Winding Paths

Ready to read? Ready to play?

Adventure awaits the intrepid reader willing to enter Winding Paths, an anthology of game stories and poetry, puzzles and prizes. You can’t get to UR any other way, and UR is where 25 original works by award-winning writers and new voices dwell.

You can read this book in order, but perhaps you are a wanderer. If so, you’re in luck! Choose paths to wind your way throughout, all the while searching for items, earning rewards, and solving puzzles.

And at the end? You can keep playing. The cover is The Royal Game of UR’s game board. The rules, along with a set of game pieces for each story or poem, are provided inside the book. Fictional combat. Author against author. Whom do you favor?

Or maybe you will wish to stay in UR forever.

Let the games begin…

Frances Lu-Pai Ippolito (she/her) is a Chinese-American judge, mom, and writer in Portland, Oregon. Her writing has appeared in Nightmare Magazine, Flame Tree’s Asian Ghost Stories, Chromophobia, Mother: Tales of Terror and Love, Death’s Garden Revisited, and Unquiet Spirits. She is the founder of game and book publisher Demagogue Press and the nonprofit, Qilin Press, which focuses on diverse, marginalized voices. Frances also co-chairs the Young Willamette Writers program that provides free writing classes for high school and middle school students. You can find her on IG@francespaippolito, FB Frances Pai, and at www.demagoguepress.com/about.

In her preferred reality, she's a neutral evil half-elf rogue with questionable scruples but an excellent burglary kit.