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I really enjoyed my conversation this fall with Jon Harrison, author the upcoming book Mastering The Game: What Video Games Can Teach Us About Success In Life, who interviewed me for his ClassicallyTrained podcast (“Life. Leadership. Videogames”).

We got to talk about video games (of course), fatherhood, Joey Spiotto’s art, the diversity of characters represented in Attack! Boss! Cheat Code! A Gamer’s Alphabet, the trickiest letter in the book (not Q, X, or Z), my Games & Books & Q&A interview series, and my earliest experiences as a reader and writer.

And let the record show that I caught myself (eventually) after declaring that there are 28 letters in the alphabet.

I’m really pleased to be joined in this installment of my Games & Books & Q&A series by a video game historian, and by the creator of NES games and glitch art under the alias Party Time! Hexcellent!, and by the curator of computer museum FEMICOM, and by an organizer of Juegos Rancheros, a monthly indie games event here in Austin, Texas.

Bringing all of those folks together would have been a lot of work on my part, except for one thing: they’re all the same person, Rachel Simone Weil. Rachel took time out from her latest batch of projects to answer a few questions via email about games and books she’s loved, and I really appreciate it.

CB: What do you remember about the first video game you ever played?

RSW: It’s perhaps not strictly a video game, but the first electronic game I recall playing is a handheld LCD baseball game by Konami called Bottom of the Ninth. The graphics were on par with those you might see in a calculator or alarm clock — not terribly sophisticated — but I found the game to be quite fun and to have a good replay value. I never really outgrew the game, either; it continued to be fun for me as I got older.

If you’ve ever played an old LCD handheld game, you know that the motion of images on screen is not fluid. In Bottom of the Ninth, after a pitch was thrown, the ball would rapidly pop in and out of predetermined places to suggest movement. Each time the ball populated a new position on screen, the game would produce a little beep. Audio cues became incredibly important in knowing when to take a swing. The sound of those successive baseball beeps is still firmly implanted in my mind.

CB: What did you like to read when you were a kid? What did you love about it?

RSW: This is a hard question to answer because I consumed books so rapidly as a child. I enjoyed some traditional children’s literature (Madeleine L’Engle, Judy Blume), as well as poetry, classics, teen magazines, religious texts, guides to rocks and minerals, knock-knock joke anthologies, books about fortunetelling and witchcraft, comics… just about everything!

As odd as it sounds, the books I remember reading the most were encyclopedias and dictionaries. I had a copy of E. D. Hirsch’s A First Dictionary of Cultural Literacy that I read to the point of it completely falling apart. I even read through a thesaurus cover to cover once! I had a general love of words and language that carried over into adulthood a bit; before beginning my research and artistic practice in video games, I worked for a number of years as a book editor.

CB: What book that you read while growing up had the most influence on who you became as an adult?

RSW: Around the age of 12, I read an English translation of Sofies verden (Sophie’s World), a Norwegian novel about the history of philosophy. There were two things about Sophie’s World that left an impression on me. The first of these was the way in which the novel blended fiction and nonfiction, entertainment and learning (“edutainment,” if you must). It appealed to my weird, thesaurus-reading sensibilities but had little dashes of mystery novel and Alice in Wonderland thrown in, too.

Secondly, Sophie’s World was my first introduction to philosophy as a subject matter, and I found it so interesting that a conceptual problem could be considered through different frameworks or ways of thinking. In the book, Sophie’s teacher, Alberto Knox, makes it a point to note different philosophical approaches throughout history: “Socrates would have thought X was the solution, but Kant would have argued that it was in fact Y,” for example. This was radically different than the kind of thinking I encountered in school: one right answer, one knowable fact at a time.

Through my current work with video-game development and FEMICOM Museum, I am interested in the destabilization of knowledge and history and facts, and I suspect that Sophie’s World has played some role in seeding that interest.

I expect to continue this series through the publication later this month of my book Attack! Boss! Cheat Code! A Gamer’s Alphabet. (I suspect that this book will appeal to a few of those reluctant readers we just discussed.) If there’s anyone in the gamer or kidlit camp that you’d love to see me feature in upcoming posts in this series, please drop me a line or tweet at me or just leave a message in the comments.

I knew as soon as I saw how P.J. Hoover was promoting her latest book that she would be a great addition to the Games & Books & Q&A series of interviews with gaming professionals about books and with children’s and YA authors about video games. She discusses her neato approach below (yes, I just said “neato”), but first let me get you caught up on P.J.’s career so far.

Central Texas is fertile ground both for technology companies and for books for young readers, and P.J. has been part of both of those worlds. She made the switch from electrical engineer to author, debuting with the Forgotten Worlds trilogy. Last year saw the publication of her dystopian YA novel, Solstice (Tor Teen), and this year she’s followed up with her middle-grade adventure novel Tut: The Story of My Immortal Life (Starscape).

On a personal note, having gotten an early glimpse at the manuscript for this book six years ago, let me just say how satisfying it is to see Tut arrive on bookstore shelves — and how glad I am that P.J. took the time to talk with me about gaming.

CB: What do you remember about the first video game you ever played?

PJH: You mean besides how quickly I could go through a roll of quarters? The thing I remember most about those early games was what a fantastic job they did transporting me to another place, even with their limited graphics. Maybe it was the way the arcade machine blocked out the sides, but when I played Jungle Hunt at the skating rink, I was there, swinging on the vines, swimming underwater. I also remember how much better some kids were than me. I’m pretty sure their parents gave them more quarters than mine gave me. :-)

CB: What games did you play the most when you were a kid? What did you love about them?

PJH: Games I played the absolute most were the ones I had at home (because there was no roll of quarters required). On the Commodore 64, I had Jumpman, M.U.L.E., Q*bert, and Wolfenstein. Q*bert I adored because I was actually better than anyone I knew at it. I loved how, if I executed certain patterns, I would evade all the obstacles. And Wolfenstein I loved because it had a whole story behind the game. I was trapped in a castle full of bad guys and I had to escape! Also, I was good at it, too. I escaped the castle almost every time. Achtung!

CB: What role do games play in your life today?

