Google “digital fiction” and you come up with….not much. Not many people are creating fiction specifically for the web, and even fewer are doing it ambitiously, creatively, and well.

Here’s a site I saw today, sent to me by my son Joe. They’re reading this site at Yale, people — Yale! I like the way the windows lead you to different stories, and I like the little movies. The poems, not so much. In fact, I most immodestly believe that Ho Springs is much more worthy of Ivy League scrutiny.

Another site I just found is Suzanne. Well, it’s not really a site but an email mystery: the story is emailed to you day by day, just as if you were reading a real person’s emails. Brilliant, and the story setup — a husband-hunting widow heading to a rich summer colony — is intriguing. After reading the samples, I ponied up $3.99 to have the story sent to me every day, more in admiration for the author’s enterprising monetization technique than because I felt I couldn’t live without finding out what happened to Suzanne. Her emails were a bit stilted and lengthy for my taste and took me out of what John Gardner called The Fictional Dream. But I like it all enough to move forward.

The world of digital fiction is a narrow one, and I can only guess it’s going to expand radically as the medium for reading fiction becomes, well, digital. I’m getting an iPad for my birthday and can’t wait to see how that inspires Ho Springs. Steve Jobs, don’t you think Ho Springs should live on the iPad? Call me.