digital fiction

The trouble with a closed door, reflected Omar, was that you never knew what you were going to find behind it. He had rung the bell of the small seafront house with a mixture of trepidation and resignation, having been turned away from two other properties that day already. He was beginning to suspect that his race was a factor - coastal towns, he had found, could be a little parochial; yet the person who answered the door this time could hardly be accused of xenophobia. For a moment he felt as if he were staring into a mirror; the man facing him was even wearing the same jumper.

“I saw your advert,” Omar announced - “in the Gazette.”

“I see.” A glint of a smile crossed the man’s face, then was gone. “Do you have employment?”

“In a canning factory,” he replied a little bashfully.

“A factory?”

“I work the night shift,” he explained.

“Then our paths will barely cross,” the man observed. He turned and began walking away, into the hallway. “The room is yours if you want it.”

From the open doorway, warm air wafted over Omar.

*

The house was to his liking - simply furnished though not at all uncomfortable. He might have chosen the décor himself - deep, woody tones and soft ochres that suited the season, complemented by plain white. The leather sofa was the same brown as his shoes.

Later that day he returned to the hostel where he had been lodging and packed his affairs into a single suitcase, which he wheeled across leaf-blown pavements to his new home. The place had everything that he needed and nothing that he didn’t, as if someone had known all along that he was coming. His was the south-facing room at the front, with a view of the beach, while his landlord occupied the smaller, back bedroom - and although Omar felt guilty at having the better quarters, within a few months it was as if he had never lived anywhere else. Their paths, as predicted, rarely crossed. He would return from his shift at nine in the morning, while Nadir, as he was called, left the house around eight-thirty. He proved a rather reticent host, spending much of his time in his room. Apart from the man who read the electricity meter, no one, it seemed, ever visited him; and he never went out, except to work - where, as he explained, he kept himself to himself.

“They have trouble understanding my accent,” he confided one evening.

“Then how do you communicate?”

Nadir shrugged. “There is little need. Work arrives in my inbox, and I process and return it. It’s simple enough - figures to be collated and so forth. If I have a query, I send an email.”

Omar thought this detachment extreme. He hesitated before posing the question that burned in his mind; after all, he hardly knew the man. “But doesn’t it drag you down?” he asked. “The loneliness, I mean.”

Nadir fixed him with a melancholic stare. “It does, yes. But such is my destiny. The cycle must continue, you see?”

Omar did not see. Nadir sounded depressed to him.

It was several days before he encountered him again. As he returned from the factory one morning, a little late, Nadir was just setting off for work. They met in the hallway.

“The neighbour just said hello to me,” remarked Omar.

“She often does,” he offered with a shrug.

“Yes, but she called me Nadir.”

“We all look the same to them,” he sighed. “Did you correct her?”

Omar shook his head. “I just smiled.”

Nadir seemed pleased with this response.

“But you and I do look the same,” insisted Omar.

“I suppose there’s a similarity,” Nadir conceded.

It was much more than that, thought Omar. They could have worn each other’s clothes, except that they didn’t need to: they had at least three shirts in common. Little wonder the neighbour had been confused.

“I should go,” said Nadir solemnly. “My bus is due.”

“I’m concerned,” Omar ventured. “You seem unhappy.”

“You may be right. But destiny is more important than happiness. This you will learn in time.”

“You spend too many hours alone. It’s not good for you to coop yourself up in that room of yours - it has no natural light.”

“Solitude is my way,” Nadir replied. “For better or for worse.” He headed for the door, keys in hand. “In due course you will understand.”

*

While Omar felt quite at home in the house, he wasn’t comfortable inviting friends round when his landlord was such a reclusive man himself; so on his day off he would meet them in a tearoom along the seafront. Their conversations turned often to Nadir, whom Omar had begun to worry about. And it was after such a discourse that he returned one Sunday to find him in the kitchen, preparing his evening meal, which he ate habitually in his room.

It seemed the right time to broach an idea that Omar had been toying with.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “That room of yours is too dark - unhealthily so for a man of your disposition.”

Nadir merely raised an eyebrow.

“Why not take the front bedroom?” he suggested. “The sunlight would do you good.”

“Thank you,” came the swift reply, “but I cannot.”

“At least consider it. You barely charge enough rent for such spacious accommodation. It would not be unfair if I were to take your room.”

“It is impossible,” Nadir said. “I shall never enter that room again.”

“Whyever not?” Omar wanted to know.

“Because of what I have seen.”

He laughed. “So you believe it’s haunted?”

Nadir shook his head. “I am certain it is not.”

“Then why? The outlook is exceptional, the view of the sea peerless.”

“It is precisely that which I want to avoid,” said Nadir, turning back to the kitchen table, continuing to prepare his meal.

