The Apocalypse Blog: A Review

The Apocalypse Blog is a blog written by the fictional character Faith MacIntyre. The blog is her account of the end of the world as we know it. The blog posts in real time almost everyday and is still running. Because of how much text there is in the story, I have decided to do a review without reading the entire thing. I believe though, that I have read more than enough to give an accurate review.

Plot:
The Apocalypse Blog is exactly what it's name implies. It is written by a character who is living through what seems to be an apocalypse. The story opens with a women, Faith MacIntyre, diarying the apocalypse of her personal life -Lost friends, and boyfriend. In the middle of her trying to piece herself back together, the actual apocalypse happens.

When I say the Apocalypse, I mean it. Giant bomb, blotched out sky, no government, killer rain, violent roving gangs, and the list goes on and on. Faith, and a haphazard group of survivers she travels with strive to stay alive and find their loved ones from their pre-apocalypse lives. The story is written by Faith as she and her group faces each new and terrible obstacle.

The group involves fire fighters, doctors, kids, and future odd assortments of people. Faith's moral strength and her spirit's fortitude make her the unlikely leader of the group.

Unfortunately, external threats are not the only thing they must face. The differing personalities and prejudices are all things the threaten to tear the group apart from the inside. As you can imagine, drug addicts and fire fighters don't get along great. Faith's delicate negotiations just barely keeps the group together.

Format
It is a Standard Blog Fiction-that is- a single blog with a single fictional author. It relies entirely on text, so no pictures or videos. A post is usually between 750 and 1200 words. Their is a new post almost every day(including weekends!). The blog also posts in realtime, so a day for us is a day for the characters. The only peculiar thing about the site is that comments are turned off.

The content is definitely R-rated. There are many violence and horrific scenes as well as limited sexual content.

Pros
There is a lot to like about this blog fiction. Obviously, the best part is the story. The story presents an ever present ever escalating sets of danger. Whenever Faith thinks she can relax, something awful happens. Either their goal turned out to be fool hardy or someone she depended on dies. Speaking of dieing, there is a lot of that in this story. People are constantly dieing - even people you may not expect. The constant danger adds a great sense of suspense for the reader.

Another great thing is that the characters are flawed. While everyone has their strengths, they also have weaknesses or characteristics that are less than admirable. As a reader, I felt that I was reading about a random selection of real, actual people.

Another great thing is the mood setting descriptions. It works to create a sense of despair when one reads about broken buildings and hollowed out stores. It makes the reader feel like they are walking around in this terrible world.

The sheer amount of writing cannot be ignored. The fact that there is a new post everyday is quite the accomplishment. The volume and consistency is to be applauded.

Finally, they broke the mold when they made this site. The layout of the site is about as flawless as they come. Posts have dates and times, archives are easy to reach, and the text is easy to read. I like the dates and times at the top of the posts. When there are more than 1 post per day, the times of each post are important. Although, I would've liked better if the times were below the post titles. For some reason my eyes keep wanting to skip over the date and time of the post. In the future, I will be directing people to this site as an example of how to put together a Blog Fiction site.

Cons
The Author has done just about everything right except for one thing: the writing. The problem is that it reads like I'm reading a real life diary. That probably sounds like a strange criticism since my definition of Blog Fiction reads in part "diary fiction" so I try to elaborate.

The story doesn't read in a way that I feel like I am experiencing it. While reading the story, I never once thought, "don't go in there!" or "why did she do that?". The reason is that it felt more like somebody was telling me what happened which, any editor worth his salt will tell, is a cardinal sin in fiction(show, don't tell!). In the case of this story it hurt it in three major ways. It takes away a lot of suspense, it adds a cloud of unbelievability, and makes it difficult to relate to the characters.

Uncountable are the number of scenes that could have been exciting if they had been shown instead of told. I'll just give a few examples. The first example is when the group tries to cross a broken bridge by car. The bridge starts falling and they have to reverse all the way back to the bank before the falling steel catches up to them.

There was a moment when all four wheels were off the ground. My stomach was left in midair as the bridge fell at least a foot, leaving our tyres to catch up. We kept going, as fast as we could, swerving recklessly towards the bank.

This is exciting stuff, but that paragraph is the only thing the describes how they made it back to the bridge. Imagine if it was a longer and gave a play-by-play of the action. Something like:
The tires were squealing as they went into reverse. I was slammed forward in my seat. I turned around in my seat. We were careening toward an abandoned car. I pointed at the car, "Look out!". Ben swerved the wheel to the left. I was shoved into my seat and my head slammed against the window. I looked up and saw the bridge fall directly in front of us. The front of the car started tipping forward. My stomach dropped. I heard the back wheels spinning in the air. This is it, I thought. Then the car slammed onto something solid and we continued rolling backwards onto the bank.
If this was the only action scene that was told it could be ignored, but almost every action scene is like that.

It's not just suspense that's sucked out of the story by summary writing technique. Humor is too. There is an august post that had a potentially humorous passage.

So off we went. Sneaking through the streets, creeping up towards the depot, we were like ninja in cracked boots and rainbow scarves. We were less ninja-like when we fumbled around inside a warehouse, trying to find somewhere to watch the depot from without being seen. It was more like a comedy of shushes and thumps and muttered swearing.

This could've been a lot funnier if we had experienced the comedy of shushes and thumps as they happened. Instead we just get a passage about how funny it was. Which is about as funny as your roommate telling you something funny that happened at work. There's a reason those stories end with "you had to've been there".

Other strange scenes are skipped over with a short summary. Check out this excerpt.

When we settled down for the night, I checked on Ben’s injuries. The poor guy had been holding onto Thorpe and then had all of us jumping on him so that he didn’t slip away too. He kept telling me that he was okay; I had to threaten to get the doctor to look at him before he’d let me make sure.

I think he was telling the truth. I didn’t get the chance to check thoroughly – it was dark and Ben was very distracting. I’d never dared to hug him before, because I didn’t want to hurt him, but we did a lot more than that last night. Hurt was the last thing on our minds, lips or bodies.

Here he comes with breakfast. I can’t stop smiling.

Wait a second! What is this Seinfeld? I think she just yada-yada'd over sex. Maybe she didn't want to be graphic, but even the leadup was skipped over. No passionate kiss, or light touch on the leg, nothing. We're expected to just accept that Faith examining Ben's wounds lead to sex.

That leads to the other problem. Believability. I read a post about Faith's group fighting off a gang.

I’ve heard that higher ground was an advantage, but I didn’t realise how much until I saw the fight across the mall. It was so frustrating – I wanted to be over there helping, not wincing in sympathy from such a distance. I caught myself shouting out directions – look out, over there – as that was all I could do. The sharks definitely came off worst this time around – the others drove them off without too many problems.

Really? How did the group (which at that point only had a few healthy adults) fight off a large group of healthy young men. I could believe it, if I was shown how it was done, but instead I'm just told that it happens. This is just an example of nearly a half dozen scenes where we're told that the group somehow fights off another group. Call me a pessimist, but I don't buy it.

The final way the telling hurts the story is that it's very hard to relate to characters when we are only told their actions instead of seeing them. There is a scene where the characters must decide what to do next.

Thorpe asked if we should forget about trying to get across the river and move on to the next marker on our map. I think that’s the first time I ever saw the big fella and the doctor agree about something (Masterson is usually of the ‘why bother?’ attitude).

I asked which one of them was going to tell Dillon that we weren’t going to look for his family because it was a bit difficult. Neither of them had an answer for me; even Masterson didn’t want to break the kid’s hopes like that. If we can face Stripers and fight off sharks, then we can cross a stupid river. That was the end of that idea.

This seems like a conversation worthy of seeing and not summarized. While we do get a sense of how the 3 people approach life, we could've seen more if we could've witnessed the conversation. I'd like to have seen Faith get upset at the suggestion of abandoning Dillon's destination. I would've liked to have seen the two men cowering at the thought of breaking Dillon's heart. I would've liked to see Faith's moral fortitude rubbing off on the group. Instead, we're just told that it happens. We're not allowed to see the conflict between the three, which means that we, the readers, never have a chance to ask ourselves, "whose side would I be on"?


Conclusion
The Apocalypse does a lot of things right. It has great characters, the story is horrific, and the site layout is just perfect. Unfortunately, the writing fails to capitalize on all those great things. When I first started reading my attention was held. However, after dozens of summarized action sequences and arguments, my interest waned and I had to force myself to keep reading. That's why I would only recommend this site if you're really into horror or post-apocalyptic stories. Overall I give it a:
5 out of 10

Entrecard User Script updated

For those of you who were using my entrecard script, if you upgraded to firefox 3.5 you probably noticed that the Move Back link was missing. I've fixed the problem and now works just fine with firefox 3.5 I didn't add a new link, I just updated the old one so my original post links to the latest script.

