Building

I’ve been building.

Words were piled on top of words on top of words. Then I took some away and added more. Lots more. Then I took some more away. And so on.

Then I sent them off to the OTHERS so they could dissect and dismember them. I willingly handed the words over to be scrutinized and scoured, to be deemed worthy or doomed to oblivion, to be lauded or laughed at.

And so very many other alliterations.

The feedback has been trickling in. And it’s very interesting. Some surprises, some of them even exciting. But that’s for a different post.

As I wait for it all, I have been building other things: websites and Facebook pages, a publishing company. I’ve commissioned cover art and it is amazing. I can’t wait to share it, to see it on my actual book.

The website stuff gives me horrible, figurative headaches, and sometimes real ones. I dream of the day I can tell someone else what I want and have them figure it out for me. And I can laugh an evil laugh while I have a delicious craft beer and a snack, probably a bowl of tortilla chips with salsa (my tastes are rich), knowing my day is complete when my word count goal is attained. Today, however, I persist in doing it myself. And after days of struggling, I feel my site is shaping up nicely.

I’ve added an email sign-up list, and it’s very, very functional, and not that shabby. You can admire it here: Not Too Shabby Email Sign-up List. And I’ve rearranged my page, so there is a static home page and other separate pages that have neat stuff on them like blog posts and a very short, free story. I changed “blog” to “journal” because it just sounds so much nicer to me. “Blog” sounds like a foul, unwanted, surprise bodily function, something you might do after eating that leftover taco truck burrito that you can’t remember purchasing, and right after getting over the stomach flu.

“Oh god, Tristram just blogged again. Will you please clean that up! It smells!”

So… yes, “journal” it is.

Now, I have to make time to actually write in it. Oh… look at me, I am.

Then there’s Facebook, that ever-present distraction that it is imperative I build an author page for. Must build followers. Must build social media presence. It is the new normal, the necessary evil. The tree falling in a forest thought experiment has been updated:

If a person you know doesn’t have a Facebook page, do they really exist?

We may never know. I’m working on my page. It’s not really that difficult. Mostly, I just need new photos.

[Side note: Right now, there are a tremendous amount of sirens blaring nearby my home, and helicopters overhead. I currently live near Interstate 5 in Los Angeles. Something unsavory is clearly happening, and a car chase on the freeway has resulted. I dearly hope no one has or will be hurt by whatever is going on. And I long for a quieter place to call home. Scotland would be nice. If you can make that happen, send me a message.]

Back to photos… I have had that bloody computer keyboard as my banner for a long time. I really like it. It’s my actual blood and my actual keyboard. You’ve heard of guitar players with bleeding fingers? Well…

But it will be going away. It is kind of unsavory too, although still amazingly badass. Right? I will archive it somewhere after I get nice, authorly photos done.

Once it is all built, I will be able to sit back and relax and watch the money stream in while I sip my Belgian abbey ale, my feet up on the veranda overlooking a deep blue loch… said the landlord when he bought a fixer-upper rental property in a dodgy neighborhood. It will be continual work, I know. But hopefully just basic maintenance, and not too many backed up sewage lines.

Soon I will be announcing it all to friends and family and here on the blog website. Many people I know don’t even know I’ve written a book, or that I write at all. I’m quiet that way. But soon the world will know.

And…

…we’ll see.