My Writerly Blog

I stumbled upon an online story a couple of months ago through one of the digital fiction feeds I actually pay attention to. It was a really fun, neat little story, and I subscribed to the author's feed because I wanted to read more of his work. That first story was completely free online and on various readers (Kindle included). It was a story that used elements of the new digital world, but was essentially a straightforward print story online. Nothing incredibly innovative, just good writing. It was fairly popular, though, to date generating 72 comments (not bad for a non-commercial, non-controversial post). I didn't get any further posts from that feed for quite some time. The second story that came out was under a different model - the Kindle version was for sale, and once 100 Kindle copies had sold, he would release the free online version. It took only a few days for the free version to go up. After that, he began a new endeavor: a not-yet-written novel (novella, ...

No, there's not much chance I could keep up with things enough to post a weekly update every week. But I wanted to pull together a collection of the things I've been looking at and reading lately. Please add on to it in the comments if you know of something I might enjoy! Chris Joseph's blog Flight Paths Drunken Boat The Iowa Review Dreaming Methods ( Consensus Trance is the most recent, and it's great fun. I particularly love the way the author has incorporated nonlinear and ludic elements in a primarily linear story.) Net Art Commissions on Turbulence ELO's Electronic Literature Collection e-Fiction Book Club Novelr Digital Fiction Show And a short story on the web that I absolutely loved: "Mr. Penumbra's Twenty-Four Hour Book Store" by Robin Sloan It's interesting to me that electronic literature is already splitting off into a gajillion splinter genres: visual novels, ludic stories, digital poetry, twitter fiction, serials, Flash fiction (...

It was inevitable: give me three weeks on my own, with no work responsibilities, and I will read. Straight through. I haven't been able to actually read a book since the winter break; between teaching classes, marking papers, researching for the PhD, and trying to squish in some writing here and there, I just don't have the free hours to drown in a good novel these days. The closest I get are audiobooks when I'm cycling or running. So when I picked up two books on a shopping expedition last week, I knew I was tempting fate. The first had me curled up on the couch for two days, plowing through it. I had to take breaks, however, as Ben Elton's Blind Faith managed to hit on my two major phobias: crowds and enclosed spaces. His take on an update of 1984 is focused on the YouTube concept of us becoming our own Big Brothers, watching each other, with privacy actually becoming illegal. You're never alone in his world, always surrounded by people, pressed in, group...