What's in it for me?

This is an important question: why should anyone want to contribute?

I want to get this written and published. Afterwards, we can all go to Hollywood to work on the script. Following on from the success of the first novel, we can then split up into specialist groups doing TV programmes, manga, White Papers, How-to manuals, then tidy up some of the really sloppy mythology and stuff that's been written.

I don't know.

Promise: if we can put a good book together and get a publishing deal out of it, contributors will receive a pro rata share (within reason, a comma might not earn you much) and all well-intending contributors will be cited as co-authors. Details to be worked out as fairly as possible. Promise.

Getting published is perhaps the most convincing reason for joining in. Without going into the complexities of modern book marketing, the idea itself is, if you excuse the pun, reasonably novel. It may not be the first time anyone's tried, but we could certainly fix this as our objective: to write not just a collective book, but something really quite brilliant.

Everyone has qualities of some sort, and here's the place to put them together and create a credible, and above all conflict-driven construction. This is, after all, what the story is about.

In my first post, I advertised the following: "Wanted: white supremacists, Islamic fundamentalists, neo-Nazis, evangelists, people with brains, ombudsmen, -women and -children, AI activists, whales, rabbis, ballerinas, popcorn vendors..." It was intentionally provocative but probably failed to do the job.

Unlike a single novellist, the idea behind a collective author is to include the opinions of the novel's characters by the novel's characters. And where I imagine it easy enough to goad some groups into writing, others might be less enthusiastic. This is a risk we have to take. But by opening the story to the possibility of flaming and other forms of restraint-restricted cybercommunication, we could quite possibly cream off the useable ranting as legitimate ingredients.

Perhaps the main thing is just doing it because it's fun (writing about WWIII is fun?), OK, interesting.

For the moment, there are zero rules and nigh-on zero contributors, so everyone's free to suggest whatever reason they like. And if the idea doesn't appeal to you, maybe your sister might like it, your granddad, a neighbour, your worst enemy. Copy and paste the link - http://hell.pbwiki.com/ - send it and see.