In dancing, I started by teaching swing at various clubs and occasional private events. Then, when the huge swing craze started to wane, I got a gig teaching at a ballroom dance studio. After a few years there, I saw how they kept making all the wrong business decisions, and so I took steps to go out on my own, even perhaps even open my own studio. However, a car accident took me out of professional dancing. On the plus side, that led to me stumbling my way into a writing career.
When I first started self-publishing, I was concerned with selling a few ebook copies for a few extra dollars of my storytelling shows. As the popularity of my books grew beyond my storytelling shows, I focused almost entirely on gaming algorithm Amazon’s algorithms… until Amazon started mucking about with their algorithm so that gaming it wasn’t viable anymore. It took them a lot less time to figure out what we were doing than we thought it would.
With ebook sales lagging, I course corrected the selling print books at live events like comic cons and such. That worked really well for a while. Then COVID happened… Just as I started my second MFA. Between school and my brain processing the ramifications of the pandemic, I didn’t have the spare bandwidth to really course correct. Hell, I barely maintained the creative energy to work on anything other than my school work for most of the lockdown.
As I wrote in yesterday’s post, my current big course correction is in becoming self-sufficient.
Over the years, I’ve learned that both the big online retailers and pretty much every publisher do not have really have a writer’s best interest at heart. Which is fine. It’s business, after all.
Now that I’ve got my footing again after another stint in grad school and the at the tail end of a global pandemic, I remember something Robert Kiyosaki said in his amazing book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. “Mind your own business.” To me, right now, that means leaning into getting my creative works into my space to maximize the legwork I’ve done to cultivate a community that’s supported me since even before I published my first story.
Publishing, both independent and mainstream, is in a time of crazy fluctuation. I’m currently of the opinion that no matter how a writer gets their work out to the world, they should prioritize making a space for themselves in the literary landscape completely removed from publishers, retailers, organizations, events, social media, or websites the writer doesn’t completely control.
The other thing writers should keep in mind for reinvention is examining their process, that is, how they do their writing.
I have a lingering shoulder injury from an epic night of drinking and partying at Comic Con 2019. It started in the VIP section of the Rave of Thrones party, wandered over to the VIP section of Ready Party One, caused some shenanigans in the streets of the Gaslamp District, and ended with whiskey shots at the Blarney Stone Pub. At least that’s where most of the memories fade to snapshot images, rather than a video playback. Anyway the next morning I woke up with my shoulder hurting more than my head.
My shoulder still hurts some today, especially after I’ve been typing continuously for about 15 to 20 minutes. I get shooting pains up my neck. Not great for someone in my profession. So… I had to reinvent my writing process.
These days, I write every rough draft of pretty much everything by hand in one of the many journals I’ve collected. I have a set of multi-colored pens that write smoothly (the rough draft of this post is in red), and I love the feel of them gliding across the page. For some reason, writing by hand with pen on paper doesn’t use whatever part of my arm the typing does, so I can sit and scribble for hours.
At some point after writing a draft in my journals, I dictate to my computer and get my rough drafts into Scrivener. I give the draft an immediate once-over to correct the errors in the dictation translation. From there, the writing sits in Scrivener until the whole project is complete.
After some distance, I print the whole project out and mark line edits with my sparkly pink pen. Big story edits and changes get noted in a generic journal just for that purpose. Once I go through the whole thing, noting what changes the story needs, I go to editing in Scrivener. Unless I need to write an entirely new section, and then it’s back to writing by hand. When editing, because it’s not continuous typing, I can make it an hour or more before the shooting pain starts up. Thankfully technology has provided me such an awesome such awesome options for reinventing my writing process.
I guess the whole point here is don’t be stuck in your ways or fall into the trap of only one right way to do things, no matter how many people do something a certain way. In both business and in the creation of art, innovation and reinvention are vital and necessary now and then.
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This is the year I’m working on being mostly self-sufficient. I just added a storefront to the website, offering ebooks, print books, and audiobooks directly from my website.
