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Gary Benchley, Rock Star

By Paul Ford

Ftrain.com, I've been unfaithful to you. I went and had an affair with print publishing, and the result is a novel published by Plume Books (a division of Penguin), and available all around the nation. I hope you will forgive me.

This is how it happened. I'd long been a web-only writer (a pejorative term which I wore with pride) with a little radio thrown in here and there. I love the Internet and the unique textual experiments it allows me to perform, and for a long time I had been interested in seeing what it would be like to write a serial novel online. I had a suspicion that people might like a funny story on the installment plan.

So I began a novel on The Morning News, and the fellows there also let me publish it under a pseudonym, because that makes everything more fun. I've done it before on this site with Scott Rahin and Rebecca Dravos, and a few other fictional folk. And doing this on The Morning News led to a novel deal.

Gary Benchley, Rock Star is a comic novel about a callow, indie-rocking youth who must find a way to live--and rock out--in the hipster neighborhoods of the East Village and Williamsburg, Brooklyn. If you like Ftrain.com you'll probably like this novel. I worked hard on it and I hope you'll purchase a copy, take it home, and read it, and either pass it on to your friends or else tell them to pick up a copy. Feel free to let me know what you think.

I'm giving a reading in Williamsburg, Brooklyn on Thursday, October 6. I hope you'll come out and say hello.

More Ftrain.com starting Wednesday.

More about Gary Benchley, Rock Star

The official website for the book.

Buy the book from Amazon.com.

An explanation of the hoax on The Morning News.

The original serialization of the novel on The Morning News.