Friday, April 07, 2006

Gratuitous Self-Promo & Gratuitous Sex

I just published the 40th post on my online serial thriller, "I, Death" which I started on January 18, 2006. It's been a blast rolling out this story in "real time" from the POV of a fictional blogger named Peter O'Mallick.

And I get to experiment a lot, try new things, make references to cool books I've read, etc. For example, in the recent post, Peter (my main character, a teenager who is trying to get over being dumped by his longtime girlfriend and also trying to deal with feelings of guilt as he believes that he is responsible for the tragic deaths of so many of his friends and family) has befriended his new supply teacher (he also feels responsible for the accident which put his regular English teacher in a coma), and is discovering yet another horror author. In this case it's Richard Laymon. You can read an interview I did with Richard, possibly the last interview he gave before he passed away by clicking here.

Another thing about the 40th post is that within it, Peter has another strangely erotic and horrific dream. So far, response to the previous erotic entries within the story have been positive. But I always wonder if I'm just throwing them in for the shock value or to attract new readers. And at what point does this serial thriller become dubbed an erotic horror thriller? For example I added an "adult content" disclaimer in the header for "I, Death" because while I respect freedom of writers to use naughty words and situations, etc I feel we should also let people know in case they find that content offensive.

Speaking of offensive, based on feedback from a writer friend who has added a link to my serial thriller on his sidebar, I created a slightly better vertical image link, which you can see here. (Thanks, Ian) - if you've read my serial story and would like to link to it, feel free to copy and paste the url below, just replace ( with <> and you're good to go. (And let me know, so I can reciprocate with a link back to your site, blog, book, CD, whatever)

(a href="http://this-mortal-coil.blogspot.com" target="_blank")(img src="http://members.aol.com/misterbuny/IDeathNarrow_DeathStalks"/)(/a)

And at what point after talking again about this serial thriller do I turn off readers of my blog who say. "Oh boy, there Mark goes again, blah blah blahing about his writing stuff -- just tell me something funny, dammit."?

3 comments:

Franny said...

Mark, a writer is who you are, therefore, write is what you must do. Remeber that writing about writing is more what a writer does than not writing about writing or actually just writing period.
Heck, even when you're not really "writing", you're writing about writing...am I right?

I guess what I am trying to say is the world needs more art. It's all good.

And no more identity crisises, or me and me are coming for a visit.

lime said...

lol, i actually want to read it. i just have all these other things i have to read for classes and older things i have been wanting to read fo ra long time staring at me as i work through the pile.

Wenchy said...

You are very gifted.