The updated script is here.

What should I do with lost Blog Fiction

As most of you probably know, I have a forum dedicated only to listing all of the blog fiction available on the internet. I've had it up for a couple years now. Over the last few years some of the Blog Fiction listed has been taken down. That means I have a lot of broken links and etc...

I was getting ready to just outright delete these entries, but something stopped me. Right now I have probably the largest collection of Blog Fiction both past and present. I asked myself, Would I and the internet be losing something if I deleted the last piece of evidence of some of this early blog fiction?

So I wanted to ask you all. Is it worth preserving these links and brief descriptions? Should I move them all to a broken link section? Or maybe I should sync up all the broken links into one topic. Or, maybe I'm being silly, and just need to delete them. I'd love to hear your opinions. The Forums\ is getting pretty clogged up, so I'm setting a deadline for myself. In one week the broken links will be dealt with one way or another.

Writing your first Post: Get on with it!

When writing a book, the first page of a book is the most important because it is going to be the most read page when it's sitting on the shelf at the bookstore. It better be good, or the other pages aren't getting read. The same thing goes for Blog Fiction. If the first post isn't interesting, you may not hold your audience.

So how do you write an interesting first post? Well, first of all, don't write one that reads like an online dating profile. e.g.

My name is Mary Nextdoor. I am 33 years old and live in Manhattan. I'm 5' 6'', blonde(natural), brown eyes, and have curves. I love my pets, hate my parents, and only go to church on Christmas eve.

Luckily, most people haven't written anything quite that boring, but I do see a tendency to always want to introduce themselves. Here's some real examples.

The Professional Pet's first paragraph

Lets start with the basics, my name is Fluffy and I live with a family in England. Yes, I'm a pet and I'm still pretty much a baby as you can see from my picture. Most people comment on my name because, well, I'm quite clearly the least fluffy thing you are ever likely to see. Lets be honest, a mouldy carrot has more fluff than me! Why am I called Fluffy then? My owner thought it would be funny... I didn't agree. I wiped the smile off his face when I left a little present on his bed though, hehe.

Wilf's World's First Paragraph

My name is Wilf and I am eight, very nearly nine years old. I would really like to be called 'Buzz' like, Buzz Aldrin but my parents wouldn't talk to me when I tried to change my name. I mean whoever heard of an astronaut called 'Wilfred'? I live with my parents who are extremely old and like to visit garden centres and stare at things. My favourite place (apart from The Science Museum of course!) is my bedroom or inventroom, as I like to call it. I have a computer in my inventroom and its name is Dexter. I named it after my best friend, Dexter. I am sad to say that Dexter is a bit slow and so is the computer-ha! Anyway, I want to tell you about my world because I can. The first bit of my story has to do with Christmas. Mum says this is always a difficult time. Too right. I'll start you off tomorrow as I have to go to bed now.

Great Swan Alley first post

I was born on Great Swan Alley in the April of 1725. Or rather I should say, I was left in a doorway on Great Swan Alley in the April of 1725. I do not know where I was born, or of what parentage, but I am on a quest to discover.

In all 3 examples, the character introduce themselves. Granted they all find little ways to make sure it's not boring, but the goal shouldn't be "not boring", it should be "so interesting a reader just HAS to read the next post".

When reading a Blog Fiction, I like the ones that form the first post, just "Get On With it!" There is no introduction, the writer just jumps into a story where the fictional blogger already has a problem. I love blogfic that starts that way, and I'm willing to bet your readers will too. I'm not sure what the formula is for writing a great beginning post. So the best I can do is post some examples that work.

Here's from the first post of The Voice of the Living

We’ve been running all night, and the sun is about to rise. I hope and pray that we are not the only ones who’ve made it out alive, but from what we saw back there, I find it unlikely. With me are Dr. Graham York and Pte. Hannah Johnson, and right now we consider ourselves the only survivors after the outbreak of infection in the state of New York.
Due to the aggressiveness of the virus, there’s a good chance it has spread even further by now. That would explain why no help was sent for us.
Right now, our main priority is getting in touch with any other survivors out there. I will continue documenting everything, so that if we do not survive, our story will.

Reading this really makes me want to continue reading it. It makes me want to find out several things. "Where did they make it out of?" "What kind of virus was this?" "Were these 3 involved in making it?" "Are there other survivors?" I want to keep reading because I want those questions answered.

From the first post of Alone on Earth

I awoke this morning to a slight humming noise. I thought it was coming from the communications center. But, I turned it down low in case of any incoming calls or email. I went outside and just as it started, it stopped. Ralph was whining the entire time. The humming lasted only about 2 or 3 minutes. A few years ago I would have said it was coming from power lines. Except there are no power lines any longer. I need to take Ralph in to town for a checkup. He’s been acting funny for the past few days.

This is another great example of a story just starting. It too makes me want to keep reading. I want to know "what was that humming that woke up the blogger?", "Who or what is Ralph and why has he been acting funny?", and "where is he that there are no power lines?" In both cases the stories above did eventually introduce the characters, but they did so either a little at a time, or well enough after the first post that the reader should already be hooked.

One more piece of advice on your first post. I've noticed that several blog fiction writers try to be clever by making their first post be a "test" post. That is, they right a post that just has the word "test" or "test post" in it. I do get that they're trying to emulate real bloggers that might have done this. Unfortunately, this is being done so much that it can no longer be considered clever. (see I woke Up in Pittsburgh, Modern Vampire, Ten-Sided) Just... GET ON WITH IT!!!

Forum Problems Fixed

I know I haven't been around a lot.

fortunately, the problems with registering in the forums has been fixed. So at least you can post in the forums. I do watch the forums for new postings as well as comments.

Thanks for visiting

Faster EntreCard Drops

Earlier this year I wrote about Entrecard and how to make the most of it. One of the key parts of EntreCard is "dropping".

Dropping
The final way to earn credits is the most intensive, but is also the primary earning for a blog with little traffic. You can go to other sites that have EntreCard and "drop" on them. Not only will that site earn a credit, you will too. As a bonus, many sites will often do "dropbacks" meaning they will drop on your site if you drop on theirs. If you find people that do that each drop doubles in value. My suggestion for doing drops is to bookmark a few blogs everyday that have the following characteristic:
1. Have an EntreCard
2. Are of a related subject
3. Have the EntreCard widget towards the top of their site.
Then put all of those bookmarks in the same folder(I use the firefox "Delicious" add-on and give all the sites the same tag). Everyday, go to that folder and choose the "open all sites in this folder" option. Then, go to the bathroom or make breakfast. By the time they are done loading you can click-close-click-close each and every site. Once they are all loaded you should be able to do about 50 or more drops in 5 minutes. Also, monitor your "dropbacks" and see who returns your drops. Delete the sites that do not and replace them with sites that do.

As Dropping is the most time intensive part of EntreCard I'm always on the lookout for ways to do it more quickly. I've come up with a way to find people's EntreCard's faster and completely eliminated requirement 3 from your drop list.

Here is what you'll need.

1. The Firefox Web Browser
2. The GreaseMonkey Add-On
3. Click on this link to install the EntreCard User Script

Once it's all installed what will happen is that whenever you visit a website that has the entrecard widget it will move it to the top left of the webpage. For Example, here is my blog before installing the user script:


Now, here is what it looks like after installing the script


You may wonder what happens if you don't want the website's entrecard in the top left corner. Looking again at the picture and you will notice that not only that the card is moved, but there is now a black box below it. After dropping your card(even before if you really want to), you can click the words in the box, "Move Back", and it will move the Widget back to where it was originally placed.

I wrote the script with the thought that I could now put any website in my drop list regardless of where they placed their widget; however, I have found it useful during my normal browsing too. It's a good way to be notified that someone has an EntreCard on their site. And with the "Move Back" button you can easily move the widget back to where it should be.

Hope you guys find it as useful as me.

New Layout

How do you guys like the new layout?

It's a pretty radical change, but I think it was needed. Over the last couple years I had hacked up the layout little by little until it was no longer coherent. So let me know what you think. If it is panned across the board I'll consider restoring the old layout.

There Is No eBook Standards "War"

Last week, PC World had an article last week suggesting a Format War for ebooks is brewing - One similar to the HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray format war. The latest catalyst was Google's entrance into ebooks. I think this is a little (actually VERY) over hyped situation. There is almost no similarity between the next gen DVD and eBooks.

HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray was years in the making. That battle cost the involved businesses millions in R&D, manufacturing, and marketing. Worse still, consumers who picked the wrong side were left with hundreds, even thousands of dollars in outmoted equipment and disc.

The first difference with eBooks is that there are more than 2 options. Sony has their own style(lrf\lrx) and Amazon has their own style (AZW), also there's ePub which is an openly developed standard. Also, there's formats transferred from PCs (such as PDF, text, html, etc...). Oh, and there's also Mobipocket and a dozen other formats that you probably haven't ever heard of. So that's the first difference is that there are more than 2 formats in competition.

For Blu-Ray(Sony) and HD-DVD(Toshiba) there was a financial incentive for the businesses to want their format to succeed. They wanted to collect on license fees. They collect a fee for every machine, or software program written that could read their format. They even charge a per disk fee for every disk that is manufactured and sold. The companies had every reason to want their format to beat out the other one.

There isn't that incentive for ebooks... mostly. The state of most eBook formats fall into 1 of 3 general categories:

1. Completely Open and Free(with or without DRM)
2. Open without DRM, Closed or license for DRM
3. Proprietary

No license for the first category. There is some incentive to win a "standards" war for the second and third category. However, not nearly as much as disks. License fees are only collected for programs that consume or create the eBooks. There isn't a per file cost as there are with DVDs. In addition, many of the programs to read the formats are given away for free by the companies.

The third and most important difference is that, with the eBook "war", is that it's near impossible for the consumers to lose. The Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD, the loss for consumers was easy to see. If a consumer bought the "losing" equipment they are now out hundreds - even thousands - of dollars in outmoted equipment and movies that they will soon not be able to play on anything. The hardware of Blu-Ray used different hardware and lasers than HD-DVD.

Ebooks are software! If you have an ebook writer that can't read a certain format the manufacturer can always release new "firmware" so that it can read a new format. Better still you can always convert from one format to another (hopefully legally). A practice that wasn't really an option with physical disks. This really is the most important difference. Consumers don't have to worry that they might be buying a 300$ brick.

So if you agree with my dismantling of a "format war", how do we look at all the different ebook formats out there? A better model to understand what is going on is to look at the previous format competition for digital music format and word processor document formats.

Both digital music and word processor document formats that have already been fought and settled, have a lot more in common with ebooks. All three had more than 2 options, difficult to leverage license fees from the winner, and all 3 are software based.

Not only are these better models, but they give us 2 different results of the results of the ebook format competition.

One scenario result would follow the results of the digital music formats. In digital music, mp3 won. MP3 is a open and free standard that anyone can use without having to pay any company the rights to create, or use mp3s. There are still proprietary digital music formats, of course. But in every case-be it Windows Audio, iTunes, or a CD ripper- if your program can't convert to or from mp3s it is just plain primitive.

The other scenario is the word proccesor documents. A long long time ago, there were lots and lots of word processor programs. Each company would try to outdo each other by supporting their own proprietary document format as well as their competitors. There was no effort to make a standard across all applications. Eventually, Microsoft's doc(.doc) format won and became a de facto standard. Partially from being an able document format and also the proliferation of Microsoft Office. Just like MP3s and music, no word processor dares to enter the market unless it can read and write .doc documents (see openoffice and google documents). Fortunately, they didn't charge other companies for reading their files. Unfortunately, this result left one company with complete control over current and future formats. They also had the upper hand because other companies must reverse engineer the spec as Microsoft didn't open the specification until more than 15 years after it's creation.

• What will happen to ebooks? Will an open format or a proprietary format become the standard? I don't know. What I do know is the following:
• A standard will eventually emerge
• The "losers" will be able to easily convert over to the "winner"
• For a proprietary format to win it would have to be from massive proliferation of content and devices that use the format exclusively. From where I'm sitting, Amazon and it's Kindle device, are the only ones in a position to win that war.
• Finally, and most importantly, none of this should be a factor in delaying your purchase of an ebook reader.

The next 18 months should be enough time to prove me right, or prove me a fool.

Privacy Policy

Because of some new requirements by Google's Adsense, I have to have a posted Privacy Policy to continue using their service. Please consider this post the official Privacy Policy of blog.blogfiction.org

Privacy Policy for blog.blogfiction.org

The privacy of our visitors to blog.blogfiction.org is important to us.

At blog.blogfiction.org, we recognize that privacy of your personal information is important. Here is information on what types of personal information we receive and collect when you use and visit blog.blogfiction.org, and how we safeguard your information. We never sell your personal information to third parties.

Log Files
As with most other websites, we collect and use the data contained in log files. The information in the log files include your IP (internet protocol) address, your ISP (internet service provider, such as AOL or Shaw Cable), the browser you used to visit our site (such as Internet Explorer or Firefox), the time you visited our site and which pages you visited throughout our site.

Cookies and Web Beacons
We do use cookies to store information, such as your personal preferences when you visit our site. This could include only showing you a popup once in your visit, or the ability to login to some of our features, such as forums.

We also use third party advertisements on blog.blogfiction.org to support our site. Some of these advertisers may use technology such as cookies and web beacons when they advertise on our site, which will also send these advertisers (such as Google through the Google AdSense program) information including your IP address, your ISP , the browser you used to visit our site, and in some cases, whether you have Flash installed. This is generally used for geotargeting purposes (showing New York real estate ads to someone in New York, for example) or showing certain ads based on specific sites visited (such as showing cooking ads to someone who frequents cooking sites).

DoubleClick DART cookies
We also may use DART cookies for ad serving through Google’s DoubleClick, which places a cookie on your computer when you are browsing the web and visit a site using DoubleClick advertising (including some Google AdSense advertisements). This cookie is used to serve ads specific to you and your interests (”interest based targeting”). The ads served will be targeted based on your previous browsing history (For example, if you have been viewing sites about visiting Las Vegas, you may see Las Vegas hotel advertisements when viewing a non-related site, such as on a site about hockey). DART uses “non personally identifiable information”. It does NOT track personal information about you, such as your name, email address, physical address, telephone number, social security numbers, bank account numbers or credit card numbers. You can opt-out of this ad serving on all sites using this advertising by visiting http://www.doubleclick.com/privacy/dart_adserving.aspx

You can choose to disable or selectively turn off our cookies or third-party cookies in your browser settings, or by managing preferences in programs such as Norton Internet Security. However, this can affect how you are able to interact with our site as well as other websites. This could include the inability to login to services or programs, such as logging into forums or accounts.

Deleting cookies does not mean you are permanently opted out of any advertising program. Unless you have settings that disallow cookies, the next time you visit a site running the advertisements, a new cookie will be added.

AdSense Privacy Policy Provided by JenSense

How to link to your site

Here's a quick little promotional tip for Blog Fiction writers. I've talked about linking before, but it is a topic worth repeating. If leaving a comment on a blog or a forum promoting your site, don't link to it using the name of your website.

As an example. Instead of saying:
Check out my online fiction site, Improvisational Oblivion.

Instead, say this:
Check out my online fiction site, Improvisational Oblivion.

So, why would you do this? This way when search engines pick up your site, they will record that it's about "online fiction". That way, when somebody does a search of that term, your site is more likely to come up than others. Someone looking for fiction is going to be searching for things like, fiction, online fiction, blog fiction, etc... This is web traffic that you want to get.

If you link to your site using the name of your blog you will only be increasing your ranking when somebody does a search on the name of your blog. Unless somebody has already seen your blog, they are not going to know the name of it and therefore will not be doing a search on it. Also, the name of your site will probably already be in one of the top rankings so there is no reason to try and increase it.

Keep this tip in mind and you'll hopefully start seeing more traffic from google, yahoo, and MSN Bing.

Why your Blog Fiction will never be published

I grew up in a mostly Christian community and didn't learn much about other religions. When I did start learning about other religions I found out many things that fascinated me. One of the things that fascinated me about Islamic theology when it comes to translations of their holy book, the Qur'an. You see, the Muslims believe that the Qur'an was divinely inspired and is the literal word of God. Therefore, any published version of the Qur'an in a language other than the original arabic is considered only an "interpretation" of the Qur'an. It is not considered to be as good as the original. Blog fiction (minus the divine inspiration part) is the same way. A published version of a blog fiction is not going to be the same as experiencing the original online.

Let's pretend that you write a blog fiction site that becomes insanely popular. You have tens of thousands of readers. One day a publisher contacts you and wants to take your blog and make it into a book. Great! All you have to do is take all of your posts, paste them together, and send it in as a manuscript. Or do you? Should you fix all of your misspellings? Probably, well, except for that one that lead to a really long conversation in the comments section. Oh wait, the comments! What about them? Do you put those in the book too? Maybe only some of them? Will it be the same without any or some of the comments?

