MIFFLIN COUNTY COKE BLUES

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This week I have been chatting to Isa K, author of Mifflin County Coke Blues, a short story featured in the Other Sides anthology. Many of you will know her from Split Self, her popular webserial, and you may have wondered why the links to Split Self have been suspended.


Me:  So Isa, what is going on with Split Self?

Isa:  After running it on fluffy-seme I had a lot of great feedback about what worked and what didn't. When I start writing I have just a sliver of an idea that develops as it goes. That's what makes web fiction so much fun, the audience helps me develop, gives me ideas, helps me identify the bits that are interesting to people other than myself. But the reality is that I don't always know where I want the story to go when I'm writing it, so I find that, when read as a whole instead of in instalments, my webserials can drag on or come off sloppy and uneven.

For that reason I really didn't have any plans for Split-Self after it was done. Some authors release ebook compilations or POD editions, I really couldn't see myself doing that here. But then I came across a pretty successful romance/erotica publisher by the name of Loose Id. All through the serialization of Split-Self readers made it pretty clear they want more of the romance, but since the central relationship was m/m/f I wasn't 100% sure they were really looking for the story I wanted to tell. And here I am on Loose Id's website reading basically a request for m/m/f stories. Then I looked at their list and realized I had read some of their books before ... suddenly I'm thinking to myself "this is the perfect publisher for Split-Self...."

Happily they agreed, so now I have the opportunity to use all the data collected during the webserial run and really polish the story. Unfortunately, that meant taking the old story down, the timing of which was not ideal for Other Sides.

People who read Split-Self the webserial can expect a tighter, more consistent and sexier book. Loose Id does very professional ebook releases and our tentative release date is early March. Then, depending on sales, a print release may come out.

Me:  You are also known for running fluffy-seme, a publishing platform bringing the work of other webfiction authors to readers. When will the changes be complete and the site ready for relaunch?

Isa:  It's funny because every entrepreneur says the same thing: it will take you longer than you think it will. And... wow ... oh God, yeah. It really does.

When I started fluffy-seme I built it on a very naive concept: give authors a platform with which to build a community around their work. Along the way I realized that this would never work because readers really really hate commenting and will not take amongst themselves in a place where they think the author might see them. So as time went on I began to see things differently: writers didn't want or need a community. Writers want feedback, as much and as detailed as possible, but none of the existing publishing platforms can deliver that.

Really what takes so much time is not doing it, it's doing it right. You look at the websites that survive (the Facebooks -vs- the Friendsters if you will) and it's all about scaling. It's all about how those first few decisions-- from what language to program in to how the database is structured-- played out once the site grew from 100 users to 1,000,000. I've been spending a lot of time talking with programmers, database experts, system architects, trying to flesh out the fundamentals before going forward, but now I feel like things are slowly coming together and hope to have something running again in the spring.

Me:  Readers of Split Self will know Jake. Is Mifflin County Coke Blues a little teaser? Does it give us a taste of Jake’s history?

Isa:  In Split-Self, Jake is a character with a secret, but even once you learn what that secret is he's still a little 'off'. He sees the world in a very unique way that's connected to his background, but every detail about his background you learn makes his motives more mysterious rather than less.

Even though Jake's grandmother never appears in Split-Self, she becomes extremely important in the plot. Mifflin County Coke Blues was an opportunity to explore some of the tensions running through Split-Self from a different angle. Also as a writer I like the juxtaposition of odd topics in the same story and I think MCCB serves as a good introduction to my style in that regard. Coked up Mennonite teenagers and witchcraft, it's not exactly an intuitive combination.

Me:  Other Sides is proving very popular. How did you feel about the opportunity to contribute? Are there authors among your fellow contributors whose work you really love?

Isa:  I'm really happy with Other Sides because of what it represents for webfiction. We're a small community and although we all get along, in the past we have not been very good about organizing. Jan Oda does such incredible work handling all of our big egos on a regular basis she's basically a super hero to me now.

And of course looking at the names on the cover of the finished product, it was really an honor to be asked to contribute (I know that sounds corny). I had my reservations because-- to be honest-- I don't like Sci-Fi/Fantasy. Split-Self always gets labelled as 'urban fantasy' and I try not to be argumentative about this because ultimately it's a silly issue ... but really it's not. To me it's Magical Realism like the work of Haruki Murakami or Gabriel Garcia Marquez: weird stuff happening in the a story otherwise rooted firmly in reality. My other webserials are even LESS Sci-Fi/Fantasy ... to the point where I think most webfic people don't even know they exist. For that reason whenever I'm asked to participate in things like this I'm usually a little reluctant, I've had negative experiences with putting non Sci-Fi/Fantasy works in front of readers clearly expecting Sci-Fi/Fantasy, but Anna Harte, MCM and Jan did such an amazing job curating the anthology that everything flows together nicely. There's variety without being jarring and-- not to be cliché here-- there's really something for everyone.

Personally I thought MeiLin Miranda's Dalston Junction was an absolute gem of a story. I also really liked M. Jones's Junk Drawer ... which is one of those stories that if I had to explain it, I don't know if I could hit on what was so compelling, but as soon as I picked it up it drew me in and I couldn't stop reading it.

Me:  Snap! Two of my favourites, too.

Isa K is a writer and entrepreneur currently residing in New York. Her first traditionally published work Split-Self will be hitting the Kindles and Nooks of perverts worldwide in March. She still manages to scrape together the occasional ridiculous fanfic in between working on her hockey serial Season in the Red and her publishing venture fluffy-seme, which she hopes will rid the world of comment begging forever.

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If you haven't read your own copy yet, it's time you did. Go to Other Sides at ErgoFiction eBooks.

And follow up on the other authors and reviews at:

Oct 14    Guest post Zoe E. Whitten on The Monster Blog.

Oct 15    Review From Chris of  The Pirate’s Bounty.

Oct 17    Guest post Zoe E. Whitten on Louise Bohmer.

Oct 18    Guest post Zoe E. Whitten on Jerrod Balzer’s blog.

Oct 19    Review From Lyda of Day in the Life of an Idiot.

Oct 21    Review From A Fanatic’s Book Blog.

With thanks to:  The Darkest of Lore;  Gabriel Gadfly;   Fuck Yeah Ebooks
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