Omar went and sat in silence in the living room. He wasn’t in the mood for television; his landlord’s gloom was beginning to rub off on him.

As the weeks went by, he himself grew withdrawn. He ventured out less and less often; and when he did, he spoke of little but Nadir - much, he realized, to the annoyance of his friends. Yet he found himself unable to think of anything else. He simply could not comprehend the man’s perspective, or how he found fault with the seascape beyond the bedroom window. As far as Omar saw, it could serve only to lift the spirits.

It wasn’t long before his frustration got the better of him.

“What is it about my room?” he demanded. “Why daren’t you go in?”

Nadir surveyed Omar’s furrowed brow. A sad smile creased his lips. “I think you are ready,” he declared.

“Ready for what?” snapped Omar.

“There’s a cycle,” said Nadir, “like the seasons.” He looked almost tearful. “I used to live in that room, before you came.”

“Then what’s so wrong with it?”

“With the room itself, nothing.” He cast his eyes to the floor. “It is what I have seen from the window that troubles me.”

“Troubles you still? When did you move out?”

“It was a year ago next Friday. The same day I saw a man on the beach.”

“A man on a beach is nothing to fret over.”

“I was early evening,” said Nadir. “The sun was setting to my right, whilst the man walked calmly toward the sea, fully clothed. I knew what he was going to do, yet I did not attempt to stop him. I simply watched as he strode deeper and deeper into the water, until all that was visible was his head. And then nothing.” Nadir looked Omar darkly in the eyes. “He never returned.”

“So you feel guilty for not intervening? You are burdened by your conscience?”

“No. I was not meant to stop him. He was fulfilling his destiny, as must we all.”

That word again. Nadir, Omar felt, was rather too obsessed with fate. And it struck him that in his unhappiness he might do something stupid; that he might take his own life even. “You talk such rubbish,” he professed. Yet as the week wore on, his landlord’s troubles disquieted him more and more; Nadir’s millstone became his too. Fearful of leaving him on his own in the house, he called in sick at work. He cancelled his rendezvous with his friends too, told them that his shifts had changed, he would be in touch.

The end of the week came and Nadir seemed in particularly low spirits. Omar kept a close watch on him when he returned from the office on Friday evening, shadowing him as he pottered about the kitchen, setting things in order.

“Can I help?” he suggested. “Four hands are better than two.”

Nadir ignored him. “Your work at the factory is temporary?” he enquired.

“It is,” said Omar.

“Your situation will improve,” Nadir opined. He continued tidying, needlessly it seemed, while his lodger looked on. It was several minutes before he spoke again; and when he did, it was with an air of complicity. “The man who walked into the sea,” he volunteered. “I knew him.”

Omar had suspected as much. “From where?” he asked.

“He used to live in this house.”

“… In the front bedroom?” Even as the words fell from his lips, he knew the answer.

“Before I lived here, yes,” said Nadir. “And later in the back room. I took the front one when I arrived.” He radiated his melancholic stare once more, though now it carried a sense of acceptance. “You know which name he went by?”

His lodger nodded involuntarily. “I do,” he said, “though I don’t know how.”

Nadir stared him calmly in the eye. “The cycle must continue,” he declared. “I’m going for a walk on the beach.”

Omar knew what he needed to do. One’s destiny could not be escaped. The pair faced one another equably. The time had arrived. Omar shook Nadir by the hand and ascended the stairs to his room. There he drew back the curtains and sat on the bed, staring seaward. The view soothed him; the waster was calm, the beach deserted, the sun setting to his right. He waited patiently; and sure enough, within a few minutes a figure appeared on the sand, making his way towards the ocean. As with Nadir, it was not his place to interfere. He watched as the man walked away from him, deeper into the sea. Soon only his head was visible above the water; and finally, he was lost beneath the waves.

When Omar went back downstairs, he found Nadir’s wallet, passport, and keys on the kitchen table. Alongside lay a set of handwritten instructions written in pencil. He threw his own wallet in the bin and pocketed the dead man’s. Returning upstairs, he moved his affairs from the front room to the back one and climbed into the bed.

*

The following day he put an advert in the Gazette for a lodger (by next year, he was sure, a suitable one would appear). He spent the rest of the weekend indoors; and on Monday morning, following the given instructions, he took the eight-thirty bus to the office where he now worked. In his desk drawer was a short note:

Welcome to the job, Nadir. In time it will drag you down, as will the waves. Always remember, the cycle must continue.

* * *

Copyright © Will Arnold 2008. More information about Will Arnold and his writing can be found at his website.

Georgina Bruce’s writing mixes realism with fantasy. These bizarre fictional places, half-real half-imagined, are inhabited by living people and fantastic creatures. They explore the fragility of emotion and the mystery of poetic phenomenon. Her remarkable stories are posted up at her blog, The Bearded Lady, which she describes as: ‘a home for short and odd stories, poems, junk and ephemera, a sort of virtual cupboard under the stairs’.

