coming out of like a hot dream?’ They’re like, ‘No, it’s creepy.'”

I know we can’t re-create actual memories, but do you think other people’s experiences could ever be bought and sold like in your story?

“I actually think that we could get to a place where that’s possible. I’m very fascinated with memory, and this universe that appears in that story appears in another one of my pieces of short fiction and is in a novel that I’m working on. So I spend a lot of time thinking about how memories and experiences work. And I think a lot of times, if you think about the rise of social media, I think there’s a lot of wanting to be in people’s experiences because it used to be that you could just read about them. Now there’s pictures, now there’s live video. I mean live in a lot of ways. My concept of experiencing memories is basically like live video plus sensory experience plus emotional experience. The sensory experience you could get, you could record something live and then add in. You could go back and layer in the senses. You can be like, “Here’s what it smelled like.” You know, someone’s following me around recording all the things that are happening and we’re going to recreate it for you. I think the hard part is really the emotional resonance, and how do you get that to come across? You know, technology’s crazy. So I think that there’s a lot, you know, that could be done to really put yourself in somebody else’s shoes, which I think is really exciting. I mean, a lot of times when I think about sharing memories and writing about it, I write about the kind of crazy fun ones. But if you think about empathy, if you can truly put yourself in somebody else’s shoes, if somebody could experience a woman experiencing street harassment and you could show a guy who was like, ‘oh, it’s just catcalling,’ what that feels like for her. Then maybe, which reminds me of the video that they did a few years ago on YouTube, where a woman just walked up and down New York for several hours, and they recorded every time she was catcalled just live just so people can see how often it was. And I think that kind of thing is really cool, because then you can really use experiences to take people past the empathy gap that sometimes exists when you can’t envision what it’s like to live with somebody else.”

What kinds of VR/MR/AR experiences have you had, literature-related or not?

“I haven’t had as many as I would like. Part of that is really because of my vision is not being great, and, so, I have issues with some of the VR things. They don’t work well with my glasses, don’t work the way that they’re meant to. I think some of the very high-end ones do, so when I win the lottery, I will have an amazing VR experience, but I think a lot of my experiences have been more with like either audio stuff that’s just audio, like Zombies, Run! Things that are interactive in a more tech sense and less augmented, less virtual, unfortunately.”

Speaking of, how did you get involved with Zombies, Run?

“Naomi Alderman, who created it, and her team, they wanted to bring in new blood around season six – it’s on season eight now or season eight is being released later this year. And so they actually put out a call for training. All these people applied, including me, and I was accepted. I’m the only one who’s not British. Me and some other British people became part of the training program, and at the end of the training program, some of us were kept on to become staff writers. It’s wonderful. I have such a great time and it really made me think differently about how audio works. I’ve always been fascinated with audio. I grew up watching soap operas, and, because they started in audio before video, I used to go back and look at how audio soaps were done and all the really interesting things people have done to make audio drama work. And so it’s cool to now be a part of it and really have to think about, you know, there’s different roles with audio than there are with visual or with text. It’s like, obviously, you can’t just describe things for people. People can’t see anything. You can’t rely on some visual cues that evoke emotion. You’d be surprised with how much things that you might think to make something, make somebody feel something are visual. You have to figure out, okay, well what’s the audio version of that? You can’t just cut over to someone’s facial expression, for example, to show a reaction. There’s no visual reaction. So you have to either do it in an audio way or like a gasp or something like that or try and do it with an audio cue or figure out a different way to evoke surprise than you might otherwise.”

Are there any roadblocks you foresee that may stall the introduction of these technologies into the book publishing industry?