Let's say you do finally get the manuscript assembled and published. There are a lot of things that make Blog Fiction unique. The interaction, the performance, and the instantness, to name just a few. Now let's think about what would happen to all those things if you were to read a dead tree published version of it.

There is no interaction in a book. Not with the character, author, or other readers. The best you can do is join a book club and talk about it with a few people that may or may not be at the same point as you. There is no performance interaction with the characters either. You can no longer ask them a question when you think of it.

What about the instantness of it? If your blog was taking place in real time you may have been talking about or mentioning current events. Reading it on paper months or even years later is not going to give it the same fresh feel as reading the first time it was published.

I'm not trying to squash anyone's dream of selling print copies of their works. I just want to give a reality check. Fiction created with one medium in mind is going to translate perfectly to another. You may not have to go as far as calling the print version an "interpretation" of the original, but it would be accurate to call it an adaptation, or just a partial reprint.

Time to relearn how to type

It seems like everyday I am turning more into an old folgie. First, I'm complaining about those crazy kids and their new fiction, now I'm being told that I type wrong. Apparently, after a period I no longer need spaces. I only need one. This is true in both APA and MLA typing style. Of course, on the internet it doesn't matter. Two spaces are usually condensed into one, but that doesn't stop me from typing them. It almost pains me to keep my thumb from double-tapping that spacebar after typing a period. I hope other old folgies have better luck changing than I am.

Sony CEO Michael Lynton: Douchebag

Michael Lynton, CEO of Sony's Hollywood studios, really stepped into a pile of you-know-what when he was quoted as saying, "I'm a guy who sees nothing good having come from the Internet. Period." Ouch! He was rightly ridiculed for the statement.

He then tried to *ahem "clarify" his statement by writing an article at the Huffington Post. (For those who don't know, the Huffington Post is where the rich and famous go to blog, because, apparently, there is no other way for the rich and famous to get out their message.)

The premise of the whole article is how piracy is so bad and the mean ol' internet is hurting his profits er... ah... hurting the artists that make him rich... I mean, hurting the creative people that work for him.

my point is this: the major content businesses of the world and the most talented creators of that content -- music, newspapers, movies and books -- have all been seriously harmed by the Internet.

Now, to his credit, Mr. Lynton does pay some lip service to what is great about the internet:

my concern about piracy does not obscure my understanding that the Internet has had a transformative impact on our culture and holds enormous potential to improve the prospects of humanity, and in many instances already has.
*snip*
And yes, new talents have emerged thanks to the democratic and viral impact of the web. Yes, the rise of new distribution platforms for existing content is exciting and rich with promise.

At this point we come to his giant, "but": And that is that the internet has doomed DOOMED! everything that we enjoy reading\watching\listening. He tries to make his point by using several dishonest arguments. First, by using a strawman argument:

But at the same time, I cannot subscribe to the views of those online critics who insist that I "just don't get it," and claim the world has so fundamentally changed because of the web that conventional practices concerning property rights no longer apply; that the Internet should be left to develop entirely unfettered and unregulated.

Nobody is suggesting that the internet be completely "unfettered" and "unregulated". Anyone who has seen an episode of "to catch a predator" knows that law enforcement has a place on the internet. What people are arguing for is that law abiding users have their privacy maintained. Also, people want to make sure that there is an even playing field so that the best service wins, not the richest. His next bad argument is pure hyperbola:

In no other realm of our society have we encountered so widespread and consequential a failure to put in place guidelines over the use and growth of such a major industry.

Really? How about the massive growth and subsequent increase of train accidents in the 1870s that lead to hundreds of deaths because there wasn't enough rules and regulations to guide them?

How about the terrible air pollution caused by rampant industrialization in London 150 years ago, or any of the other hundreds of ecological disasters in history caused by "unfettered and unregulated" growth of new industries?

Need something more recent? How about our current financial crises caused by over leveraged derivatives in the financial industry? No... no... no. All those other things pale in comparison to the "great content theft of the 21st century". Mr. Lynton also stoops to really bad analogies:

Internet users have become used to getting things when they want it and how they want it, and those of us in the entertainment business want to meet that kind of demand as efficiently and effectively as possible. But what has happened online is that if it is 'beyond store hours' and the shop is closed, a lot of people just smash the window and steal what they want.

With this argument, I think we're starting to inch towards what is really bothering Mr. Lynton and his fellow studios. He reasons that people will steal content when they can't get it how they want it. In his crap analogy he says people "smash the window" and grab what they want. That is a poor analogy. What is really happening is that people are finding the store closed, but some street vendor says , "I see you really want that DVD... I sell it to you now, and for less". Now some are honest enough to say no, while others are not. Consumers are trying to get what they want, when the studios won't give it to them, other, less honest brokers, will.

It is so interesting the way Michael phrases his "point". Because I can't disagree with him. Read what he says is his point. He's not saying all artists are hurt, he's also not implying that the quality of the content is being hurt, just the artists that work for him and the other big content distributors. Now, he probably didn't mean to word it like that, but it's still the truth. The major content businesses have been harmed by the Internet, but it is not piracy that's hurting content distributors.

So what is it about the internet that terrifies the major content distributors? The internet means that they are no longer the gatekeepers between the people making the content, and the people who consume it. This is the fight that is playing itself out over and over again for each major content business.

The first industry to realize the danger of the internet was the music industry. The RIAA's grip on the industry was perhaps the most extreme and was the first to start to slip away. The music industry controlled everything from what you heard on radio stations to what CDs were mass produced and sold to big box stores. Now, here comes the internet. Artists no longer have to "sign" with studios. Just upload your music and people can preview and pay for it. Sure, it all started with fighting piracy and they rightfully beat Napster. Since then, they have done everything to keep control - to remain the gatekeepers. They even bought out mp3.com, the most popular music site for independent artists, and let it atrophy into nothingness.

Other commercial products came along. The most famous is itunes. But even then the industry tried to keep control. They only sold "DRM" music. That meant you could only play on certain compturs, certain devices, and could "expire" at any moment. People said, "no thank you" and piracy continued on underground networks like Gnutella.

Now the music industry has just about given up. Some of them are actually letting apple sell their songs with no DRM. It has been a tough slog getting here. The major music distributors are finally selling what Napster was giving away for free a full 10 years ago. And they wonder why people keep calling their industry a dinosaur.

The fight with the RIAA isn't over yet. I bought a new CD last week. It had 18 tracks on it. It cost me 14$. That same amount of music on itues would've cost me 18$. The music industry is still charging consumers more for the same product even though the distribution costs of itunes is less than that of a CD.

The movie and TV industry are having the same fight, it's just a few years behind the music industry. In response to YouTube and other video sites, their first instinct was to sue them all into oblivion in response to "piracy". The biggest sites complied and do their best to take down copyrighted material. The smaller ones disappeared, and were replaced with new ones. Just like the music industry, the MPAA and Television studios were playing legal whack-a-mole - a very expensive game. Worse still, in the absence of their "high quality" content, consumers started finding independent artists that were uploading movies that were just as entertaining as their own crap.

Eventually, the industry decided to start making their content available on demand just like the consumers wanted.(to their credit, this decision came about much quicker than the RIAA's decision) This has given rise to sites like hulu which kick ass and provide a revenue stream to the content creators.

Now let's take a look at the newspaper industry. Newspapers are facing declining circulation. Why? Because bloggers and websites are giving away for free what newspapers are trying to sell. Sound familiar? Their first instinct was to sue away their competitors into oblivion. (just like the RIAA and MPAA tried) The AP started threatening bloggers who Linked to them. They have also talked about threatening news aggregators like Google. This newspaper fight isn't over and I'm not sure how it'll turn out. Although, I'm willing to bet that whatever happens, successful businesses will make money online and stop suing.

The book publishing industry seems to be facing the same thing. There seems to be a huge worry about pirated eBooks. This fight will play out just like the other ones. It is also a fight that I will have a vested interest in as an "independent" content creator. Just like the other fights, the big publishers will try to maintain an iron grip, and they will lose it.

Piracy, even on the internet, is bad. But that's not why people like Michael Lynton try to demonize and belittle the internet. It's a red herring. They use it as an excuse for not giving people what they want at a price that's fair. Mr. Lynton pays lip service to the democratizing effect of the internet, but at the same time he doesn't want to compete on that fair field.

So, whenever the head of a major industry bemoans about how their industry is doomed DOOMED! by the internet, remember why. They might talk piracy, like Michael Lynton, but that's not what keeps them up at night. It's the idea that they no longer have control that keeps them up at night.

