Website: www.slimpalmer.com

Writer Slim Palmer's character Albert appeared in 2002 and made his online cartoon debut on a blog in 2004. Slim’s first book, The Albert Tales, based on characters from the cartoon series, appeared in September 2005 and now Albert The Third has been shortlisted for the $10,000 Blooker prize for books which have been adapted from blogs. LNE asks him how he made the leap from screen to page.

So for anyone who's not seen the books, tell us about them.

‘The Alberts’ are about the adventures that the character – he’s an anthropomorph not a snail – has with anything from a dwarve to a wizard and gargoyles to the WI (Witches International). Albert is helped in these tales by Granny Poad, a lady of advanced years but with a taste for Harley Davidson motorbikes, blues music, real ale and deadly handbags; Mister Bufoe, Granny’s gardener dwarve and some-time toad, and Vincent, a computer geek. I illustrate the books, in pen and ink, up to about fifty drawings.

The Albert books are categorised as ‘Young Adult Fantasy’, which I dislike. My youngest reader – that I know of – is seven and the oldest in his eighties. Some of my biggest fans are in their twenties.

When did you first start keeping a blog?

The idea behind the blog was that it should be written by me, but actually be Albert’s words and thoughts. Here he could ramble about anything from the internet to the spreading thickness of Marmite.

The second entry, March 3rd 2004, was actually posted on an old site of mine that no longer exists:

‘After having tried 'the web' for a couple of days decided to move to my own place - 'althought dot com'. I did insist that I didn't like being called Al but Vincent, the web techie, told me that all the TLD's for Albert had gone. Am now trying to find out what a TLD is as I thought it was something you gargled with.’

These entries were accompanied by a single panel cartoon that drew upon Albert’s thoughts. From these cartoons and the characters in them came the basis of the Albert books rather than the blog entries – although they did play a part in expanding the characterisations.

Had you kept a diary of any sort before that?

The closest I’ve ever come to keeping a proper diary was to use one as an appointments book. Looking back over old ones, the entry for January 11th 1981 of ‘JGate:8e’ must have meant something at the time. As for keeping a personal diary, that would be a series of notebooks for jotting down thoughts and ideas and doodles. I’ve done this for as long as I can remember.

You worked in visual media for most of your previous career. When did you start thinking about the words too?

I’ve always loved words. Right from the off. At school I couldn’t wait for the English lessons where we were given three titles – the sort of ‘What I Did On My Holidays’ kind – and told to pen a thousand words. Or that we were to read, out loud, something like Kidnapped or poetry. On leaving school I became a photo-journalist and that meant having to pen three paragraphs to go with the image – who, what, where, when, how, why in a hundred words or less. Further down the line – joining a PR company – meant I could expand this into more paragraphs. Even when I ran away, to join the theatre, there were more words – the script. Later, other people’s words, as well as my own, came into being in my time as a graphic designer. I suppose it was a natural progression to start writing books and the opportunity came along quite by accident.

What was that accident?

I was asked by my partner what, or rather how, I was going to do to expand Albert. Thinking about it, I realised that she and I knew a lot of the same people – albeit we did not know this initially – so I decided to put some of them into a short story with some of the characters from the blog and Albert. Then it came to pass, during this writing, that my mother fell very ill and I had to give up my design and teaching work to look after her. Not wanting to be a couch potato and not having the space to set up a fine art studio – I used to paint in oils – I decided that Albert was the way ahead. Two years later... nine stories in three volumes and a full-length tome, Kryptos, which was published April 2007. The follow up to this, Skriveners, is due in November.

How did you hear that you were on the Blooker short-list?

I'd submitted the first book to the 2006 Blooker just to see what it would do – it came nowhere – then they announced the next Blooker, so I submitted Albert The Third. Several months later I got an e-mail saying that I’d been shortlisted.

With the likes of Mil Millington and now Wife In The North and yourself getting something approaching mainstream recognition, the blog to book path seems to be becoming a relatively well-established route to getting published. Is this really the case or is it simply a case of talent winning through regardless of the medium?

Unfortunately, there seems to be a fair bit of animosity amongst some bloggers that Judith O’Reilly, Wife In The North, got a book deal so soon after starting her blog – most put it down to the fact that she, as a former education correspondent on a major national newspaper, had ‘connections’.

As Roland White recently said in The Times, blogging harks back to the tradition of Dickens and Conan Doyle for a lot of publishers – a story in episodes that eventually becomes a book. Saying that, I do believe that the good stuff that is out there will float to the top and be recognised and cannot end up on a slush pile – unless the site disappears – the way that a lot of traditionally submitted work does.

What advice would you give to other writers who might be considering starting a blog?

The most important thing about having a blog, I believe, is also having a website to go with it. That means getting a top level domain name, eg, slimpalmer.com, as the major search engines won’t necessarily pick up on ‘myname.blogs.co.uk’. Have it professionally created and use the whole thing as a marketing tool with regular updates. The statistics for blogs are astounding. In July 2006 it was estimated that there were 12 million US blogs, however the average blog has the lifespan of a fruit fly!