“I think it’s interesting that I was having a conversation a few months ago with somebody else who works in publishing who is on the agent side, and I was like, ‘What do you think you would think now that we have Kindles and other, you know, places to read books that don’t require the page. Cause that’s your number one thing. So if you wanted to create any sort of augmented experience with a physical book, there are ways to do it.’ There are really interesting books for, like, you turn here and they do things on the page with the way that the words are laid out to make it more interactive. But if you want to add something besides text, obviously it’s going to be difficult if you just have a physical paper book. So a lot of times like it’s like, okay, well how do you get around that? Well now we have digital books, but surprisingly to me, I’m still not seeing a huge influx of people using interactive tools or audio in making books. So we have audiobooks, but I feel like there’s a difference between an audiobook that’s me reading your book and an audiobook that’s you having an audio, full-cast experience. Like an audio drama of the book. And, I mean, audio drama is more expensive, more actors, more sound cues, more than just getting, you know, a really, really good reader to do it and do all that themselves with their own voice. I think there is room for more of it, but I think what I’m seeing now is that books are becoming supplemental to interactive things. So you’ll have Dragon Age the game, which is its own full narrative experience and then a book that adds to the lore. But the book is not interacting with the actual game. I’d love to see more of that. And I wonder if it’s because the interactive audience and the book audience – I think there’s a huge overlap, but I’m sometimes not sure that everyone agrees with that. I think sometimes people think, when people want a book experience, they want a certain type of text experience. They’re going to go to Book Land and sit down and read. And when people want an interactive experience, they’re going to pick up their console or their app or their phone, and they’re going to be having a completely different experience. And never the twain shall meet. I think that I think they’re starting to be more crossed-over, but you know, maybe I would hope in the next few years to see more of it.”

Well now we have digital books, but surprisingly to me, I’m still not seeing a huge influx of people using interactive tools or audio in making books.

Erin Roberts

Do you think this technology would invite more people to read? What about book purists?

“I think there’s room for everyone. Like there’s a million different ways. It’s kind of like genres. The existence of science fiction doesn’t mean that people who have no interest in it cannot get their own experience reading contemporary fiction or romance. And so I think that it’s just the more ways people have of experiencing the narrative, and at the end of the day what you want people to do is to love narrative. And I think we all do, but humans are natural storytellers. We love to tell stories to each other all the time. That’s how we mostly relate to each other. I think maybe I just think that because I’m a writer. And so I think it’s just about convincing people, but other people telling narratives is interesting. And I think that some people may never pick up a book in its traditional form. But I think sometimes you do get people thinking about the Dragon Age thing. Maybe there are people who are like, ‘I thought of books as being like something really inaccessible that my teacher forced me to do, and I graduated, and I’m like, ‘never again.’ But now I’m really interested in this game, and I’m reading all of the like lore entries and the codex entries in the game, and I’m like, ‘oh, here’s a book about it. I know I already like have bought into this world. I’m interested in these characters. Like now I’m going to read a book about it.” So I think that there are ways in books that actually supports bringing more people into the book world. And then the other way around for people who always love books. There’s some stories that will be told better in film than in books, but there are still book adaptations of every movie. So it’s like every time there’s a movie, you can go in the store and read the book of it. People do, obviously, because they keep making them. So I think that the more that people see interactive as not being something that replaces books, but just something that adds to it and brings in more readers, I think the more it will flourish. And I also think the more tech tools we have in our own home. So one thing I’m really interested in is Alexa and Google. People aren’t making audio experiences for them and those are in so many people’s homes, you know, so it’s like, this is an interesting thing to try when I’m like sitting around my house and bored. So I think then the more things we have around us and the more narratives that are created for them, the more likely it is for the average person who experienced them.”

Have you participated in the Netflix sensation of Bandersnatch? Do you think this kind of production helps or hinders your goal?

“The sad thing is I, I started it but have not finished it yet. I have to get back to it. It was interesting. I saw a lot of critique of it and from various circles about its content, but I’m sort of, people are like, it does this. And this, no spoilers, but it does certain things poorly or certain choices that you make. I don’t like the way the game responded to them. And I’m like, ‘that’s cool.’ I just kind of want to see how they did it. And I was really interested in the fact that they use Twine, which is just an open source, interactive fiction tool to actually map out the choices. I mean, then they went and made video, but they, you know, that’s what they used in originally. I was like, ‘wow, that’s really cool because I could use Twine for free.’ So technically I could be making Bandersnatch 2: Electric Boogaloo. So while I have not experienced it yet though, I will probably within like the next day.”

