Jumping in with both feet, up to my neck.

Good morning.

I've done some drive-by lurking of this site for a month or so, but today I set up an account and figured I'd introduce myself. So hello: my name is Christopher Wright (Chris is fine--for some reason whenever I post on the net I wind up using my full name, I have no idea why), I'm a technical writer currently living in West Virginia, and I'm a writer, web cartoonist, musician, and generally acknowledged authority on my opinions, of which there are many. I know very little about the world of WebLit/Web Fiction, but I fancy myself a fair storyteller and I know a lot about how I want to do things, and I'm about to find out exactly how compatible my ideas are with reality.

The title for this forum is broken into two parts, and since I've covered the first half, it's time to dive into the second:

In January I started publishing a novel, Pay Me, Bug!, on unexploredhorizons.net, a website I'd been working on expressly for the purpose of web publishing/e-publishing/self-publishing serial fiction. I publish a chapter a week, updating Wednesday, and I estimate I'll reach the end sometime late October or early November. I describe the novel as "Something Oscar Wilde would have written if he'd been a science fiction author in the 70s." So far nobody has really contested the claim, but it's only 10 chapters in (11 tomorrow) so there's plenty of time. On a more serious note, the novel does have a distinctly pulplish, 1970-era Space Opera feel to it which is probably one of the reasons I could never get a mainstream publisher to buy it.

Unexploredhorizons.net is intended to ultimately host multiple works, and I have two other novels tentatively lined up to be released in serial form. My basic theory is that I'll publish my work in serial form, one chapter a week, and at the end of it make it available as an e-book, and set up an account on Lulu so that someone can buy a paper version of the novel if they really want to.

For Pay Me, Bug! I'm also experimenting with podcasting -- I publish a podcast of each chapter on Thursdays. The podcasts are of uneven quality because reading into a microphone is a lot harder in practice than it appears to be in theory.

I'm looking forward to reading what other people are working on, though at the moment I am a poor community member because my day job is consuming most of my time, limiting the amount of time I can spend on fun things. That will get better, though.

... I hope...

Anyway, hello! Hope to chat more with you all in the [insert time increment here] to come.