Building a Virtual World for Authors in the Metaverse

This is my state-of-the-writer's-colony  report:

The Tea and Strumpets bookshop is done. Everyone is in there, though all the shelves don't fit in one shot.
 

 Our writer's colony has been getting some press:

Virtual Christine mentioned me and the grid where our writer's colony is a few times in this article.
She'll be doing a blog about us in the next couple of weeks so now is a good time to start creating your presence at the colony. Get pictures up in our Flickr group and do some blogging on your experiences. Look around and see if there's a spot you'd like to make your own. I'll show you how to set stuff up.

Talla Adam, owner of the Opensim Virtual community on G+ dropped by the world and did this little write up.

 After which Rob Bot had a few visitors and I made a little Flickr group for I-Danced-With-Rob-Bot photos. I've got to get all the pics put in, but some are there. Feel free to drop in and dance with Rob.

Just walk down the street to the Glass Slipper. When you get there you will see a pink ball in front of him. Move your mouse pointer over top of the ball, right click and then when the pie-menu appears left click on "sit here". Then this will happen:

If you'd like to take a picture of your dance, click that little camera icon down in the bottom bar, toward the right, on your screen.
 

 Click the disk tab and hit save.

I know it must feel like I'm Morpheus from the Matrix telling you take the red pill. Take the red pilland come through the rabbit hole with me! Maybe that is what I'm doing. This is a world where the rules, boundaries, borders that you are accustomed to don't exist.

  
You can be a shape-shifting butterfly.

  

Or a tiger. Or whatever else you can dream of being.

That's what virtual worlds are good for. You can put out characters like Rob, like the cats, or the selkies. And visitors will drop in to interact with them and the world around them. You branded yourself as an author. You entertained your readers. You've moved the evolution of storytelling forward.

 I've left buildings empty so that anyone wanting to set up a presence in the colony can find a spot and start adding their touches to it.


I know it sounds complicated. It's not. It's like putting out doll furniture and dressing Barbies.

I have a new post on building characters over at the Nook Blog.  Go give it a read and try updating your author look or dressing as one of your characters. Wicked fun awaits you. Swallow that red pill. Follow me.

*If you never heard of the Metaverse, but think this sounds cool and want to try it. Go here for the how-too.

*If you have been to the Nook but have been haven't been able to get in recently, you probably didn't get our change of address.

*If you got the change of address and still couldn't get in, go try again. I was doing a lot of updating these past few weeks and you probably just tried to log in during a reboot of the system. Once or twice I could see people were trying to log on while I was resetting.

~Nara Malone

You can learn more about Nara Malone at her website.