The first question might be, who in his right mind would go and post the first draft of a novel, more or less raw and steaming as it pours out of his keyboard?

Well, that would be me, and the key phrase is “in his right mind”. Which I'm not.

Unfortunately, while the web log format is fine for many things (in fact I'm amazed at all the different applications, some of which I previously cited) a full length serialized novel isn't necessarily one of them. The reverse chronological format doesn't help things, and in my case, I'm also blogging on so many other damn subjects (OK, so at least half are beer related, but still) there is a high noise-to-signal ratio. If all you wanted to do was, figuratively, settle in with my little characters and setting for a couple of hours, your current option is to browse one of the fiction categories, which pulls up the most recent post first-- fine most of the time, but not really ideal for someone who wants to start from the beginning or who has missed a few instalments and needs to catch up.

And then there's the fact that I'm posting not one story, but three. This gets messy fast. HTML is pretty flexible, though, so in this case I think I can get water to run uphill.

First, let's simplify the category tangle-- instead of a separate tag for each project ('cause with the way my mind wanders, you never know how many of these little stories I'll eventually come up with) I plan to just tag things as fiction from now on. (..if it's fiction. Sometimes bits of dialog show up in other posts, but that's usually just me talking to myself.)

Next: the titles of each post. I had been using the titles to also designate which story was coming up, but (and this is a creative decision) if I'm constantly reminding you it's fiction fiction fiction that doesn't really help one submerge themselves in the story. And fiction is an ugly, awkward word. So screw that. I have no idea what sort of naming-system might develop to replace it, but I'm ditching the 'Fiction:' prefix right now.

And (what I hope is) the elegant solution to the novel/blog problem: a small, possibly colourful header at the top of each fiction post, identifying the project, and a then a few quick links to help you navigate just that book.

Click 'first' and start from the beginning. Page through by clicking 'previous' or 'next'. Should be intuitive.

Since I'll be linking entries directly, each will be the only thing on the page (other than the sidebar) without all that other noise on my blog. -- A virtual, stand-alone book that still fits in the blog format, and only requires me to add small links, not a new domain or css template or any of that crap. (I'm a little proud of myself for thinking of this) (and I'm glad I thought of this now, rather than 50 entries from now. Retrofitting the entries for categories was bad enough)

(...hey, wait a minute. All that 'other noise' on my blog is my life. Dude. That's harsh)

One last admin. thing about the web novel: to keep the pages clean, and to help the reader focus on just the novel, I'll be deactivating comments on most fiction posts-- if you want to complain about my writing, I'm sure you'll figure out a way.


Amphital: a fanasty novel project
-- first --

Busted Seventh: a novel experiment
-- first --

The Lecture Series
-- first --