I wanted to know more about these strange worlds and where they come from. I was also keen to get a picture into some of the other aspects of her writing, areas beyond the scope of her blog.

1 ) I’m familiar with your work through your blog, which I believe only provides a partial representation of your work, can you explain what the other aspects are?

I’ve been calling myself a writer since about 2001, and in that time I’ve done all sorts of things - a lot of screenwriting, community arts projects, stand up comedy, performance poetry, storytelling, teaching and mentoring. In the last couple of years I’ve become less and less interested in anything except writing prose fiction.

I write mostly short stories these days, but I don’t put all my writing on my blog, only my flash fiction and a little bit of poetry. I like the fact that the blog is very focused. I don’t write about myself or give my opinions on things - I just post up my stories and that’s it.

There are a lot of longer short stories which you won’t see on the blog (but I’ll post links to any that are published online). I feel like I’m doing some of my best work in short fiction at the moment and I’m really happy with how that is going.

2 ) Most writers desire an audience and to have their books available in high street shops. Are you happy publishing your stories on the Internet or do you want more?

The Internet has given me a small but intelligent and passionate readership, and I’m really grateful for that. Having readers is at the heart of writing - a story without a reader is a sad thing.

I’m my own first reader. I write for myself, and I write the stories I want to read, but I absolutely want other people to read them too, the more the better! I have to admit I’ve always wanted to write and publish a novel, and the advent of e-reading tech is spurring me on, because - call me an old romantic - I want to publish an actual book in dead tree format. So the idea of that is definitely there. I’m quite interested in self-publishing, which seems to be a natural extension of publishing online - but I do try to get paid for my writing wherever I can!

3 ) Your short stories often live in strange make-believe worlds, childish and fantastic and yet full of adult psychology. Would you agree with this?

Absolutely. I sometimes describe my writing as childrens’ stories for adults. I want to recreate that magical feeling of fully entering the world of the story, the way children do. I’ve never lost the feeling of wanting the story to be real and believing in it.

Michel Gondry, the filmmaker, said something wise about this - words to the effect of something that is good is often very close to being stupid. I feel like that with my writing - often my ideas seem laughable, absurd, and in the past I used to talk myself out of writing down these strange, silly ideas and make myself write ‘clever’ stuff that I thought was proper writing. But eventually, thankfully, I realised that I had a voice of my own and I started to pay attention to it.

Nowadays when I start to feel that a story is totally stupid and ridiculous, I take that as a sign to plunge in deeper. I worry if I think I’m writing something that doesn’t take those kinds of risks.

4 ) As writers we play with real things through stories. It’s like a sandpit to play in. What’s the interplay between real experience and fiction in your work?

That’s quite a complex question, isn’t it? I can say, I don’t think that reality is a straightforward proposition. For me, it’s always been blurred with my imagination and so my real experiences are a mix of what I’ve physically and emotionally lived and how I’ve refracted that through my imagination. I’ve created stories in my life which have never been written down, but which I have lived out. I think we all do that. Unrequited love is a popular one. Mine have tended to have magical, escapist, allegorical or fantastical elements to them, and I tend to write about those experiences. That’s also what I enjoy as a reader - lots of magical realism, fantasy, sci fi, fairytales.

I don’t tend to find interest in everyday situations and people, even when they are fairly dramatic or sordid. I get interested when things slip out of place, words slip or masks slip, or surreal coincidences occur. That’s the starting point for my fiction. Language itself can be a starting point. I’m fascinated by the idea of a reality beyond language, which I think I do believe in, but for obvious reasons cannot articulate - except perhaps through fiction.

My characters are often living half in and half out of reality, in very unstable situations. They might play out a story which begins for me in a weird coincidence, a paranoid thought or vivid dream image. So they are inhabiting really transitional, uncomfortable places, and that’s often where the story comes from.

5 ) People often ask writers: where does your inspiration come from? Where do you get your ideas? I’ve always believed the things we like can be quite obvious influences but what goes into an actual piece of writing is intuitive, subtle, confused and often vague in many ways. I see it as a kind of mental alchemy - turning thoughts and impulses into a ‘story’. I hope the reader ‘gets’ it - I don’t want to have to explain myself. I’m assuming you would agree with this? Or do you see writing stories in a different light?

I agree. I think that if you have to explain a story, the story has failed. Stories are for saying things that there is no other way of saying. In much the same way as a dance or piece of music says things that can’t be expressed in words, stories express things which are outside the net of everyday language. They express our inner world, which is all the things you say - intuitive, chaotic, confused, subtle - and which can only be told and shared through narrative.