70%? Is Amazon Crazy?

When I first heard that Amazon was setting up to stream any blog's rss feed to the new kindle, My initial reaction was ecstatic. I though that this would be perfect for Blog Fiction, or any online fiction. Then I read the fine print.

• Amazon sets the price.
• Amazon takes 70% of the revenue and only 30% goes to the blogger.
• Amazon will not allow any blogger placed ads.
  

I can't make the decision for other writers, however, as far as I'm concerned, Amazon can go jump in a river.

Write first, market later

It never ceases to amuse me when I find a fiction site that has done everything right with one exception, it has almost no fiction. When I first started this blog I did a post, Blog Fiction That Never Had a Chance. Consider this a sequel. Here are a few more examples of people giving up before they really even started.

Neocommon Era, purported to be a news blog from the future, started last September. It got listed at both Web Fiction Guide and Muses Success. Unfortunately, it seems that censorship is live and well in the future because it only lasted 3 posts.

Wren & Marnie’s Guide to World Domination was supposed to be 2 high school friends staying in touch after going to different colleges. They put together a very beautiful word press site and went to great trouble setting up categories for each person. Unfortunately, after less than 2 months later, the 'friends' quite talking to each other. I guess it was a rough freshman year.

The El'zup Prison is a story based "on a Prison where the architect has deliberately left hints for the convicts on how to escape. He believes that the one who is worthy of completing this maze deserves to live a free life". Unfortunately, the writer must have escaped because 2 posts later we haven't had any new updates.

The World Emperor was supposed to be a blog about the secret Emperor of the world. Unfortunately, he must have been deposed because less than a month later no one has heard from him.

This is great. The Voyage of an Intergalactic Space Pirate. It sounded like a fun idea. Unfortunately, it only lasted ONE post!

Here is one that is just plain puzzling. SPACECOM. This is a website where all but one link leads to a "restricted" section. I get that a website could still be under construction, but then why are ads for it showing up on my website? For goodness sakes, get your site complete before you buy adwords.

The Writer's Stand was another great idea. It was short stories, but not a full story like flash fiction. More like an important part of a story. The author spent time in my forums as well as putting ads on his site. Unfortunately, it seems that this writer could only stand for 4 posts before sitting.

As anyone who reads this blog knows, I never mock people for trying to write... as long as they are trying, or at least committed to trying. These bloggers however, I don't think they were trying very hard. Now I get that there is an initial high when putting together your blog, and advertising it, but come on!

Authors, please, write first. If you write it, they will come. If you market it, they will come too, but they won't stay if you haven't written first.

TwitterFic, yeah...

I have to admit, I'm kinda glad that this didn't catch on. I barely understand twitter as it is. I don't know what I'd do if people started using it to publish flash fiction on twitter and call it TwitterFic.

Death's Blog counter-point

After I published my Review of Death's Blog, the author wrote me to explain a couple of my criticisms. The explanations seemed relevant so I got his permission to publish the email here for everyone to read.

Once again, thanks so much for reading, featuring, and reviewing my blog. Although I was hoping for perhaps a slightly more enthusiastic endorsement, I found your review to be thoughtful and reasonable. I just wanted to write a response to you, letting you know a little about the history of the blog.
"Death's Blog" was originally started as a bit of an inside joke. It wasn't intended to be true "web fiction," follow a true narrative path, or garner a big audience outside of a small circle of friends. When I was fortunate enough to attract a bit of press and a following, I began expanding the blog into a more fully realized, serialized format. I did leave the original entries up, but as you clearly saw, there are actually two very different "Death's Blog"s on the site. Even when the format expanded into something more substantial, the narrative or serialized thread running throughout it remains, quite intentionally, very loose. My primary intention is really to give people a good laugh, as would be provided by a humor column in a newspaper.
A number of sites have found the blog and (not unreasonably) categorized it as "web fiction," which has led people to read it beginning to end like a novel would read. If you note the review you quoted from (on a different blog fiction web site) that reviewer actually did not read past the first ten entries or so, and based her review solely on those beginning posts. I prefer to think of the current blog entries more of like self-contained episodes of a sitcom, where one's appreciation of the current writing is not diminished by the earliest "episodes." Reading the entries chronologically, like chapters in a book, would place it more in the category of true "web fiction," and those very early pieces probably do diminish what the blog has since evolved into. Also, I do think that most of the humor can be appreciated without going back to the very beginning.
Again, if you look on the web fiction site you quoted from, there was a user who nailed it in her review by saying that she got the feeling the blog was started "on a bit of a lark," which was exactly the case.
On a separate note, I very much appreciated your comments regarding the look of the blog. I am in the process of reworking the format, so it will have an entirely new look when it resumes.
Keep up the great work Dustin. I think you're providing a wonderful portal for people to expose themselves to some great writing that's taking place on the internet. Take care and all the best.

Review: Death's Blog

Death's Blog is a humor blog fiction written by a fictionalized Grim Reaper. The blog picks up right after Death retires. He blogs about dating, his mother, and reminisces about memorable killings. When it started it had new postings 3 to 5 times a week, but posting slowed down through and eventually stopped. Fortunately, the blog is scheduled to come back at the end of this month.

Plot
This is a humor blog. It does not pretend to be anything else. You're not going to find a lot of deep soul searching(figuratively speaking, there IS literal soul searching!) nor are there epic quests. It is simply the story of Death going into retirement, dating, and eventually being pulled into semi-retirement. Every post is quite funny and as the blog goes on the situations only get more ridiculous.

Format
The story is presented as a standard blog fiction, that is, a single fictional character writing a blog. The blog makes good use of it's formats. There are usually humorous pictures to go along with the topic of each post. It will also provides backlinks to past events so you can dive into the blog at any point. Best of all, Death responds to comments regularly.

When starting out, posts were only about 250 - 300 words. However, as the blog went on posts gradually became longer. 500 - 600 words quickly became the Norm.

There isn't any graphic sex or violence. However, the blog still isn't for any kids who might still believe in the "boogeyman". Flesh eating demons tend to get a PG-13 rating.

Pros
It's funny. The cast of Characters are hilarious. The Devil as an umpteen times married pervert, an alcoholic reaper, a clinically depressed reaper, egotistical philosophers, and a never ending cast of Death's victims(well, he uses the word "clients"). All that before we even get into Death's disastrous dating life.

There's also a lot of satire built into the blog. For instance death often speaks like an annoying corporate boss when talking about managing his reapers. Another favorite example of satire is his recounting of when he was delayed bringing a busload of victims to heaven because of heavy "traffic", because it's a hilarious parody of airline delays. Sometimes satire just comes from Death explaining certain how certain rules in the afterlife came about, like the one grocery bag rule.

There's often also a surreal feeling to some of the posts. Like the way Death nonchalantly describes a restaurant in hell where you can hear the screams from the kitchen and human flesh is served. It's just funny reading a description of this the way one would describe eating at Applebees. It's made to seem perfectly normal.

Once you combine all 3 of these aspects you get posts that have you in stiches as you read about Death having to tell the devil not to eat the flesh of a bunch of nuns that were dropped off in purgatory instead of heaven because the alcoholic death wanted to make Happy Hour!

There are other good things I like about Death's blog. He makes full use of the blog format. He uses pictures, responds to people's comments "in character", and links back to past events (usually).

Cons
As funny as most of it is, there are still some problems that plague Death's blog. The first one you will probably notice is the color scheme of the site. White on Black background, as appropriate as hard on the eyes to read. The second thing you'll notice is an even worse problem. The text of published comments are black so you can't read other people's comments without somehow highlighting them.

Another strike against the site is that it starts so slow. You have to slog through about the first 15 or 20 entries to get to the funny stuff. Don't get me wrong, humor is attempted, but it gets old fast. The editor, Donna Sirianni, at Web Fiction Guide, explains it perfectly in her review of the site.

I kept thinking of Norm MacDonald’s Death in The Family Guy when I was reading this and there’s a stark difference between the two. Family Guy’s Death isn’t seen very often so when we do see him, it’s with something new and the laughs at what he does maintain their freshness. With Death’s Blog, it was cute and quirky for the first few entries (I actually read the first ten since they were so short) but I think the schtick got old quick. The constant reiteration that he was once Death and is searching for a new life just dampened the humor that could have been there.

Unfortunately, you can't just skip the posts, otherwise you probably won't get future jokes.

My last criticism are 2 cheesy running jokes in the story. The words "Scythe and "Reaper" being constantly substituted into other common words or phrases. Like "Scythemore University" or "Reapernecking". I know that comedy is subjective, but in my subjective opinion it quits being funny after about the second time you do it.

