First real day of MEP full time

So, today was my first real, full day of running Modern Evil Press full-time. Mandy had last week off for Spring Break (she teaches High School, remember), so I worked on and off and tried to use the week and half between leaving ICE and today to transition myself mentally and emotionally for this. I worked on putting together a semblance of plans and goals and … I don’t know, action-item lists… Is that what they call To Do Lists these days? Trying to have some idea of how to go from where I’m at to making money from my books and my art, so I’m not merely floundering. The general day-to-day plan, for time-management sake, is to get up with Mandy and work (at least) as long as she’s working. So, M-F, 6:30AM to 4:30PM.

Art in progress, 3/23/08So to get off to a good start, I started with a painting. I’ve been meaning to document my “process” better, so I also took a quick shot of the first coat of paint with my iPhone and threw it up on flickr (thumbnail at right). It’s a sort of a landscape right now. The image I’m planning for this background, which I will now describe as a “…monster with a robot head…” is not what it sounds like. Maybe I’ll post some more images tomorrow, when I’m working (digitally, of course) on adapting the sketch for the canvas. I sortof jumped the gun on the composition of the background without doing proper previsualization, but it’s no problem to work the elements together on the computer screen before I apply any more paint.

Ooh, thinking of it, I actually took a photo of another painting first, while the sun was still quite low. It’s one of four paintings I finished last year that I’ve only just put on wretched creature: ‘what… and why?’ was today’s photo, and I’ve been working on getting ‘it’s the internet…’, ‘without you’, and a (currently) untitled one with a face … Okay, admittedly, when I finished it I had a name for it, and I didn’t write it down or put it on the site right away, so … I can’t remember it right now. I’ll update it later, in the event I can recall the full name.


Then I spent a couple of hours reading my feeds, focusing on publishing feeds, and following a couple dozen links to more publishing and lit blogs, going through them to find ones I think will be beneficial and subscribing to them and passing on the rest. Ah, blogs. I’ve got to start reading them, getting in tune with whatever it is “blogging” has turned into in the last few years, and becoming an active part of “the conversation” – because, as the people who appear to be in the know will tell you, that’s a key part of successful online sales. The blogosphere. Yup.

Then I worked on outlining the specifications and basic layout I want to try and either implement (by spending hundreds of hours learning modern web programming and building it) or find someone else to implement (see the paragraph above, re: becoming part of “the conversation” – I just have to get these ideas into the heads of the genius programmers already doing stuff, and they’ll do it, right?) in the coming months for … what I’m currently referring to as “Web 2.5” in my notes and design documents. I want to put my novels online with it, and blog in it, and I’d like to see it spread a bit through the internet. More on that later.

After a couple of pages of that, I grabbed some drawing paper and sketched out a design for a flyer to advertise my books. And then spent the rest of the day in InDesign and Photoshop working on the flyer. Actually, it came out pretty good. I’ll get some copies made soon and get them posted up places. Your suggestions for places are welcome. I’m thinking, like, colleges, libraries, and then the book stores I’ll be schlepping my books around to to try to get them on shelves in, anyway. Ooh, I know. Here, (right-click, choose Save As…) a PDF of the flyer for you to print and post if you want to help. Its primary focus is on my free e-books, and the wonders of the Creative Commons license.

Anyway, then Mandy came home, and it only took another 30 or 45 minutes to get the flyer done after that, and then … we went for a walk, had dinner, and I settled in to write this post while we watched a movie (Black Irish)… and actually, Mandy’s just headed to the bedroom, so I guess it’s bed time again.

Hopefully we’ll have another good day tomorrow. Plenty to do. Gotta stay home for now – I’ve ordered a big order of physical books, and the first box arrived today (all poetry) and three more are coming tomorrow – but that alone gives me plenty to do. Finally going to set up my own online sales. Planning on using Google Checkout, so I’ve gotta sign up for that, read all the documentation, and re-work my website with a bunch of links so people can order books directly from me and can pay for the PDFs if they want to. (ie: If they want to support the artist for a little less than the cost of the book itself.) I gotta figure out shipping costs, I guess. Anyway, that’s it for now. Good night.

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Teel

Author, artist, romantic, insomniac, exorcist, creative visionary, lover, and all-around-crazy-person.

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