I love it when people read my stories and tell me their interpretations, because they are usually so different from how I see the story. Sometimes readers understand the story better than I do myself and can tell it back to me in a way that makes me realise what I was writing about. It’s often the case that I don’t understand my own stories until others start to interpret them. I’m a bit thick, I think, or I just don’t ask those kinds of questions.

6 ) Posting short stories to a blog can be a mixed blessing. A printed book is sort of perfect in that it is what it is. There are no distractions to click on. Although I’m obviously a huge fan of the digital domain it has its advantages and unique problems. Have you felt that too?

There’s a sense of shared ownership on the net, and that is something I think people need to feel comfortable about. Anyone can read your story and make comments about it, and people feel ok about suggesting changes and making criticisms, so you need to have confidence in your writing. A book can seem more authoritative than a piece of writing on the internet. I’m comfortable with that, and I have a Creative Commons licence which allows people to ‘jam’ with my fiction, mess it up and post it elsewhere. Some writers stick copyright notices on everything, but I agree with Cory Doctorow, a champion of Creative Commons, who pointed out that his problem isn’t people nicking his work, but people not seeing his work.

The immediacy of the response to the blog posts is a wonderful thing. But you still have to experiment and take risks - risks which might alienate your existing readers. I write what I want to read, so if I satisfy my own criteria (i.e. I quite like it), I’ll post it on the blog and let it sink or swim.

7 ) Comedy seems to get noticed much more than darker fiction on the Internet, as web surfers we have preconceptions as to what we’re after. Does that bother you?

Not at all. I’m honestly very happy to have any readers at all! There are millions of pages of content on the web, so to have visitors who come back again and again to my pages is something I feel really pleased about, and it inspires me to carry on.

Realistically, I reckon most of the people who read writer’s blogs on the web are writers themselves. Who else would go to the effort? Even my friends and family don’t look at my writing!

8 ) In terms of the actual writing, do you have a disciplined regime or do you write when you feel like it? Do you ever write long hand?

I don’t write every day. I’d like to, but I get distracted. I’ve had periods where I’ve had lots of time to write and didn’t, and I find that I am more productive when I have to fit the writing in with other things, like a day job (but sometimes the day job can take over). I’m usually working on three or four different stories at once, so I’ll flit from thing to thing until something catches hold of me and I’ll spend solid days finishing that piece.

I write longhand quite a lot. Often I start stories late at night, sitting up in bed. They’ll stay in notebooks for ages and then eventually I’ll find them again and if I still like them I’ll work on them on the laptop. Again, I usually have three or four notebooks on the go. I’m addicted to them! I love the Paperblank ones with the heavy magnetic covers.

I’m a very fast typist, though, and I like typing. I’ve got a sound program on my laptop which makes it sound like an old fashioned typewriter, with a sliding ping. I put that on if I’m feeling whimsical.

9 ) What, if anything, does the short and very short story give the writer and reader that the novel doesn’t - indeed can’t?

Good question. Short stories can have an intensity and vividness that most novels can’t sustain. I think more than anything, it’s the creative space to fill in the blanks. A good novel takes you deep inside another world, whereas a good short story opens the door into another world - but just a tiny crack. It’s up to the reader to push the door wider and step inside, if they want to. There’s a lot of freedom in it.

It’s also a great discipline for a writer. Trying to tell a whole story, to convey a sense of a whole life, a whole world, in less than 500 words is a challenge, and it hones your skills as a writer. That kind of discipline really helps when you try to write longer pieces, too. It teaches you to focus in on what’s truly honest and important in the story.

10 ) Do you see your work in terms of some sort of literary history, a lineage or line of creative development?

That’s a really difficult question to answer. I think that what I write is magical realism, or some version of that. I aspire to be mentioned in the same breath as Graham Joyce, Kelly Link, Judy Budnitz, Alan Garner, so that’s probably where I’d place my writing.

I’m not an English Literature graduate and I don’t come from that sort of literary background or have the sort of vocabulary which would make me sound intelligent answering this question! Everything I know about books and writing comes from my own obsessive reading. My idea of a literary history would include writers like Philip K Dick, Ursula Le Guin, Marge Piercy, Jonathan Carroll, Neil Gaiman, Haruki Murakami, Scarlett Thomas, Kurt Vonnegut, Christopher Priest. Those are the kind of writers I feel I know about and understand and are part of my creative development and longstanding influences.

There aren’t that many writers who write the kinds of stories I like to read, which is one reason why I try to write them myself. I don’t imitate other writers, but if I’m trying to create a particular effect in a piece of writing, I might turn to a writer who I think does it well and pick their words apart to see how they do it. Often it’s to do with the point of view. I’m becoming obsessed with point of view.

11 ) Do you ever feel you might run out of the ‘need’ to write or is it something you’ll always just do?

I don’t know. I can’t imagine not writing. Even before I was a writer I spent my whole time writing.