Just about right after I started self-publishing, people would ask me, “What’s the best way for me to get your books so you get the most benefit?” I used to reply, “Whichever is most convenient for you.” It was a cop-out response. Some ways were more beneficial than others, but it unusually wasn’t worth trying to go into all the nuance of which at any given time. Now, it’s pretty easy. If you want to get my stuff with considerations of the biggest benefit for me, this is the best place for people to get my books and their preferred format ebook, print book, or audiobook.
With the goal of being completely self-sufficient, I need posts and traffic here to build up SEO. I’ve heard this SEO thing is pretty important. At some point, in my copious moments of free time, I’ll study up on this VERY important SEO thing. Just one more thing I gotta figure out in order to build my reach and get my books in front of more readers so that someday I can stop spending as much time on business stuff and get down to writing more books.
So, here we are at the beginning of a month-long journey to get some attention to my website. Well, as much attention as I can by writing about random stuff here for the next 31 days, and sharing that on all of my social media. What are some things y’all would like me to blog about? I’ll entertain any suggestions. What are you curious about, anything you want me to rant about, of course, I might not write about every suggestion, but with 31 days to fill, odds are good I’ll get to most of them. Or some of them. Unless I come up with something more interesting for me to write. So, whatcha got?
I’m going to spend a significant amount of time this month working on filling in the cracks here and there, getting book pages updated, and integrating an online store to the site.
I’m super jazzed at all the awesome stuff I have going on creatively in my life: new stories, finishing overdue stories, a new podcast, a couple more podcasts in the works, a YouTube show coming soon, the Slipstream Symposium in October, and more.
Recently I’ve figured out that if I have enough projects going, I can use them to procrastinate on my other projects. So basically… I am kinda tricking myself into getting a bunch of work done by feeling like I’m goofing off and avoiding a bunch of other work. I’m just embracing the wonkiness of how my brain works and turning that into a semblance of productivity. I think it’s pretty cool and messed up at the same time. Shrug. At least it’s getting me to get stuff done.
Anyway, keep checking back here for updates and new additions to the site.
Slante!
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Jhereg, by Steven Brust – I’m going to flip-flop between new writers and established professionals. Brust is the oldest on this list, I think. This book is also the most polished of all the entries on this list. This mafia-like, high-powered, swords and sorcery novel doesn’t read like a writer’s first book. It offers the promise of a writer who knows what he’s doing, and in the decades that followed, Brust absolutely delivered.
Death of a Fairy Tale, by Emily Fluke – I believe science fiction and fantasy should be ever-evolving genres. With this book, Fluke takes urban fantasy to a new place. It’s what you might get if Dresden was female with a family, oh, and it’s slightly meta, not in that the main character knows she’s in a book, but that the book offers the reader a subtle sense of knowing what it is and that the reader is along for the ride. I wish more urban fantasy writers would take some risks like Emily Fluke. Looking forward to seeing where Fluke takes her writing.
His Majesty’s Dragon, by Naomi Novak – This is what you would get if Patrick O’Brien, author of Master and Commander, and Jane Austin were in a dnd game run by Anne McCaffery. This is possibly the best historical fantasy series ever written, full of epic battles and heart-wrenching and heart-warming character growth for its entire continuing cast.
The Bone Shard Daughter, by Andrea Stewart – If Gideon the Ninth brought me back to fantasy, this book is one of the ones keeping me here. First, it’s not just another European fantasy setting with some name changes and a new “twist” on a magic system. Stewart uses some Asian motifs to spark off a setting that’s refreshingly different than other fantasy settings. She intertwines her characters and their stories into this setting in a way that kept me from being reminded of pretty much every fantasy I’ve tried to read since the late 90’s.
Vurt, by Jeff Noon – This book is weird. It’s like if someone nabbed some ephemeral, imagination DNA from H.P. Lovecraft, Phillp K. Dick, Harlan Ellison Chuck Palahniuk, M.C. Esher, and Salvador Dali — THEN said, “Go write a cyberpunk novel that may or may not be supernatural in nature.” Weird. And then his other books get weirder because he could pull it off.