“I love the way that it’s gotten people talking. I spend a lot of time, more than I should, probably, on Twitter, and I’ve been seeing a lot of people talk about what makes fiction interactive. I saw an interesting person ask is this interactive fiction? Because it’s choice-based fiction, interactive in the sense that it’s not like you can just, whole cloth, create new paths. You’re choosing from paths that were written, it’s not like you can be controlling the actors and telling them no, like in a live-action role-playing where you can just be like, ‘we’re going to go completely off script,’ like a D&D adventure. I don’t think we’ve yet figured out how to put that in a digital package in a real-time digital package. Where you can just do whatever you want. Like in the Star Trek holodeck where it’s like, ‘now I’ve decided to just murder Juliet.’ Maybe we’ll get there with AI and machine learning.”

A lot of times there’s an interesting tension between what players want, which is, I think, true freedom, sometimes, to just do whatever.

Erin Roberts

A lot of times there’s an interesting tension between what players want, which is, I think, true freedom, sometimes, to just do whatever. If you look at just games in general, open world, I mean open world isn’t really open world, at a certain point you’re going to get to like a top of a mountain and you’re going to be like, ‘I want to climb that.’ They’re going to be like, ‘There’s an invisible wall between you and this mountain, and you can’t get there, good luck with that.’ That mountain’s just for show, there’s nothing past it. But I think that open-world feel is big in, kind of, the outskirts of narrative games like that. I know of an open-world narrative already constructed. You’ll see sometimes people go on forums where you can do that. Then I think kind of replicate what you would do role-playing like a traditional role-playing game, but it’s hard to package all that in, because you don’t know what people will do. As when you’re making interactive experiences, you have to try to figure out like what people want and where people might go with something and what kind of things they might want to do and then try to build around that, which I find really fascinating, like emergent gameplay and where you just provide the tools and try to see where people go with it. A lot of the favorite games I’ve been playing, as much as I love narrative games, are also, kind of, survival games, cause I find it interesting that, in some ways, they just tell you, ‘Well, here are the types of things you could be doing, and then it’s up to you what you kind of want to do, if you want to let all your people die. Sure.’ Things like don’t starve or oxygen not included or frost punk where it’s like, you know, you have a lot of leeway within the game.”

Is there anything else that you want to tell people, get them jazzed about the session or anything else that you just think everybody should know?

“There is a lot more to try. Different pumps. I think that’s the thing that I would say, and even though I don’t even get to try as many of them as I would like, because there’s only so much time in the day, I really do find it really interesting to think about and look at what’s something really interesting that you could be doing. Escape Room, puzzle games, which are an interesting kind of experience. And, probably, the VR game that I’ve played the most in its own weird way is “Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes.” Which is a really cool party game that uses the fact that one person can see something and that you can kind of manipulate it physically in it’s own way.”

“I just would say like try different forms, like read an audiobook, listen to something that you might not listen to otherwise, try a new game that you wouldn’t look at otherwise. Read a book, you know, all those different things. I think one of the things that’s really exciting about interactivity in any format or like any sort of new narrative form is that sometimes there are stories that you can’t tell well in text, but you can tell in augmented text or you can tell in interactive fiction. Well, the thing that you played [Thanks For the Memories], it’s a story that I’ve been frustrated with forever, because I couldn’t figure out how to tell it. And the answer turned out to be, I couldn’t tell it in a linear story, because that wasn’t the experience that I wanted the person to have. And, so, I wanted to play and have a different experience, and, therefore, I had to kind of wait until I figured out and learned the tools that I needed to create that experience. Certain stories, I think, are meant to be books, and certain stories are meant to be audio. And you know, certain stories are meant to be both. And it’s also fun to kind of think about how the same story can be told differently, leaning into or leaning out of whichever medium, like the novelization of the movie is going to be very different than reading the script of the movie. But you know, they both tell the same story in a lot of ways, but just differently. So I think really doing more of that is always a plus. I think, like you were saying, too, sometimes people can see new forms as a threat. Sure, it’s in small doses, but we spent a lot of the day reading, reading what other people have written, and, as a writer, that’s exciting to me, because it means that people are reading and that, maybe, if they’re not reading the form that you’re writing, they will later or maybe you can create something in the form that they’re used to reading and then still be able to tell the same stories that you want to tell and have an audience for it.”

For more information about this subject, please check out the How Books Are Fighting Back in the Digital Age panel on Saturday, March 9 at 12:30 p.m. at the Austin Convention Center, Ballroom F and visit Erin’s website.