PJH: With two kids at home (ages 10 and 13), one of our favorite things to do together is to play games. Mario Kart 8 on the Wii U is a great family time activity (actually the whole Wii mentality is very family based). One of my kids still plays Wizard101 with me (imagine World of Warcraft meets Harry Potter). I’m proud to admit that I am a Level 71 Fire Wizard in the game (which translates to many hours played). I’m also trying to improve my Portal 2 skills on the Xbox (the cake is a lie). So to say video games play a role in my life today is an understatement. I encourage parents to take time out of their lives and play games with their kids. They’re actually a ton of fun.

I see how much time kids want to be on the computer, and given my love of gaming, I’ve developed some fun gaming tie-ins for Tut. There’s a Minecraft server developed for the book where kids can explore both ancient Egypt and modern-day Washington, D.C, unlocking hidden clues as they go. There’s also an old-school 10-level video game, written using Scratch (a fun programming platform created by MIT). The game requires basic evasion, puzzle solving, and decoding. (Cheats are available on my website.)

I had to delete Candy Crush from my phone because I was playing far too much. :-)

I expect to continue this series through the October publication of my book Attack! Boss! Cheat Code! A Gamer’s Alphabet. If there’s anyone in the gamer or kidlit camp that you’d love to see me feature in upcoming posts in this series, please drop me a line or tweet at me or just leave a message in the comments.

Glenn “Commander” Banton, the board chairman and executive director of Operation Supply Drop (OSD), is the next interviewee from the field of gaming in my Games & Books & Q&A series.

OSD is a 501(c)(3) charity that provides video-game-filled care packages to American and allied soldiers, both those deployed to combat zones and those recovering in military hospitals. The organization plans to increase on-base activities stateside, contribute further to peacekeeping and humanitarian missions worldwide, and help soldiers leaving the military to transition into entry-level game-developer jobs.

For reasons that you’ll read for yourself below, my exchange with Glenn brought to mind the much-needed focus and attention that “reluctant readers” receive from librarians today, as exemplified by this session at last year’s American Library Association conference. If you could use some “strategies for turning reluctant readers into ‘eager readers,'” I highly recommend it.

CB: What do you remember about the first video game you ever played?

G”C”B: This is a great question! While I’m not 100% sure what the actual first game was, it almost certainly was on one of those Tiger handheld systems. Maybe the Bo Jackson Football/Baseball combo, Paperboy, or electronic football. We didn’t have a console-type system, so I remember saving up the $20-30 for these individual games. Also, around the same time frame I recall the long days and nights on Super Mario Bros. as well as the day we beat the game… and the utter disappointment in that it just starts the game over. I still know the house I was in when that happened and have even shown my kids. I’m not sure they’re impressed.

CB: What did you like to read when you were a kid? What did you love about it?

G”C”B: When I was a kid, I had a love/hate relationship with reading — meaning I loved to hate it — which is quite odd given how much I now read as an adult. I remember very clearly reading (and enjoying) books like Henry and the Paper Route by Beverly Clearly or Superfudge or How to Eat Fried Worms as well as what I’m sure a lot of kids’ favorite library checkout was around the same time, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, but that was very small window during 4th/5th grade.

In order to encourage more reading late in elementary school into middle school, my parents even offered to pay me 10 cents per chapter, and for some reason this didn’t work, either. As I got older, entering high school and then college, I can’t honestly remember reading much other than the Cliff’s Notes versions of books unless they were nonfiction. I believe this had a lot to do with the number of books being assigned in school and not having the time time to actually explore what I would have liked to read. I’d rather read books on computer programming or historical books, but those weren’t a part of the curriculum.

As I mention, though, I read a lot these days, probably 2-5 books each month. And even with both of my kids, they’re the types that telling them they cannot read would be a punishment.

CB: What book that you read while growing up had the most influence on who you became as an adult?

G”C”B: There are actually two, with one being more of a series of books. The first and most influential is the Bible. There is no other book on the planet from which a kid, or adult for that matter, can draw such wisdom. I still read the Bible every day. The second would be the Cub Scout, then Boy Scout handbooks. I was a scout for 7+ years, and nearly everything we did was also taught or narrated from one of these books. I’ve had the pleasure of recently starting up scouting again with my son, so it’s great to share these same lessons with him.

I expect to continue this series through the October publication of my book Attack! Boss! Cheat Code! A Gamer’s Alphabet. (I suspect that this book will appeal to a few of those reluctant readers we just discussed.) If there’s anyone in the gamer or kidlit camp that you’d love to see me feature in upcoming posts in this series, please drop me a line or tweet at me or just leave a message in the comments.

The next interviewee from the field of gaming in my Games & Books & Q&A series is Sam Johnson.

Sam aspired to be a game designer as early as high school, and he began his career as a writer for Shadowbane. Now, as Lead Creative Designer for KingsIsle Entertainment, Sam creates and writes the storylines for the company’s massively multiplayer online (MMO) games, which include Wizard101 and Pirate101.

CB: What do you remember about the first video game you ever played?

SJ: There’s a few ways I could answer this, given the nature of video games today. I’m one of the old guys, who actually remembers the birth of the medium – I’ve seen a lot of stuff come and go. So I’ll cheat and give you 3 answers, one for each of the major platforms:

Coin-Operated stand up: The first video game I ever played, ever, was a coin op — it was a black and white game called Tank: Think of the main tank game on the old Atari 2600 Combat cartridge, but not in color. No narrative, graphics beyond primitive, sound crude as well. For all its crudeness, I remember how fun it was, in a visceral way — the competitive nature of it (I think you had to play against another player — no AI tanks on screen) instantly amped everything up. It didn’t matter that my collection of little squares barely looked like a tank, or that the shots from my cannon barely traveled faster than my tank did. As soon as a match started, my heart was racing and my adrenaline was through the ceiling. I remember trying to dodge the little obstacles without getting stuck on them.

Console Game: The first game I played in the comfort of my own home was Pong. Yup, straight up Pong. It was on a console the size of an Atari 2600, but there was no cartridge — the game (and like one or two variants) was hard-wired into the thing. I remember how responsive the controls were: if you spun that wheel too fast, you’d miss the little square ball and lose — it was my first experience of having to get zen and concentrate in a video game — the heart-racing that was so fun in Tank was counter-productive.

Computer Game: The first computer game I had was Ultima III: Exodus on my good old Apple 2. What I remember about that one was how big and rich the world seemed — new mysteries would open up all the time: dungeons I missed, or hidden cities that were illustrated on the cloth map but that I couldn’t find for the life of me when I stomped around that tiled landscape. I also remember thinking it was silly that they pluralized “Orcus” as “Orcuss” — I played DnD, so I knew “Orcus” was unique.