Conclusion
If you can get over the bad color scheme and slog through the beginning posts you will find a very funny story. As I said in the beginning, the blog will be coming back at the end of this month. So if you hurry, you should have time to read the archives just as your rss feed starts loading up new humorous posts for your enjoyment. Overall Death's Blog does come squeek by with a recommendation. I give it a:
6 out of 10
(rating scale)

Back from the Brink

Two Blog Fiction sites that I had written off as abandoned are once again showing signs of life. Thanks to the Blog Fiction Widget I was able to notice that both The Time Traveler Blog and Trish Tales are posting again.

The Time Traveler Blog had been dormant since Febuary, and before that there hadn't been an update since December. Apparently, however, it seems that it is back to posting weekly.

Trish Tales is also back. Unfortunately, it's been limping along with only 1 post a month. Once it missed April I figured that it was finally over. Fortunately, the writer's wrote into the story an explanation of their absence.

Rating Scale

I already did one review. I have another review coming up. Before releasing it, I thought that I would clarify my numerical rating scale. I wanted to be clear that 6,7, and 8 are very solid ratings. So, if you are looking for a good blog fiction, you should know that a '6' is worth your time, even though it may only translate to a B-\C+

10. Masterpiece - No way to improve it without ruining it.
9. Near Masterpiece - Room for only the most minor of minor improvements
8. Solid, Professional, and entertaining - Better than most writing
7. Recommend taking a look, guaranteed you won't be disappointed.
6. Worth taking a look.
5. Average writing that's Worth a look if you've already read everything else
4. Below Average - Suffers from either bad writing, bad story, bad characterization, or terrible site layout
3. Bad, suffers from several of the following: Simplistic plot or severe plot holes, flat writing, too much "telling", 2 dimensional characters, bad site layout
2. Nearly Incomprehensible story, characters, and\or writing
1. Dan Brown

No Comments?!

I was reading My Super Hopeless Romance the other day and noticed something peculiar about it... it doesn't allow comments! A blog fiction without comments? What's the point? Just write web fiction. Actually, web fiction is more fun with comments too... So you may as well just write a book. Seriously, without comments, I can't give feed back, can't interact with the character, and I can't interact with other readers.

One of the words in Blog Fiction is 'Blog'. While the comments function is not necessary for a website to be called a blog, it is important. As Wikipedia says:

Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs.

Comments is one of the cool inventions that made blogs so popular. So while a blog fiction that doesn't have comments is still technically blog fiction, it's peculiar and... just not as fun.

Use Wikipedia to promote yourself? Don't Bother

I was checking out twitter and found this tweet about Wikipedia from Muse's Success.

Added our link to the Blog Fiction article on Wikipedia. Let's hope it doesn't get removed!

The link did not last more than a day before being removed as "spam". Compared to how quickly most links get removed from Wikipedia articles that's practically a record. Wikipedia is meant to be used as a research tool, not a promotion tool. The editors have a lot of rules in place to keep the site from being used for promotion.

Wikipedia has a "bot" (computer controlled editor) that looks through all articles and removes the most obvious self-promotion updates. What criteria does it use? I'll let the XLinkBot article answer that:

XLinkBot is primarily intended to deal with domains which may have a legit use on-wiki, but are frequently misused by new and anonymous users (or have a history of being misused). The bot allows established users to add links, while reverting links added by others. IP's and new users can still edit a page that contains links on the bot's revert list, they won't be reverted unless they add or change a link themselves.

So if you add an external link, and you aren't a frequent editor, it will remove your link by reverting the article. So, if you're a blog fiction writer, don't bother trying to promote yourself on the wikipedia page. All that will happen is that you'll add an external link to your site and seconds later it will be gone.

Even if you somehow manage to defeat the XLinkBot's logic, you'll still have to deal with human editors. If they think that your link was either self-serving or irrelevant, guess what? It's gone.

It's not worth trying to get your link on the site. This blog was around for nearly a year and a half before someone finally decided to add me to the external links portion of the Blog Fiction article. Now that I'm listed I get about 1 hit every other day from it. So getting listed on that page is hardly worth the time. Rather than trying to defeat the bot and other wikipedia editors, might I suggest something more constructive, entrecard, Web Fiction Guide, or Muse's Success.

A splog stole my content! Now what?

When I started offering full text rss feeds, I knew that I was putting my content at risk for easy theft. I received a google alert for my keyword on a website I didn't recognize. When I checked it out I found a splog that had my last few posts on the website. Eventually, I got the content removed. Being successful, I thought that the steps I took might be of interest to others who have had their content stolen.

1. The first step was of course finding out that my content was stolen. I'll again direct you to Kate's brilliant tactic on prevening rss scrapes for details.
2. My second step was to search around the website for an email address or contact page. I could not find one.
3. My third step was that I left a comment on each post of mine that was stolen. I said, "Stop stealing my content you are commiting a crime by doing so." I then left a link to the original post.
4. Unfortunately, the comments required moderation. I waited 4 days and nothing happened. I decided to go after his hosting company.
   
5. I opened up a command prompt(start-> run-> type "cmd"-> press enter
6. I pinged the domain name to get the IP address of the website (ping domain.com)
7. Once I had the IP address, I went to this website and typed in the IP address and got the information on the name of the company that owned it.
8. I googled the name of the company and found their website. The company was indeed a web hosting company.
9. I located their "terms and conditions" page and discovered they posting copyrighted material was against their rules.
10. I found the company's "abuse" email address and wrote them an email explaining the situation. I included links to the offending content as well as links to the original content. I asked that they contact the owner and have the owner remove the content, or, failing that, take down the website as he was violating their own terms and conditions.
11. A day and a half later the content was removed. I sent a follow up email to the webhosting company thanking them for their help.

I never received a follow up email from anyone, so I don't know if it was the webhosting company contacting the owner, or it was the comments that I left that eventually prompted the offending content being removed. I don't know if following these steps will work for everyone, but they did work for me. Hopefully, they'll work for you too.

Voice of the given up

The Voice of the Living has closed up shop.



It's a shame when Authors do not receive the attention and audience that they are entitled too...

Short Posts or Long Posts

Is it better for your blog fiction to have a lot of short posts, or is it better to have fewer long posts? This is something I've thought about a lot. When I'm reading Blog Fiction, I prefer nice short, bite-sized posts; however, when I'm writing, I seem to prefer writing longer posts. In deciding which is better, I broke it down by pros and cons for each.

There are a lot of things I like about short posts. They are easier for me to read. I can read a short post quickly and get a sense of satisfaction very quickly. When I write short posts that means I can (usually) write more total posts, even if the word count is the same. With more posts, that gives readers more of a reason to frequently check the website for updates.

One of the cons to writing short posts is that your writing can get choppy. If you're stringing together a lot of events, readers may forget certain details. When it comes to new readers, they may get lost because there won't be much context in shorter posts. As a writer, you have to be more careful to provide backlinks or sidebar summaries for your new readers.

There are a couple reasons that long posts are better in Blog Fiction. First of all, when it comes to fiction, most readers are used to long passages when reading fiction. A post that is considered "long" by Blog standards would more than likely be considered very short in terms of chapters in a book.

Another advantage to long posts is the ability to have a more contained story in each post. Each post has a better chance to entertain and interest new readers. A longer post could be more likely to be linked\stumbled\dugg\reddit\etc... That of course means more readers for your blog fiction.

There are of course some disadvantages to longer posts. The biggest thing is that longer posts is going to reduce the frequency of new posts. That means readers are going to be very disappointed if the writer misses a post. This places a burden on the writer to make sure to post on schedule. If you're posting long chapters once a week and miss a week, that means readers will think they have to wait a whole week for an update. Whereas if you're posting short articles everyday, it just means that they only have to wait one more day for an update. In the A.D.D world of the internet and blogs, that might mean losing readers.

Speaking of A.D.D., that brings me to the other disadvantage of longer posts. They are going to be harder to read. Internet readers are used to nice short posts. Better yet, they prefer nice bulleted top 10 lists. It's just like when reading a book. When I read a book, I'm always more likely to read "just one more chapter" before putting it down if the next chapter is only 3 pages, as opposed to 30 pages.

Which is better to do? I'm not sure. As a general rule, I prefer reading blog fiction that has generally short posts (with occasional long posts being tolerated). I'd like to hear from you what your preference is when reading blog fiction (or any online fiction): Long posts? Or Short posts?

Anonymous Lawyer Back!

