LOCAL AUTHOR AND AUSTRALIAN PEN PAL PUBLISH NOVEL

If ever there was any doubt that the Internet has made the world a smaller place, one need look no farther than the mystery novel Ring of Diamonds by Sharon Stevens for affirmation of just how much things have changed. Sharon Stevens is the pen name of a writing partnership that spans the globe. Steve Alcorn lives in Windermere and is the president of Alcorn McBride Inc., a company that designs products for theme parks all over the world. Sharon Brindal is a secretary who lives in Geraldton, Western Australia.

These days lots of people use the Internet to communicate, even to collaborate. But what's different in this case is that the collaborators even met on the Internet - and only on the Internet. That's right - Sharon Brindal and Steve Alcorn have never met, or even spoken on the telephone. Their entire collaboration occurred in cyberspace. 

In 1998 the two found each other through a writer's web site. They began corresponding, and started exchanging paragraphs, building what they thought would be a short story, one crazy paragraph at a time. At first they just tried to entertain each other, throwing in new characters and plot twists as the mood struck them, trying to make it difficult for each other to write themselves out of the corner they'd been painted into. 

But within a few weeks it became apparent that their "story" was taking on a life of its own. They began to spend more time planning, constructing character biographies and building a master plot. This necessitated several re-writings, and resulted in more than half their characters vaporizing, with their parts being assumed by others. 

Finally, after about a year, the first draft was complete, and they began circulating the work, again by the Internet, for editing and comments. Many rewrites and much polishing later, their readers pronounced it "a damn good read" and it was time for Sharon Stevens to go to press.

For an author born of the Internet, there was only one logical place to be published. Using the latest on-demand technology, Ring of Diamonds was released through Xlibris.com It's available in both hardcover and trade paperback from online booksellers Amazon.com and Barnesnoble.com.

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