CB: What did you like to read when you were a kid? What did you love about it?

SJ: I’d have to say comic books more than anything. They actually taught me a lot of vocabulary, and the old Marvel ones were fraught with little literary nods: “Ours is but to do and die,” “The Light That Failed,” that kind of thing. I also read a ton of classics comics — to this day I haven’t managed to finish The Odyssey and I haven’t read a word of The Count of Monte Cristo, but I know those stories because of what I read. I also dearly loved science fiction, as much of it as I could get my hands on. I loved learning words, and seeing how you could make such awesome phrases and sentences out of them. I ended up a writer, go figure.

CB: What book that you read while growing up had the most influence on who you became as an adult?

SJ: Boy, that’s a tough one. It all depends on what you mean by “when growing up.” So again, I’ll give you two answers:

Elementary School: Lizard Music, by Daniel Pinkwater. I really identified with the main character — he was a nerd like me, an outsider, with his distinct loves (Walter Cronkite, pizza) and the things he worried about: getting the glue right on his model airplane, or the pockets of superhot cheese that might be lurking under the surface of that piece of pizza. That book taught me it was okay to be me. Also, the mystery and the adventure he got into helped me really cherish my imagination, and hang on to the idea that I could find really wondrous or special things buried under ordinary life if I looked at it through the right eyes.

High School: The Stand, by Steven King. I felt like I knew those characters, like I’d lived with them my whole life. They turned into my role models. I learned about love in that book, and devotion, and faith, and endurance. Stu Redman taught me to do whatever it takes, and how to endure hardships without despairing. Looking at Stu, I saw the grown up I wanted to be. Harold Lauder showed me the dark side of the nerd I was growing up into, who I might end up if I let jealousy and ego consume me — he taught me what kind of man I did not want to be. I’ve had some really hard times in my life, and the example of all those characters helped me come through them intact. And I have to say, at the darkest moment in my life (I was still growing up at 23), Glen Bateman’s realization and sacrifice literally saved my life.

I expect to continue this series through the October publication of my book Attack! Boss! Cheat Code! A Gamer’s Alphabet. If there’s anyone in the gamer or kidlit camp that you’d love to see me feature in upcoming posts in this series, please drop me a line or tweet at me or just leave a message in the comments.

I confess that I’ve never played video games with Adam Gidwitz, but on the occasions when Adam has joined my family for board games while visiting Austin, he’s shown himself to be a fun, vigorous competitor. I figured he’d be a good author to include in the Games & Books & Q&A series.

Adam is the author of the fairy tale-inspired (to put it lightly), occasionally a smidge gruesome (to employ a bit of understatement) middle-grade trilogy consisting of A Tale Dark & Grimm, In a Glass Grimmly, and The Grimm Conclusion (all published by Dutton).

His upcoming books include a retelling of The Empire Strikes Back, part of a series that will also feature previous interviewee Tom Angleberger‘s take on Return of the Jedi. Before we get into talking about video games, here’s a little more information on their Star Wars books.

But enough about Star Wars. (I’m kidding. There’s no such thing.) Let’s talk about video games.

CB: What do you remember about the first video game you ever played?

AG: Is this question just an excuse to gauge your interviewees’ age? I know it is. I find it offensive and embarrassing. What if I said the first computer game I played was Halo? You’d think I was 14. Or Dr. Babbage’s Automated Loom-Game? You’d think I was 200.

In truth, the first game I played was Mario Bros./Duck Hunt, for the original Nintendo. I remember a friend of mine, Chip Martucci (isn’t that a great name for a kid in a nostalgic memory?) had the first Nintendo of anyone I knew. It was the freshest thing on the market. I coveted it, and coveted my time playing it. I would sleep over at his house, and wake up at 5 a.m., and just lie there, starving, waiting for him to wake up and praying he would want to play Nintendo.

I had a problem.

CB: What games did you play the most when you were a kid? What did you love about them?

AG: The game I have been devoted to since it appeared was Sid Meier’s Civilization, as well as its many retreads and spin-offs. I had the original game on its seven floppy discs. When I want to update the most recent iteration (Civ V, for those counting at home) with an expansion pack, I can download it wirelessly. Despite the fact that one hundredth of the expansion pack couldn’t have fit on those floppies. How far we’ve come. All so I can conquer the world again and again and again.

CB: What role do games play in your life today?

AG: Honestly, I try to limit my gameplay these days, as I have an obsessive personality ONLY in regards to games (of all types). Whenever you try to close Civ, it says, “Are you sure?” And you can choose “Exit Game” or “Just one more turn…” Oh, if only it was “one more turn.” I literally threw my Civ III and IV discs down the trash chutes at college because I was not working — only to buy them again. And again throw them down the chutes. Sadly, if I threw the wi-fi router down the trash chute, I would not be able to participate in interviews like this.

So these days, I try to channel my desire for world domination and epic battles into my fiction. Adults often bemoan those parts of my books. But kids, especially gamers, get it. If I can make a kid feel like I did playing those games, if I can transform “One more turn…” into “One more page…,” I will have done a good thing.

I expect to continue this series through the October publication of my book Attack! Boss! Cheat Code! A Gamer’s Alphabet. If there’s anyone in the gamer or kidlit camp that you’d love to see me feature in upcoming posts in this series, please drop me a line or tweet at me or just leave a message in the comments.

My friend Melissa Wiley is the next children’s/YA author that I’m featuring in the Games & Books & Q&A series.

Melissa is the author of more than a dozen books for kids and teens, including The Prairie Thief, Inch and Roly and the Sunny Day Scare, Fox and Crow Are Not Friends, and the Martha and Charlotte Little House books. She lives in San Diego with her husband, Scott Peterson, and their six kids. Melissa has been blogging about her family’s reading life at Here in the Bonny Glen since 2005. She is @melissawiley on Twitter and @bonnyglen on Instagram.

CB: What do you remember about the first video game you ever played?

MW: First video game I played had to be Pong. I think my dad brought it home from Radio Shack, if I recall correctly. My little sisters and I were enthralled. There is a certain shade of glowing green that always brings Pong rushing back to my mind. Was it even really green? That’s how I remember it.

CB: What games did you play the most when you were a kid? What did you love about them?

