Zombie Lawmen? Where the heck did this come from!?

Well that's weird. I've been doing searches of the term blog fiction for months now and I have never seen any "Blog Fiction" ads from google. However, when I did a recent search, I found this:

Click picture for full size image.

An ad for something called, "Zombie Lawmen". The description read, "Where Justice is Dead! The very best in Blog Fiction". Naturally, I couldn't resist checking out the site.

What I found was, "disappointing", to say the least. All it was was a weird graphic, a parental advisory warning, and 3 links useless links leading to websites that were just scum-sucking domain squatters. At this point, I was completely confused.

After doing a quick google search of "Zombie Lawmen", I found a copule websites that shed some light on the subject. Apparently, this (now defunct) Blog Fiction effort was launched by a company called GMobile Media. They have a description of it on their main page.

Zombie Lawmen™ is a Blogworld set in an anarchic future where the heroes of the Amercian Old West are raised from the dead to bring law and order back to Tombstone, Arizona: "The Town Too Tough To Die.”

I also found a blog post about it from last year. You can read the summary of Zombie Lawmen here. The whole concept sounded really interesting, if a little far fetched.

So what happened to it?
Why are ads still appearing for it when it's obviously an abandoned project?
When it was still around, was it any good?

When I have some time, I will try and find the answer to these questions.

The "Fake" Blog Explosion

For a year and a half, the blog Fake Steve Jobs was a runaway hit. One, because it was a entertaining parody and, two, because of the mystery surrounding the blog trying to determine who the "real" Fake Steve Jobs was. It was so popular that, once the identity was revealed last August, that even the New York Times announced that the mystery of the wrote an article about it.

That article must have introduced the blog to a lot of people because shortly after the article(and probably many many others) were printed, a whole slew of copy cats flooded the internet. Almost all of these hard working copy cats lasted only a few months until the blog ended or was abandoned. Now come on, If you're going to be a copy cat, at least put some work into it. If you want somebody to spend time reading your writing, you should be either original or spend a lot of time working on. Most of these copycats did neither.

The Secret Diary of Jonathan Schwartz:
This was a darn near exact copy of the Fake Steve Jobs blog. The title was the same, The Blogger template that was used was the same, only the widgets were slightly different. It started in August - right after the New York Times Article was printed. It limped all the way to November before being abandoned.

The Secret Diary of Brad Stone:
This hard working mocker of the guy who outed Fake Steve Jobs, lasted only 4 days past a month and only 13 posts.

The Secret Diary of Hillary Clinton:
It's amazing how politics can bring the best out of people... Luckily it doesn't bring out hard work so we don't have to endure them for long. Like so many of these "Fake" blogs, it came in with a lot of posts at first and then limped on until it was abandoned a few months later.

The Secret Diary of D.A. Carson:
It's amazing how religion can bring out the best in people... This very original blog copied the title and template of Fake Steve Jobs. It started right after the New York Times article. This hard working sinner only lasted 2 months.

The Secret Diary of Greg Swann:
Here's an esoteric diary that only our Australian friends would probably get the jokes. Thankfully for the rest of us, we aren't missing much. This fickle Aussie blogged for a grand total of 7 days.

As you can tell, I really don't like unoriginal, lazy, copy cats. To get a glowing review from me you don't need to do much. You only need to do one of two things. Be original\different, or show some work ethic. I will never mock anyone who works his\her butt off, or for trying something new.

As far as "Fake" blogs go, I will continue to link to ones that are active. Also, if you're thinking of doing one yourself, please, don't make it exactly like Fake Steve Jobs right down to the template and description. There is plenty of ways to be original in your "Fake" blog. Also, if you're shooting for the same popularity as Fake Steve Jobs, take note that he had over 1700 posts in 2007. In other words, you're probably going to have to type your fingers to the bone.

Did Blog Fiction peak in 2005?

Lots of new things in popular culture follows a certain pattern. Somebody does something new and/or different. It becomes popular. Everyone talks about it. The genre is then copied repeatedly until every hack is trying to do the new thing. The novelty then peaks. People quit watching the crappy copies and only the best survives. People quit talking about it because it's no longer new and just becomes part of the culture.

Examples of this were variety shows on TV Variety shows gained popularity in the 60s, especially the Ed Sullivan show. Then in the 70s it really peaked. Any idiot that was famous got a variety show. Now, the closest thing to variety shows that we have are late night talk shows and SNL.

