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Saturday, July 2, 2011

A new beginning and Moby Dick

Feels good to be hitting the keyboard again.

The click, click--

The tap, no wait, erase that--that's what I want! Yeah...

Most nights I'm working on a short story, novella or some form of writing.

Over the last few weeks I've been Facebook chatting with a good friend of mine. He's going through final edits for his sci-fi story. He's almost done. He's got cover art (and a cover design thanks to yours truly), some marketing ideas, and as we were talking about our respective heroes: his in a sci-fi world, and mine in a high fantasy world, we both realized how invaluable this experience has been. I'd say so far, but so far it isn't even close to being far from anything. Really, it's closer to a beginning.

A new beginning.

Oh, there's no cash flow yet. We may never make enough money to sustain rent or mortgage, but we can't say we haven't tried.

Most importantly we're having fun along the way.

In this e-publishing experience we've realized how important writing is to us. How reading... books period are important to us.

Reminds me of a conversation we had a few days ago when he said everyone is so busy trying to write the next big novel that they aren't writing something people want to read.

Might as well have handed out three for one coupons to Hometown Buffet. The next few hours were a blur. We talked about Melville, Dickens, King, and I think somewhere in there Hughes and Asimov and Sagan.

We talked about what is popular. Why it's popular. The changes in the industry. The push for independent artists. The publishing world in general. The economy and how it effects decisions, and then people, which if I remember correctly semi-coloned into Marx.

The road maps that publishers and authors have used for the last few decades are not so reliable anymore. Blame it on e-readers, blame it on book markets, blame it on genres, blame it on whatever you want to blame it on. There is no absolute to this constant disorientation in publishing.

Hours I tell you... just flew by. Not much writing got done, but it felt good that for those hours, huddled over the computer, coffee beside me, the whip-click-whip of the kitchen fan I felt like a university student again arguing virtues.

Someday we'll be adding our stories to the Kindle market. Someday we'll be adding our stories to the market after that. It's best to just keep a weather eye open because we're not just staring down Moby Dick from the bow, harpoon ready, fighting for our souls; we're trying to balance ourselves on swells, at the same time.

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