MW: We got an Atari 2600 when I was around 8th or 9th grade. I. LOVED. THAT. THING. Fave game: Adventure. The way the dragons curled up when you stabbed them! I went through a whole blissful nostalgia-binge not long ago, revisiting Adventure on a desktop version. It’s amazing the wave of feelings it conjures up. That exhilaration of discovery; the happy state of tension I love in a game.

We also had Atari Pinball and my prowess at that game became a badge of honor — I rocked it. Nobody could skirt just this side of a tilt like I could. For a kid who was hopeless at sports and miserable in gym class, excelling at a video game was a confidence boost beyond measure. I was this tiny, scrawny, late-blooming kid, but at Pinball I could whip my best friend’s older brothers. I’m still proud. :)

Other friends had a ColecoVision, and I spent hours at their place playing Donkey Kong. They also had an Indiana Jones game (Atari? Coleco?) that I loooved. Those snakes, the music, the ankh. To this day I love adventure games where you have to puzzle your way through.

CB: What role do games play in your life today?

MW: Pretty major, I’d have to say! I have six game-enthusiast kids, and playing together is truly one of my greatest joys. My favorite group game is Minecraft – I’m fond of sandbox games. We have our own server and I love logging in to see what new marvels they’ve built in our world. In my own world (created before we set up the server) I have a giant Tudor mansion and English garden. I’m constantly tearing down wings and renovating. :)

We play a fair amount of Wii Mario Kart and Wii Sport together (especially Scott and the kids, for the latter). I also like the ski jump game in Wii Fit.

We love World of Warcraft but unfortunately my computer is the only one in the house that can handle it, so the kids can’t do much there and it’s been a long while since we’ve logged on.

The game I loved most of all and mourn deeply is Glitch. Another sandbox game, but with art and music like none other, and a charming, deeply creative community. All my phone ringtones are from Glitch which means constant nostalgia pangs. We were so sad when it shut down! Tiny Speck released all the assets to the public, though, and a couple of teams of volunteers are working to recreate the game, so I have high hopes of feeding sloths and milking butterflies again someday.

I expect to continue this series through the October publication of my book Attack! Boss! Cheat Code! A Gamer’s Alphabet. If there’s anyone in the gamer or kidlit camp that you’d love to see me feature in upcoming posts in this series, please drop me a line or tweet at me or just leave a message in the comments.

The next interviewee from the field of gaming in my Games & Books & Q&A series is Anastasia Salter, an assistant professor of digital media at the University of Central Florida.

Anastasia has two books forthcoming in 2014: What is Your Quest? From Adventure Games to Interactive Books (University of Iowa Press) and Flash: Building the Interactive Web (MIT Press), co-authored with John Murray. She also writes for ProfHacker, a blog on technology and pedagogy hosted by the Chronicle of Higher Education, and is currently chair of the North American Simulation and Gaming Association and a member of the THATCamp Council.

CB: What do you remember about the first video game you ever played?

AS: I got into video games for the first time with my parents, playing on our DOS personal computer. The game we started out with was Rise of the Dragon, an adventure game by Dynamix with grainy images surrounded by black frames. Now that I think about it, it was a pretty violent game for a kid — it’s set in a cyberpunk world where we played as “Blade Hunter” fighting against an evil plot to destroy everyone with a mutating water-born virus, I think. I mostly remember drinking from a water fountain every time we failed and transforming into some sort of pink reptilian monster.

It was good preparation for the Sierra adventure games I would play soon after, with their many arbitrary death sequences. One of the best things about the game was its bundled manual — a comic books with a guide to being a private investigator, which I kept. This was back when games came in awesome boxes with lots of great printed material, definitely a golden age for game stories.

Adventure games cemented my love of PC gaming. I played a little on early consoles around the same time, but none of them stood out like Rise of the Dragon and the many games that would follow — Maniac Mansion, King’s Quest, Monkey Island, Doom, and so many more. PC games seemed like a lens into the grown-up world, and not just because of the “adult test” (a series of questions like “Does a pair of queens beat 3 deuces?” and “Which of these drinks is non-alcoholic?”) before Leisure Suit Larry. My parents did bring home educational games, but they mostly couldn’t compare.

CB: What did you like to read when you were a kid? What did you love about it?

AS: As a resident of my own imaginary world, I pretty much lived on fantasy novels. Anything that offered me lots of books in a world I could get lost in made it on my shelf for endless re-readings. My childhood hero was Raistlin Majere from the Dragonlance novels, with his perfect sarcasm and outsider image. Magic users (fantasy’s academics, appropriately) really appealed to me, particularly the nine-lived Chrestomanci of Diana Wynne Jones’s novels, the too-proud Sparrowhawk of A Wizard of Earthsea, and the sword-wielding seers of Robin McKinley’s The Hero and the Crown.

I was completely devoted to the works of Piers Anthony, even if I didn’t quite get all the humor until later. My favorite elementary school librarian gave me a copy of Man from Mundania, which featured a story of an apparently average guy getting to cross from real-Florida to Xanth, and I loved the concept even more than Alice’s rabbit hole. It got even better a few years later, when Piers Anthony released Demons Don’t Dream, a novel about a game that allowed players to transport to Xanth — which was bundled with the computer game itself, Companions of Xanth, coming full-circle.

CB: What book that you read while growing up had the most influence on who you became as an adult?

AS: I’m on my third copy of Tamora Pierce’s Alanna: The First Adventure, the first book of a quartet. I reread my previous copies so many times that they fell to pieces. The four novels tell the story of a girl who switches places with her twin brother in order to go into training as a knight, thus avoiding the fate of growing up to be a “lady.” The quartet should have been one novel, but this was before J.K. Rowling changed the standards for what could be marketed as a kid’s book. It deals frankly with things that never got discussed in any of my other books: having a first period, birth control, and sexual agency.

Great, complex women were in short supply in most of the media I encountered as a kid. Alanna stood out as a truly powerful character who wasn’t just a “strong woman” written for the masculine gaze. None of her story falls into the traditional happy ending traps that most fantasy women from books and games seemed destined to land. Most importantly, Tamora Pierce’s novels included greater diversity than any other fantasy novels I’d encountered, offering a fantasy world truly worth finding a rabbit hole.

I expect to continue this series through the October publication of my book Attack! Boss! Cheat Code! A Gamer’s Alphabet. If there’s anyone in the gamer or kidlit camp that you’d love to see me feature in upcoming posts in this series, please drop me a line or tweet at me or just leave a message in the comments.

