I've been publishing fiction since the late 1980s, and writing prose fiction – that thing that I do behind closed doors, silently, for a long time – remains my true love. The short story and the novel offer both readers and writers different pleasures, but for me these are equally intense and satisfying. However, during the 1990s I began to stray a little, and found myself developing skills for screenwriting, a form that, as I like to proclaim to the occasional student who wanders my way, has only one thing in common with prose fiction – typing.

And then at the beginning of the 2000s (well, what else can we call it – 'twenty-first century' still sounds too futuristic to me), I came across a whole new idea: digital fiction, stories that exist on and for the computer screen. I took up a post as Research Fellow at the trAce Online Writing Centre, as part of a larger project trAce had undertaken to look at the relationship between writers and the internet. Although by then I’d been teaching online for a while, it was through this fellowship that I first got an inkling of the creative potential of computers, and began to see a way ahead for myself as a writer in this field. And since then I've been writing for the new medium with increasing enthusiasm. It seems only sensible to be creating fictions that make the most of the multimedia opportunities offered by these powerful machines that we spend so much time of our precious time sitting in front of and staring at.

In 2004 Arts Council London gave me a grant to work with two collaborators on a full-length digital novel called 'The Breathing Wall' (www.thebreathingwall.com). 'It seems only sensible to be creating fictions that make the most of the multimedia opportunities offered by these powerful machines that we spend so much time of our precious time sitting in front of and staring at.' I worked with a Berlin-based writer and software pioneer called Stefan Schemat, and a Montreal-based web artist called babel. This was the first truly computer-based project I’d undertaken; the internet afforded the close contact on which such a collaboration thrives, while the finished piece requires its readers to form a physiological bond with their computers - sections of it reside on software that allows the computer to respond to the rate of the reader’s breathing. You breathe your way through the story.

The software involved in this project (called 'The Hyper Trance Fiction Matrix', a name you’ll find either amusing or alarming, depending on your overall view of these things) utilises electronic files that take up a lot of space and, as a result, 'The Breathing Wall' is too large to live on the web and instead resides on CD. And, while this is all well and good, one of the things I like best about the web is the fact that it can allow for a free exchange of information and publication without the overheads and restrictions associated with the book trade.

The idea for my current project came about when a former student of mine, one of those wanderers mentioned earlier, Ian Harper, approached me; he was developing a large project that includes a game, a film, and a gadget and wanted to put together some kind of innovative web campaign to promote all three elements. After some discussion, we came up with the idea of publishing on the web a series of inter-linked multimedia short stories that tell the back-story of the main characters in the film and game, Alice, a games animator, and Brad, the game character she creates. We’d start at the beginning, with Alice as a young girl, developing her animation and game-design skills through Brad. Each episode would use visual images, movement and sound as well as text to tell what is, essentially, a self-contained short story. And so Inanimate Alice (www.inanimatealice.com) was commissioned. We launched Episode 1 in October 2005, and not long after that we set up Alice’s fictional blog as a way of harnessing online discussion created by the stories.

For me the whole thing is a kind of elaborate, multi-layered experiment, and the commission (after all, it's not every day I get commissioned to write short stories!) was a welcome opportunity to create further work for the web. It was also a good opportunity to work once again with babel, one of my collaborators on 'The Breathing Wall'; one of the things digital writing shares with screenwriting is the absolute necessity for collaborators. For Inanimate Alice, I write the script, which includes the structure of the piece and the text that appears on the screen, while babel (otherwise known as Chris Joseph) does everything from cameraman to musical score composition, and Ian Harper, our producer, sits at the back, wheeling and dealing and smoking a big virtual cigar.

We’ve recently found out that Episode 1 has won a major prize, the first Premio per l'arte digitale, or Prize for Digital Art, awarded by the Italian Ministry of Culture, Department for Cultural and Environmental Heritage, DARC (General Directorate for Contemporary Architecture and Art, www.darc.beniculturali.it), MAXXI (National Museum for 21st Century Arts) and the Fondazione Rosselli (www.fondazionerosselli.it). We have just launched Episode 2 upon the world and have plans in place for number 3. Whether or not we’ll reach our goal of creating all ten episodes remains to be seen, but that’s the plan.

The web is an ideal platform for the short story and I have great hopes for this project. So, turn on the sound on your computer and have a look at the stories and, if you feel inspired, post a comment on Alice’s blog.