There is a lot of pleasure in reading a good novel. For me, one of those pleasures is immersing myself in the into the world of the character/s. A well-written character can start to appear like a real person, and I often find myself feeling their pain when something goes wrong, or celebrating their joy at even the smallest of victories.

But what happens when you finish reading the novel? I often find myself thinking about the future of the character, or how they would react to hypothetical situations that my imagination plunges them into. One book that stands out in my mind is Forty Signs of Rain (aff link) by Kim Stanley Robinson. The book is the first in a trilogy and introduces us to a character named Frank. Frank is an awkward loner type who eventually makes his home in a tree house he built in one of the Washington D.C. parks. He’s one of those characters I obsess about long after finishing the book (or in this case, the series of books).

Creating a virtual world for characters

I was highly intrigued when I came across this article from The Guardian website. It talks about a character named Steffi McBride, who is the lead in a novel called The Overnight Fame of Steffi McBride by Andrew Crofts. And what makes her so interesting is not so much the novel (although that plays a large part) but Steffi’s "life" outside the novel:

But what, arguably, makes Steffi more interesting than your average airhead celeb is that she’s the figment of an author’s imagination and these tantalising – or annoying – insights into her star-studded existence come courtesy of her updates on Twitter the social media "microblogging" site, and her Facebook page.

Yes, Steffi has a Twitter account and a page on Facebook. On the one hand, it’s not that surprising. A popular character can probably do pretty well on such social networking sites, and it can only boast the novel’s popularity among fans. On the other hand, however, I’m inclined to think many people will see this as over-the-top. Part of the magic of certain characters is their lives within the framework of the novel. If they set a metaphorical foot outside of that, things can start to appear wishy-washy.

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Like I said in this post, I usually take my time reading my beloved Poets & Writers magazine. Well, today I read an article that shook me to the bone.

The article was an expose on writer Andrew Porter and detailed any writer’s worst nightmare. After working tirelessly on a collection of short stories, he lost everything. Here’s a quick excerpt that tells about Porter coming home from a friend’s house:

When he returned home, around one in the morning, his apartment had been ransacked. "Everything was gone," Porter remembers, "my stereo, my CDs, my clothes, my computer, my disks with all my backed-up stories, even the little briefcase where I kept all of my hard copies. In other words, everything I’d written that year, almost everything I’d ever written, was gone." (Poets & Writers Nov/Dec 2008 107-8).

Yikes! That is very scary. Even the hard copies were taken! Needless to say, it took Porter a while to recover from this incident and he almost gave up on writing altogether.

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Welcome to Brad’s Reader! If you are reading this, then you are new to this blog. I hope you’ll take a few minutes to explore my little home on the internet. To help you out, I decided to put together this little "Welcome Guide" so your exploration is not in vain.

What is Brad’s Reader?

I started Brad’s Reader so I could write about literature, books, the publishing world, writing, and even a little philosophy. Lately, ebooks have really captured my attention and I am very interested in using new technology to distribute and consume literature.

This blog began in December 2006. Since then, the appearance has undergone a few cosmetic changes, but the essence of the blog remains the same.

Every so often I tread lightly in the world of politics. This is not a political blog. There are thousands of blogs dedicated just to politics for you to get your daily fix. However, there are some issues that cross-over from politics to literature and I feel it is necessary to write about them here.

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I recently finished reading The Alchemist (aff link) for a book club I belong to. I must admit, at first the book didn’t excite me very much. Even the first chapter or two dragged. But after that, I became engrossed in the story and I ended up liking the book enough to recommend here. That is hardly the point of this post, however.

The Alchemist was originally written in Portuguese, and then translated into many languages, including English. It’s probably one of those rare gems in the US publishing industry that a translated book becomes such a big hit. I have never been averse to reading translated works of literature (maybe with the exception of poetry, but that’s another post for another day). But I often wonder what has been lost in the translation process. Perhaps many Americans feel this way, which is why we (as a country) don’t read that many translated books. Maybe the issue is much more complicated than that.

