I haven’t ’blogged in a while… a lot of that was the recovery phase from my surgery, which wasn’t as traumatic as I thought it would be, though there is still some discomfort and I’m out of Vicodin, so excuse me if I’m a little crabby.
Paperback Writer
Another thing going on is that Grunch Road is now available in paperback, and I’ve been crowing about that. I’m pleased at how the story turned out, but wish I could have made it longer. I suppose I could have padded it out with unnecessary details and salacious gratuitous sex, but I don’t want this to turn into porn. It’s got enough adult content as it is, all the stuff that sells: drugs, sex and violence.
It’s available on Amazon or at my own CreateSpace e-bookstore. I’m promoting both sites, because while my e-bookstore pays a higher royalty rate, Amazon has its name recognition going for it.
I’ve also set up a fan page for Grunch Road on Facebook so that people can go and “Like” it. The next step is the scary part: an advertising campaign. I want to run an ad for it on Facebook and see if that sells me any copies. I learned how to do this last weekend at an internet marketing seminar Jim dragged me to.
Something else I’ve been thinking about is writing a sequel. I like my main character, and would love to get him into more trouble. What I have in mind is sending Nick off to college, but this time I’m going to go the fictitious route and make one up, a small campus out in the Louisiana bayou country that I’m naming Arkadia as an homage to my late friend Johnny Byrne. And there’s going to be lots of weird things going on there from voodoo witchcraft to mad science. I could have a lot of fun with that.
I even found this guy on a royalty-free clip art website and have decided this is the face of Nick Eismann. He’s kinda cute for a high-contrast line drawing. He gets his pretty face mauled at one point in the story, so I also have a scarred version to use in the sequel. Hey, scars can be sexy.
But alas, Nick’s a straight boy. I wanted to have mass-market appeal, so he likes girls. Eww. At least I’ve come up with a good girlfriend for him, and gave the girlfriend a gay brother who, of course, has a crush on Nick. For a little added atmosphere I’ve created a tiny little town near the campus and populated it with colorful cajuns and creoles. Ethnic dialogue can be a lot of fun to write, it’s almost like writing in another language. Turn spellcheck off.
I’m probably going to have some fun with time travel here, too. First I want to send Nick back to Pompeii where he warns somebody about Vesuvius and saves his life. The fun part is that he only has two years of college Latin under his belt and he’s trying to speak it, and probably getting it all wrong. The trick there is to use Google Translate to convert my correct English dialogue into Latin, then reverse the process and translate the result back.
The other fun time travel idea is for Nick to travel forty years into the future. Since my story is set in the early seventies, that means he comes forward to the present day and learns about stuff like the Internet and 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina… and the Saints winning the Super Bowl in 2010, but nobody back in his own time would ever believe that one.
Back To School
The Chorus will be starting up again in a couple of weeks. This will be a bittersweet season, as Stan will be leaving us at the end of the year. We’re also going to be commissioning a new work to bring to GALA next year. It’ll be great to see all the guys again and sing again.
Meanwhile, Jim has found more trouble to get into, and he wants me to get into it with him. Come to the dark side, Matt… it is your destiny… He wants me to help him with a “pay per click” advertising operation but I don’t know… I’ll give him the technical help he needs and see what happens. Better yet, as his first project, I want him to help me promote Grunch Road.
Something else Jim has been wanting to do is take a Bahamas cruise he bought. I have my passport ready, but I’m really glad we opted not to do it this week. The east coast just can’t get a break this week, it seems. First the earthquake earlier this week, and now Hurricane Irene. Gee, what’d they do to piss God off? Right now we are in the prime season for hurricanes, mid August to mid September, and we’ve already marked a couple of big anniversaries, like those of Camille and Andrew. Next Monday will be six years since Katrina, and September 9 will be the 56th anniversary of Betsy. New Orleans isn’t out of the woods for 2011 yet, either.
I’m surprised the end-of-the-world doomsayers aren’t speaking up. Maybe they are, and I’ve just learned to tune them out.
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