Plus, there’s an element of ambition, and craftsmanship too. It’s important to do things well, with care, with attention to detail, and to challenge yourself. I think my writing can get a lot better.

12 ) What are you working on at the moment. Is there a big ‘project’ planned? Lastly, where would you like to be with your writing in five years time?

I’m working on four short stories at the moment, and the beginning of what I think is going to be a novel - so that’s the big (scary) project.

I have a lot of ambitions for my writing, but they are mainly to do with being able to write certain stories that at the moment I don’t have the craftsmanship to pull off. When I crack those stories I’ll be able to think about what’s next. It’s a slow process!

*

Many thanks to Georgina for taking the time to answer my questions. You can read her short stories on her excellent blog, The Bearded Lady.

I remember years ago being excited by a Flash art project I found on the Internet called, ‘The Hospital’. I’ve always wanted to do a bit of Flash myself, but it’s a lot harder than it looks to do it well. I liked the atmosphere of, ‘The Hospital’. The crumbling, decaying interiors have a certain charm about them and the abandoned medical equipment makes it seem extra creepy. There’s the feeling of some past histories having happened and for a writer it fills you with creative thoughts, some funny, some dark. That’s a wonderful subtitle too.

I found it again. Yes, it’s amazing what you can do with Google. It’s great to see that this superb piece of art is still available on the Internet and looks just as good as when I first saw it. Check it out here.

I once went to a farm which had been abandoned (probably for economic reasons) and it was like something terrible, disturbing even, had happened. It made me think what the countryside around Chernobyl might be like, as if some dreaded radiation or virus has escaped and wiped everyone out (ok … I’m watching way too much Sci-Fi!).

Anyway, I recommend ‘The Hospital’ for your daily dose of disturbing Internet art. It was created by Apoka. Flash pieces like this make me wonder sometimes about the possibilities of storytelling in a non-linear way where it becomes an interactive user experience. Huh? Yeah, you know what I mean. Don’t you?

I got an email from Apple today. No, it wasn’t a personal message from Steve Jobs telling me he’s really eager that the iPhone / iPod Touch become eBook platforms. Nor was it a free gift to thank me for all my positive blogs about Apple or Apple related products.

It was a customer survey, the kind companies send out to anyone a short while after they’ve purchased one of their products. It asked me a range of questions about my satisfaction with my iPod Touch, why I bought it and the one thing I was looking for it didn’t have.

My satisfaction level was the highest rating. This little beauty is a life saver on my otherwise unremarkable commute into Central London. I bought it for music and video, but I’m regularly using it (to my surprise, for writing) and eBooks.

For my most wanted feature I put down eBook support via iTunes. My guess is that 90% of people will probably put copy and paste as their most requested feature. I’d like that as well but it would be #2 on the list.

It got me thinking, lurking within those questions are Apple’s concerns about their weakness - if they need to push the marketing in this or that direction. Also, their strengths and how to maximise potential. There’s also the angle of customer feedback going into future product development.

It makes one wonder how seriously they take all the aggregated data. Merely as a dialogue with the customer this kind of thing has value in making the customer feel valued. I suppose some people might find a request to fill in a survey annoying too. Sadly I don’t think we’ll be seeing any dramatic changes like eBook support via iTunes.

Now that Adobe is Killing off Flash Paper, the CS add-on that prints or converts documents to Flash (opening them up in their own Flash document viewer) you might we wondering what’s going to fill the vacuum. Flash Paper, along with other flash document viewers, are increasingly popular ways to view documents where the author wants to retain as much of the design values as possible.

These Flash-based formats make great platforms for online journals, ezines and the like. Often with niche areas in writing such as small stories these are a better option than printing an ezine. It’s not just about the cost factor but time and distribution. It’s difficult as well as time consuming (often impossible even) to sell low volume magazines to shops. It’s also trickier than you might imagine selling stuff off the web. But giving stuff away is a lot more attractive, especially when it’s off an already well trafficked blog or website.

Now there’s a new solution. Adobe InDesign CS4 has an export to Flash option. It’s baffled me why it hasn’t had this years ago. I suppose either technical issues, more pressing priorities or an apparent ‘lack of demand’ have played a part. Who knows? It’s interesting how these exclusively traditionally print-publishing applications, like InDesign and QuarkXPpress, are increasingly becoming digital content production suites, but this is a whole new topic.

This is what this piece of text looks like as one of these Flash (.swf) booklets. Turn the page by clicking near the corner.

I know. I was thinking the same thing. Is this the best they can come up with? Sure, if we wanted amazing Flash features we’d be doing this in Flash right, but isn’t the point of this to leverage the skill of the designer to provide more powerful end results without the need to code?

Wordpress 1.2 for the iPhone / iPod Touch is on the way and looks set to have some cool new mobile features.

