Online Odyssey Continues
© Roxianne Moore
As my broken leg heals, my online odyssey continues. Last time, I left off at Macmillan Corporation Publishing . You can read e-books online, keeping up to five titles at a time on your personal bookshelf. This is a free service that lets you examine hypertext books, with the option to purchase the print version. While most of the titles aren't specifically of interest to creative writers, you'll learn about productivity software, HTML and the Web. Topics include General Internet, Education, Web Publishing, and Productivity Applications.
You can examine a wide number of e-books online, with the option to purchase the books directly from MacMillan. If you click on the picture of a book cover, you'll be taken to an order page. From there, you can click on "SuperStore," which takes you to The Simon & Schuster SuperStore. Here you'll find books and software, with everything from bestselling novels to cookbooks and travel guides using their searchable database. The searches are quirky. For instance, looking for travel guides to England will also turn up books on New England. Entries are brief, with no reviews or description, but you can order directly online. You can also search for a bookstore in your area, simplifying local purchases.
From there, I clicked on "Other Bookstores on the Internet," which led me to a "sorry" page. Apparently, this feature has been deleted or moved. Instead, I tried "Yellow Pages," which brought me to The World Wide Web Yellow Pages. Using the keywords fiction and poetry, I turned up 177 hits. Several of the links were broken, and others seemed to be forgotten relics. One link led me to Here Lies: IO Writing Quarterly. Although the link says they're soliciting fiction and poetry, I'm skeptical since the last issue online was published in September 1996.
One of the best links I found here was Nua Dan, Irish Hypermedia Artists. The poems in the series, "Hunger," were excellent, and made good use of hypertext to link readers to historical and explanatory documents. This is one site you really have to explore if you're at all interested in the use of hypermedia in creative writing.
Using my usual odyssey technique, I jumped from there to "Other Literature Sites on the Web." Finally, at Web Hyperfiction Reading List, I found some real meat. Again, many broken links, but I found some great hypertext work. If you've never read any of this, take a look at Lies by Richard L. Pryll, Jr. This is interesting because you can begin with truth and get one story, examine the lies and get another. Or choose a little of each for yet another version.
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