Max Barry, author of the novels Jennifer Government and Company, has started releasing a novel online, one page a day. You can try out page one of Machine Man for free.
Angela Meyer, of the "LiteraryMinded" weblog, was so intrigued by the concept that she asked the author about it all.
It's not like it's never been done before, but you may be one of the first Australian authors depositing installments of a novel into cyberspace day-by-day with Machine Man. What made you decide to tell this particular story this way?I really liked the idea of each installment being short. I love the net, but never thought it was a great way to deliver novels, because novels demand long periods of undivided attention, whereas I can't read more than eight sentences of anything online before feeling the urge to check my email. And that's including when I'm reading my email.
So a novel delivered one chapter at a time via the web never seemed right to me -- particularly a novel written as a regular print book. The art and medium just didn't fit. But I heard about these tiny, bestselling Japanese novels delivered via text message, and found that intriguing. At that time I had the basic idea for Machine Man and a few hundred dull, ponderous words that sucked all life out of it: when I thought of that idea in a compressed, electronic format, it came alive again. The format changed the nature of the story.
