“It’s a five-year process from writing to publishing,” said Llewellyn, of traditional books. “It’s incredibly frustrating. And it’s like the lottery, such a risk every step of the way. “The Tilting House” was the fourth manuscript I tried to have published – no one ever read the others. So the idea of having an immediate audience was attractive.”

The result is “Letter Off Dead,” a book in blog form (letteroffdead.com) which Llewellyn’s been writing since last April. The book follows the middle-school adventures and mishaps of Trevor, who begins writing to his dead father in a desperate measure to cope with life. Unexpectedly, his dad writes back from an after-life limbo – and the blog continues as the two correspond, one letter per post, five posts per week.

I’ve been following Letter Off Dead for awhile now. It’s an interesting experiment in publishing.

If I could hazard a guess, one of the reasons it works is because Tom started writing in April and then began publishing in September. That was a wise move. Having hit road blocks, false starts, and some purple prose while writing my own work, I would hate to press publish if I hadn’t put more thought into a post than the few seconds I give to each of these here.

Kudos to Tom for this! I’ve been following along off-and-on since he started. (Interesting how the format changes reading. Like any blog, I dip in and out, but I still have enjoyed it. There are many kinds of books this wouldn’t work for, but it’s well-suited to the medium.)