Some Interesting News Bits happening in the Blog Fiction World. Some old, some recent, all of it was news to me in the last week. This is a little longer than usual since I've covering December as well.
Abandoned Sites:
- Diary of a Dhampyr in England hasn't had a new story post since November. Fortunately, a post last week by the author indicates that it may spring back to life.
- The Time Traveler Blog - Only 1 post since august 2008 and nothing since November. I think it's safe to declare this abandoned.
Site Redo
The Super Hero blogs each took a temporary hiatus. Fortunately, they used the time to migrate their separate blogger blogs into a single Wordpress blog. I love the new look. It makes reading them together a lot easier. Great job guys, the new site looks great! All the old posts have been copied to the new site.
Hiatuses
(Un)Dead Man Blogging has decided to take a hiatus. Not sure when he'll be back. "Maybe" late spring.
New Sites:
I've provided links to all the new blog fiction sites that have come by in the last couple months. You can read more about each one in the Blog Fiction Links forum.
Minimal English | Sketches of Absurdity
Asher Marr | Cyberpunk
Detling Adventures: Lake Wobegon meets X-Files
Treasured Vulva
Diary: Alone on Earth
Wren & Marnie's Guide to World Domination
New Sites, but then abadoned:
- My Super Hopeless Romance was a good find. Too bad a new post has been added since I found it in early December.
- http://fictionblogs2.blogspot.com/ used to be a site that listed blog fiction sites. It had been abandoned for years. Late last year it was redesigned and posted a couple articles. Since then it's been abandoned again. - Oh well.
Back from the Abyss
- The Captivity of Wrigley the Cat - This site was abandoned last summer. Good to see that it's come roaring back.
- Life in Bear Country - My word. What once was lost, now is found. After I complained about the whole thing disappearing, the author, Marsha Loftis, stopped by to let us know that, not only is she rewriting the story, but that she has also made the original available on her site. SWEET!
- Evangeline's Ride went on hiatus in early december. Then, after some brutal reviews at webfictionguide.com I was afraid that it may not come back, but, fortunately, just as promised, the story is going again and posting every friday and monday.
6 comments:
Hey, thanks for the link to Wren & Marnie, I appreciate it!
No problem, tie.
Luckily you put it in the forums in time for me to notice so it could go in the January news roundup otherwise it would've probably waited until February.
I'm excited to see your project play out. I like seeing experimentation in the blog fiction format. In your case, not only do readers see multiple character's blogs, but the characters see each others's blog entries. I'll be really excited if you also plan on responding to people's comments 'in character'.
Hello
Wilf's World is taking a long break. I'll let you know when he's back. Cheerio for now and thanks, Dustin.
best wishes
Addy
Wilf, I'm sorry to hear that. Can I ask why you're taking a break?
DustinM:
I found your http://blog.blogfiction.org/ website back around Thanksgiving holiday weekend 2008. I have returned to it today 2 February 2009 in an attempt to contact you. I did not find any email address or any direct contact link, and so I am using the comment link for this particular posting of “January '09 New Roundup” as a way to get through to you. Also, I have 4 to add to your Roundup. I hope this is acceptable. You may contact me directly, hereafter1956 at gmail dot com – James C. Harwood.
I have been asked by a friend in England, who has a friend at Google, to write a Google Knol at http://knol.google.com/k about Blog Fiction. I believe you are more qualified. For a knol to have more than one author is allowed, and it is ok for more than one author to write separate knols on the same subject. There is information there about how to write a knol and what is acceptable. Fairly simple.
I want to go ahead and tell you how I came to the subject of Blog Fiction. I'll try to be brief, but that is not an easy thing for me!
After 10 years of submitting to agents and publishers, my science fiction novel was first published as a paperback in May 2003. It was only available through websites such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Walmart, etc. It was not displayed in bookstores, so buyers would have to order it online and pay for shipping. It was overpriced, which I had no control over. I was in line at a grocery store near my former home in Wichita, Kansas, [now living in Norman, Oklahoma], and noticed a display of a new novel from Dean Koontz. His hard cover book was selling for half of what it would cost to get my paperback plus shipping. Who would spend that kind of money on a paperback from an unknown author? A few did. I was given a sample and was impressed with the cover, paper, and print quality. It was a new small publisher in Nebraska, who was very hungry for new authors. The publisher didn't realize that I had put my email address in the novel for readers to contact me. I got a few emails from readers. The problem is that the publisher claimed there hadn't been any sales at all! I was being ripped off! I took legal action, got out of the contract, and terminated the publisher.
