Red Room

Thanks to Mr. Pink who tipped me to the existence of Red Room, an online community for writers. The San Francisco Chronicle profiled the site earlier this week, describing it this way:

"Redroom.com puts writers of varying success on an equal footing, providing each with a Web page and blog. The site is meant to appeal to readers, authors, booksellers and publishers as a kind of one-stop shop for biographical information, book reviews, blogs, video and audio content and author appearances. It's a virtual place where "midlist" authors in particular, who are watching their books get knocked off store shelves with alarming speed, can network and promote themselves, much as emerging musicians do on MySpace.com."

Joining is free - simply give yourself a name and a password and you're in.

The goal of founder Ivory Madison is for Red Room "be a household name, where people start when they're looking for an author, a book or what people are saying about current ideas or events...Because we have the writers, we have the potential to be the smartest conversation on the Web."

Red Room authors include Dorothy Allison, T.C. Boyle, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Rebecca Solnit, Amy Tan, Tobias Wolff and many, many others. Once inside the Red Room you can "visit" authors' sites, read their blogs, etc.

Check it out.