Way back in the misty past of 2016, a conversation in the writers corner of the SFFWorld.com forums gave rise to a collaborative fiction concept. The idea: to take a crowdfunding site like Patreon (where people pay a monthly fee to the projects they want to support) and use it as a publishing platform, where those payments would “buy” issues of a magazine.
The resul
t was Archipelago, a swashbuckling alternate-history serial in which naval explorers of the early 17th Century were transported from our world to another one, where endless seas and chains of islands lay in wait, along with magic, monsters, and who knows what else.
The participants—Charlotte Ashley, Andrew Leon Hudson, and Kurt Hunt—each took their own storylines and, with a little planning in advance, set off to try and deliver three new chapters on a month-to-month basis, inviting their Patron-readers to complicate matters via periodic polls that would influence the course of the action. Beforehand, they ran a Kickstarter campaign, letting their backers name characters or vessels, in order to raise money to pay the artists who created the project’s logo and a grand cover for an eventual collected edition.
The first season of Archipelago ran for just over a year, ending in the summer of 2018. During that time, they wrote and published over 150,000 words of fiction, including thirteen three-chapter magazines, a one-off bonus issue for the Kickstarter backers, and a standalone short story for Podcastle which was recorded before a live studio audience. When the final issue was released, the authors collapsed due to emotional and creative exhaustion. They are only now sufficiently recovered as to compile the material generated into a single volume:
You can find out more at the project’s new site, IntoTheArchipelago, including introductions to the storylines and the authors—one of whom, Charlotte, will be at WorldCon2019 this weekend to promote the publication of the ebook version on Saturday 17th August. The paperback will follow soon, but to celebrate their digital launch Archipelago is available for pre-order at just $2.99, and that price will persist until the end of the convention for the benefit of attendees and mere mortals alike.
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At the dawn of the Age of Discovery, three portals break open to a mysterious alien world. Three nations take the first bold voyages through the portals, changing the course of history as we know it.
On the other side, thousand of island chains hide ancient ruins, sophisticated artifacts and complex messages from a long-dead civilization, now reclaimed by the land, the sea, and the huge creatures that have come to dominate the ocean planet.
This is a world that rewards the brave, the reckless, and the ambitious. Those who cross through the portals and stake their claims on this new world can reach out and claim wealth, fame, and power — if they don’t get killed…
Welcome to the Archipelago!
Book site: https://intothearchipelago.wordpress.com/