It was then published in May 2004 as an ebook by a new ebook publisher in Australia, who happened to be another published science fiction novel author. Top quality product. Fair price. A few sales. The only problem is that the big print publishers got into the ebook act and used their influence to shut out new small ebook publishers. He could not get his ebooks displayed at Amazon or any other major websites listing ebooks, unless he could submit a minimum of 100 titles, pay a $5,000.00 distribution fee up front, and give up nearly 50% of the retail price to the distributor and websites. Therefore, his ebooks were only listed at his website. By 2006 he was forced out of business.
I started my first blog at Blogger.com in March 2005, shortly after my 49th birthday on 5 March 2005, just to be a combination of personal and professional postings. It was not until after I moved to Norman, Oklahoma, 3 June 2008, that I noticed significant improvements at Blogger.com as result of it having been taken over by Google.
It was in November 2008 when I first began to think about putting fiction in blog postings, and wondered if doing that would be acceptable at Blogger.com. I wondered if there is such a thing, and so I did a Google Search for what I guessed would be the right key words: “Blog Fiction” and then “Blog Fiction Defined.” I read about it at Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog_fiction and then found your website. After that, I decided to proceed.
First, I decided to write a continuation of my science fiction novel. I liked the “fictional journal” option mentioned at Wiki. So I decided on a journal written by the new general manager of a hotel located on a Mercatorian colony planet at a major crossroads of the Interstar Trading Worlds. Think of the movie titled “Hotel” but set on a distant planet. How then to explain the blog? Well, of course, the general manager of the hotel is regularly visited by a time traveler from Earth, who makes use of Blogger.com each time he returns to Earth and our present time!
Second, I decided to make the ebook version of my paperback novel available as a Blog Novel. Originally, I wanted to be able to upload the ebook version to a Files section, like at Yahoo! Groups, so that readers could download it from there, but Blogger.com does not yet directly have that option. I was then confronted with the problem of how to post it, since the most recent posting is listed first at the top. The story in “HEREafter, Book One: A Mild Case of Death” alternates between an interview format and a standard narration and dialog format. It is like you see in some British movies about the person who has returned from a great adventure and is telling his story to another person. The scene of him telling his story then shifts to scenes within the story. The person being told the story, in an interview setting, can ask the storyteller questions, and make comments. Some critics note that with that kind of story you know the adventurer wasn't killed and has survived to tell his story. Therefore, I killed him, partly to prove the critics wrong, but it was just a mild case of death. The “Chapters” of the paperback were changed to “Parts” in the ebook version, and those were then converted to “Interviews” for the Blog Novel version. I posted them in order. The final posting, the permanent main page posting, is the cover, title, and contents page, with hyperlinked contents titles to take the reader to each separate posted Interview. I left the Blog Archive listed on the left side of the page for additional easy navigation.
Third, meantime, I was able to do more with the ebook version than what is normally done with most ebooks. I eliminated the PDF and similar versions in which internal hyperlinks are not possible. So I did a MS Word version and saved it as an HTML web page after creating internal hyperlinks. In order to streamline the story for easier reading, I relocated a lot of detail to the “back of the book” in a glossarium. For example, a reader can click on the name of a character, which has been hyperlinked, and then be taken to the listing of that character in the glossarium to learn more about that character like in a personal profile. I did that with characters, events, locations, and other subjects—over 300 in the ebook version—195 for the Blog Novel version. To do that I had to create a separate blog for the HEREafter Glossarium. Blogger.com allows for each posting to have its on address. So a reader can jump back-n-forth between the Blog Novel and the Blog Glossarium subjects. Like the Blog Novel, the Blog Glossarium has a contents page as the final posting.