For my upcoming book Attack! Boss! Cheat Code! A Gamer’s Alphabet, it’s pretty obvious which video game terms the letters A, B, and C are for. But what about the rest of the alphabet?

In the Bartography Express newsletter sent to my subscribers this week, I announced that my publisher will be giving away advance copies of the book for correct guesses about D through Z. So, alert any gaming aficionados you know: For the next 23 days, on my blog and on Twitter, I’ll be offering clues in the form of bits of the illustrations for those letters, similar to the pieces of “A is for Attack,” “B is for Boss,” and “C is for Cheat Code” featured in Bartography Express.

I’m also giving away a copy of Little Green Men at the Mercury Inn, a funny, twisty, middle grade sci-fi thriller by Greg Leitich Smith, to one subscriber to my newsletter. If you’re not already receiving it, click the image below for a look -— if you like what you see, click “Join” in the bottom right corner, and you’ll be in the running for the giveaway at the end of this week.

Next among the children’s/YA authors that I’m featuring in the Games & Books & Q&A series is J. Anderson Coats. J. is the author of the YA novel The Wicked and the Just (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), set amid the English occupation of medieval Wales. Published in 2012, the book was ranked among the year’s best YA fiction by both Kirkus Reviews and the Young Adult Library Services Association.

CB: What do you remember about the first video game you ever played?

JAC: Playing Nintendo was a way to hang out with my older brother and develop a common vocabulary. The better I got, the more he treated me like a peer instead of a pest. We bonded over Karnov and Contra.

CB: What games did you play the most when you were a kid? What did you love about them?

JAC: I played a lot of Super Mario Bros. 2 and 3, and hours and hours of Dragon Warrior II. Dragon Warrior was a quest game, and you had to travel around talking to people and gathering items and interpreting clues. It reminded me of reading a great story, only you got to participate.

CB: What role do games play in your life today?

JAC: Games are a big part of how I connect with my teenage son. He doesn’t want to do things like bake cookies anymore, but he’s usually up for a game of Civilization V. And I’ve been known to play Civ V or Medieval Total War when I’m stuck on a scene or a plot point in a book I’m working on. It’s good for morale to succeed at something, even if it’s razing your opponent’s city to the ground.

I expect to continue this series through the October publication of my book Attack! Boss! Cheat Code! A Gamer’s Alphabet. If there’s anyone in the gamer or kidlit camp that you’d love to see me feature in upcoming posts in this series, please drop me a line or tweet at me or just leave a message in the comments.

The next interviewee from the field of gaming in my Games & Books & Q&A series is Sarah Schoemann, a video game designer, educator, and born-and-bred New Yorker now transplanted to Atlanta.

Sarah is the founder of of Different Games, a conference on inclusivity and diversity in games and game culture. She’s also a PhD Student in Digital Media at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and her research and organizing interest is in social justice issues related to technology. Also, Sarah might be adopting a dog soon, and she’s really, really excited about that.

CB: What do you remember about the first video game you ever played?

SS: I was probably about 6 when my Mom took my older sister and me to get an NES, and I remember the experience feeling pretty epic. We had an Atari that my dad would sometimes set up on top of the TV in their bedroom for us to play with, but this was a huge cultural phenomenon at the time so we were pretty amped up about getting to play Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt. My favorite game was probably the movie tie-in, Home Alone, which involved sneaking around Kevin’s house, hiding from the movie’s two burglars and setting traps to slow them down. You basically had to survive for 20 minutes without being caught to beat it, which I only managed when a glitch in the game trapped one of the burglars mid-shimmy on a drainpipe. Honestly, my Mom was way better than me at this and all of our Nintendo games, almost as a rule.

CB: What did you like to read when you were a kid? What did you love about it?

I was really into ghost stories and mysteries as a kid. I loved Alvin Scwartz’ Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark even though they initially gave me horrible nightmares. I had a much less scary book by him (sort of a Scary Stories primer) when I was too young to read on my own called In a Dark, Dark Room and Other Scary Stories. I LOVED to have that read to me so much that my mother got me an audiobook version of Scary Stories on cassette tape.

Unfortunately the narration by Broadway actor George S. Irving (whose dramatic performance swings from quavering to booming on a dime) and the foreboding synthesizer soundtrack was a bit much for me as an under-10 listener. I had to wait a few years before I could return to those stories and actually enjoy them, although of course then I had to contend with the book’s gorgeous and utterly terrifying illustrations by Stephen Gammell.

I got into books like Goosebumps, a popular series of scary books for young readers that offer a sort of gothic-horror alternative to The Baby-sitter’s Club. Then I graduated to the Fear Street series by the same author, R.L. Stine, which was teen-themed for more matured tastes. Kind of like Sweet Valley High, but for adolescents who like their high school romance with a side of Santa-suit-donning axe murderers.

I liked more subtle scary stuff, too, like John Bellairs’ books such as The House with a Clock in Its Walls, which featured gorgeous cover art and illustrations by the late, great Edward Gorey. And adult short fiction by folks like Ray Bradbury and Roald Dahl.

CB: What book that you read while growing up had the most influence on who you became as an adult? How did it shape you?

SS: When I was an older adolescent, I got into books by Toni Morrison like Sula and The Bluest Eye and Richard Wright’s Native Son which got me to think critically about identity and race in America and to see the way that current social conditions are tethered to our dark national history. Reading fiction that dealt with those themes was crucial in helping me to make sense of and contextualize the real-life horror of events like the Rodney King beating and the LA riots, which I had watched unfold on TV as a child.

However, even though I now look to literature to teach me, I still appreciate stories as a source of joy. Since my tastes always tended towards dark material like ghosts and mystery I’ve always loved gallows humor. My parents’ coffee table book of funny, creepy drawings by Charles Addams, the creator of The Addams Family, was a big influence on my taste in comics and graphic novels. Seeing the work of great illustrators helped me discover how powerfully visual storytelling can communicate ideas and this has continued to influence me as a game designer.

With that in mind, I think my absolute favorite books as an early reader were the Elizabeth Levy series Something Queer Is Going On (later renamed The Fletcher Mysteries). They were all centered on the adventures of two quirky best friends who solved mysteries while hanging out with their droopy, immobile basset hound, Fletcher. But unlike a lot of girl characters in books, who wanted to impress people or be liked by boys, these girls were awkward and scrappy and seemed like people my sister and I could hang out with.

