What is Adelaide Sprawls?

Short answer: Adelaide Sprawls is a blogopera set in the sprawling city of Adelaide, South Australia. In Adelaide, it’s all two degrees of separation. At most.

Is it true?

Adelaide Sprawls is a blogopera. This blogopera is fiction. And where it is not fiction, the appropriate acknowledgements are made. That doesn’t make it fact.

What’s a blogopera?

I’m not entirely sure. Blogopera is in its infancy and it doesn’t have a wikipedia entry. I am borrowing concepts from blogging, flash fiction, novels, soap operas, historical research – all things I love very much.

Blogopera might be a whole new genre or it might be a project that can’t be sustained.

I hope it goes for years.

Update August 2008: At the end of 2007, I received a grant from Arts SA to write my second novel and a companion weblog both to be titled Locked In and both to take as their starting point, this post.

At the time I wrote my application, I had (or thought I had) a clear idea of how I would get the blog and book to work together. But when I started on it, I just couldn’t get it to work.

In addition, 2008 hasn’t really been going how I had expected it would go, and my writing is not getting done.

In addition addition, I really wanted to start a blog title Weird Adelaide and based Barbara Hanrahan’s brilliant article. I started, but it wasn’t quite gelling either (it’s over here if you’re interested – it’s really not good, but I might leave it there for now).

Then, I had the genius idea that instead of trying to plan it all out and make it all fit together, I would use this blog and just let it be much more muddy. By which I mean: just write.

On August 1 2008, I started writing and publishing one short post every day (200-300 words) with no real clear direction of plot or character development in mind.

In this respect, I expect I shall be drawing quite strongly on soap opera conventions.

It could be that this is a Big Mistake and that I would be much wiser to leave my drafting and jotting in my notebooks and private files.

Who is the author?

My blogging name is ThirdCat and my day to day blog is here. If you want to get in touch with me, leave a comment, or email me: thirdcat at gmail.com

I’ve got an idea for a storyline. There is someone I want to know more about.

Let me know. Some characters have well-defined roles and storylines, some I have hardly thought about. Again, leave a comment, or email me: thirdcat at gmail.com

Haven’t I read this somewhere before?

Unlikely, but possibly. Some of the posts here are adaptations of other pieces of writing I have done here and there. I always check with the owner of the original website or publication so that they don’t feel compromised by having my material in more than one place. The copyright is mine and this is all my own work.

Your writing is wonderful. Elegant expression, clarity of thought, narrative impetus, intriguing plot. Can’t you get a real publisher?

Thank you. No.

This blogopera sucks. Your grammar is poor, you can’t spell, bloggers are all narcissists, blogging is going nowhere, this is the end of literature as we know it.

Yes, I know. But thanks for dropping by all the same.

To contact ThirdCat, leave a comment or send an email to thirdcat at gmail.com