Romance Stories: An Interactive Fiction Collection

By Christina Crooks

Be the star of six fun and twisted little romance stories. Explore the playfulness, action, and sudden mortal danger of these adventures with built-in hyperlinks where you choose the direction the stories take. The six stories offer thirty-five possible endings, but only a few endings will be a happily ever after. Can you find them?

This gamebook's stories include: 1) "Meeting the Barbarian" - You've lived inside the ground for as long as you can remember. 2) "The Lifeguard" - You're riding a bicycle down a beach trail when disaster strikes. 3) "Blood Rock" - You're rock climbing when you encounter a creature from a nightmare... or a fantasy? 4) "Luck in Love" - Con man or policeman? Your luck in love is about to change. 5) "Baxter and Bunny" - The love of your life dumps you for a blond receptionist named "Bunny." 6) "Unfamiliar Ground" - You're a mermaid lured to the shore.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christina Crooks
• Release date: Sep 3, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476157252

Christina Crooks

Christina Crooks is a romance author with books for sale in print, electronic and audio editions. Her novels have been published by Kensington, Samhain, Five Star/Cengage, and Books in Motion Audiobooks. Christina currently lives in Portland, Oregon. Her books Rough Play, Hands On, Sweet and Dirty, L.A. Caveman, and Thrill of the Chase are now available.

Book preview

Romance Stories: An Interactive Fiction Collection

Meeting the Barbarian

The Lifeguard

Blood Rock

Luck in Love

Baxter and Bunny

Unfamiliar Ground

Gamebook Directions: When choices are presented to you, use the directional buttons on your ebook device or use your mouse to click your desired choice.

If you change your mind and wish to make a different choice, press the BACK button (not the Previous Page button) to go back to your previous location.

Read an excerpt from romance novel Thrill of the Chase.

Meeting the Barbarian

You've lived inside the ground for as long as you can remember.

Not that you’re supposed to think of it as the ground. Since you were two, ground has been protective safety, a necessary shield of earth behind the smooth pink plastic surface of walls and ceilings as well as the floor.

Pink, of course, was the color the High Keepers chose to help minimize adjustment trauma when everyone moved into the huge caverns seventeen years, six months and twenty-four days ago. The color pink is psychologically soothing, they claim.

So why are you slowly going crazy?

You try to keep it hidden. Wouldn't do to have the High Keepers find out you're a social misfit, bad for the stability of the community. They'd make you complete one of those awful, embarrassingly public readjustments and that would not be fun.

Come to think of it (as if you thought of anything else lately) nothing about this claustrophobic hole in the ground is fun.

They don't think of it as a hole in the ground, do they? you muse aloud. Those self-appointed bigshots would keep us here forever if they could.

Jennifer, the only other girl you bother socializing with anymore, stares at you with apprehension. You shouldn't talk like that. They’ll hear you.

Who? The Hive-Keepers? you ask innocently.

High Keepers. Jennifer's eyes widen with worry. I really have to be going...

So go. You watch as she flounces out of your cubby with great swirls of her pink robe. There goes your last friend. To join the rest of the warren in ostracizing you. You wonder why you don't care more.

Suddenly your console beeps. Before you can begin wondering who'd be contacting you, you see the official pink seal of the High Keepers. A sense of foreboding warns you but you’re still shocked when you read the official summons.

Scanning through the document, you feel dread. Words pop out at you: maladjusted... for your own good...danger to Society...report to the Readjustment Center immediately.

A deep, burning anger chases away your dread. Recognizing the fierceness of your anger, you realize they're probably right. Since earliest childhood you've heard the lectures on how the delicate social structure needs 100% harmony. That's the reason everyone needs to dress the same and think the same. Why be angry about it?

But you are.

You decide you’re not going to be punished for not fitting in. However, there’s simply no way to avoid another readjustment.

The small pink cubby seems to shrink, constricting your soul. The surrounding earth seems to press in on you from all sides.

You have to get out.

There’s no other way. Even if it means death, you have to go Above.

Unfortunately, it will likely be an uncomfortable death, not like the long life followed by sterile sleep of their world down here.

Already, it is their world, you notice. No longer yours.

You deliberately imagine radioactive winds asphyxiating you, biological germs eating away your insides, and worse – you imagine being captured by the misshapen creatures who lived through the end of the world. The mutants. The High Keepers assured everyone that they still rampaged Above, eating human flesh and contaminating the mind with crippling illness. Only mutants would be left after two decades of post-apocalyptic chaos.

It’s worth it, you think crazily. Better the mutants than kissing all these pink backsides.

You know of a tunnel that might lead to Above. You discovered it on a childhood exploration. You still remember the odd, exciting smell of the air that wafted from the small, upward-sloping passage. The High Keepers since sealed it up, but you remember where it is.

Choose

A) You leave the life you've known to brave a dangerous future Above.

B) You decide to conform and try to make the best of your safe, secure existence.

You put on an extra pink robe for warmth, only sparing a thought for how much you loathe the color pink. You pack your day-sack full of clothes, toiletries, snacks, and a sharp knife and sneak out to the smooth pink wall covering

Reviews for Romance Stories

[mrsrogerq · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

This is an interactive book where you pick the endings. Multiple places to pick your endings and work your way through the book. Not my type of story but still worked through a few paths of the book. Fun/interesting for the person that likes being part of the book so to speak.