Book Island isn’t new to Second Life, it has been around since 2007 and claims to be the oldest dedicated literary sim in Second Life. They’ve recently welcomed back a renter by the name of V.L. Dreyer who is the author of The Survivors series of books.
The sim exemplifies what virtual worlds do well, community, it’s clear that there’s community work here with events advertised for a 500 word writing challenge, Open Mic where you or one of the regulars can read in voice, live literature where one of Second Life’s regular live performers reads.
Then there are events aimed at writers, such as an Improv writers challenge and writers chat. There’s also something called Promptly Erotic, which you will have to ask Freda Frostbite about!
I’ve seen communities such as this inside and outside of Second Life. Earlier in the year I took a trip to Opensim to look at the Hypergrid Stories Project. Indeed this community were so nice that even though Second Life isn’t part of the Hypergrid, it was included in the Hypergrid stories project!
One of the reasons for that is of course related to Second Life having an audience that it worth engaging with. This point arose recently in my blog post about Seanchai’s discussion of Second Life and Kitely. The discussion in the comments is quite interesting as we see that authors in particular are not happy with Linden Lab’s TOS but they still want to engage with Second Life.
The authors are of course going to other virtual worlds too. The cost of land in Second Life is cited as a reason for authors to look beyond Second Life. This is unsurprising of course but the authors aren’t slamming Second Life for the cost of tier, as communities like Book Island prove, they work within the confines of the virtual world they are in.
This is what Seanchai are doing too. They are very much embracing Second Life, but they are also looking to Kitely for options too. Talla Adam apparently has something intriguing coming to Kitely in terms of an interactive story whereas Stephanie Mesler is utilising Second Life, Inworldz, Kitely and even Opensim in the shape and form of having a presence on Nara Malone’s Nara’s Nook, which was my starting point in the Hypergrid stories project.
The thing that strikes me here is that storytelling is an extremely portable medium. This explains why people can take their stories to different virtual worlds but that portability is also one of the reasons why storytellers are not happy with Linden Lab’s terms of service and why some of them choose to only perform their stories in voice in Second Life these days.
I’ve said more than once that I’m a big fan of storytelling, so I’m pleased to see places and communities thriving in different virtual world environments. Whereas virtual worlds aren’t really great at this stage for reading virtual novels, they are wonderful places for people to share stories, listen to stories and learn about writing stories and much more too. Poetry, music, non fiction, the virtual community has strength here.
As we can see from Book Island in Second Life, here since 2007 as a full region, it is possible to keep a venture like this afloat despite the tier monster breathing down one’s neck, it’s good to see.
SLURL To Book Island in Second Life : maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Book%20Island/174/203/36
Don’t just ask me about Promptly Erotic– go read some of the writings produced there. You will have to click through several times to get to the writings. That’s because this publisher learned some time ago to cover her virtual and significant rump in content warnings that cannot be missed. http://virtualworldnotes.blogspot.com/p/promptly-erotic.html
Then, after you do that, join us some Thursday on Book Island at 2pm PST. We always have a great time!
I also want to say that I love Book Island and Selina Greene who owns the place. She has built a fabulous community for writers. It and she are two of the reasons I am in sl.
Good article, Ciaran and thank you for covering all this. I think the future of SL and OS is bright if we all concentrate on building community across grids. Both systems have so much in common and yet each has its own unique features that can work in complimentary ways.