Mazes of Power, by Juliette Wade – One of my big pet peeves about genre fiction these days is the semi-religious fervor for world-building. We talk about it all the time, and then books come out where the author has done an immense amount of work on the fictional world they’ve created for their story. We know that because they seem to want to show us and tell us all about it. Not Juliette Wade. She gives us just what we need for THIS one story that starts off her quintet. We can sense way more in the background, but this story only offers up what we need. For which I’m grateful. I can’t wait to see where this series goes and how it wraps up.
Geekomancy, by Michael R Underwood – Of all the books on this list, Geekomancy is the only one that made me think, “Damn. I wish I’d come up with that.” It’s another evolution of urban fantasy where magic comes from geeky people loving nerdy things. It’s a bit of fan service, I suppose… kinda like Ready Player One is fan service… however; it’s all from a place of loving homage, something that permeates most of Underwood’s subsequent work, and I’m here for all of it.
Missing You Metropolis, by Gary Jackson – This is the only poetry book on this list. It’s full of poems about comics, comic characters, and what it’s like growing up as a black nerd. It’s here not just because it shows promise for Jackson’s future work (Origin Story is a masterpiece) but because Jackson has given so many nerds permission to write poetry about our experience and the things we love.
Gardens of the Moon, by Steven Erikson – Yes, I’m a huge Malazan fanboy. I’m cheating a little with this one. It’s not Steve’s first book, but it is Steven Erikson’s first book. It can be an acquired taste for some. Even the author suggests others start with the second book of The Malazan Book of the Fallen. Still, this one kicked off quite a career, not just for Erikson, but for Ian C Esslemont as well. Whether you like or loathe Malazan, it sparked a fantasy world with over 20 books now between the two writers. That’s a hell of a debut.
Again, I have Amazon associate links because I’m a hustling creative in late-stage, free-market capitalism.
]]>Then, not long ago, I was sipping my first coffee of the New Year, quietly letting my mind wander, stream of consciousness, from subject to subject, and something profound struck me about 2022. That realization made me understand something vital about 2023.
2022 is the year I learned that I wanted to live.
It’s something I’ve struggled with throughout my life for as long as I can remember. 2022 was the year that changed. On May 5th, 2022, I got my semi-colon tattoo. I got it because I realized I was ready to get it. I finally grew internally into the force of my personality that I always projected externally. Kind of a “fake it til you make it” kind of thing.
It took 50 years for me to reach this point. I’m here. I like it here. I’m going to make the most of being here.
So that was 2022.
2023 is the year I start practicing what it is to live. And to love. And I’m not talking romantic love. Just love. I’m talking a Zorba the Greek, Gomez Adams, Calvin (from the comic strip), and Miss Megan kind of love for epic moments, great and small, that fill the world. I will strive for zest, zeal, kindness (different from niceness), and curiosity. That’s not to say I won’t have bad moments and that I won’t feel sorrow, pain, grief, or loss. I still have cPTSD and BPD. The depression is still lurking in the shadows of my psyche. I can’t escape those. But I can recognize those, and I have a whole army of good pals that I can check in with to make sure when I’m feeling down, that it’s a justified down and not blown out of proportion by my trauma. I’ve managed the dark stuff in the past. I’m even better at it now, especially with support.
All things considered, 2022 was pretty epic for me.
2023… I’m coming for you. And… I’m bringing the Gallowglas Army with me.
]]>Why 13 and not 12 like the song I’m playing homage to?
Well… this much awesome cannot be contained within a mere 12 days. I also wanted to end on a Saturday. So, in future years we may have more or fewer days of Gallowmas, depending on where weekends fall in relationship to this sacrilegious parody I’m conducting.
Gallowmas is a series of events and debuts I’ll be playing around with online: here on the website, Facebook, TikTok, Goodreads, Patreon, Twitch, and other online locations.
Here is the current calendar of events, subject to change on my whim, and any other awesome ideas I come up with over the next two weeks. Everywhere it says, “gift,” you can check on my Patreon page and download a PDF of the offered writings.
