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The story of an author meeting his own fictional characters is a common one — and usually it becomes some kind of metafictional meditation on the nature of authorship and what it means to be a fictional character. But what if that fictional character comes from a weird post-apocalyptic world, and it was kind of a shitty story? More »
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Edward Packard's Choose Your Own Adventure book series was a heady mix of genre conventions, RPG identity-swapping, and dying for no apparent reason. These novels weren't high art, but their innovative structure has prompted analysis decades later. More »
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Often, it seems the highest praise you can give a story is to say it avoids a common trope. And thanks to the Internet, everyone, including creators, is hyper-aware of this. But do we cherish trope-avoidance, instead of fresh storytelling? More »
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Got some spare time? The world's longest novel is available as a free download! Coppell, TX writer Mark Leach has just published an expanded 12.6 million word edition of his apocalyptic novel Marienbad, My Love. It's nearly ten times longer than the official record-holding longest novel, Proust's In Search Of Lost Time, not to mention the previously longest science fiction novel, L. Ron Hubbard's Mission Earth. And Leach says he's just getting warmed up. How does he fill so much space? More »
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