VERSUS

Unless you write longhand or on a typewriter most writers are going to spend significant periods of their life in front of a word processor. That ‘word processor’ (such a clinical sounding name, huh?) is likely to be Microsoft Word. I’ve used Microsoft Office pretty much since the day my first computer arrived. Of course I’ve had a play with other programs along the way - the defunct Claris Works (later called Apple Works), various text editors, Apple iWork’s Pages, AbiWord, Wordperfect - and I’ve used different operating systems; Macs, Windows and Linux. But I always seem to return to Microsoft Word. I turn off most of those infuriating automated features, especially the grammar check and other automated-turn-your-prose-into-an-office-memo features. This is not a real sentence. Well actually I WANT a one word sentence here for effect. Consider splitting this sentence into two sentences. No, I won’t thanks.

I’m probably used to Word from the workplace. There have always been other options, most notably OpenOffice.org’s Writer. Now with the release of OpenOffice.Org 3, is it time to forget Word altogether?

For what seemed like years one of my main gripes about OpenOffice was that simply didn’t look as good as Word. And ironically by the time it smartened up Microsoft Word had already moved on with a makeover, it’s excellent ribbon menus. Once you get used to them they do seem to be faster or more ‘productive’ to use the jargon.

Whatever you think about Microsoft, Word really is the premier word processor. Not just in terms of cost but style, ease of use and features. The software developers at OpenOffice don’t have access to the guts of Windows so they can’t do as slick as job as the Microsoft Office team integrating it into the underlying operating system. This has always irked me along with Microsoft’s ‘monopoly’ or should I say ‘virtual monopoly’ over the OS which has been something Microsoft have taken advantage of.

With OpenOffice 2 OO finally introduced features that MS Word didn’t have. Saving documents to PDF has been supported for a while. You can now download an add-in from Microsoft to print to PDF within MS Word. (And, not that a writer would probably need it but, OpenOffice.org saves presentations to simple Adobe Flash files.)

There’s also the document format war. Most office documents are saved to Microsoft Word. Openoffice.org are pushing their own Open Document Format. Like the software itself the document format is ‘open’ and free. There are some conversion issues converting between ODF and Word as there are converting between the latest Word format DOCX and the old DOC file format, but for most writing situations this shouldn’t be a problem. OpenOffice 3 also saves to MS Word or RTF if you prefer.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could make eBooks directly from Word or Writer without any plugins? Well with Openoffice.org 3 Writer you can, by default, you can save to the Aportis / Palm Doc eBook format which is a popular and widely supported eBook format. But … Wouldn’t it be great if we could save to ePub too? Here’s for dreaming.

It looks like ODF and DOCX will eventually merge into a new, open and standardised format, although there will be a lot of loops and hurdles to get through before that happens.

Thankfully Openoffice.org has for a while had word count. It took ages to get there though. Such a simple and essential feature!

Good navigation within a document is vital for any document creation, stories and especially novels. During editing we can be moving back and forth within a document checking name places are correct, what a character said in a previous chapter, etc. MS Word’s navigation used to be well ahead of Openoffice.org but this has narrowed somewhat. Personally I think Word’s is still easier. Both now have the same scroll bar to zoom the document view, which is much better than the old method.

Openoffice.org 3 - Navigator

Styles is something that writers use to speed document creation. It’s much faster using a style heading for a new chapter than messing around with the formatting individually. Plus changes to styles can be made globally.

Styles in Word 2007 are much better than they used to be. They used to be terrible, overly complicated and liable to mess up at the wrong moment. Openoffice.org 3’s Writer has always had more ‘robust’ styling.

Ultimately a lot of the choice is going to come down to the fact that Openoffice.org 3 is free and Microsoft Word costs money, indeed it’s pretty expensive. If MS Office comes ‘free’ with your PC it’s an easier choice perhaps. And then there are increasingly popular on-line word processors such as Google Docs. These can be great for collaborations (both writers can edit a document at the same time).

The truth is that writers don’t need loads of features and both these word processors have all the essential ones we could possibly need. For me, my only irritation with Openoffice.org 3 is that it can take a while to load up for the first time. MS Word does look a bit nicer too, it’s a more attractive environment to work in. On the other hand OpenOffice.org 3 provides similar features plus it’s a free download.

Time to say goodbye to Microsoft Word? I’ll let you decide.

I put my coins in the machine.

“Welcome to the Baltazar Short Story generator. What genre story do you wish to create?”

“Intellectual puzzle,” I said.

“Your wish has been granted,” the machine said. Then the light went out.

“Where’s my story?” I shouted.

The machine was silent.

