Roommatefromhell.com is a blog fiction / book that’s simultaneously being published as a book version of a blog and blogged in fake real time. Got that?

It’s written by Jim Munroe, of No Media Kings, which is his non-fictional, standard issue blog. The plot – and the first post, which is up today – certainly grab my attention. The narrator has barged into her roommate’s room, without knocking, to find her apparently deep into some demonic ritual. Rather than confronting said roommate, the narrator decides to take the episode as a starting point for the blog she’s been meaning to start writing. Not a bad start at all for a blog fiction. It uses the project blog idea, which is rather like the basis of an epistolary novel: there has to be a reason why the narrator starts writing letters and a fictional audience to whom the letters are addressed. Here, the fictional audience merges with us, the real audience. An epistolary novel only ends when the letters end, and traditionally, they only end when the narrator or the fictional recipient dies, or of course, when the narrator marries the recipient, or one of the recipients. I wonder whether roommatefromhell.com will end in death or marriage? Or perhaps a blog fiction ends when the narrator’s fictional mum fictionally starts reading?

Roommate From Hell unabashedly announces itself as fiction, and suggests you might like to fast forward, actually, and, well, just buy the book. I think I’ll read it online. I like the episodic. Though I’m kind of annoyed that today’s entry – the very first – is dated September 2003. Why not date it now? Oh, right. The book. Sigh.