The same thing happened in the 80s with standup comedy. Every bar owner thought they could be the next Improv and every office "funny guy" thought he could be a comic. Well, the number of stand up clubs eventually declined, but stand up is still done in clubs that know how to run a comedy club.

With that in mind. It seems like interest in Blog Fiction peaked back in 2005. Considering that they only started in 2003 that's pretty quick. I know things go fast on the internet, but this is ridiculous.

I keep find articles and websites circa 2005(or earlier) about Blog Fiction and very little since. Don't get me wrong, people are still writing Blog Fiction, but nobody is really writing about it. Here's some of what I mean:
FictionBlogs is a list of Blog Fiction that hasn't been updated since January 2005.
Over on BloggersBlog all of their posts about Blog Fiction were in 2005 with one January 2006 exception.
Blog-fic.com used to be a gathering place for Blog Fiction writer's, but now the site is gone and has been replaced with a scum-sucking domain squatter. (Link not included so as to discourage people going to these sites.
Over at Grand Text Auto, an active blog "about computer narrative, games, poetry, and art", hasn't had an post about Blog Fiction since 2005 as well.
The yahoo group fictionalbloggers started and peaked in 2006. It hobbled along until the middle of 2007 and died (right about the time I found it, of course)
The most recently active site that was dedicated to Blog Fiction was Betsy's Phony Bologna blog. Unfortunately, shortly after finishing her thesis she had to stop writing about them to concentrate on her job.

I think you're starting to see the point. Based on all the searching I've done, Novelr and I are the only ones left still writing about Blog Fiction. And Novelr writes about the more broad topic, Blooks. Or, at least, we're the only English websites still talking about it. I don't think that's a good thing. If more people writing about them, I think it could help to increase the blog fiction audience. I think it's healthy to have multiple views and angles about a subject. I hope more people will pick up the subject.

If I do find a site, or a section of a site, that is dedicated to blog fiction I will link to it. So far though, there are none that I know of that are still active.

Blog Fiction and Blogrush

The concept of BlogRush is simple enough. Every time someone loads up a page on your blog, BlogRush will show 5 random blogposts from other bloggers. In exchange, someone looking at a different blog will see the title of your latest post. The more visitors to your blog, the more your posts show up on other's. There's other factors to determine how often your blog's posts are shown, but I won't get into that. You can read about it yourself.

As for driving traffic to your site it's decent. On this blog I get one or two visitors every other day. For Terran Resistance it's less. More like 1 or 2 a week. I have to assume I'll get more once the blogs themselves get more traffic. Considering the low traffic of this blog and even less for Terran Resistance it's worth my while considering it's a free service.

I'm still experimenting with it to see if I can get more or better traffic. And by "better", I mean letting people know what to expect when they click a post title. For instance, if I a post title is called "Engine Test" people might think it's about cars or search engines. When I have some time I'd like to see if I can somehow slip the word "story" or "blog fiction" into my blogrush feeds so that people know what they're clicking on. Right now the only targetting is that I put the Blog under the "writing and literature" category so it'll only show up on other "writing and literature" blog sites.

The best part of the service is if you're just starting out you'll get "bonus" credits which means that even though your blog is new with no traffic you'll get "free" views. Bottom Line: There's probably no downside to picking up this widget and putting on your Blog Fiction site.

Is Blogger Favored among Blog Fiction writers?

Wordpress, Blogger, TypePad, Nucleus. These are just a few of the many many different ways that you can blog. All of them are popular and have a lot of users. However, which of them is most favored by us Blog Fiction writers? Of all the Blog Fiction that I've found, here's the breakdown of the software that is used:

Blogger:
Anonymous Lawyer
Captain Picard's Journal
Ten-Sided
(Un)Dead Man Blogging
The Darth Side
Wilf's World
Atyllah the Hen - Chicken with Attitude
The Professional Pet
Confessions of a Blogger
Transplanted Life
Modern Vampire
The Astonishing Adventures of Lord Likely
Horton's Folly
Secret Blog of a TV Controller
Fleet Commander
The New Year's Resolution
Diary of a Killer
Fictional Blogs of Original Super Heros

WordPress:
The diary of dastardly deeds, space cowboy
Yanni's Block
Confessions of a CEO
Life in Bear Country
The Mexican Year
Up and Onward (Confessions of a Super Hero)

NucluesCMS:
Action Figure Diary
Unknown Ship, Unknown Planet
Terran Resistance

Square Space:
The User Pool

TypePad:
Peep This Diary

As you can see Blogger is the far and away favorite amongst blog fiction writers. WordPress is a distant second. Or is it? As I've documented (twice), google tends to favor blogs hosted on Blogger. So, I had the thought that the reason so much of the blog fiction I've found is hosted on Blogger is because that's what comes up in my google searches.