It appears that Anonymous Lawyer is back from a year long hiatus. Looks like he's been back since mid-April. Based on looking at his posts, it looks like the current world wide recession provided the writer with some inspiration. Almost all of his posts since April make reference to cutbacks and layoffs. It's another example of Blog Fiction giving Instant Literary reaction.

Interacting with a blog fiction

Okay, I think it's time to discuss the concept of "suspension of belief", and, how it relates to Blog Fiction. If you've never heard of the term, I'll direct you to this media glossary article.

In the world of fiction you are often required to believe a premise which you would never accept in the real world. Especially in genres such as fantasy and science fiction, things happen in the story which you would not believe if they were presented in a newspaper as fact. Even in more real-world genres such as action movies, the action routinely goes beyond the boundaries of what you think could really happen.

In order to enjoy such stories, the audience engages in a phenomenon known as "suspension of disbelief". This is a semi-conscious decision in which you put aside your disbelief and accept the premise as being real for the duration of the story.

When it comes to Blog Fiction, the reader must also suspend their disbelief and accept that they are reading the blog of a fictional person. If the writer of a blog fiction wants the reader to believe that they are reading a blog of a fictional person, that illusion needs to be maintained as much as is practical.

So why do I see so many blog fiction sites where the *Author* is the one responding to comments? When this happens it completely breaks the illusion of reading a blog. It is a reminder that you are reading a blog written by a writer not a character. It jars the reader out of the illusion - and that is not good if you want to keep your readers interested. Evangeline's ride is a good example of how jarring it is. Almost every entry I am thrown out of the illusion when I read about how the Author has been busy, or how she's improving her writer, etc...

Some sites, like Fate's Acquittal, started out leaving comments as the Author, but transition to responding "in character" as the story unfolds. I think it got better when this happened as it allowed the writer a second tool to reveal what the character was thinking. It also gave some foreshadowing for the thorough reader.

To those who are reading blog fiction, this article is for you too. If you're reading a blog, be sure that your comments are left for the character as well. If you want to talk to the author directly try looking for an email somewhere on the site. Please don't be like Ian over at Flyover City. In this case you, the reader, are ruining the illusion for other readers.

10 reasons SG-1 more badass than Star Trek crew

Some of you may be wondering why I haven't been posting much. Well, I'll be honest with you. I've been watching too much T.V. My wife and I recently splurged and got a duo-deca-super-mega-kamehameha cable package and ended up with a DVR. I've been taping and watching a whole bunch of scifi shows that I only used to watch occasionally. I've been watching old and new(er) star trek and also stargate. I've just about finished watching the last season of stargate and I have to say, I think I like stargate better. The characters on SG-1 are just so much more badass than those wimps on Star Trek and I'll tell you why. So here it is, my top 10 reasons the SG-1 crew is more badass than the Star Trek crew.

1. More seasons.
10 freaking seasons. Do I really need to say more? The original series only lasted 3 seasons. The next generation, deep space nine, and voyager all only lasted 7 seasons. Star Trek Enterprise only managed to last 4 seasons("Way to kill the franchise, Bakula!").

2. Commited More Deicide than the Klingons
Star Trek crew fought a Greek God and won. Also, they traveled through The Great Barrier, met God, and wasn't impressed. However...

SG-1 killed dozens of gods. Seriously, they would wake up and just say, "I think I'll kill a god today." Apophis, Anubus, Ba'al, Hathor, Ra, Sokar, Yu... the list just goes on and on. Oh and after they killed all of the gods in their own galaxy, the SG-1 team got pissed and decided they weren't done commiting Deicide. SG-1 then traveled to another galaxy, found a bunch of gods, gave 'em all the middle finger, and killed all of them too. Damn! that's badass.

3. Better Resurrection
Spock died and came back to life. Daniel Jackson died and came back to life... twice! Bonus point, Daniel Jackson didn't make his friends spend an entire terrible movie uniting his mind and body. Advantage: SG-1.

4. Medicine
When you're off fighting the badguys, eventually you're going to get hurt. If you're hurt, which would you rather do? Go see a Doctor with a bad attitude or take a nap in Sarcophagus? yeah... I'm going with SG-1 again.

5. Engineering Skills
What's a good scifi show without some good far-fetched technology. The coolest thing Star Trek ever did was create a planet. Pretty badass. But on the other hand, SG-1 would frequently find, escape and manipulate BLACK HOLES. You know, those things that crush and pull everything into them, and here's SG-1 playing around in them like they're a jungle-gym.

6. Enemies
The enemies SG-1 faced were always scary and formidable. Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, they all had about the same level of skill and technology. SG-1 however, always faces vastly superior numbers and technology, and they still blew them the 'F' up. Badass!

7. Alternate Realities
If alternate universis in Stargate are better. Star Trek only had one alternate universe. Granted, that one was pretty badass, but star trek crew ruined it. SG-1 dealt with millions of alternate universes. They even repaired a "rift" between them. They also never convinced their alternate selves to quite fighting which lead them to their eventually downfall.

8. Stress Level
Like any good action show, the people in Star Trek and SG-1 are always fighting for their lives. However, every once in a while the stakes are raised a bit. The most stressful thing for Star Trek was that they had to save Earth. Now don't get me wrong. The fate of an entire planet is one hell of a burden to carry, but, once again, SG-1 was worse off. SG-1 was constantly trying to keep the entire galaxy from being destroyed by, mechanical spiders, power crazy go'uld, and power crazy ascended beings. Yeah, I think being in SG-1 was a little more stressful.

9. Best "Macgyver"moment
When you're off saving the day, every once in a while you have to be channel your inner Macgyver and be resourceful to get yourself out of a sticky situation. Now, Kirk once made a cannon out of bamboo, sulphur, potassium nitrate, charcoal and then fired diamonds into the heart of his enemy. I have to admit that's pretty badass. However, SG-1 HAS Macgyver on their team.

10. Most Cold Blooded Act
Part of being a badass means that once in a while you got to do something cold blooded to let people know what a badass you are. Keeping this in mind, Spock once tried to kill his Best Friend over a women. So much for Bros before Hos. While that's cold, SG-1 wins this category too. How? you might ask. I watched an episode where Daniel Jackson did the most cold-blooded thing I'd ever seen from any character in movies or tv. Goodguy, or badguy. What did he do? Brace yourself.

Daniel Jackson tried to shoot and kill an 8 year old girl.

This really needs repeating. Daniel Jackson, the "HERO" character of the show, tried to shoot and kill... an 8 year old little girl. The only reason he didn't succeed was because his friend stopped him. And the stopping him wasn't one of those cheesy, "don't do it, you're better than that" scenes either. I mean he pointed the gun at the girl's head and was about to pull the trigger when his friend pushed and ruined his aim at the last minute... as the gun went off. Yes, he pulled the trigger without hesitation. Cold! Blooded!

I will say this, Jackson did know that the little girl in question was going to grow up to be like Hitler on the galactic scale... but still. There's that old ethics question, "If given the chance, should we kill Hitler before he killed anyone". Well, if you're Daniel Jackson, not only is your answer "yes", you'll ask for the nearest gun and aim for the face.

Dr. Daniel Jackson... Archeologist and BADASS!
(who shoots little girls)

Who is protecting your content?

I have a question to all authors who write online. Who is protecting your content? If you can't answer that question with a simple, "I am", then chances are, the answer is "no one". It's amazing how much time someone would put into a blog, but never take the time to do a backup.
Whether you host your blog on a shared server or a managed blog host like blogger or wordpress, you are the one that needs to take responsibility to make sure your content isn't lost.

