Real People as Fiction - Linkgasm #3

Timmi Duchamp on representing history in fiction, particularly using real historical personages in fiction. Here's Part Two.

Are novelists entitled to use real-world characters? by Guy Gavriel Kay, an essay for The Guardian that's linked from the above post.

This also brings to mind Real Person Fiction, which is not at all a new practice - for example, the Brontë juvenalia includes historical figures and variations thereof.

How about Reverse Historical Fiction? (via Creating Van Gogh) "[Shumaker]'s story is an epistolary one in which a literature professor describes the troubled history of a (deceased) colleague's doctoral dissertation, one that the colleague was forced to drop. The long and short of it is that while a graduate student, this man discovered that Huckleberry Finn was no fictitious character but a real person who wrote down his life story and gave it to Samuel Clemens, merely hoping for assistance in getting the memoir published."

And these sound interesting as well: The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte and The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen by Syrie James.

I haven't read either of those books yet, so here's a review of The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte at the BronteBlog. Review of The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen at Bookstack.

Here's another interesting post: Redefining Historical Fiction, Amazon-style at Reading the Past.

Then there're cartoon characters of a real person that take on a life of their own, in this post from Henry Jenkins, back in April 2008: My Life as a Cartoon Character.

Sometimes, the details of reality just won't work, no matter how hard you try. 2D Goggles: The Style Edition.

And on a completely different note, How Being a Theater Geek Improved My Writing by Barbara Barnett.


Linkgasm 1.

Linkgasm 2.

Linkgasm #2

A Writing Revolution at Seedmagazine.com. "Nearly everyone reads. Soon, nearly everyone will publish."

That's not a new idea. "Consumers" who write have been around for a long, long time. I was reminded immediately of The Organization for Transformative Works. And Henry Jenkins' Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide as well as Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Media Consumers in a Digital Age, published in 2006.

I was recently looking for an online newspaper article, and found useful link amalgamation sites: Online Newspapers (U.S.) listed by state, and HomeTown Free Press, which features links to newspapers worldwide.

LibriVox "provides free audiobooks from the public domain" by volunteer readers (sometimes a single book might feature multiple readers). They're also looking for volunteers!

Finally, Cybereditions "publishes quality non-fiction books as ebooks online or as print-on-demand paperbacks available through bookshops or online suppliers, including Barnes&Noble and Amazon. As an independent publisher, we specialise in academic works or new editions of out-of-print works updated with new introductions, supplementary chapters and revised bibliographies. We welcome submissions by authors."

Related post: The Desire to Publish.

Linkgasm 1.