Not only did they have strong, spunky personalities in the stories but the pictures of them creeping around to investigate sinister goings-on with Fletcher were so descriptive and endearing that they added as much to the characters as the written narrative. These books showed me the way visual media like games and illustrated books are able to tell us things that writing alone can’t. When great writers and artists come together to tell stories visually and narratively, they can be that much more compelling, whether in a video game, a comic or an awesome book.

I expect to continue this series through the October publication of my book Attack! Boss! Cheat Code! A Gamer’s Alphabet. If there’s anyone in the gamer or kidlit camp that you’d love to see me feature in upcoming posts in this series, please drop me a line or tweet at me or just leave a message in the comments.

The next author I’m featuring in the the Games & Books & Q&A series — in which I alternately interview children’s/YA literature folks about video games and ask gamers about the books that inspired them — is Tom Angleberger.

As anyone who’s ever folded a piece of notebook paper into a Star Wars character knows, Tom is the author of the Origami Yoda series, including the upcoming and final title, Emperor Pickletine Rides the Bus. His most recent book is The Qwikpick Papers: Poop Fountain!

CB: What do you remember about the first video game you ever played?

TA: Probably Pong, my dad had it. I remember that you could create your own variant games by leaving the switches stuck halfway.

I think my first arcade game may have been Space Invaders. And my first real gamer moment was when my school got an Apple ][ and I saw Colossal Cave Adventure boot up for the first time.

CB: What games did you play the most when you were a kid? What did you love about them?

TA: I played a lot of games that now leave me wondering, why did I waste my time on that? Stuff like the Atari Raiders of the Lost Ark or, frankly, most of the Atari games.

Even a lot of computer games left me feeling the same way — possibly because I was never able to finish them. (Cranston Manor, Masquerade, The Bard’s Tale and the aforementioned Colossal Cave Adventure.) I remember a real moment of clarity after trying to swim past a shark in some dumb game. You had to work so hard to get to that shark and then it just swam right into you. That became a touchstone for me — just because someone made it, doesn’t mean it’s worth playing.

But then there were games that WERE worth playing!

In the arcade, it was Discs of Tron, Marble Madness, Joust and the sublime Star Wars (vector graphics).

And on my Apple it was Lode Runner. What a game! Not sure it’s ever been topped. 150 levels + 50 more with Championship Lode Runner. You had to run and gun (drill actually) and think.

And what I may have enjoyed the most was programming my own games in BASIC. Man, those were the days!

CB: What role do games play in your life today?

TA: I have put serious time into early Final Fantasy games (Final Fantasy Tactics is another masterpiece), Donkey Kong Country, Tony Hawk Pro Skater (2 was my favorite), NBA Jam, various golf and racing games. And I love pinball simulators since I cannot afford my own machine. (Best pinball ever: The Addams Family by the master, Pat Lawlor.)

But aside from Words with Friends, my gaming time now is mostly devoted to one game: 007: Quantum of Solace. Michael Hemphill, my co-author on Stonewall Hinkleman, and I have been playing the two-player version of this on the Wii for years. It is surprisingly deep, we keep finding new strategies, new variations.

We’ve been playing various games together for about 15 years, I guess: Gran Turismo, ATV Offroad Fury, Dynasty Tactics, a little bit of Mario Kart and now this OO7 thing. It’s woven into our friendship.

I expect to continue this series through the October publication of my book Attack! Boss! Cheat Code! A Gamer’s Alphabet. If there’s anyone in the gamer or kidlit camp that you’d love to see me feature in upcoming posts in this series, please drop me a line or tweet at me or just leave a message in the comments.

Next up in my Games & Books & Q&A series of chats with gaming folks about books and with children’s/YA lit folks about video games is Andy Robertson. Andy is a freelance family technology expert for the BBC and The Guardian, and he runs the Family Gamer TV YouTube channel.

CB: What do you remember about the first video game you ever played?

AR: I remember playing a game on the C64 called Star Quake and Monty on the Run. They were difficult but fun and offered a labyrinthine world to explore.

CB: What did you like to read when you were a kid? What did you love about it?

AR: I enjoyed reading Asterix and Fighting Fantasy adventures. I think mainly because they felt like they were my own thing that I’d found myself rather than being told to read them.

CB: What book that you read while growing up had the most influence on who you became as an adult? How did it shape you?

AR: Reading the Bible, I think, as part of Sunday school and then later in church as an adult. It offered a fascinating fabric of life captured through the years that needed substantial interpretation before you could really know what to do with it -– endless possibilities.

I expect to continue this series through the October publication of my book Attack! Boss! Cheat Code! A Gamer’s Alphabet. If there’s anyone in the gamer or kidlit camp that you’d love to see me feature in upcoming posts in this series, please drop me a line or tweet at me or just leave a message in the comments.

So, we’re going author, gamer, author, gamer in the the Games & Books & Q&A series, and as you pattern-recognition aficionados out there already know, that means it’s time for me to feature another children’s/YA author.

Samantha Berger has written picture books including Crankenstein and its upcoming sequel, A Crankenstein Valentine, both illustrated by Dan Santat (Little, Brown); the equally upcoming Witch Spa, illustrated by Isabel Roxas (Dial), and the (yes) upcoming Snoozefest, illustrated by Kristyna Litten (Dial). She has written cartoons and promos for Nickelodeon and other networks. Sam has also written comic books and commercials. In addition, she’s written movie trailers, theme songs, slogans, magazine articles, poems, TV-books, sticker books and professional books. Basically, you name it, Sam writes it.

CB: What do you remember about the first video game you ever played?

SB: I’m a child of the very first games. We had Pong in my house, and my little brother and I spent long, long periods of time playing it. It was MESMERIZING.

HYPNOTIZING.

The little DOOT… DOOT… DOOT… sound? The little light ball bouncing around the screen? I mean, you could do it for hours.

And we DID. (My first warning I could easily become an addict.)

Then Asteroids came out, and they had it in places like Pizza Hut.

Yeah it was in B & W and yeah it was basic, but somehow I was GOOD at it.

CB: What games did you play the most when you were a kid? What did you love about them?

SB: As a kid, I was never good at sports. What I loved about video games was that I was good at it. And it felt sporty …

… somehow.

Even though it was motor skills and hand/eye coordination and reflexes … it felt sporty. It felt like, if you could be a high-scorer, there was no possible way you could be picked last in gym.

