January '09 New Roundup

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.
  

Did I miss anything? Have your own January '09 news? Let me know in the comments.

October News Roundup

Some Interesting News Bits happening in the Blog Fiction World. Some old, some recent, all of it was news to me in the last month. I know I usually post this on the last or second to last day of the month, but I can't quite seem to squeeze it in lately.

Novelr on hiatus
Novelr announced early in October that the blog will be on hiatus until December 4th. Nothing too unusual. Novelr is known for taking occasional breaks. With the quality of his observations and dedication to blooks, I guess we let him.

BlogRush Over
Obviously my damning review of that useless BlogRush widget did them in. BlogRush has announced that their idea and experiment is over. It's a shame really. I think the idea had merit, but they didn't experiment enough with it. They did try different things, but one thing they never messed with was the look of the widget itself. A shame, really. Something that was better at drawing people's eyes might have really helped the thing.

Newly Found Blog Fiction sites
Some really high quality blog fiction sites found in the last month or so. (well, in some cases, they found me) All of the ones below were found this month and are still active.

Evangiline's Ride
Follow the story of a girl as she and her band go from nobodies to rock & roll super stars. Jealousy, romance, and tension laces every post.

Tapestry
A fantasy diary of a family as they struggle to survive living in a world ran by a corrupt kingdom.

A Stab in the Dark
Believe it or not, A blog fiction that is based on a video game. Follow the story of a Rogue in World of Warcraft

The Diary of a Dhampyr in England
Follow the story of Tavoris Tarvoris, a half vampire half human. Great conflict right from the start.

Did I miss anything? Have your own October news? Let me know in the comments.

September News Roundup

Some Interesting News Bits happening in the Blog Fiction World. Some old, some recent, all of it was news to me in the last month. I know I usually post this on the last or second to last day of the month, but my day job has been reaking havoc on my blogging and reading time.

GGR hiatus
Purhaps the saddest news of the month was the announcement that Giant Girl Rampages is going on hiatus until further notice.

We're not ruling out Melly's eventual return, but we're not making any promises either. We've been working behind the scenes to recruit a new team of writers/illustrators with the time and energy to pick up where we've left off, but dream teams are hard to come by.

New Blog Fiction sites:
There are 2 new sites in the blog fiction list that are still active. Time Traveler blog is one of them. The other is in french-so I THINK it's active.

Lord Likely gave me 500 credits
Three cheers for Lord Likely!!! (Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!) He was kind enough to give me 500 advertising credits for entrecard. If you have an entrecard please go to his site and drop it on him to thank him. (stop and read his site too - it's hilarious for anyone who deosn't mind the "adult" humor)

Muse's Success launch.
It looks like there is another alternative to Web Fiction Guide and Pages Unbound. Muse's Success is still pretty young, but it's mission is ambitious: "create a catalogue of each and every web based novel (or serial) available on the World Wide Web. In addition, we allow our visitors to review stories within our catalogue, and also provide a community in which authors and readers of web based novels can interact and communicate." I'll be watching it to see how it will differentiate itself from the other internet fiction rating sites.

Tech Babe and Jason X meet.
Some interesting developments over at The User Pool. For quite some time, the fictional characters Tech Babe and Jason X have existed quite separately in their own little worlds. They only conversed in the online world by leaving and responding to each other's comments. In recent postings the characters recounted meeting each other in real life. Could this mean there could be some future drama between the two? I don't know. It would be very interesting to see though.

Did I miss anything? Have your own September news? Let me know in the comments.

August News Roundup

Some Interesting News Bits happening in the Blog Fiction World. Some old, some recent, all of it was news to me in the last month.

Novelr taking a semi-break
Eli James has let us know of a planned "study break" until December. Unfortunately, that means a lot fewer posts. The online fiction community never seems quite right when we're deprived of Eli's insight.

Pages Unbound is closing down.
In a sad move, Pages Unbound is shutting down. Alexandra Erin didn't have enough time to run the review site and forums. Pages Unbound was a busy, well frequented site, and a great resource for finding quality fiction online. It's absence will leave a huge gap and need. Fortunately, another site has risen to fill that need. Which brings us to the next news bit...

Web Fiction Guide now has forums
In response to the loss of Pages Unbound, the editors at Web Fiction Guide installed a forum. The forum isn't Blog Fiction centric, but covers all online fiction which include Blog Fiction.

Seeing Blog Fiction published
This is really old news, but Undead Man Blogging is working on getting published. Still waiting to hear about Star Islanders being published.

New Blog Fiction
I found 2 new blog fiction sites: Death's Blog which is still active, and BlogPaige which is not.

Unknown Ship, Unknown Planet gone.
Unknown Ship, Unknown Planet has done a disappearing act. One that would make "Life in Bear Country" jealous.

Unannounced Leaves
Unfortunately, there are a lot of blog fiction sites that seem to be taking unannounced leaves.
A while ago, Fleet Commander teased us with a possible comeback. Unfortunately it didn't materialize.
The three Super Hero blogs, of Leroy and Enigma have not had a post since July 8th. Hopefully they weren't defeated by a super villain. Terra is still blogging sporadically.
Peep this Diary also teased us with a comeback. With only 2 posts back in early July and none since, it may have been premature to call it a comeback.

What was news to you this past month?

July News Roundup

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.

New site: Web Fiction Guide.

Jim Zoetewey visited the forums to let us know about a new website that he is apart of. It has a very professional layout. The core list of editors consists of both writers and web professionals.
There are the core reviews done by the editors, and also, anyone can register with the site and leave their own reviews. The easy navigation of the site alone will makes it an up and coming competitor to Pages Unbound. Also, if you're a writer of web fiction, you can send them updates about what you're doing and may get it published for added promotion.

Star Islanders being published.

Star Islanders is a standard blog fiction that I recently found. It posted consistently until the end of 2007. The latest post there says that she is working on a print version. I'll be curious to see how that goes.

Peep this diary showing signs of life

Peep this diary, the historical Blog Fiction site is showing signs of life after an unannounced break. The authors there had posted consistently since 2006, but suddenly stopped this past April. Earlier this month the blog showed signs of life and even tried to tie the absence in with the story. They also added fictional twitters.

Anonymous Lawyer in mothballs

Anonymous Lawyer announced his temporary departure in march and has posted nothing since. I think it's safe to declare it mothballed. That sucks, I liked him.

Horton's Folly Springing back to life

Horton's Folly went dark around mid April of this year and without explanation. This month it's come back posting regularly. The author, via email, has also indicated that posting will be more regular. Welcome back Horton, you crazy crazy person you.

Life In Bear Country still AWOL

... and I'm still kicking myself

Blog Fiction going on vacation.

That's right. I will be taking a planned 2 week vacation from this blog and forum that will be starting next week. Unfortunately, the important task of maintaining this blog will be interrupted by the frivolous activities of Holy Matrimony and something called a "honeymoon". I'll be gone July 30th until August 13th.

Bad News Double Whammy for Blog Fiction Readers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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