Who is Xander Mellish?
by Calvin Reid -- Publishers Weekly, 3/24/1997
According to her Web site, she's a "girl who lives in Greenwich Village." She's also a young short-story writer and cartoonist who has used the Web to develop a reading audience by publishing her own engaging stories of lonely young men and women new to New York City. In 1994, she began to post her stories in pizza parlors, on telephone poles and in laundromats, lurking nearby to see the reaction of those who stopped to read. She got hundreds of phone calls, and in 1995, launched the Web site. Her stories have attracted a following and have turned Mellish into a crusader for electronic self-publishing. "Internet fiction will someday be recognized as a separate form of fiction publishing," she told PW, one that avoids "distribution costs, or a two-year wait from manuscript to bookstore." She's got an agent now, and the site attracts 500 to 1000 readers each week from around the world. There are audio clips, charming illustrations and Mellish news updates -- her fans have even translated the stories into four languages.
