Ficlets

LA’s largest book event, the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, has dropped its Author list onto the Web, so if hanging with the likes of Mitch Albom, Jane Smiley and Sherman Alexie seems like the way you want to spend your last weekend in April, now you’ll know where to turn.

I do suspect that the “Author” list should be more accurately called the “Participants” list; otherwise, I’m very disturbed at the idea that American Girl, the expensive (and, if you’re not a six-year-old girl, vaguely creepy) doll, is an actual author. One wonders if her ghost writers are required to type by holding her little chubby porcelain hands and making them strike the keyboard. Really, this image is going to keep me up all night, shivering.

What I find particularly interesting about the LATFoB is that it has its share of blogger/authors – authors who transitioned to book writing after the established themselves (at least in some part) online. Examples of this include Pamela Ribon, the author of a humorous novel Why Moms Are Weird, Ron Hogan, who before he wrote The Stewardess is Flying the Plane, a celebration of 70s movies, created and toiled on the online literary site Beatrice, and Cory Doctorow, who is one of the masterminds behind Boing Boing. And Gore Vidal, who has a lovely LiveJournal. Hmmm, perhaps not. Although he probably should. The point being here is that authors who got started online are no longer merely a curiosity; they’re part of the mainstream. And that should be an encouraging thought to you Ficleteers.