Author Interview: Adam Cadre
2015-11-19 · by Devi Acharya
Interviews
Adam Cadre is responsible for the stuff at adamcadre.ac, which includes interactive and conventional fiction, the Lyttle Lytton Contest, online comics, podcasts, music, essays on various topics, and he believes there is a picture of Scooby-Doo dunking a basketball in there somewhere.
This interview was conducted by email in November 2015.
Devi Acharya: How did you get your start in interactive fiction?
Adam Cadre: I actually talked about this at some length in the first installment of my interactive fiction audio program, but here’s a short version: I hadn’t been a big fan of Infocom games back when they dominated computer game stores, but I’d had enough idle curiosity about them that when I randomly happened across the Masterpieces of Infocom collection—every Infocom game on one CD for twenty bucks—I figured I’d check it out. I played a few of the Infocom games that I’d always wanted to try, and then I discovered that on the CD there was a folder containing
some games that had been written just the year before, by hobbyists, using freely available authoring tools. I had never given much thought to writing a text game before, but the notion that I could cook up an interactive story and it would look and function exactly like an Infocom game was appealing enough that I gave it a try.
Devi: What’s kept you in the medium?
Adam: Well, nothing—my participation in the IF world has been very spotty. I didn’t officially release anything between 2003 and 2012, and haven’t released anything since 2012 except for a short tutorial. I also hadn’t played anything post-2001 until this year, when I started an audio program in which I attempt to play
Unfrozen Caveman IF Critic and catch up on what I’ve missed in the interim.
Devi: Do you have a favorite piece of your own or a favorite IF piece in general?
Adam: I think ENDLESS, NAMELESS is pretty clearly the best piece of IF I’ve done so far, but my favorite is probably still NARCOLEPSY.
Actually, while I really do enjoy writing IF and hope to write more of it in the future, I generally don’t like playing it. And I haven’t played anything post-2004 (I am midway through playing the 2004 games for my audio show). If I had to pick one piece by someone else in the pre-’04 period to single out, I guess I’d go with MOMENTS OUT OF TIME by Ross Raszewski.
Devi: Why would you recommend it?
Adam: I just wrote about it on my site a little while ago, as it happens, so go read that article.
Devi: What are some of the other projects you work on besides IF?
Adam: I just finished doing a complete rewrite of my novel READY, OKAY!, and the new edition will be coming out as an ebook in the next few days (it may already have done so by the time this sees print). I have a number of ongoing projects—the
audio program I’ve mentioned a few times; an online comic series; several series of articles on books, movies, and history; and of course there’s the Lyttle Lytton Contest.
Devi: What do you see yourself doing in the future? Any big new plans?
Adam: As soon as the second edition of READY, OKAY! is out the door, I’ll be turning my attention back to the PHOTOPIA novel. It’s a little over half done at present.
Devi: Where can people go to find out more about your work?
Adam: adamcadre.ac
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