Dec 26th – The First Day of Gallowmas
Dec 27
Dec 28
Dec 29
Dec 30
Dec 31
Jan 1
Jan 2
Jan 3
Jan 4
Jan 5
Jan 6
Jan 7
Today has been pretty good. Met a good friend for coffee. Hung out with some amazing creative folks on a Zoom. Got a nap because I needed one. Woke up too early for how late I was out last night largely in part by the children playing with balls in the greenbelt outside my window. I could hear the impact of the balls on the tarmac, over and over and… over…
I couldn’t be mad about it, despite less than five hours of sleep. I got wrapped up in the joy of bouncing balls and laughter and just lay there being in that joyful moment by proxy. If the last two years have shown anything, it’s that we need to celebrate joy when and where we find it.
This isn’t one of those toxic-positivity posts about how “outlook” is everything. Sometimes shit is going to piss you off or get you down, no matter how hard you try to spin it in your head. Sometimes things stink. However, the last two years have conditioned us into this vicious cycle of perpetual suckage, and sometimes we gotta find little joys in odd places. We need to pay attention so we can find some bits of beauty in the shitstorm that’s whirlwinding around us and turning our lives inside out over and over and… over…
For most of my adolescence and adult life, I reveled in outrage and negativity. I have a feeling that’s largely due to some aspects of my BPD. But I also liked feeling like a rebellious badass. Only now… It seems like finding beauty and kindness in the current state of the world is the most rebellious act of badassery possible.
So, here’s to our next arbitrary trip around the sun being filled with moments of joy and beauty.
Here’s some of my best of 2020-2021
Best Show: Arcane on Netflix
Honorable Mentions: The Mandolorian, Sense 8, Lovecraft Country, Watchmen
Best Movie: Ghostbusters: Afterlife
Honorable Mentions: The Eternals, Don’t Look Up, Dune
Best Book: This is How you Lose the Time War
Honorable Mentions: Missing You Metropolis, The Bone Shard Daughter, Gideon the 9th, Collected poems of Lucielle Clifton
Random Moments of Beauty:
Falling in love. The poetry I wrote falling in love. And the poetry I wrote to process the heartbreak.
Watching Miss Megan slay boxes with swords on recycling days.
Nerding out about poetry on my livestream with Steven Erikson.
Having Patricia Smith tell me she wished she had ended one of her poems the way I ended one of mine.
CM Punk returning to wrestling.
The wonderful community of the Gallowglas Army.
Finally being able to do shield rounds in Hapkido.
Being Miss Megan’s favorite author
That one thing I can’t talk about because of a promise I made.
Magz
What are some of the beautiful moments from your 2020-2021?
]]>First off, I wrote 5 new installments of the Nine Tenths Project and scheduled four. I plan to schedule out all that I have written first thing in the morning.
I drove to Davis and looked over the banquet room facilities to see about doing a Bard for Life show there. I’ll be doing a combination lunch and show matinee at 1 pm on October the 27th. This show will be limited to 30 people.
Updated the Bard for Life page on the website and created the Facebook event.
More scouring the internet for poems and fiction to use in the “Exploration of Craft.”
Wrote a poem.
Fiddled around with some fiction.
In the evening, I went to an artists’ networking mixer at Oblivion Comics, hosted by the Empire Arts Collective. The comic shop downtown as a coffee shop with a few food items as well as cider and beer. I’ve been to several events there, all hosted by Empire Arts. I love the energy and co-operative spirit of this amazing group.
Now I’m going to read some of The Stone Sky and some poetry before I crash.
]]>I read through the three books for “Exploration of Craft.” I also scoured the internet for thoughts on readings for each lesson and assignment.
I read students’ work and prepared responses.
I transcribed scheduled three posts for the Nine Tenths project.
I spent a large portion of the day working on the short story, “The Courtship of Halloween Jill” which I’ll include in the Kickstarter editions of Halloween Jack and the Devil’s Gate.
I had a call with my assistant about taking care of Kickstarter stuff.
I also messaged back and forth with a convention next year about doing a four-day writer’s intensive during their convention. We’ll see how it goes.
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