blueAlto

Update:

Part 1 now posted in The Letters Project.

First off, just let me say a big hello and welcome to anyone who is visiting the site for the first time today. Being that today my writing partner and I are launching a new feature, I'm guessing that "new to the site" may apply to a few of you.

The goal for today's post? To talk a little bit about the project that Tate and I have been busy developing. Our motivation for it, where we want to see it go, how we want it to get there, and ultimately the role of the audience, the reader, and if there is something in that potential that may have overlooked in the history of traditional publication paradigms.

Briefly, since many of you are new here, I should say a few things about myself. Easy stuff to begin with, my name is Al, technically Allan, but everybody calls me Al, and earlier this year I hit the big 40. Piece of cake. I live in Toronto, am single, and share my living space with my dog, otherwise known as the insane canine, Singher, a black Lab and Dalmatian cross. Coolest.Dog.Ever

In my daily and off line life, I am two short weeks away from my thesis defense for the MFA in creative writing. So yes, insanity, at the moment feels like it's running in the streets. For more specific information on me, my bio is here, and these are my 100 random things.

As an author, I'm just at the point where my work is getting some larger recognition, and have been offered a few small publishing options. After a successful thesis defense (that would be the plan anyway), my main goal will be attempting to market my novel to some of the larger publishing houses in both Canada and the US. Somewhat ironically, this project began out of an idea that was meant to keep the level of writing discipline up after the highly structured MFA came to a sudden, screeching halt.

My co author, the one you people know as Tate, was someone who I met this fall and instantly hit it off with. We soon discovered that there were not many areas socially, politically, philosophically, and let's just go with "other ways as well", that were dissimilar. Writing, and the desire to pursue that as a life career, was something Tater was just beginning to give consideration to. I think we both knew at the outset it wouldn't be long until we would put our heads together coming up with something. And it seems, we were right.

So, what is The Letters Project? In a nutshell, it is a multi author fiction series that will occur once a week, and each week one of us will build creatively on plot, characters and story structure of what the other author had previously written. Though there is, of course, a catch. Beyond an initial set up of a loose plot and character abstract, and an agreement on theme, Tate and I have not talked to each other at all regarding ideas or plans for the story, or the characters. The very over used saying "when you know it, we'll know it" applies very well here.

Beyond that, everything is going to be a wait and see. We really don't know if this will last past our initial thoughts of a ten week run, or who knows, maybe this is meant to be the first online soap opera that will know a ten year run. Like I said, who knows? Overall our goal is to spur each other on creatively, while offering clear support of that goal. Anything beyond that, is simply going to be fun to enjoy on the ride. Hopefully for the reader, it will be an equally enjoyable ride

Lastly, the first edition of The Letters Project will be posted this Thursday evening (tonight). We really hope you enjoy it, and if you do, we would love you to toss a comment in the box telling us what you thought. Because judging from what we have written so far, we promise you, this is going to be something very, very exciting for all of us.

To access the The Letters Project, simply click the folder in the sidebar.