Characters Become Bloggers

There's a writer on a local writing group list that I monitor who works for "a family entertainment company in New York," writing TV and movie scripts. She also says "In my spare time (which is rare) I'm working on a series of novels."

Interesting enough, but what truly caught my attention was two paragraphs from one of her recent posts to the local group, reposted here with her permission ...

I've been playing with a women's fiction series for some time - sort of a Mitford meets South Park thing. The manuscript for the first book is finished, and now it's with the artist. Yeah, I'm going to illustrate this book - heavily - using a scrapbooking theme. The artwork will take some time, so I began to wonder if I could use the same approach - characters blogging - to introduce it to readers.

I decided to try it. (I love a challenge.) So Monday, I put Pages from Paddlebrook up on the web. This is a prequel to the first book in the series, written by 2 main characters, sisters. They write daily posts and basically give backstory and all those little details that never make it through a final book edit. I plan to publish the contents of the blog (in part or entirely) later, so this writing is not all for naught.

Interesting technique for promotion, don't you think?