My Egalitarian Experiment with Fiction

A few months after I started this weblog, I was finishing up a novel and a friend suggested that I post the novel, in its entirety, for free online. At the time, I thought this was a preposterous, backward idea. It was my belief that one takes time to produce art and that one should be compensated for that time. This seemed to me to be a natural, universally accepted process between artist and consumer.

However, my beliefs have progressed over time on how to best use my modest web presence. I have spent a great deal of time ranting about politics on this page, trying to add my voice to a ever-growing chorus of other voices in the political blogosphere. Overall, I think I have offered some important insights throughout the short life of this weblog, and will continue to keep my archive links active for anyone who is interested.

Still, I have always felt that the blog would evolve, and that eventually I would come to a point where I could post something more uniquely personal, something completely original, something that does not perpetuate the traditional echo chamber of social and political news that is the norm on these blogs.

I have never been one to take the conventional route with my writing. After all, I have largely rejected the traditional publishing avenues, vying instead to write, design, produce, and sell my own work. This rejection of conventional publishing is multi-faceted, but the crux is that I reject the corporate mindset of modern publishing, and on a more personal level, I do not believe that my work has a large enough market for me to ask the industry to support it.

So, posting stories online for free seems like a natural step for me to take. It is an inexpensive way to share my work with anyone who cares to read it. It is certainly not a profitable option, but if my only concern were making money I would be writing more traditional, palatable prose.

Ultimately, my hope is that posting my work will better reflect my changing attitudes toward the egalitarian evolution of how the written word is offered online, and that this evolution will attract a small band of readers that will act as a future support system for my writing.

I will begin posting all of my completed work in chronological order beginning this Friday with my first short story, The Lonely Season. I plan to write a brief history and introduction to each piece followed by a link to a reader-friendly version of the story to be read online. However, if you are someone who prefers not to read material online, I will also offer a printer-friendly link to the story.

So, until this Friday,,,