I wanted to try something new and different, so I downloaded a virtual novel from the play store that would run on an old nook I turned into a basic android tablet. Since the best it will do is android 2.3.7, I opted for my laptop instead to study further. I started reading up on the Ren'Py engine and downloaded it. It looked simple
enough and came preinstalled with it's own tutorial. This in turned got me interested in the Python language.
Long story short, I "borrowed" a short story from an author on the web and because I have no drawing skills, I resorted to downloading free pictures from places like unsplash. Within a couple of weeks, I had a working kinetic novel. I sent an email to the author of that story and got no response, However I was so inspred with my accomplishment I started learning about different tools and other assets I could use.
I found another story, read the first few chapters, emailed the author with my idea, and to my surprise was as interested in it's development as I was!
Six months later, I released my first kinetic novel here. It's only been out for a week, but has 183 downloads so far. The author loved it, and pretty much has given me free reign with his story. Out of respect to him, the story was cut and pasted into the KN. The only edits were misspellings and in a couple of places I had to rearrange a sentence or two.
Currently, I'm working on chapter 2 which will have more game like elements as I learn them.