William Clarke

I'll keep it simple.

I'm new to VN's (and thanks to the community of authors and developers here!!!) No, I won't use the word "creator" as that lumps what we do into the same pool as influencers. Cringe.

I'm retired from the corporate world and my background includes software development, journalism (international reporter/photographer/editor) and... cowboy. Hey! While folks were slaving away on the 9-5 grind, I was living my dream and making memories actually worthy of a life well lived.

My big brother is George Elliott Clarke (You will find him on a web search before you find me, but back in the 90's people would stop him and ask if he was me!) He's written multiple books (of which I have been the reviewer of many), librettos, and a couple of TV movies. My banker brother wrote his first book in 2024 (I edited). Of course, having been presented with multiple awards (you sure you got the right name?) in my journalism career, I've been published in print more times than I can remember (I once called the mayor a nazi in an editorial - I got calls from national press about that one!!) but the past 15 years I've been on the dark side and they were glad to be rid of me. No bonus and no gold watch. 

So I've returned to telling stories, but leveraging the digital platform 'cos ANYBODY can write an E-Book, right?? My inspiration is my son and when I was away it was my job to call him every night to tell him a bedtime story. We created the character Archie the Apache Attack Helicopter, who would pick him up at daycare and they would go on "missions" that had to be completed in time for his mom to arrive at daycare. 

Hmmmmmmmm I've told a few friends about Archie and they say I shouldn't ever be responsible for children!! Ha ha ha ha.

Mason is now 21 and in the final semester of chasing his BFA. I sent him the comic I made of his Archie mission to save the baby whale, the ONLY mission where they didn't go "weapons hot!" because the daycare had a thing about rockets, explosions, and 50mm cannons. He had forgotten the comic and he said it made his day to receive the comic.  Good memories are the ones that can turn things around.

Anyway, I looked to create VNs because I wanted to provide interactivity on a graphical digital platform - but not PDF/Ebooks. Of course the majority of VNs out there don't fit children as the audience (even though kids use devices, too). My characters are little cupcake kids who go on adventures together as the cupcake crew. It's all in good fun with big colours and over-the-top situations.  The idea is to enjoy childhood, be who you are, question everything, and have fun!! My second VN missed deadline (YIKES!!) because I had never used Ren'Py. 

AI - I retired from photography in 2011 for two reasons; I was tired of lugging a hundred pounds of gear to shoots, I was tired of how digital "ghettoized" the trade. Everybody who made a pretty picture was suddenly doing "minis" while the computerized camera actually did the work of idiots.
I find that AI makes people lazy. I'll explain - it's somebody else's work that has been cleansed, folded, and manipulated (Cevin Cey) because people are too afraid to learn what they don't know, too afraid to make mistakes, too much in a hurry to get that pat on the head from billionaires so they take shortcuts. AI is now replacing entire newsrooms of people while churning out crap. In my brother's courses, he makes his students bring pen and paper and write their assignments in class so they cannot 'cheat' with AI. Some of my backgrounds and characters may have been created with AI, but I prefer organic and I'm not an artist. If you need a collaborator, you might want to hold me to writing!!!