Why write a first draft of a novel, publicly, on the web?
It’s an experiment! This is my first novel-length project in a long time, and I am very keen on trying something different. IAT homages and parodies comic books, cartoons, manga, anime, and Internet bulletin boards–all of which are episodic in nature. I thought it would be interesting to write a serialized novel, where each update is like an episode of a cartoon, an issue of a comic book, or (when I’m really crunched for time) an entry on a bulletin board, in order to capture the feel of the stories I’m plagiarizing–er, I mean emulating. Most important, however, has been reader feedback. Readers have contributed typo fixes, puns, continuity checks, editorial support, entire subplots and even a couple of characters.
