Hmm, I fear this community seems a tad quiet, but I hope people are still reading! Seems a shame to lose this resource.

To anyone who is listening, we at the EpiGuide Webserial Community are preparing a new EpiCast. We'll be recording our podcast in early April, and we have some requests for info from both audience members and writers/producers if you'd like to participate.

(Never heard the EpiCast? Visit http://epiguide.podbean.com/ for our archives.)

Hi again everyone. Just wanted to let you all know that it's that time again: for the sixth straight year, the EpiGuide Web Fiction and Entertainment Community is hosting a month-long serial writing marathon, starting on August 1 and running through August 31, where creators of original, regularly-produced webfiction are challenged to write as they've never written before.

What? Oh, nevermind. Anyway, my name is Chris. I recently published my first Mystery/Crime novel "Death in the Fast Lane" featuring LAPD Det. T.S. 'King' Leary. Look me up on Amazon.

"Fast Lane" recently spent a few days on the Amazon Kindle bestseller lists in the UK, Germany, and France. This fulfills my lifelong desire to be more popular in both Germany and France than I am in the U.S.... like a Crime Writer version of Jerry Lewis AND David Hasselhoff. Hey, a boy can dream, right?

The nominations for the 2012 Rose and Bay awards are up - I've got a vested interest because I'm a nominee, but there's a lot of good authors up this year.

The nominations are:

The Many Writings of K.A. Jones by kajones_writing aka moonwolf1988
The Fiction of Lyn Thorne-Alder by aldersprig
Garden of Prose by Clare K.R. Miller (clare_dragonfly)
Require: Cookie by Stormy (Grace McDermott) (Me! )
A Rosary of Stones and Thorns by M.C.A. Hogarth
No Dominion by C. E. Murphy
Eclipse Court by Shirley Meier
Hiraeth: the Adventures of Trevor and Jason by robling_t
Free Microfic Day! by skjam
Philosopher in Arms by Karen Wehrstein
Wonder City Stories by Jude McLaughlin

You can vote here.

I recently had a pretty nasty website crash, and I'm only just tech-literate enough to know how to install drupal and wordpress under my own domain name. The end result was that I learned much more about databases than I ever wanted to (which, really, is actually not all that much). As a result of all the technical drama though, I seriously considered migrating my books to one of the developing weblit platforms.

I wrote a guest post over at Cheap Ass Fiction about weblit as gifting culture,primarily exploring the drive to share as well as some other reasons people want to give their stories away (marketing, monetizing, etc). Thought people might be interested, and I'd love to hear other people's thoughts!

So Guts and Sass has been on its feet for a couple of months now, and now that I've got the website doing mostly everything I want it to I'd like to ask for some outside perspective on design.

I have one main concern, that related but pertinent non-story content distracts from the story content (such as in the sidebars and between the header image and the posts). I want to draw focus to the story, but there's little features or announcements I want to be easily available to readers. And they tend to clutter.

Cross-posted at MeiLinMiranda.com

Update: You can now subscribe to my site on Kindle. I'll keep webserial folks posted on results here and at MeiLinMiranda.com.

A funny thing has happened: I've stopped reading webserials.

I KNOW, RIGHT??

You see, I got a Kindle, and I realize now that I hate reading on the web. Hate. It. But I like serialized fiction. And I'm hearing from readers of my own work that they're in the same position now that they have ereaders; they've stopped reading on the web. I'm thinking that ereaders have the serious potential of taking away our online audiences.

So now I have a dilemma as both a reader and a writer. What to do? I could do what a lot of traditionally published writers, agents, editors and publishers do and rage against those horrible ereaders. Or I could be smart and go with it. I choose smart.

As a writer I'm going to start publishing my feed on Kindle. Or try to; there are hoops I have to jump through.

As a reader, I'm going to start asking writers to do the same--once I test the waters. There's no charge--no downside--and a potential revenue upside. It pushes content to the Kindle, and any advertising eyeballs lost may be balanced by subscriptions.

I'm also going to see if there are other blog-to-ereader apps out there that will work on, say, Nooks. iPhones and Droid devices have Kindle readers already so I'm not worried about them.

So what do you think? Do you have an ereader? Would you prefer to have this site on your ereader than your web browser? Note I'm not asking you whether you'd pay for it, just whether you'd prefer it; I'm thinking that this might be a way of reaching out to readers I don't have yet.

And if you're a fellow serialist, have you tried this? What's been your experience?

WeSeWriMo, aka Web Series (or Web Serial) Writing Month, is a writing marathon/project much like NaNoWriMo, but with far more flexible and personalized goals. The project is hosted by the EpiGuide web fiction community, where our mandate is to encourage and promote the bountiful variety of webserial formats and genres.

Since 2007, writers of any kind of serialized fiction or webseries are invited to spend August 1 - 31 churning out material with a set goal of ... well, whatever measurement you like! You might decide on 50,000 words or 10 installments or 50 scenes or 100 pages or any writing goal you wish. The idea is to make it ambitious enough to be a challenge, but realistic enough so that you're not dooming yourself to failure before you even start.

This idea has been rumminating in my head for some time. I don't think I've mentioned it on here before (I did a quick look see for a post and couldn't see one, but if I'm wrong I apologise).

Anyway the idea:

Firstly you need to read this article.

Now, obviously, that's about an alternative book tour for a physical book, but I think parts of it could be used by us.

Here's how:

1. Work out how far afield you can afford to go and how long you can dedicate to the tour.