The Great Australian Blovel

April 23 2009

Recently Australian writer Sean Condon threw caution (and his manuscript) to the wind by posting chapters online. The (Something) Burlesque is Condon’s self-deprecating look at a writer struggling to get his novel published. The manuscript’s protagonist, Michael Sherwood, literally has celebrity in his sights and sets about bumping off anyone more famous than himself. As in any novel, readers wonder how much of the author is caricatured in his hero.

Blogs lend themselves well both to first person narratives and the blurring of reality. Stripper-turned-screenwriter, Diablo Cody wrote a non-fiction blog about her pole-dancing career but also kept a fictional blog, Red Secretary. It’s a character sketch of a Belarusian woman and her ‘kokaine’ escapades, but to qualify as a blovel (a contraction of ‘blog novel’) there needs to be a novel-length story told over a series of posts.

The best blovels use short sharp posts to gradually tell their tale, sometimes responding to comments from readers about where the story should go next. The blovel is popular in the US particularly among genre writers, like Scott McKenzie who serialised his vampire novel, Rebirth when it was snubbed by publishers. McKenzie wrote a blovel sequel, The Rising, which also leapfrogged print. Though if readers can’t wait for the blovel’s slow release then they can buy it in one hit through print on demand.

One deeply Australian blovel is The Curly Situation in which author Jason Davis blends crime and cricket. But the big question with online content is who pays? Davis has placed a tip jar for readers who want him to keep him spinning the yarn. Recently his blovelling has been interrupted by the Courier Mail co-opting his character for a spin-off, Curly Flat Out. It seems that crime blogs do pay.

George Dunford