Is anyone out there? A tech friend told me about the http://www.statcounter.com/ free counter so I can know how many people are finding my blogs, and with some information about my visitors. He helped me to install the counters. Not too complicated. Just don't mess with the Edit HTML in Layout. It is much safer and easier to copy and paste the code into Layout – Add a Gadget – HTML/JavaScript – just pit a V for title – paste the code into the main text box. So far, the counter has proved to be very useful. I have been surprised by what it has revealed about my visitors. A few speak English!
Is it possible to make money off of Blog Fiction? Yes. It is like musicians who set up and perform their music/songs in a public park for free, but put out a hat for donations. The Internet – Blogger.com - is the free open public park. PayPal is the hat for donations, and I put a link for that at my Blog Novel website. Blog Fiction is the performance. If a reader doesn't like it, no harm done, because it did not cost a dime. If a reader does like it, but can't afford to give because of the bad financial times most of us now live in, then it is my gift of free entertainment to help ease such difficult times. If a reader does like it, and can afford to give a dollar or more, then it is much appreciated. I have enough confidence in my work to put it out there like that. Have I made any money by that means yet? No. That's ok. I'm surviving well enough on another source of income.
HEREafter is a Shared Universe concept. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_universe Wiki's explanation. Star Trek became a Shared Universe concept series. Different authors have written Star Trek stories since it was created by Gene Roddenberry. I created HEREafter and wrote Book One to be the example to follow. I created the HEREafter Glossarium as an aid for writers as well as readers. The original plan was to use Book One to get exposure, and then make money off of the series of novels. I alone own HEREafter, Copyright, All Rights. However, I'll be 53 on March 5, as my health is in decline, and my time is running out. It is now a free gift to any author who wants to make use of the material. The only condition is that I be identified as having created HEREafter. The HERE of HEREafter is in all caps because HERE is Earth, as in reincarnation. An expedition to Earth ends in a mutiny and crash of a star ship, killing all of the explorers. The souls of 12,301 alien souls are reincarnated – born into present day Earth human life. Now they intend to build Earth's first star ship in order to return home. Each of them has a different story to tell.
Finally, completely separate from HEREafter, is a variation I have created for different authors to participate in a single blog for Blog Fiction. Up to 100 authors are allowed by Blogger.com for the same blog. The one common setting is a hotel. The hotel exits can go to just about any location of any place in time where human life can exist. Science fiction, of course, but any sub-genre is acceptable for the different kinds of stories that can be told. From all of those different realms, the characters can interact with each other at the hotel, and tell each other their stories about their experiences. By the way, I'm a former motel manager and hotel night auditor, so I have plenty of fuel for that! After all, some of the people I rented rooms to acted and looked like they could be from another planet! Humor is recommended. For this I've been influenced by the Callahan's series of novels by Spider Robinson, and all the characters who crossed paths at Callahan's Saloon – the first novel of the series titled Callahan's Crosstime Saloon. So far, with no exposure, there have been no hits on the visitor counter, so no readers as well as no authors other than me at that blog.
Through my friend in England, and his friend at Google, I'm now trying to get Blogger.com to create a Blog Fiction Directory, in order to get more exposure by listing those blogs.
My Blog Fiction Links -
HEREafter Book One [Blog Novel] http://hereafterbookone.blogspot.com
HEREafter Glossarium http://hereafterglossarium.blogspot.com
HEREafter Tractus [The Innkeeper's Journal] http://hereaftertractus.blogspot.com
Kaleidoscope Hotel, Bar, and Coffee Shop http://kaleidoscopehotelbarandcoffeeshop.blogspot.com/
Nonfiction -
My personal/professional blog HEREafter Ebooks http://hereafterebooks.blogspot.com
This “comment” and attempt to contact you has turned out to be much longer than intended, but I hope it proves to be useful to you and anyone interested in reading or writing Blog Fiction.
I hope you will consider writing a Google Knol. I have not yet decided to write a knol and what I will put into it if I do and if on the subject of Blog Fiction.
Respectfully,
James C. Harwood
Hey D.,
Thanks for the shout and glad you like the new diggs... It's taking a minute to get used to but we like it. We've also got a few new writers - which we are completely psyched about.
Take care...
J-Renzo
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