Last year, local horror publisher Cryptic Bindings published an untitled serial novel. It's now available for purchase, and it has a title—Billionaires, Bullets, Exploding Monkeys. It also has a cover that makes my palms itch, it's so bad. You can read the serial novel or buy a hard copy over here.

And Underland Press, which produced the very lovely and gruesome story about amputation cults, Last Days, has a new serial novel up, which they unfortunately have named a "wovel," or web novel. It's called Exit Vector. The difference between a wovel and a regular web novel is that you can actually vote on the way the story runs, like a Choose Your Own Adventure read by committee. For instance, the first installment ends:

“Sorry, don’t think so,” Billy said, more with regret than indifference, and he reached under his jacket and pulled out...

And your options are 1. "A black gun with many many many barrels" or 2. "Eyeglasses with attached mini-microphon (sic)"

You can vote until July 3rd. Someone is going to figure out how to do this sort of thing on a mammoth scale, I'd be willing to bet. It feels right for the publishing industry to go back to the Charles Dickens-era model of publishing: Micro-bursts of soap opera to keep people returning to your site. The books can be collected later for extra revenue. I'm surprised that the New Yorker hasn't done this already on their website with an up-and-coming author.