Bad News Double Whammy for Blog Fiction Readers

This news is pretty old, but I've been out of the loop for a while.

Just when we were all getting ready to settle in with Wilf's first book, we find out his publisher has just gone out of business.

The slightly droopy news is that, The Friday Project has stopped being a publisher because it ran out of money. Even droopier news is that the money ran out before, 'Wilf's World' was made into a book.

I'm not sure of his plans or how this affects his timeline of when he'll be back or have a book published. I guess my eyes will have to get used to the computer screen if I'm ever going to read his entire blogposts.

Also, it appears that the very popular site Anonymous Lawyer has been hit with a bout of writer's block.

I wish I had more to say as this guy right now, and I keep hoping I can force it, and throw posts up there hoping it'll spur me to get back into the groove and hit some well for this character that I haven't yet explored. Obviously the biggest part of it is that I'm not working at a law firm, and so I'm not being hit with the ideas and inspiration I'd get if I were really living in Anonymous Lawyer's world. That's not an excuse, it's just an explanation. There will be more that I have to say as this guy, I'm sure of it, and hopefully some of you will enjoy reading it. It just hasn't been there while I've been working on some other writing projects, and it's been long enough thinking in this character's voice that maybe I've needed a bit of a break from it.

For a while very little was getting posted over there. Unfortunately this made some of his most loyal fans more than a little antsy.( see comments here and here for examples). I can empathize with both sides. As you can tell, it's launched a mini-controversy among his readership.

On the reader side, I do hate it when a blog or website I love goes AWOL. I hate not knowing whether or not a blog is active or not. As I've written before a writer should announce to his or her readers if there's going to be a temporary shutdown.

On the other side, I've now been blogging in some form or another for a year, I admit that life and writer's block happens. While a writer should let their readers know what's going on, this means that the writer has to face the fact that they can't do something that they love doing. That can be hard.

Ultimately, I think it falls on the writers of a website to let their readers know what's going on, but, I don't think asking for some understanding from your readers is too much to ask for either.

10 Sided: Dissecting a Disaster Part VI (The Good Stuff)

This is now my sixth post in the Dissecting a Disaster series. Follow the link for the beginning.

I saved the best for last. Not everything in Ten Sided was a total disaster. This can be seen in the romance that developed between the writer of Smooth Blue, Toni , and the writer of J-Meister, Jez. Their stories are so intertwined that you can't talk about one without talking about the other.

At the beginning of the story, Jez starts out as the typical gliding through life bachelor who's looking for something more. Toni is also seems unsatisfied with life. Presumably that's what led her to her online gambling habit and eventual decision to runaway away with Jez - but I get ahead of myself.

The J-Meister blog starts out kind of funny. It definitely sets the tone that Jez does not understand blogging. He goes on to a couple posts that make it sound like he belongs with the house arrest blogs, with all his hallecunation of blue women (obviously, a reference to another Ten-Sided blog).

Meanwhile, Toni is introduced to us as a lonely, timed woman who uses the internet to reach out to get away from her life.

During the first 3 weeks both blogs stay pretty isolated with only fleeting references to the other people in Ten-Sided. However, April, the two blogs start getting intertwined into a story that's not only readable, but enjoyable.

Everything started with a seemingly through away comment by Jez back in mid-march.

Oh and another thing Tim. Next time you mention that nurse from Manchester I met at Martin's party and how I might have been married to her by now if I hadn't lost her phone number I really am going to hit you.

April 2nd things get interesting when Toni makes a direct reference to Jez.

Then I met this guy at a party. Jez his name. He was a right laugh and I thought we’d make a great couple. When he said he’d call me I believed him and, like a fool, I sat in waiting for the phone to ring. But it didn’t.

And again on the fourth:

Back home I thought I’d try ringing Jez to cheer me up. He was out but his mother was in. That woman certainly can talk. She went on and on and on about nothing in particular. Not only that, I forgot to leave my number and I’m definitely not going to risk calling again. Couldn’t face going through that again.

By the next day, Jez decided to respond.

she mentioned something about a lovely chat she'd had with a friend of mine on the phone, and why couldn't I be more like that - a bit more human (yawn yawn). I asked her who she meant ( I knew it couldn;t be Tim) and she said it was a nice sounding girl, who said she was a nurse or something. God, my stomach lurched then. What was her name? Did she leave her number? What did she say? Of course, my bloody mother couldn't tell my anything useful - no number, no name. She'd been too busy telling the poor girl about her latest trip.

From there, Brim took on the role of matchmaker. Each of the characters had already connected with Brim, so Brim "connected" the two of them together. This partially happened through comments and blog posts.

From there, the two of them go on to a long, complicated romance. If these two blogs were pulled out of Ten-Sided and stood alone, I'd call the project a delight. I won't give away the ending. Some of you may enjoy reading the rest (though to warn you, it does get a little weird for a couple weeks of posts).

To conclude the lesson here is how these two authors connected. One referenced the other to offer an opening for a connection(Jez talks about Mandy). The other then made a very strong attempt to connect with the other(Calls Jez's Mother). Jez and Brim take it. Jez and Mandy (AKA Toni) go on to tell the story of a romance from both viewpoints. That's definitely a lesson that a group blog fiction could learn from.

Super Hero Invasion

I guess it's super hero week this week. Yesterday I posted about the batman marketers. Today is a follow up to the Super Hero blogs I talked about a while ago.

The characters all exist in the same "world". Each of the blogs references the other 4. Sometimes the characters will even comment on each other's blog. All of the 5 characters have their own Blogger account. So I don't know if it's 5 people on each blog or if it's 1 person writing all of it on 5 accounts.

Well, I've been visited by the authors and, as it turns out, there is one writer for each blog. That's awesome. Currently, That makes it the only [update:] one of a few(see these two related blogs) still running Blog Fiction that uses the Many to Many format. On top of that it's one of the first successful Blog Fictions that's written by more than one person.

Super Hero characters dominated the Golden Age of comic books and is what made earned them a permanent ficture in our popular culture. It would be an interesting historical coincidence if it was Super Hero characters that helped launch the Blog Fiction genre.

Anyways, if you haven't already, go check out the blogs. I haven't listed them in the sidebar yet, because I'm still trying to figure out how I'm going to arrange their feeds.
Leroy J. Power
Terra Stone aka Elemental
The Enigma Known As Brice
Mr. E. aka weird Wellington "Edwin" Mallard

New Batman Movie Promotion

The people who's job it is to promote the upcoming Batman movie, The Dark Night, are trying their hand at some viral marketing. They have put up a sample of a Gotham newspaper, The Gotham Times. There's a mock campaign website for Harvey Dent for District Attorney. Finally, the website I find most interesting is the mock "drudge report" style blog, the Maiden Avenue Report.

Normally I find these types of marketing campaigns to be boring and pointless. (see Cloverfield) However, I really like this one. Without seeing the movie I'm not sure how much information we're being given that we won't find out in the movie. That being said, there's no way we'd have the level of detail we're being given in those sites.

The newspaper, blog, and campaign sites are giving us almost a play by play of how Harvey Dent gets to be a District Attorney. Based on summaries of the movie and my knowledge of Harvey Dent, I'm guessing that he'll already be D.A. once the opening credits are done. That would mean that we're really seeing story and background revealed. To me that makes it more than simple marketing\advertising and crosses into story telling on the web -which I find cool and interesting because I think that it would qualify as a commercial Blog Fiction.