I have published six novels, some of which can be described as thrillers. The first three comprise a trilogy set in the Stone Age; the fourth is a futuristic prison story; the fifth is a love story set in the 13th century; the sixth has a post-apocalyptic setting. Though the books have a conventional narrative framework, and the prose is conventional too, I try to give them a depth which goes beyond straight entertainment.

1 ) The idea of shareware has been around in software for many years. What made you opt for this as a licensing model?

DRM for ebooks tends to be easily cracked by pirates and only inconveniences honest readers, who might later find their library unreadable through no fault of their own. It also militates against new writing and the spread of literacy.

If you release your text commercially, without DRM, you have two options. You can ask readers to pay up-front for all or part of it, which will make them reluctant to try your work, and is anyway self-defeating, since the whole text will appear sooner or later on the darknet; or you can use the shareware model.

I like the idea of accepting payment only from satisfied customers. With paper publishing, you get little direct feedback - many books reported as sold are not read or enjoyed, and many more are returned from the stores and pulped. It’s all rather impersonal and alienating, a bad thing for one engaged in such a solitary occupation as authorship. Many of the comments I have received have been a real boost, and some readers have put forward valuable suggestions about promotion and distribution.

2 ) Do you think a distribution / business model like this is best suited to early adopters, people already interested in technology, most likely to have an interest in Science Fiction?

I do - SF is hugely popular on the Web. What seems to be my most heavily downloaded title is tagged as “SF” at Feedbooks and manybooks.net. However, I think we’re already getting beyond the early adoption stage. E-reading is moving into the mainstream.

3 ) I know from experience that it’s a mammoth task promoting a book, especially if the author is doing it. Some people would see this is a marketing move. What would you say to that?

Yes, it’s a great way to get noticed and read. Online promotion is problematical, even unpleasant, since it can stray into spam-like activity. Obviously you have to do something to let people know your work is available. It needs an initial push.

The indulgent admins at MobileRead don’t mind ebook-authors announcing new work on the forum there. I have received a lot of kindness from David Rothman and his colleagues at TeleRead, from Matt McClintock at manybooks.net and Hadrien Gardeur at Feedbooks, and from “Mike”, a torrent-savvy contributor to my blog. Persons unknown to me (may they be rewarded in heaven!) have been plugging my site at Stumbleupon, Reddit, Diggit, etc.

The best promotion is by word-of-mouth. This is how any book becomes successful. Reviews are useful, but not as important as you might think. Conventional publicity - advertising, plugging on chatshows, etc. ¬- is comparatively ineffective except for celebrities and those authors who are already household names. In the end, it’s the quality of the work that counts.

4 ) Have you looked at other models for publishing your work?

My first novel was published in 1978. My experiences in conventional publishing were not happy. I took a few years’ break from it, and when I came back the landscape had changed. Book publishing today is largely controlled by a handful of corporations, for which it is a minor source of income. Accountants rule: risks must be minimized and returns maximized. Most mid-list writers are having a tough time. Newcomers, and those returning after a break, are having a tougher time yet.

I did look at Amazon’s deal on publishing to the Kindle. They insist on DRM being applied, and moreover take 65% of the proceeds. And what about readers who use another sort of display? So it’s not for me. Nor is POD or any other form of self-publication involving paper books: distribution is too hard.

5 ) The publishing industry - production and distribution - favours the big players moving big volumes. Do you think eBooks and digital sharing technologies have the capability to change the game?

They’re already doing so. Publishers are scrambling to digitize their lists. As ebook-displays get better and cheaper, and as printed books get more expensive and nastier (worse paper, smaller type, bindings which fall to pieces), ebooks will come to dominate the book trade. Fiction will be the first area to be transformed. Then, as the displays improve and colour becomes common, non-fiction will follow.
The ebook will do to conventional publishing what the mp3 file has done to the record industry.

The net has given a platform to indie bands which otherwise would never have been heard. It could be the same for writers.

The books I write tend to be different from one another. Publishers like predictable authors, because these build up a loyal following who know what to expect. Most of all they like genre authors who write series, often centred on the same character. For an author this can be a bit like the conundrum faced by a popular actor in a soap opera: should I continue on this treadmill or risk the annihilation of my career?

If an author is adventurous, he must create a new genre - his own canon. Publishers are wary about such behaviour. They will lose money if an author suddenly comes up with something different and his fans react badly. And then it makes a hole in the fence: the fence around the pasture in which their existing authors graze.

The shareware model should lead to greater choice for readers. If it does take off, exciting times lie ahead for authors. They can publish straight to the net, and readers, rather than accountants, will decide what is good.

6 ) For those readers who are interested in doing this for their own work can you share with us some of the steps required to turn a novel or a collection of short stories into a shareware eBook? Would you recommend it for other writers?

The first thing is to be quite sure you have a clean and final version of your text. If you need an editor, you’ll have to hire one. There’s no way round this if you want to be taken seriously.

