A novel blog is a novel written using a blog. For the most part, these are simple, unimaginative copy and paste jobs that do little to exploit the blogform's content management powers. Ferus Rex is an exception, and a truly original blog. I have never seen anything quite like it. The author has adapted a novel he wrote (but never published) more than 10 years ago, long before anyone had ever heard of a Weblog. He has adapted the novel to the blogform, and created something that is more than a novel, more than a blog, that offers an innovative way for readers to engage the text. Though the novel offers a traditional narrative structure, there is more than one way to get from A to B. It reminds me of Janet Murray's seminal work on multi-forma narrative: "Hamlet on the Holodeck". I think she would be happy to discover Jack Mardack's "Ferus Rex".
I am bringing Ferus Rex to the blog-form as an experiment. I am curious how the blog-form might be used as a vehicle for novel-length works of fiction. The blog-form allows for many exciting things with text. But the blog also brings with it a number of eccentricities and challenges. One such that I can think of immediately is the fact that I shall have to begin at the end of the book, rather than at the beginning. This is necessary so that readers be able to start at the “front”, where one usually finds the most recent, or “last” post. If I started my blog posts at the beginning of the book, the novel would be backwards. Weird, huh. Well, let’s see how this goes… more
novel blog
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