Category: Internet

Blog tinkering, late nights

I seem to have stayed up all night tonight. Bought a new video game (used at Zia for $22, vs. the original retail price of $60 = win), Civilization:Revolution for my PS3, and played it for 5+hrs, not finishing up until 4AM. Would have played a little longer, but this version of Civ doesn’t allow for the “..just one more turn” option after you win; you just have to stop playing when you win.

Blinked a couple of times, looked around, thought about heading to bed. Really, tried to decide between trying to stay up (ie: all day) and going to bed (and then trying to get up at a reasonable hour). Part of this is related to not getting out of bed until Noon on Monday. Now it’s after 5AM on Tuesday, and my typing is bad enough that … probably I oughtn’t to try to stay awake if my intention is to accomplish anything worthwhile. But I paused at a computer for a moment, and couldn’t help but do a little of this, a little of that.

So, I updated the “via Podcast” page for Lost and Not Found, added a via Podcast page for Forget What You Can’t Remember, and added an “eBook edition” page for FWYCR explaining that the eBook should be available in February (& I wouldn’t mind help getting it ready by then).

Then I came over here, to lessthanthis.com, and poked around a bit at the new Tweetbacks plugin I’ve got installed. It’s still not got the dates right, but at least that’s not my fault. It is separating everything out and labeling and displaying things appropriately, for now. Didn’t realize the version I was using wasn’t the original, or that since I dropped it in here half-working the first guy had gone ahead and written an entire TweetSuite – I’ll have to think about putting that in, too. I’m pretty happy with what it’s doing right now, though, so … until I feel like tinkering again…

Free copy of FWYCR paperback!

I’m giving away 5 copies of my new novel, Forget What You Can’t Remember, through Goodreads‘ First Reads program. “How can I be the lucky recipient of one of these free books,” you ask? It’s easy:
 
1) Sign up for a Goodreads account.
 
1b) Actually use your account; put in books you’ve read, are currently reading, want to read, write reviews, and otherwise participate!
 
2) Go here and click ‘Enter to win’.
 
No, really, it’s that easy to enter. Then, at the end of the month (ie: January 31st, 2009) Goodreads will work its mojo and semi-randomly select 5 people to receive free books. ((They have an algorithm and everything: “Goodreads will collect interest in the book, and select winners at our discretion. Our algorithm uses member data to match interested members with each book.”)) Then I’ll ship out the books personally to the winners, and they’ll bask in the wordy-goodness that is the new book.
 
For those of you who either a) don’t win, or b) don’t like paper books, but still don’t feel like paying: Please feel free to enjoy the free serialized audio version of the novel, either by signing up for the Modern Evil Podcast or by going to Podiobooks.com and signing up for either the default feed (which gives you episodes as I post them) or a custom feed (and get episodes on your own schedule). The free eBook version should be available in February, 2009, as well. Enjoy!

Apparently available in India

Google Alerts just let me know that Indian retailer Infibeam has my books available. The website says they have “free shipping to all cities in India.” Doing a quick currency conversion, it looks like their “discounted” prices are actually in line with retail prices in the US for my books, so between having them shipped to India & then anywhere in India for that price, it’s a good deal. I love the internet. Not sure anyone in India wants my books, but if they do, this looks like a good option. That and the free eBook versions available at modernevil.com.

A lot of podcasting

You’ve been reading a lot about it here because it’s been dominating my time and my thoughts a lot lately. In case you somehow aren’t aware, I’ve been podcasting my fiction and poetry via the Modern Evil Podcast, and simultaneously releasing my podcast novels over at Podiobooks.com in sync with my personal feed. My feed (the Modern Evil Podcast) has also included (in addition to the weekly, half-hour episodes roughly identical to the Podiobooks release) poetry and short fiction in mid-week episodes.

<complain>
What this means, for my time, is that I have effectively been running three weekly podcasts: The podiobooks feed, with just the novel, the Modern Evil Podcast Friday episodes, with the novel and alternate introduction and closing, and the Modern Evil Podcast mid-week episodes, with my poetry and short fiction. ~2.2x the recording and editing, 3x the mixing, converting, and uploading vs. doing one weekly podcast. It’s been a lot of work, and time and thought consuming.
</complain>

So, along with the upcoming release of my new book, Forget What You Can’t Remember (now targeting a January release), I’m going to be starting podcasting it. In fact, I’m planning to overlap the two novels’ releases, so that people who listen to the final episode of Lost and Not Found on Podiobooks can immediately go subscribe to Forget What You Can’t Remember and so that people who subscribe to the Modern Evil Podcast will -instead of going for a while without episodes- get an extra episode or two during the overlap. Now, here’s the lazy part:

I’m going to continue releasing on the MEPodcast at the same time as Podiobooks, but Forget What You Can’t Remember is already broken into chapters of roughly even length, each of which should be around 15 minutes long. I’m going to release one chapter at a time, twice a week, into each feed. No poetry or short stories in the MEPodcast during the run, just chapter after chapter of the novel. Also: because of the structure of Forget What You Can’t Remember, the majority of chapters have no “breaks” in them, and thus will have a somewhat reduced editing time and effort – a savings then multiplied by the double feeds.

The Forget What You Can’t Remember podcast should wrap up around mid-April, 2009, according to this release schedule. Hopefully by then I’ll have another book or two written.

tragic/wonderful

I’ve just been poking around my sites’ statistics, and this blog’s archives, and caught another glimpse of how tragically broken my archives are. Broken links, incomplete posts, lost of inbound links that link to … things that aren’t there any more since I switched from MovableType to WordPress, and it’s no wonder that traffic to the site dropped something like 66% when I switched and has yet to recover. Tragic.

In other news, I stayed up all night last night. Some time after 2AM, when the house had been quiet for over an hour, I managed to start writing, working on my NaNoWriMo thing. I wrote until 5:30AM, when Heath walked back in (he delivers newspapers), adding roughly 2500 words to my word count. Which is pretty wonderful. I think that’s better than almost every other day I’ve been writing. Wonderful.

According to all those widgets I put in the last post, my daily goal for the rest of the month is apparently higher than 2500 words, so that puts a little perspective on it, a little tragedy, but I expect to be able to write more tonight, between the write in and the I-just-slept-all-day-and-expect-to-be-up-again-all-night, so hopefully I’ll have an even more wonderful word count tomorrow.

In other news, I still don’t hate the theme I chose, so that’s good. Perhaps not quite wonderful, but far from tragic. Alright. Now: grocery shopping. Later: more writing.