I’ll be honest.

The original idea behind this wasn’t mine. I stole it from Warren Ellis. Or maybe he abandoned it. Either way, it was his first.

Here’s what he had.

quick idea notation

ROTOR
(placeholder name, no domain available)

one site, five writers, five weekdays (five RSS feeds). every day each writer posts something new – either a piece of a serial, or a short fiction, or an article. Under 500 words, ideally (probably 100-200 words is the ideal), but whatever. Each writer is therefore, yes, generating content for free – but each writer’s sequence goes POD-book when it’s generated enough words, the spine and back of the book also bearing the ROTOR mark. And then start again. Or bail out and free up a slot for another writer, whatever.

(tumblr version of same: one writer, one illustrator, one photographer, one musician, one video/filmmaker = five slots = one POD DVD every six months or whenever)

#thinkingoutloud (nothing I’ll ever have the time to do, so I throw it out into the wild)

I liked the idea. Mainly because I’m a masochist who likes bad/good ideas.

After the idea stuck with me for a day or two, I started asking around, figuring that no one would want to be a part of this.

I was wrong.

Within a day of sending out feelers, I had the five to run the site with. Plus enough extra to be able to open the weekends up to all of the other creative people we know.

Our opening line up right now is as follows.

Monday – Zachary Whitten, serialized novel.
Tuesday – Brandon Dill, photography collections
Wednesday – Toby Sells, short fiction
Thursday – Derek Stiles, illustration
Friday – Matthew Crawford-Trisler, poetry
Saturday/Sunday – Guest Spots

This first month is going to be us testing stuff out and getting used to the idea of this being real. I encourage everyone to tell us what they like and what they don’t like. Well, at least about how the site works.

We’re also taking submissions for people who want to show their stuff off on the weekends. We’re open to just about anything that isn’t going to get us banned from Google.

Sponsorship spots are available, but we don’t have a clear rate worked out yet. At this point, we’ll probably just trade links until I get a better ad service working.

Finally, I’d like to say thanks to everyone who’s agreed to be a part of this. I have no idea what’s going to happen now that the lights are on. I hope I don’t choke, look out into the audience and start swearing incoherently.

The mic is hot. Let’s see what happens.