"The Internet launch of 'The Daughters of Freya' may well mark a publishing milestone." - Rosemary Herbert, Boston Herald
YOU'VE GOT FICTION: E-mails deliver new mystery novel installments to readers.
By Rosemary Herbert
Boston Herald
There you are, blogging or slogging away at your computer. Suddenly, you get a pretty intriguing e-mail.
It's an exchange of messages between investigative reporter Samantha "Sam" Dempsey, her editor and others.
Sam is hot on the trail of a sizzling story about an all-female cult that calls itself The Daughters of Freya. Named after a Norse goddess of sexuality, the cult can only be called screwball.
When she learns the cult's charismatic leader, Simone Jorgenson, has convinced her followers to devote their lives to hooking up with strangers, Sam has to ask, "Are these women unwitting hookers?"
These e-mails are, in fact, installments of a book.
You can follow Sam as she risks her life to answer this question, if you have signed on to read the e-pistolary mystery novel, The Daughters of Freya. The book is the brainchild of Toronto screenwriter Michael Betcherman, 54, and David Diamond, 52, a journalist and author from Kentfield, Calif.
The collaboration was accomplished in part over the Internet. The longtime friends, who met in 1978 in a Tel Aviv, Israel, bar, and have never lived in the same city since, also wrote a chunk of the novel in Washington, D.C., working four days straight on two computers.
The Internet launch of The Daughters of Freya may well mark a publishing milestone. "There have been other attempts to use the Internet to get people to read, but they essentially asked people to open an e-mail and read a chapter of a book. Who wants to do that?" Betcherman said in a recent telephone interview. "Our approach mirrors the way people actually use the Internet," he said.
Those who order the book receive 98 e-mail messages during a three-week period from a sender identified as "e-mail mystery." Readers are then treated to the voyeuristic experience of reading Sam's correspondence. As the plot thicken and Sam's life is threatened, e-mails arrive in a sudden flurry. Then, just when readers worry about Sam's safety, they have to wait for an update.
"We made sure there were some cliffhanger messages at the end of the day," Diamond said in a telephone interview. "We knew we could up the suspense that way."
The duo also made sure Sam and her editor, Jane Sperry, discuss personal matters, such as marriage, former boyfriends and family members, just as people do in e-mails. Not only does this add realism to the story but it helps readers get involved with the characters.
"The more that I read, the more I felt I knew the characters, and I started to care what happened to them," said Natalie Engler, 37, of Sudbury. She recommended The Daughters of Freya to members of her book club, most of whom requested delivery of the messages to begin at the same time.
When her group met to talk about the book, they agreed the reading experience "was like eavesdropping," Engler said. "We have members ranging in age from their 20s to their 40s, and all of us were amazed the book was written by two men - we thought it was so true to how women actually write to each other."
Excerpt from The Daughters of Freya.
It all starts with an e-mail plea from an old friend:
Subject: Need Your Help
From: "Don Jackson"
Date: Thursday, March 4 - 1:16 AM
To: "Samantha Dempsey"
Dear Samantha:
Karen and I need your help. Six months ago, Lisa dropped out of Berkeley and joined a cult in Marin County north of San Francisco. This isn't like the moonies or hair krishna or any other cult you've ever heard of. I wish it was. Believe it or not, Lisa is running around having sex with strangers out of some crackpot belief that this is going to lead to world peace ...
(Rosemary Herbert is the Boston Herald's book review editor.)
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