Blogging a Book

I can hear the questions tumbling through your mind: What on earth gave him this idea? Did he just ruin everything so no publisher will ever look at this book? What if I don’t want to read it even if it is miraculously published? How is this going to work, exactly?

Well, let me set your little hearts at ease, and answer each of these questions.

First, I got the idea in two parts: Novels are sometimes serialized in periodicals, then edited together and published for the readers’ convenience. The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky cued me on to this idea as I read it in my final semester in college. Second was an article in Writer’s Digest that was an excerpt of the book How to Blog a Book by Nina Amir.

There are two ways to blog a book: you blog for a good while, then collect your most-viewed posts (or all of your posts, if they’re that good and that few) edit them together with some bonus material, and publish it; or (like me) you have a completed work that you cut up and realize the fact that it will most likely be many times better after professional editors get their claws into it - and a whole lot of fun to read again later!

So, nuts-and-bolts time: tomorrow at bywaysunseen.blogspot.com the prologue will be posted in its entirety (it’s fairly small). Then on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays – same place – a portion of a chapter will be posted for your reading pleasure (usually 3 or 4 pages worth). We’ll get through about a chapter a week, that way. At the start of a new chapter there will also be a excerpts from the good parts of the previous chapter. Why this may be useful even to you with good memories is that the parts I know are significant might not seem significant at the time you read it, so it can clue you in to pieces that are…well, significant. Might give you something to stir around in your noodle.

I’m looking forward to it, and I hope you are too. Everything goes live tomorrow morning so be sure to check it out! I would also dearly love your comments, suggestions, advice, and criticisms. And if you like it, feel free to share it with your friends! That way, when I acknowledge “everyone who helped this book get to where it is today” you can say “That was me!”

And if it’s worth anything to you, you’ll have my eternal gratitude.

See you soon!

*Cover art by the inimitable Courtney Dydek