On Sunday, while reading the New York Times (online, of course), I came across this article about the lack of translated books from foreign authors in the American publishing industry. It’s actually a deficit that is hurting Americans more and more as the world becomes more connected through travel and technology. Yes, there are world-class authors right here in the United States and world-class books are being published, in English, every year. But we (Americans) are still missing out on the larger picture of world literary discourse.

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Today I was thrilled to get in the mail my copy of Poets & Writers Magazine (aff link), as it is one of the very few print subscriptions I have maintained over the years. I usually read the articles over a period of a week or two. But tonight, being a lazy Saturday night, I decided to dive in early.

One article in particular caught my eye – an article about travel writing. I was intrigued because I love to write (obviously), and I also love to travel. While I have never combined the two and written articles about my travels, it remains one of those elusive dreams to get paid as a globe-trotting writer.

The article makes a few really good points. The first point that jumped out is that travel writing is not the same thing as writing guidebooks (ie. those destination guides you pick up at the newsstand at your airport). Rather, travel writing provides a narrative of your journey and contains all the elements of a story (beginning, middle, end, etc).

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Friday is here and that means the weekend is just around the corner! It also means the 2008 US election is drawing closer. Are you registered to vote yet? Depending on where you are, it might be too late. If you are registered make sure you head to the polls on November 4 to cast your ballot. This is a very important election – one that will determine the course the US will take for the foreseeable future.

Anyway, this is a weekend I’m actually not looking forward to. Why? Because on Saturday I have to go to the dentist for my semi-annual cleaning. Ack! Even these cleaning appointments always end up hurting more than I bargain for. I think I have a phobia of going to the dentist. Oh well, if it means keeping all of my teeth, I guess it’s worth it (sigh).

Once I get through the dentist’s office on Saturday, the rest of the weekend should be relaxing. And with that said, here are some links for you to read while you’re relaxing this weekend. I scoured the web all week to find this stuff, so you know it’s good! Like always, have a happy and safe weekend!

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One issue I struggle with each time I sit down to start a new short story is whether or not to put together an outline first. There isn’t much guidance from the writing community either, as some writers swear by detailed outlines while others say outlines only stifle creativity. What is a writer to do?

In my own personal experience, if I write a piece of short fiction without some kind of rough outline (even if it’s just bullet points), the chances of that story never being finished increase by a factor of ten. At the very least, I try to write down major plot points (beginning, middle, end), character names, and other parts of the story I deem important. This gives me something to work with and I can fill in the details as I write.

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I normally don’t expect any good news to come on a Monday. Generally, Monday’s are filled with doom and gloom, made worse by the ending weekend and an entire workweek to ponder with dread.

But this morning was different. I was reading my Publishers Weekly e-newsletter and came across a story that lifted my spirits. Publishing house Simon & Schuster will be going mobile! Here is, in part, what the article said:

Simon & Schuster and Macmillan Publishing Solutions subsidiary MPS Mobile announced a partnership today through which MPS will distribute over 500 S&S e-books through its Global Reader platform, which makes digital book content available over any Web-enabled mobile phone.

The article goes on to say that the first books to be made available right away are The Secret and the Star Trek books.

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Forget the presidential elections. Forget the historical economic crisis we are facing. In one month (actually, it’s now less than a month), perhaps the most important even of the year will take place: National Novel Writing Month (more popularly known as NaNoWriMo)!

For those writers who have been living under a rock for the past several years, NaNoWriMo is a writing marathon event where writers everywhere try to write a complete novel in the timespan of one month. I’m not going to get into the nitty-gritty details here, because this cool website pretty much explains it all.

I first heard about the annual contest during the fall 2004, in a small poetry club I belonged to at the community college I attended (right before I transfered to the university). My reaction was one of excitement and a little skepticism.

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The weekend is here! That’s about all that needs to be said on a Friday. Right? Well, if you’re anything like me, you’ve been glued to the election news and watching the economy tank. And as November 4 draws closer, things are going to get even more heated than ever.

I don’t have quite as many links for today as I normally like. But you should really enjoy these – there’s a lot of good reading to be had! Please be sure to read the "Writing for Animals" post, as I’m a huge animal lover so it’s something I feel deeply about. With that said, I hope everyone out there in internetland has a happy and safe weekend!

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