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.