I want to announce my PhD project on this list, as I hope that it will be relevant to some researchers here. Please do pass on the details to any colleagues or students who you think would be interested in reading or participating. Bad Influences (http://badinfluences.org.uk) is a multi-character, real-time, interactive blog fiction. It began in January and will continue until November. The purpose of the project is to explore the poetics of blog fiction, especially those relating to the narrative time effects of real-time serialisation, a feature of epistolary fiction using a blog or social network as its platform. It is also an interactive creative writing project that I hope will be enjoyable to read and to participate in whether you have an academic interest in digital literatures and narratology or not! Bad Influences is set in 2026 and tells the story of a global pandemic flu virus through the blogs of four characters, based in London, New Jersey, Beijing and Canberra. The blogs are pre-written and are being posted in real-time (i.e., each post or comment goes up precisely 13 years before the event it relates). The comments sections of the blogs are open for reader participation (upon filling in a participation agreement http://badinfluences.org.uk/take-part/participation-agreement/), and the commentary is a mixture of pre-written character interaction and improvised interaction between reader-participants and characters. This project could be of interest to anybody teaching or researching digital literatures, interactive storytelling, narrative time, disaster fiction or creative writing. Please feel free to contact me on purplepooka@badinfluences.org.uk for more information, or explore the site and the story at http://badinfluences.org.uk. Questions and feedback are very welcome, and I'd love to hear about any use you make of the project in your own research or teaching. Many thanks, Emma Segar (Edge Hill University) purplepooka@badinfluences.org.uk