Pimpin' ain't easy…
I wanted to take a moment to plug one of my best friends, Michael Oliveri.
Mike is a horror and comic book author. In 2001, he even won the Bram Stoker award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel. He’s good, and now he’s got a couple projects that you may want to check out.
First off, is his comic book, Werewolves: Call of the Wild. It comes out this April. I’ve seen the story (long before it was accepted) and I like it a lot. If you are a comic book reader, I would request that you give this comic a shot. Please go to your local comic shop and pre-order it. It’s in the February issue of Previews, so you can point it out there to get your local shop to jump on it. The more people buy this, the more likelihood it keeps going.
Next is his new collaborative fiction site, MuyMal.com. Now this is very very cool. This site is a collaboration between Mike, and authors Weston Ocshe and John Urbancik. It’s a shared universe where all of their fiction lives. It’s done in an episodic blog style format and it’s a very neat concept. Their about document says it best:
What is Muy Mal? We’re glad you asked.
Muy Mal is a shared world created by Michael Oliveri, John Urbancik, and Weston Ochse. It’s a world very much like our own, similar in time and place, but just about thirty degrees off of reality. This is a world in which magic never ceased to exist; a world that is a very bad place.
Each writer will explore their own corner of this world, though readers can expect some crossover between tales. Characters may make cameo appearances, for example, and major events will affect every story. This is not collaboration so much as it is cooperation, and readers will be welcome to witness as much or as little of the world a they see fit.
Each story will be serialized, and each writer may spread their work across several serialized pieces at a time. An overall title serves as an umbrella for each writer’s work, and each individual tale will carry its own title as it unfolds chapter by chapter. These titles are:
Chronicles of the Black Bishop by Weston Ochse
Asphalt & Alchemy by Michael Oliveri
Seeker by John Urbancik
Muy Mal is also an experiment in the delivery of online fiction. Thanks to the power and flexibility of WordPress, the stories will be accessible in a familiar, blog-like structure where each new chapter will appear at the top of each writer’s section. Similarly, links will be available so readers may drill down and focus on specific serials. There will also be RSS feeds for each author so readers can pull content directly to their feed reader rather than visit the main site.
Finally, Muy Mal’s contents are Free. All of the work posted to the site is licensed under a Creative Commons license, specifically the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 license. In English, this means readers are welcome to download and/or print the stories out to their heart’s content. Give copies to friends and neighbors! We don’t care, so long as the work is presented with bylines of the respective writer, it’s not altered, and not used commercially.
In even simpler terms: read it, enjoy it, and please don’t screw us.
If you have any further comments or questions, feel free to contact us. We look forward to hearing from you!
January 17, 2006 @ 2:24 pm
Interesting idea. Have you read the chapters on the fiction site as well? If so, would it be for ‘mature’ or adult readers only or would it be appropriate for teens? If it is, it sounds like something my nephew would enjoy.
January 17, 2006 @ 2:44 pm
Actually I’ve just read Mike’s stuff on there and it seemed okay for the teen audience. I know that Weston’s first story has hookers in it, so I’m not sure how safe that is. I would check it out for yourself and see. These guys are horror writers though, so I imagine some of the stuff might venture into “adult” territory…
January 17, 2006 @ 2:56 pm
Thanks for the info!