Then decide on the licence. I chose a “BY-NC-ND” Creative Commons licence: attribution is required, no derivative versions are allowed, and commercial use by others is prohibited. I retain the copyright.

To distribute a book as shareware, all you really need is a blog and a PayPal button. You don’t even have to host the text yourself: you can upload it to Feedbooks. But hosting is so cheap these days that you ought to have a Web site too. If your work is downloadable from your own site, it will be considered for acceptance by manybooks.net. It makes sense to keep the initial costs down by coding the site yourself.

Mine is a simple affair, in keeping with my computer skills. I used a freeware HTML editor called Trellian Webpage; there are others available, notably Kompozer.

When I started, I made the mistake of writing (on paper) to the literary editors of newspapers all over the English-speaking world. I sent a covering letter, an extract from The Tide Mill, and (I seem to remember) a press release as well. Nothing came of this.

My shareware venture is an experiment. I hesitate to recommend it to others, since the long-term results are unknown. Thousands of copies of my books have been downloaded. I have no idea how many are being duplicated, looked at, or enjoyed, or what proportion of satisfied readers takes the trouble to pay the requested fee. So far the income has been tiny. It will probably be a year or two before I know whether the shareware model can work for fiction.

If you are an established author with a backlist of titles, the rights in which have reverted to you, your publisher may make a respectable offer for the ebook rights. If not, and if you know these titles are never going to be reissued in paper, you have little to lose by publishing them as shareware. You will certainly get exposure, a larger readership, and perhaps some money as well. Everyone benefits, except the second-hand book dealers.

7 ) One of the problems with eBooks is the confusing number of file formats available and doing simple things like making it easy for the user to load an eBook onto their reader can be a problem. How did you get around this?

I got round it, I hope, by making the text available from my site as plain ASCII. I also offer MS-Word format; other formats are available at Feedbooks and manybooks.net. Between them I believe they offer every format anyone is likely to need.

8 ) How do you see your work in relation to traditionally printed books?

There’s no difference in the work itself. All the difference lies in my control of the editing and publishing process, in my contact with readers, and in the fact that if I do get paid I don’t have to wait nine months or more for a royalty statement.These are the joys of shareware!

9 ) Do you have any concerns that the technology used in this distribution method can potentially overshadow the content?

In the beginning, it’s bound to do that a bit, but as the technology matures it will become more and more transparent, and content, as ever, will be king.

10 ) How do you see eBooks and the shareware concept developing in the future?

I have posted an essay on my site which goes into this question in some detail.
The most important facilitators of a shareware culture will be critics, helping readers to sort through the blizzard of offerings. An authoritative reviewers’ site will be needed.

The most significant drag on the development of a shareware culture will be the reluctance of satisfied readers to pay. No one knows what proportion of shareware users pays for computer software: I have heard the figure put as low as 2%.

At the moment there is a presumption that content from the internet should be free. If that remains unchanged, shareware fiction will not be a viable proposition for working authors.

Let us assume that it takes 1,000 hours to write a novel (an understatement). If you are an experienced writer and the book is good, a modest reward to expect for your labours would be no less than £10,000. Say you ask £1, net of transaction charges, from each satisfied reader. If only 10% of downloaded copies are read all the way through, and if only 25% of those readings result in a satisfied reader, you will need to distribute 400,000 copies to earn your just reward - assuming 100% of satisfied readers do actually pay. If only 2% pay, you will need to distribute 20 million copies. 400,000 is achievable; 20 million much less so.

These numbers are the wildest guesswork, but you can see that the model depends heavily on readers realizing that it is in their interests to pay when satisfied: £1 is a very reasonable price for a DRM-free ebook of commercial quality. If they don’t, DRM and high prices are inevitable.

I don’t mean to end on a negative note, but one has to be realistic. The potential of shareware ebooks for readers and writers alike is incredible and I hope it will be realized.

Many readers in the Third World cannot afford the high price of paper books. Given the availability of cheap displays and PD texts, we could see a global rise in literacy which would have profound and wholly benign consequences. The widely read are much harder to exploit and order about; and if copyright works could also be distributed at low cost, the outcome might be spectacular.

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My thanks to Richard Herley for his time answering my questions. More information about him and his work is available from his website.

Earlier this week I posted a link to a video about new eReader screen technology. Basically eInks research lab screen refresh is fast enough now to cope with basic animation … And eBook readers such as the Kindle and Sony eReader do RSS feeds for newspapers …

So, what could happen to the political cartoon?

In some circles people think they shouldn’t even be in colour! The purists still believe they should be in black and white. Maybe there aren’t many of them left. Why shouldn’t the political cartoon evolve with a bit of user interaction?

And I was thinking it could go all Flash animation, that’s the future … oh wait a second someone’s already done it.