Asteroids and Pong were the ONLY games I was good at. My little brother would go on to beat me, nay SLAY me in Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Atari, and everything else. I died fast and often. Many quarters were lost in mere minutes. It became … a lot less fun.

I vividly remember when Dragon’s Lair came out. It cost TWO quarters to play, and the animation was very advanced at the time, and I LOVED that about it.

… but I still sucked at it.

And that was kinda the end of my affair with the Game of Videos.

CB: What role do games play in your life today?

SB: I am not a gamer and don’t play any games whatsoever. This was a conscious choice, as I felt like, without careful self-monitoring, I could easily slip into a phase of playing them ALL THE TIME, NONSTOP, and using it as the perfect procrastination for writing!

And, with social media, and on-demand TV marathoning, and my dog, friends, and exercise, I have noooooooo problem with procrastinating or getting easily distracted already. So I drew a line and told myself not to tread in such dangerous waters.

Ironically, last week’s freelance gig had me NAMING a bunch of new digi-games for Sesame Street.

I’m happy to name them, but I just can’t play them!

I expect to continue this series through the October publication of my book Attack! Boss! Cheat Code! A Gamer’s Alphabet. If there’s anyone in the gamer or kidlit camp that you’d love to see me feature in upcoming posts in this series, please drop me a line or tweet at me or just leave a message in the comments.

My friend Tracy W. Bush, Audio Director at Seattle-based game developer 5TH Cell, is the next interviewee in my Games & Books & Q&A series of chats with gaming folks about books (and vice versa). Tracy has composed music for games including Scribblenauts Unmasked, World of Warcraft III, Tabula Rasa, and Dungeon Runners. For more about Tracy’s work, see his 2013 interview with joystiq.

CB: What do you remember about the first video game you ever played?

TB: The VERY first video game I played? There were a couple. But the very first one that I recall was a game where you rode a motorcycle and jumped a ramp that had buses underneath it. There was also a “breakout” type game at the army post NCO club where we were stationed in Germany. I played that a lot before we got our own Atari at home.

What I remember about the bike ramp game (which was at a pizza parlor in Kentucky) was that the graphics were pretty rudimentary, but it totally communicated the feel of what it was you were supposed to do. I mean, you had to use your imagination a little bit, but it totally worked. This also was in the mid-’70s when Evel Knievel was a big hero, so it kind of hit the zeitgeist as well. I remember that I really liked it, but I only had the one quarter, so…

CB: What did you like to read when you were a kid? What did you love about it?

TB: When I was a kid, my favorite thing to read was Asterix comics. We were living in Germany, and I had been put in a German school, but I didn’t really speak the language. I had to learn pretty quickly, and I had a German tutor. The way she taught me quickest was by reading Asterix comics with me and teaching me that way. They were full of puns and visual gags and things that didn’t translate from the original French to German very elegantly, but I really liked the stories. Also, there was a sense of them being involved in actual history, since Cleopatra and Julius Caesar were main characters, and that spurred in me an interest in history which I still have to this day.

CB: What book that you read while growing up had the most influence on who you became as an adult? How did it shape you?

TB: When I was 14 I read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Probably the most influential book from my childhood. Until I’d read that book I didn’t even know there was such a thing as comedy books — you understand that the funniest books we got in school was Huckleberry Finn or Tom Sawyer, which were pretty dry. Hitchhiker’s was very, very funny, as well as being absurd, and that was kind of a revelation to me. That it’s OK to be funny, silly, even as an adult. Before that, I’d kind of assumed that all adults were just serious and dull all the time. That’s probably the first time I figured out that it was OK to grow up and be funny, and enjoy humor, and that it was socially acceptable to do so.

I expect to continue this series through the October publication of my book Attack! Boss! Cheat Code! A Gamer’s Alphabet. If there’s anyone in the gamer or kidlit camp that you’d love to see me feature in upcoming posts in this series, please drop me a line or tweet at me or just leave a message in the comments.

Next among the children’s/YA authors that I’m featuring in the Games & Books & Q&A series is Tanita S. Davis. Tanita is the Coretta Scott King Honor author of Mare’s War. Her other YA novels (all published by Knopf) include Happy Families, which was included on the ALA’s 2013 Rainbow Project List, and A la Carte. Her fourth YA novel, Peas & Carrots, is scheduled to be published in 2016. Tanita blogs at fiction, instead of lies.

CB: What do you remember about the first video game you ever played?

TSD: I remember that I was GOOD at the first video game I ever played. My cousins were kids who got everything on the bleeding edge of new when we were growing up, and we didn’t have video games, and they did… the first time they let me play, I smoked ALL OF THEM. They were disconcerted. I was disconcerted! Being raised very conservative Christians, we were all about the “thou shalt not kill,” and I was good at something with a GUN!? How did that happen? The game was, of course, Duck Hunt. Apparently, if you subtract mud, bugs, real ordinance and actual ducks, I am an awesome shot!

CB: What games did you play the most when you were a kid? What did you love about them?

TSD: My cousins had Frogger — in which I was frequently flattened – Donkey Kong, and Pac-Man, of course. There was also Spy Hunter, and some race car driver game (Grand Prix, I think), where I flipped my car over and over and over again… (apparently I can shoot, but cannot drive).

CB: What role do games play in your life today?

TSD: My hand-eye coordination as a kid was fairly awful, and now it’s even worse! Every once in awhile, I’ll find an old game like Frogger and play it on the computer, or go to the arcade at the mini-golf place, and waste a bunch of quarters playing Pac-Man, but mostly I stick to thinks I can actually, you know, win. Like air hockey. I’m terrible at video games, but I like to watch others play and enjoy.

I expect to continue this series through the October publication of my book Attack! Boss! Cheat Code! A Gamer’s Alphabet. If there’s anyone in the gamer or kidlit camp that you’d love to see me feature in upcoming posts in this series, please drop me a line or tweet at me or just leave a message in the comments (if they’re working again).

The first member of the gamer camp that I’m featuring in the Games & Books & Q&A series is Carly Kocurek. Carly is Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities and Media Studies at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, where she teaches courses in game studies and game design. Her first book, a cultural history of the video game arcade in the 1970s and 1980s, is forthcoming from University of Minnesota Press. She is also co-author and co-developer with Allyson Whipple of Choice: Texas, a web-based interactive fiction game about reproductive healthcare access in the state of Texas.

