I posted this over at LadyKillers this week and it sparked some great ideas – what do readers think the novel will look like 2, 20, or 200 years from now?

The Future Shape of Novels?

• Strictly 140-character chapters.
• Based on cartoon characters who ran for office in last election.
• Includes interactive graphics.
• Features short 3-D movies.
• Optional music.
• Optional out-loud reading of novel by Angelina Jolie (or, Brad Pitt. Your choice, but not cheap.)
• Customized with your name as protagonist. Or superhero, if appropriate.
• Streamed to your e-reader by Apple or Amazon, the only providers in business.
• Only 99 cents.
• Written by one of 10 best-selling We-Customize-for-U Authors.
• Comes with coupon: Buy 10 and get a free 32-ounce drink.

To blog or not to blog, that is the question. A few years ago, the answer for a crime writer who wanted any chance of standing out in the crowd was a resounding yes. The air was full of panel discussions, advice columns – and blogs – on the value of social media in bringing readers to your books. Publishers increasingly controlled by bottom line realities weren’t spending as much on mid-list and new authors publicity so we had to do it ourselves. And we did.

Thousands of blogs sprang up, assisted by simple and clever software programs generously put out there by companies that seemed to survive on less revenue than bookstores or lemonade stands. At first, I bookmarked like crazy. I mean who wouldn’t want to read a weekly post by David Hewson, Louise Penny, or the other best-selling authors who jumped in? And I had personal friends I wanted to support or whose small essays pleased me. And when I began my own, I was honored that some people bookmarked mine, and subscribed to the automatic feeds. But suddenly, I was drowning in clever essays. I couldn’t stay current with everybody and vines began to cover the unused links.

One innovation helped a lot: the group blog: The Kill Zone, Jungle Red Writers, Murderati, Pens Fatales…the list is long, and the quality of the writing sparkles. I blushed with pride when The LadyKillers invited me into their highly-rated group. One benefit: with so many writers in one blog, you didn’t have to produce as often as for your own blog. A nice feature, except that I – like many – still produce my own weekly blog.

I’m not answering the blog question in the negative, at least not yet. I enjoy the challenge of coming up with a topic and riffing on it for 300-450 words. I think out loud and solicit readers’ thoughts too. But I do wonder if it falls on deaf ears – or weary eyes, or no eyes at all some weeks.

And the original purpose? I hear from other authors that publishers who used to do a little publicity now do none, that the existence of author-originated strategies is now damn near all there is until and unless you hit “the numbers,” a mysterious goal that the publishers don’t actually share with you. So, onward and outward, reporting live from Blog Central.

Not many people write letters these days. Invitations, thank yous, birthdays, customer service complaints…there are email forms and clever software apps for just about everything. Just ask the Post Office, which is staring some form of bankruptcy in the face. It’s even easier to send an email than to call, witness the phone companies sweating bullets competing for my dwindling landline bill while Apple smiles at my (late adopter) embrace of texting and Facebook continues to “improve” everyone’s access to my social networking information.

So it is a joy to have one friend who not only writes letters, but writes them so brilliantly, so charmingly, so richly that I can hardly wait for her next missive. She’s an American but lives in France, so we do our correspondence via emails, but not in email language. No LOLs or IMHOs for her. She’s literate, funny, frank, and highly opinionated, which I treasure. I try to be half as interesting when I write to her.

Our letters say a lot about us, much as Jane Austen’s and Abigail Adams’ and Lillian Hellman’s did about them. I mention these women not because I equate my writing with theirs, but because, as famous writers and personalities, their epistolary (now there’s a word we don’t use much any more!) writing has been captured, saved, and published, so I can access it. My friend is an artist and writer, and once edited a fashionable magazine, so she has the chops for this. She, like I, stretches her humorous anecdotes to capture the full human folly in them, and holds up a gleaming mirror to her own shortcomings so that I continue to know her as a fully-formed person. I hear her voice and understand that she spends a little time on her letters to me, not so much that her prose is stilted, but enough so it stands for something.

I’m not writing this to bemoan the lack of letter writing skills in “today’s youth.” I suspect every age feels that way about the one that is rapidly succeeding it. I do think something is lost, not just for the reader, but for the writer, when an animated card accompanied by elevator music substitutes for a handwritten birthday note. I’ll bet my grandmother had exactly the same response when a Hallmark card took the note’s place, and somewhere in the 19^th century, someone kvetched when a reference in Latin fell on uncomprehending ears! We are of our era, and I will rejoice and be happy that my friend and I have this small pleasure to relish.

The publishing industry is in the throes of change that we thought last year would be evolutionary, but which has defied the notion of incremental adaptation and become a revolution, a tsunami, a flash.

Less than 18 months ago, I was reading quotes from traditional publishers who were willing to begin discussions with Amazon about turning their authors’ books into e-books if the right conditions (namely large profits for them) could be negotiated. While they discussed the many and complicated problems at conferences, Amazon simply plowed forward.

Two years ago, it was generally believed to be an admission of failure to bypass agents and editors at print houses and put one’s book in a POD (print on demand) form and sell it directly on Amazon – and walk-in bookstores weren’t usually equipped to help with that. Amazon made them available to customers without blinking.

Last year, authors were debating whether or not to go the e-publishing route with its attendant technology problems and perceived lack of status for books they couldn’t get into the normal print channels. Smashwords was only one of the companies that made it easy to do, and Amazon made them – all of them, good and bad – available through it’s vast, aggressive enterprise.

Today, there are several e-readers competing for the lucrative, fast-growing hardware market, other on-line retailers following Amazon’s lead (and let’s face it, they are following), and big name authors from the paper book world choosing e-book formats over print – for the money!

I feel as though a new planet zoomed overhead while I was reading the star map and thinking about far away constellations. Have I missed the boat? Is the boat still being constructed? Is there a new, still better boat in someone’s head about to burst on the scene?

The fact that I love physical books and may yet drown in them, that I love and am loyal to independent bookstores and still buy from them, and that I hope my agent may land me a new deal with a good print publisher doesn’t keep me from being awed and amazed by the vision that Amazon had and has and the creativity and courage of writers and those who are working with them to conquer this brave new world. Hell, my series may wind up in e-book format by December. That’s how fast the world turns these days.