Therefore, I started trying to tailor my searches to find blog fiction not on Blogger. In my first try, I succeeded. After doing a search on typepad "blog fiction", I found a blog fiction called The Cranky Product Manager. I've added it to the Blog Fiction List, and, since it's active, I've added it to my feed.

Over the next few days I'll be trying to find some non-Blogger blog fiction to see if Blogger really is favored, or if it only seems favored because it's easier to find.

Site Changes

I've made some changes to my site that I want to mention.

I'll start with the most superficial. I changed the style of my headers on the side bars to make it more apparent that they are clickable links. I've also rearranged some information on the right to put the more relevant information towards the top. That is, the link to a list of all of the blog fiction that I've found so far.

Second, it saddens me, but I'm removing Random People, Random Ship from the feed list. It's been nearly 3 months since a new post on that blog so I have to declare it inactive. This will probably be temporary since the author says that he'll be back soon.

Finally, due to the overwhelming response of my reader(s). I've decided to include a list of "Fake" Blogs that I've found. I have a feeling that I'm going to continue to find a lot of them and their feeds would overflow my sidebar feed list. Therefore, I won't include their feeds on my site. However, they will be listed with a link to their respective homepages on the right.

Grammar Check!

Bad grammar or bad spelling can ruin even the best story. No matter how compelling the characters or how witty the writing style, no one is going to enjoy it if they have to take out the teacher's pen before they know that hell you're trying to say. If your writing has someone "sitting at the table and eating desert" or have a driver "cames to an complete stop", it's going to jar your reader out of the story. You don't want that to happen, and neither does your reader. That's why it's important to edit your writing before publishing.

Grammar rules apply for blog fiction as well. Last night I was reading the archives of a blog fiction and kept finding myself having to reread sentences because of bad spelling or grammar. It was really distracting. It slowed down my reading and I couldn't get through the posts as quickly as I'd like.

Now, in the world of dead-tree publishing, fixing a grammar or spelling error is not a cheap thing. It requires printing a second edition and configuring a new press and distributing the new copies. In the digital world that blog fiction lives, it takes about 5 seconds to fix. (30 if you're using dial-up and god help you if you are!) That's why I think Blog fiction writer's should occasionally reread their older posts. If you see a grammar error, fix it. It won't change the story, just make it easier to read for new visitors. Don't abandon those old posts until you've reread them at least 2 or 3 times.

I once read a counter argument about editing a blog fiction post after hitting the "publish" button. It said that it lent "authenticity" because people make errors when posting to real blogs or diaries. That is total BS. When speaking in everyday conversation people will say "um...", "uh...", stammer, pause, etc... but it doesn't mean you should include those in your character's dialog.

In fact, dialog is a good analogy. When writing a novel authors only have their character's speak poorly to convey something. Like a 5 year old might mispronounce a word. The author does that to remind the reader that she's only 5. Another example might be someone stutters in their dialog because that person is nervous.

The same principle can be applied to Blog Fiction writing. The only reason to have bad grammar is if you're doing it on purpose for a plot point or character development. Maybe it's a joke that your character always misspells the same word and it gets him in trouble at work - or something. Otherwise, don't do it.

So, there. I'll quite channeling my 11th grade English teacher now.

Are "Fake" Blogs, Blog Fiction?

I've been wondering for a while if I should include "fake" blogs in my list of blog fiction. First though, some definitions on what I'm talking about.

First of all, I don't mean a hoax blog. That is a blog where it tries to fool you into thinking it's real. Something where somebody makes up a person and tries to make everything think it's real. Nor do I mean a fake blog or 'flog' that a multi-national company's marketing team creates to force fake stories and information.

What I am talking about is a fake blog of a famous person. Where somebody pretends to be a famous person, but is obviously a parody. Examples abound:
The Secret Diaries of Janice Combs
The Secret Diary of Steve Ballmer
and of course the most famous, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs

I don't even know what to call these fake blogs. They aren't really a fake or a hoax because you know they're fake. "Parody Blog" seems to broad. I'd like a good name for them because you can't say "fake" when talking about them.

I'm thinking of including them because the blogs are funny and popular; however, they don't really tell a story and are used exclusively for parody. If these blogs continue to explode in number and popularity, I may create a separate list for these "fake" blogs that's separate from the Grand List of Blog Fiction.