Friday, November 27, 2009

Link Dumpage And Remember Items For Future Referential Treatment

Ariana's Black Friday List (I'm pretty sure none of which is actually discounted today [which means that it's Ariana's Every Day List])

Emma's Short Story Challenge Whitechapel Thread (Follow up to the last challenge [which was the reason I wrote Tacks and McGee], links in thread)

LaTeX Document Preparation Stuff to look into later: Tutorial, LyX Document Processor

Happy()Sad is making a splash (I agree with everyone...the episode with the dog)

Notes to self:
- Life After Death
Get/Learn PDF software for Life After Death, Continue design layout and start actually prepping final drafts, Do edits of all completed stories.

- *Figure out if Lulu Periodical Informant Project is feasible, If it isn't it's probably because you need more content you lazy slob, In that case -- write more content, Probably want to write an intro for this, Set up layout of book, Run through LaTeX -- which you will be a master of by then, ???, Profit.

- Uninstall Reality is coming back to life soon maybe, Do a couple of articles for that, Probably comi(c)(x) articles in January or February, That means think of topics for said articles.

- Build enormous fan base that pays you gross amounts of money just to be you ya goofy bastard, Easiest one, See for reference: Ashton Kutcher.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Comic Nerds and Non-comic Nerds Alike

Hey all,

This is more of a helping out someone who is doing research thing, but:


My name is Megan Milliken and I am a University of Chicago graduate student conducting research on comic book readership. I’m interested in demographic trends of comic book readers as well as the medium’s effect on readers’ consumption of other cultural goods and participation in civic activities. I’m motivated to do this research first and foremost because I am an avid comic book fan who has derived a great deal of pleasure and inspiration from both the content itself and the community. I’m interested in how comic books have impacted readers and hope to see what it is about a comic book that keeps a reader coming back month after month. That said I have two surveys (the first is for under 18 respondents, and the other is for respondents that are 18 and over) that I have assembled. Would you be interested in posting these surveys to your blogs and encouraging readers to participate? It is intended for comic book readers AS WELL AS NON-COMIC BOOK readers as I would like to compare responses between these two groups (so please pass it along to the norms as well). Please let me know if you could do this and if you have questions regarding the study.

Thank you and take care,

Megan Milliken

18 and over: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=U3RdP8YU4i41uSTJbGBaCg_3d_3dUnder

Under 18:https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=e1kBsp0o_2fjjvJaTUc5uGpA_3d_3d

PS: I do not have administrative access to the survey (gragh life of a grad student), but I am aware of a few errors and awkwardly worded questions. The demographic questions are US centric, but I encourage everyone to take the survey. I am in our administrator's queue to fix a few typographical errors, so please mind the errors for now. Thanks!

Help her out if you've got about 4 minutes to spare.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Friday, November 20, 2009

Another Quick One

Short story, TACKS AND MCGEE: LIFE OF THE PARTY is up.  Click hnyah to read the other three stories.  This was fun.

Dicks

Harlequin Publishing is a bunch of dicks.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Life After Death

So I've got most of the crew on board for the magazine at least tentatively...for now...The tough part is keeping a) myself and b) everyone else interested in anything for long periods of time.  Hopefully hard deadlines and lots of kicking my own ass will help.

I think I've given up on Nanowrimo at around 11,000 words to work more on this.  It's a shame and I may work on it a bit more, but the LAD project is something that interstes me more and I have more invested in.  It's also very good training for a future novel I'm envisioning now.

Everyone is jumping on the POD bandwagon lately and why the hell not, it's a nothing to lose situation...I'm just hopeful the market doesn't get so saturated that things can't shine out....but then again, those diamonds in the rough always get discovered somehow.  Woot, exciting.

Monday, November 16, 2009

More POD Musings

So I think that Life After Death, which is linked up right over there on the right, is going to get the magazine treatment once we can build a buffer.  Hopefully it can be a monthly with a whole lot of cool stuff we have planned.  It'll probably be about $8...maybe cheaper for the first one to build up a customer base...I dunno.

Anyway, Arianna, Warren Ellis' chief mechanic at Whitechapel has been extolling the value of the whole print on demand sub culture.  Read what she thinks here.  All this talk has got me thinking about things in general, as a prospective creator who has never had a paying job for creating.  I'd like to get some stuff out into the world and just kind of see what takes.  POD is a cool way to do that.

I think this paragraph in particular has some really underutilized and fucking awesome implications:
Think about that for a moment: Lulu allow you to upload new guts and/or covers for a single book as many times as you want. What else could you do with a constantly updating physical object? Corrections and updates, surely — but what about yearly volumes that over-write the last? A URL-as-and-to-palimpsest of new-growth writing taking over the pages that may no longer be culturally relevant in this moment. Is it a counter-intuitive use of what we think of as a book? Perhaps. But its interesting, too, isn’t it?

I'm excited for a magazine.  Zombies will dance like sugar plums in my dreams tonight.  And who knows what the next step is...Maybe something other than print....just COD (create on demand).  Ideas(.)(?)(!) 



Thursday, November 12, 2009

Nano (non)update

Nanowrimo progress has stalled horribly in the rash of shit since last weekend I've written maybe 2000 words since last Friday.  Not good.  I think I need to write about 2200 words a day from now until the end of the month to catch up.  Not a fan of that.  At this point it looks like I probably won't finish 50k but I'd like to get at least halfway there...hopefully a lot further...like all the way.  We'll see, I need to work out where I'm going with this because I'm just sputtering out every time I finish a section now.  Have to get a head of steam going.  More on this later.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

The stuff I got from MagCloud

So, I got those MagCloud books.  They were good... looked good and all.  I just got some comics...

POTBOILER is a compilation of comics and art from author Mal Jones.  It was a good selection of art and was fun for just that reason.



PERIGREE: Stumped - Great and crazy, if not completely sense making (maybe part two will help with that) story about a patient in the psych ward who may or may not have some crazy ass powers...  The imagery is great and I like the writing style a lot.  No author listed in the book for this one, which was weird, something he/she should fix for the next mag.





Buy MagCloud motherfuckers.  Support starving artists!

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

MagCloud Stuff today

I just got my first two MagCloud books today in the mail.  I will look at them when I get home later and check out the quality, then I'll follow up maybe with pics n' junk.  Seemed to be ok on first glance over, might have slight issue with the binding (for lack of knowing a better term) but that's pretty minor.

Birthday bashiness has ensued/will ensue in the past/coming days, it's going to be lots of fun, but most assuredly keep me from being as productive as I'd like.  I'll probably be worthless this entire weekend, except maybe Friday night into Sat. morning during which I plan to be mostly sober...we'll see.

I also need the Yankees to win this series already...I can't not watch these games. 

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Nanowrimo

So I started Nanowrimo on the 1st.  The amount of drinking I did last night is killing my inspiration today.  I'm about 4300 words in right now...need to get up to 5100 by the end of tonight to stay on schedule, though I'd like to do more.  And people are coming over later.  And I think I'm making a roast in a little bit.  And I'm hungover as hell.  No friggin excuses though.

Story is about a time traveling, world saving, dude.  Save the damn world bitch.