Fantastic Online Fiction
Once upon a time, if you wanted to read a book or a short story by one of your favorite authors, you either had to borrow the book from a library or a friend or else you had to go buy it in a store. The key in any of those options is that you had to be physically in the same place as the book. If you lived in a country where that book hadn't yet been published, you may never get to see it. If the book had gone out of print, it might be very difficult to find a copy of the book. These days, you can read out of print books as well as numerous new works by great authors online. One of those great new works is The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In A Ship Of her Own Making by award winning author Catherynne M. Valente.
Today, Valente posted the 22nd and final chapter of her fantastic children's novel, and I decided to celebrate the day here on AlwaysSababa by telling you all about why this project is so exciting, and why you should click right on over and start reading.
Fairyland, as the book is called for short, started life as a fictional book inside of another sort of book entirely. Valente never intended to actually write this novel. It was simply the favorite childhood story of a character in another, very grown up, novel Palimpsest
Valente's fans, however, are hardcore. They couldn't bare the idea that they'd never know what this story was really like. If it sprang from the mind of this author, it was bound to be magical. And so, the fans began to beg. And cajole. And whine. Could she please, please write this story?
Enter the hardships of recession. Valente's partner (now newly-wed husband) lost his job, money from publications was only coming in dribbles, and the couple had a list of mounting bills. And so, this award winning author, whose fan base is, in any case, strongly connected to her through the Internet, did something that simply wouldn't have been possible a generation ago. She announced that she would write an entire novel online, make it available for free, and that we, her readers, could help support her by donating money via PayPal.
The experiment was a huge success. In a matter of days, Valente and her partner were able to deal with that month's bills, and thousands of new readers were introduced to the magic of Valente's fantasy worlds as other authors like Neil Gaiman and Cory Doctorow talked up Valente's project on their websites.
Fairyland is a beautiful story about a young and willful girl by the name of September. She is spirited away from her home on the back of a leopard, and faces a series of challenges, puzzles and adventures fit for a fairytale child. Every chapter unfolds with new surprises and new layers of wonder. It is a fantastic bed-time story book, like The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
