A good thing

January 18, 2005 11:55 AM

Letters To Martha. A blog novel (a blovel? a nog?) about an unemployed man who writes to Martha in jail. Updated every Tues and Thurs.
posted by braun_richard (14 comments total)

i like bnog myself.
posted by brucec at 12:03 PM on January 18, 2005

A bomb shelter out of tampons and blocks of cheese??

Where was I when that episode aired?
posted by Gooney at 12:06 PM on January 18, 2005

"I know, I know...asking you for a date by letter is so...impersonal. But how can I possibly ask you out face to face? I mean, after all...you're MARTHA STEWART! (Does that ever freak you out when you think about that?)"

what freaks her out is this FREAK!!

oh yeah..lame post.
posted by j.p. Hung at 12:09 PM on January 18, 2005

What happens when an unemployed man in his 30s, stuck at home watching TV, surfing the web, and eating junk food, decides to write to one of the most famous people in the world?

More like: What happens when a douche bag with way too much time on his hands gets a blog and decides to be cute by acting like a stalker...

yawn
posted by Gankmore at 12:19 PM on January 18, 2005

Uh...people? This is a NOVEL. It's fiction! It's not real.

Yeesh.
posted by braun_richard at 12:20 PM on January 18, 2005

Don Novello did this, only much, much funnier.
posted by Specklet at 12:23 PM on January 18, 2005

Is a fictional stalker still a stalker? Tonight on 20/20.
posted by mek at 12:29 PM on January 18, 2005

I don't have a problem with that link being posted here, I guess I'm glad to know it's here . . . in sort of the same way I'm glad to know about Pepsi Spice Project. Not particularly interesting, or well done . . . and given the author of Letters to Martha, I'd really have expected it to be better. Let me rephrase that. I'd really have expected it to be interesting or, at the very least, have an angle.
posted by ThePrawn at 12:40 PM on January 18, 2005

Don Novello did this, only much, much funnier.

Actually, he didn't. His letters were really sent to the people he wrote to. And they weren't in novel form.

I'd really have expected it to be interesting or, at the very least, have an angle.

It's really unfair to judge this thing on the first chapter alone. It seems to have an angle to me. I'll give it a few more entries before I judge it.
posted by braun_richard at 12:49 PM on January 18, 2005

I'd also give it a few more entries before I said it was updated every Tuesday and Thursday . . . or before I started spreading the word.

The angle might be more easily gleaned if there were an introduction of some sort, I suppose. Growth is certainly aided by initial interest.

I've subscribed to the RSS feed, so we'll see how it pans out.
posted by ThePrawn at 1:01 PM on January 18, 2005

Actually, he didn't. His letters were really sent to the people he wrote to. And they weren't in novel form.

Sorry, you are right. I should have said it was a similar idea. His letters were really sent to real people, even if he did write them tongue-in-cheek and under a nom de plume. And they were only later complied in a book.

But, I still think it was a lot funnier than this.

I think it's perfectly fine to judge it on the first chapter. The poor conception is not going to get better with additional chapters.
posted by Specklet at 1:03 PM on January 18, 2005

It's really unfair to judge this thing on the first chapter alone. It seems to have an angle to me. I'll give it a few more entries before I judge it.

Maybe you should have waited for this "blog novel" to be more than two posts old before you made it an FPP? Is this guy your buddy or something?
posted by _sirmissalot_ at 1:04 PM on January 18, 2005

I vote "blovel" = bad, and "nog" = good.
posted by mrs.pants at 1:57 PM on January 18, 2005

I personally don't like "blog novel" in any abbreviation. It's too limiting: there's very little blog fiction out there right now, but the best ones tend to be serials rather than novels. (I humbly include my own attempt in that list.) They don't have a discrete beginning, middle and ending; they follow the patterns of real life instead, with only a bit more drama.

If we absolutely must have a cute name, then I think blogfic works as well as any. Though really I don't care what it's called; I'd just like to see a community and an audience for it.
posted by iJames at 9:24 PM on January 19, 2005