The Darling Budds is a Young Adult serial by Johnny Dale. Seven friends in uptown New Orleans struggle to get through a long summer vacation after the leaders of their close-knit group have disappeared.
A serial is a story that’s released in parts over a period of time instead of all at once. A new installment of The Darling Budds is posted most Sunday afternoons, and you can read the entire story (up to now) online for free.
No. The Darling Budds has a very definite beginning, middle, and end. The complete narrative has been mapped out in pretty intricate detail, and I stick closely to this outline.
Well, the story has a definite story arc like a novel, but it's also written as a true serial: there are back stories, sideplots, and character developments that don’t necessarily tie into the main plotline.
Instead of thinking of The Darling Budds as a traditional novel, imagine it as an entire season of a TV show: there’s one big story, but that story is composed of a bunch of individual episodes.
I’ll never charge money to read The Darling Budds. I’m not gonna post half of it and ask you to buy the rest, and I’m not going to charge for access to the novel. The Darling Budds will always be free.
You can! I tell you exactly how to do it on the Downloads page. But I've set up a mobile version of the book as well, no download required...just visit this site on your phone and you'll be redirected to a specially formatted website designed for easy reading on a small screen.
Not right now. (I’m too lazy to set it up.) But if you want to save new episodes to read later, check out Instapaper.
When you're reading an installment, look over on the left for a button that looks like this:
If you click the small A, the text gets smaller. If you click the big A, the text gets bigger. Click the one in the middle and it goes back to the default.
(I bet you just tried clicking and it didn't work, right? That's just a picture of the button...to try it out for real, you need to start reading.)
There are a bunch of ways to keep in touch with developments on the book. Check out the Stay Updated page for more information.
The Darling Budds is written by me, Johnny Dale. I’m a professional writer who lived in the Garden District of New Orleans for twelve years. To find out more about me, go the About The Author page.