T&G

I never win anything, but today I won a signed copy of Bret Easton Ellis’s new novel “Lunar Park” — kind of silly, given I’ve already purchased and read the book (which I really liked, but that’s another entry). I won the book because my team, The Tardy Terbys, wrote the winning story in an online game of Exquisite Corpse, a surrealist, literary game of telephone, where each person only sees the last sentence written in a collaborative story.

The game is perfectly suited for online play, and the design company the built the software did a good job. You sign up and are placed on a team. You get email letting you know when it is your turn to play with a link to a website that displays only the last sentence contributed with a field to add yours. We wrote the story very quickly, and from the sentences I saw there were some talented and imaginative writers in our random group. I can’t really see how the game helps market the book at all, but it was one of the more creative online tie-in games I’ve ever seen.

If other Tardy Terbys find this, please sign in. It is so fun to have won something as a team of strangers.