| The Aliento Webfiction Project is a unique brand of collaborative fiction designed to exploit the possibilities of hyperlink technology. Aliento itself is a town somewhere in the United States that three writers have joined together to create. | "Shep, the thing about guarded rituals is that they make you predictable. When you're predictable, you're vulnerable and ready for the take." Isi looked at Shep, square in the eye. |
| You want your American dream, you think that new suburb is heaven, you may as well move to Aliento and rub elbows with these grime balls. You think you can make your life something, get a woman, get a house, get a lawn chair and lousy bean patch, then get out of the service. Get get get... | Being a bit on the ambitious side, the authors of the Aliento project wish to do nothing less than change the way narrative is created and experienced. The Aliento stories are all associated with locations on the Aliento map. Characters recur, encounter each other, and die, but your discovery of their stories will proceed randomly without a linear structure preconceived by the authors, something only possible with the hyperlink technology of the web. However, if you ever do wish to fall back on an ordering of stories, click on the Guide to Aliento and you may access stories by character or in chronological order. |
Like any other town, Aliento is constantly expanding. At last count,
34 stories defined its character and its inhabitants, but new stories
are added every week, so be sure to bookmark this site and check back
often.
To begin your visit to our town, proceed to
Aliento.
Or, to get a better description of the town before you enter, read
our Prologue.
Frameless/Text-only version available. |
We were born in blood, washed in holy water, the priest raised us up to our mothers who passed us on to run wild in Grace, snatch bullets in Jinx, and lunge for each other's blood on the rails. |
| Roy could not remember a time when he could not sense the swarm in someone . He rarely lost fist fights because he knew when a punch was in the oven and knew exactly when the timer would go off. |
The authors would love to hear from you. E-mail us as a
group or individually: John A. Fife Maximillian Gill Udhaya Kulandaivelu Or leave comments for all visitors: Sign Guestbook To check out what others say about Aliento: View Guestbook |
| Author Biographies: John A. Fife: The author divides his non-linear time between his cottage in the Gallery quarter, his shack in the bean fields of Harvest and his squalid flat in Jinx. He spends much of his linear time in San Jose pursuing enlightenment or forgetting about it altogether over a glass of wine and a gab of gossip. Maximillian Gill: Poet and Websmithy. The web journals Eclectica, Sparks (Best of 97 issue), and Indiastar have published his poems, and he has his own Martini Page. Udhaya Kulandaivelu: When not extolling, debating, or debasing art, the author does tend to work, family, & friends while managing a few original thoughts for the willing reader. You can thumb through the author's novel past at: http://www.udhayak.globalcenter.net. |
Ants build a hill with so much effort and toil only to have a snake takeover and live in it. I drove out the snake and gave it back to the ants. |