If you don't believe me, just look at some of the terms of service for blog sites. First, let's look at a section of Google's Terms of use:

LIMITATION OF LIABILITY

15.1 SUBJECT TO OVERALL PROVISION IN PARAGRAPH 14.1 ABOVE, YOU EXPRESSLY UNDERSTAND AND AGREE THAT GOOGLE, ITS SUBSIDIARIES AND AFFILIATES, AND ITS LICENSORS SHALL NOT BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR:

(A) ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL CONSEQUENTIAL OR EXEMPLARY DAMAGES WHICH MAY BE INCURRED BY YOU, HOWEVER CAUSED AND UNDER ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY.. THIS SHALL INCLUDE, BUT NOT BE LIMITED TO, ANY LOSS OF PROFIT (WHETHER INCURRED DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY), ANY LOSS OF GOODWILL OR BUSINESS REPUTATION, ANY LOSS OF DATA SUFFERED, COST OF PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES, OR OTHER INTANGIBLE LOSS;

(B) ANY LOSS OR DAMAGE WHICH MAY BE INCURRED BY YOU, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OR DAMAGE AS A RESULT OF:

(I) ANY RELIANCE PLACED BY YOU ON THE COMPLETENESS, ACCURACY OR EXISTENCE OF ANY ADVERTISING, OR AS A RESULT OF ANY RELATIONSHIP OR TRANSACTION BETWEEN YOU AND ANY ADVERTISER OR SPONSOR WHOSE ADVERTISING APPEARS ON THE SERVICES;

(II) ANY CHANGES WHICH GOOGLE MAY MAKE TO THE SERVICES, OR FOR ANY PERMANENT OR TEMPORARY CESSATION IN THE PROVISION OF THE SERVICES (OR ANY FEATURES WITHIN THE SERVICES);

(III) THE DELETION OF, CORRUPTION OF, OR FAILURE TO STORE, ANY CONTENT AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS DATA MAINTAINED OR TRANSMITTED BY OR THROUGH YOUR USE OF THE SERVICES;

(III) YOUR FAILURE TO PROVIDE GOOGLE WITH ACCURATE ACCOUNT INFORMATION;

(IV) YOUR FAILURE TO KEEP YOUR PASSWORD OR ACCOUNT DETAILS SECURE AND CONFIDENTIAL;

15.2 THE LIMITATIONS ON GOOGLE’S LIABILITY TO YOU IN PARAGRAPH 15.1 ABOVE SHALL APPLY WHETHER OR NOT GOOGLE HAS BEEN ADVISED OF OR SHOULD HAVE BEEN AWARE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF ANY SUCH LOSSES ARISING.

(emphasis mine)

I highlighted the important part. If blogger goes down and your blog is accidentally deleted. Too bad. Google is under no legal authority to restore your content or replenish your loses do to the loss of your blog. Google is not alone. Wordpress offers no such warrenties either. From sections 11 and 12 of their terms of service.

Disclaimer of Warranties. The Website is provided “as is”. Automattic and its suppliers and licensors hereby disclaim all warranties of any kind, express or implied, including, without limitation, the warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. Neither Automattic nor its suppliers and licensors, makes any warranty that the Website will be error free or that access thereto will be continuous or uninterrupted. If you’re actually reading this, here’s a treat. You understand that you download from, or otherwise obtain content or services through, the Website at your own discretion and risk.

Limitation of Liability. In no event will Automattic, or its suppliers or licensors, be liable with respect to any subject matter of this agreement under any contract, negligence, strict liability or other legal or equitable theory for: (i) any special, incidental or consequential damages; (ii) the cost of procurement or substitute products or services; (iii) for interuption of use or loss or corruption of data; or (iv) for any amounts that exceed the fees paid by you to Automattic under this agreement during the twelve (12) month period prior to the cause of action. Automattic shall have no liability for any failure or delay due to matters beyond their reasonable control. The foregoing shall not apply to the extent prohibited by applicable law.

Even if you did find a service that took responsibility that they would never lose your content, there's still alway id10t error. You may accidentally hit delete or your account gets hacked.

So what should you do to protect your story? Backup, Backup, and Backup. For my blogger account, about once a month I like to download a copy of both my layout and also an export of all of my posts. I do something similiar for the blog fiction forum. Whenever I change or upgrade, I copy all of the files from my webserver to my desktop and then also export the a copy of the databases.

Granted, my content isn't 100% protected on my computer either. However, I find the chances that my computer's harddrive crashing at the same time as either Google's or my ISPs to be remote. So that's what I'm doing to protect my content. What are you doing? or should I say, what SHOULD you be doing?

I've been interviewed

Check it out...
http://queensjournal.ca/story/2009-03-13/supplement/exploring-world-e-fiction/

It may only be a college newspaper, but definitely making progress in promoting this niche.

Lord Likely Redesign

Looks like Lord Likely spruced up his site. I'm digging the new look.

He's got a new url to go along with his new look too: http://lordlikely.co.uk/

U-Verse is popular

Holy Crap. Not having internet at home sucks. You may have noted my extended absence for going on 2 weeks. Well, I was moving and waited way too long to order my new internet service. For cable, after I call to sign up it only takes about a day or two to have the technician to come up and hook me up. With AT&T U-verse it actually takes more than 2 weeks. So after moving I ended up without internet longer than expected. Combine that with all the hassle of packing and moving I either haven't had time or haven't had the ability to read and post.

Anyhoo, I am back with a warning to readers. If you're getting U-verse for your internet connection, leave a lot of time between sign up and when you cancel your old service.

How to Save Your Spot When Reading Online Fiction

I've mentioned before the problem with using bookmarks when reading blog fiction. The term "bookmark" is the terminology we use to refer to the concept of "saving" a webpage for later. I believe the Netscape coined the term for their original web browser - and it is something I may never forgive them for doing.

Even though we use the same word to describe saving our spots in books and on the internet, we use those "bookmarks" very differently. When I use a bookmark in the physical world, I am saving my place only until I get back. When I return to the book, I remove my bookmark, read and continue reading from where I was. The old "bookmarked" spot no longer exists. In cyberspace when we "bookmark" something we are usually saving it either permanently or at least "until further notice". We use our bookmark to jump back to a spot, but we do not remove the bookmark.

So why is this a problem? It's a problem because now I don't have the vocabulary to describe a "real" cyber bookmark. That is, a temporary bookmark that is erased when I open it. Well, for now I'm just going to refer to it as "temporary bookmarks". Now that my mini rant is done I come to the point of my article. I have found 2 bookmarking services that work like temporary bookmarks instead of permanent bookmarks.

The first service is a firefox add-on called "taboo". The idea behind "taboo" is that not only does it bookmark a page, but it saves any text you've entered into the page as well as how far down the screen your scrollbar is. It also takes a visual snapshot so that when you look at all of your "taboos" you see a nice preview of the page you saved. The service add 2 buttons to your browser. One is a button that will bookmark or "taboo" your spot. If you click it on a webpage that already has a saved taboo a little box pops up that allows to either change the name or description of the taboo and to move the taboo to the current spot on the webpage or you can just remove it. This makes removing a taboo very simple. Load a page, click taboo, click "remove". All of this without using any menu options.

The second button, as you may have guessed shows you all of your "taboos". If you click the button it will open up a firefox tab that shows all the thumbnails of the taboos you've saved. It lists them in the order that they were saved so you can see your latest bookmark -err... taboo- of each website you've visited if you have more than one taboo. Another quicker option is a little arrow next to the "show taboo" button will show a little popup of your latest taboos so you can quickly go back to a page you were reading.

Another bookmarking option I found was called dogear. This service is a little harder to describe. It places less emphasis on the time you saved a page than taboo does. However, the service works with all web browsers because all the information is saved on their webserver.

Here's how it works, when you want to start using it, you click a bookmark called "dogearit". What that does is create a frame at the top of your browser and the rest of the webpage in a frame below it. Then, when you want to "dog-ear" a page, you highlight the text you want to come back to and then left click it. That create's your dog ear. If you highlight other text on the page and then left-click it, it will move the dogear to that text.

To retrieve your dogears you have another bookmark. That takes you to a webpage(assuming you're logged in) that lists all of your "dog-eared" web pages. Then you can click them like any other hyperlink and you'll goto that webpage, scroll to where you left it, and the dogear frame will be at the top of the page.

So, which of these services works best? Hands down "taboo" is a lot better. I use it to read the archives of blog fiction and it works out great. The dogearit service is too slow. When the frame is on the page, it seems to almost quintuple my page load times. Unlike taboo, it is not as easy to remove a dogear you no longer want. Plus it seems I'm always getting logged out of the service so I waste time trying to log back in.

There are a couple things that dogear does better than taboo. First of all, any browser can use it. So if you use Internet Explorer, Safari, or Chrome dogear is pretty much your only option. The second thing is how the services handles saving your spot in a page. Taboo only remembers how far down the page you scrolled. That means if the page changes by adding content to the top, your scrollbar will not be in the same place. Dogear remembers by keeping track of the text you highlighted. Dogear will take you to that portion of the page regardless of where it is. So, if dogear ever solves the speed issue, it might become as good, if not better, than the taboo firefox add-on. Until the speed issue is resolved, however, I would recommend using firefox and taboo if you're looking to use temporary in-page bookmarks.

While taboo and dogearit solves a couple of the problems with reading online fiction it does not resolve them all. For instance, if you're not reading in a chronological order (which is definately a possiblity with blog or any online fiction) you can't keep track of what you have and haven't read. It does however, solve 2 big problems. It allows you to do an in-page save - this is especially helpful if you're reading multiple blog posts on a single archive page(i.e. all August posts). Also you can remove a temporary bookmark easily so you don't have 3 dozen bookmarks on the same webpage.