A blog that brought a book to life

Tricia Walker’s book ‘Benedict’s Brother’ was gathering dust on the shelf after being rejected by numerous authors. She soon realised she didn’t need a publisher when she had a blog.

Benedict's Brother: From blog to screenplay

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Benedict’s Brother was written 13 years ago by Tricia Walker. Even though she worked on it with an agent and had an award-winning writer mentor her, publishers refused to buy the story. She reluctantly let the manuscript retreat to the confines of her bedroom drawer.

In August 1999, Blogger – known for being one of the earliest web-publishing tools – was launched by Pyra Labs.  In Fedruary 2003, Pyra Labs was acquired by Google. In May 2004, Google enhanced the look and feel of Blogger with web templates, post archives and posting via e-mail.

In August 2006, Walker, deciding that her story was not worthy of drawer-dust, decided to resurrect her book via a blog – something she had only heard of. It helped that her story was a journey and that telling it through its actual time-line served the dual purpose of helping readers keep pace with the plot while leaving them insatiable for more.

According to Blogger, the live blog of Benedict’s Brother has 1223 views from its first post in August to the end of the book in December 2006. It can be read in its entirety here.

Unexpected Success

‘I did it in instalments in real-time with the actual story. I did an instalment every two weeks,’ says Walker. ‘It was then published with a small publisher; we had a launch, which was the biggest-selling launch for Borders UK bookstores that year.’

Six months later Benedict’s Brother was named ‘Top 3 Book of the Year’ in Publishing News, alongside some award-winning authors. ‘I was pretty much blown away by its success,’ she said.

Did she lose out on an audience because she published the whole book online? ‘No,’ says Tricia. ‘Infact, more people wanted the book because they liked what they read on the blog.’

She says that her blog worked because her story still had relevance after all those years and the fact that it was written in the form of a  diary which began in August and concluded in December.

She recenty received the wonderful news that Benedict’s Brother will soon be turned into a motion picture. So who will portray her (the protagonist) in the movie? She crosses her fingers and gushes with pride when she takes the names of two very famous British actresses. But she doesn’t want to jinx it, till one of them signs on the dotted line.

Just back from Cannes, life cannot be any better for Tricia Walker, who is planning to write the sequeal to Benedict’s Brother on her new i-Pad.