CB: What do you remember about the first video game you ever played?

CK: When I was a kid — really young, like 4 or 5 — my family used to go to a local pizza place, now long closed, called Ken’s. I was completely fascinated by the arcade games near the doors, and I’d always beg for quarters for them. I think this worked maybe once, and I can’t even remember the game. I do, however, remember the way that the buttons and the plastic on the cabinet felt. Later, we got a hand-me-down Atari 2600 from some family friends, so I played Pong and Frogger and a few other things. The first game that really resonated with me, though, was Tetris. I got a GameBoy for Christmas in 1989, and I played Tetris for years and years. I’ve talked about this before, but that game is and was incredibly important to me. I’d play when I couldn’t sleep or when I was worried. I found it fun, obviously, but I also found it soothing. My mom and I had a back-and-forth high score ware that lasted about 10 years. I’d wake up and she’d have beaten my high score in the night, so I’d work all day to beat hers.

CB: What did you like to read when you were a kid? What did you love about it?

CK: I really loved Roald Dahl’s books. He’s a really problematic author, in a lot of ways, particularly when it comes to anything even remotely having to do with race. But, for his flaws, there are other things he does so well. He has all these stories about brilliant, interesting, kind, adventurous kids who are basically being tortured by brutish adults who don’t understand them or who are actually just monsters. That was so powerful for me, then. I read Matilda and James and the Giant Peach over and over. The American Girl books were also a serious fixation, and I think they’re part of why I wound up studying American cultural history.

CB: What book that you read while growing up had the most influence on who you became as an adult? How did it shape you?

CK: There’s a book called Winter of Fire by Sherryl Jordan that I have to mention. I think I might have read that book more times than any other book from my childhood. I could say a lot about it, but at a basic level it’s about a girl who changes the world. I want more stories like that. I want every kid to grow up reading books about girls who change the world. I had to read so many books about boys on adventures and boys becoming heroes when I was at school, and that’s fine, but it should have been more diverse. We expect girls to be able to relate to stories about boys, but we train boys they don’t have to deal with stories about girls. That seems dangerous.

I have a really battered paperback copy of this book around somewhere. And, it’s one of those I know I’ll never get rid of. It’s beloved. If it was a velveteen rabbit, it would 100% be real by now. The book has a pretty clear narrative about a young girl — and a girl who is part of a social class that’s devalued and dehumanized — fighting against sexism. I grew up around a lot of really amazing, strong women, but reading a book that was so explicitly about a system that’s unfair and having a character really fighting that, and often suffering for being willing to fight, was really inspiring for me then. It still is now, but now I know all kinds of true stories about those kinds of fights.

I expect to continue this series through the October publication of my book Attack! Boss! Cheat Code! A Gamer’s Alphabet. If there’s anyone in the gamer or kidlit camp that you’d love to see me feature in upcoming posts in this series, please drop me a line or tweet at me or just leave a message in the comments.

The first member of the children’s/YA literature camp that I’m featuring in the Games & Books & Q&A series is Greg Pincus, the author of middle grade novel The 14 Fibs of Gregory K. (Arthur A. Levine Books). Greg also writes poetry (including the Fib, a form he invented) and screenplays, and he blogs about children’s literature at GottaBook.

CB: What do you remember about the first video game you ever played?

GP: It was awesome. And it was Pong. I remember thinking that it was fun to be able to use the TV in a different and interactive way… and that you got to play with a second person, too. [See Greg with his dad, below, playing an unknown game on a borrowed console that grown-up Greg cannot identify.]

CB: What games did you play the most when you were a kid? What did you love about them?

GP: I was actually more of a pinball buff, and we didn’t have our own home console… but still, I mean, if there was a Space Invaders machine around? Well, I was on it. Missile Command was a sore spot for me because, seriously, the controls just never worked well. (No!!! It wasn’t that I was no good at the game! The controls just didn’t work well.) But I played it anyway, along with Pac-Man and some Q*bert and Marble Madness and Galaga and Centipede. But not Asteroids. I just stunk at that. In all cases what I loved was that there was lots of action, sometimes some strategy (and often that you had to think about on the fly), serious hand-eye coordination, and what seemed like a lot of variation. Plus, games are fun.

CB: What role do games play in your life today?

GP: I still love video games, though now I mostly play them on my phone or via the Xbox. I also really limit my time on them because I know, truly know, that I could easily play for hours, particularly since I have a need to finish/beat games! I play games with my kids, too, and watch them do things that I cannot do (my visual-spatial skills are a generation behind!). I still prefer games that require some strategy and thought rather than just pure shooters, and marvel at the way graphics have evolved. And most of all, I love the way games have evolved to tell stories and create worlds… or allow the player to do the same. It’s a rich, fun sandbox out there! (Though I still play Space Invaders whenever I run into an old machine.)

I expect to continue this series through the October publication of my book Attack! Boss! Cheat Code! A Gamer’s Alphabet. If there’s anyone in the gamer or kidlit camp that you’d love to see me feature in upcoming posts in this series, please drop me a line or tweet at me or just leave a message in the comments.

As I worked on my forthcoming picture book Attack! Boss! Cheat Code! A Gamer’s Alphabet — which will be published by POW! this October, with illustrations by Joey Spiotto — I was struck by similarities between adults who have tied their love of video games into their careers and those who create books for children and young adults.

Among those in the gamer camp that I’ve spoken with, or read essays by, or listened to interviews of, or just followed on Twitter, I’ve noticed a lot of the same passion for creativity, thoughtfulness about their audience, and concern for diversity within (and represented by) their field that I’ve long seen among other children’s authors and illustrators.

There’s been some crossover — video games playing roles in fictional stories, children’s books being reimagined in digital form, individuals I know who have worked in both fields — but I wanted to see more.

That’s what inspired me to begin this “Games & Books & Q&A” series of simple interviews with authors/illustrators about their gaming experiences, and with gaming folks about their reading tastes while growing up. I think these will be enlightening and fun, and I hope you enjoy the parallels and cross-pollination between the two fields.

Let’s get started with middle-grade novelist Greg Pincus and Carly Kocurek, who teaches college courses in game studies and game design. I’ll continue next week with Tracy W. Bush, who composes music for video games, and YA novelist Tanita S. Davis.

And if there’s anyone in either camp that you’d love to see me feature in upcoming posts in this series, please drop me a line or tweet at me or just leave a message in the comments.