Duane Poncy's blog post asked, "What is a blook? Does The Germaine Truth qualify?"
I had already scanned the sidebar and the rest of the page for an advert of a printed book. Finding none, I [in my usual arrogance] pronounced it non-blook.
I read on, thinking that if the question had come up, maybe it was a blook-to-be. In the middle of the post, Poncy claimed that The Germaine Truth was "a new form of literature." I'm a sucker for lines like that. [Be sure to include one on your blog!]
Based on the asumption that blooks meant serialized online fiction or non-fiction, which convert to blook format easily, he wrote, "The Germaine Truth is something which a book can never be. It is part of a new form of literature which is dynamic in a way that only the internet can allow."
I took a wander around the site and quickly discovered what the difficulty would be in getting The Germaine Truth into print, not the least of which was multiple authors on multiple blogs! I resorted to the Directions for Reading to scope out the magnitude of the project.
"The Germaine Truth is made up of a dozen different websites representing different aspects of the fictional town of Germaine, Oregon. We realize that this might seem daunting at first. Just realize that most of the pages are auxilary to the story and you don’t have to read them all, or any of them, to enjoy the main story, which is contained in Susie Applegate’s blog."
I found The Germaine Truth shortly after I had examined Carbondale After Blog (a blook-to-be). "Carbondale After Blog is a multi-media publication in print and electronic formats. Only the first page of each chapter will be printed in the paper edition, but a compact disc containing the complete text (thousands of words) of every chapter, plus hundreds of color images, audio and video files in addition to links to web-based content."
Thinking this sort of approach might work for him, I wrote to Poncy and asked him to share his thoughts about possibility of blooking.
I'm sure that there must be something in the gaming genre on CD or web that might act as a point of reference, but I am NOT the person to ask about it. Anybody with something we could use as a jumping off place?
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