Shameless Begging and Other Oddities

I'm going to give this a shot, and hopefully, nothing explodes.

By "this", I mean tricasting this blog on Blogger (which I haven't used in almost a year), Livejournal, and Facebook.

... Something's going to explode, isn't it?

I told myself I would be a good boy today, and write a few pages of play and a blog post, in my effort to be-a-writer-on-a-regular-basis. I met with terrible failure until about 10:30, when I holed myself up at an obscure Tim Horton's and wrote for a greatly successful two hours. Now, I'm going to blog. Probably explosively.

I've spent a great deal of time (read: about ten minutes) over the past week considering my future. I'm jobless, prospectless, and other than a long list of things that I want to do in the near or semi-distant future, planless. I've resolved, in an effort not to be a complete and total loser, to write regularly, and retool some of the stories I've written over the past couple of years, and send them out for publication, and possibly look into voice acting or voiceover work, to make a little money.

I recently came across Joe Hill's blog, author of 20th Century Ghosts and Heart-Shaped Box, regularly known as Joe Hill King, son of some other author. He mentions having published his first short story as a chapbook, for a small, independent run. Which sounds like a stupendous idea, and suddenly fit very nicely in my head. See, the last short story I wrote (which I never titled) ended up being a great deal longer than I'd expected, and really is probably too long for publication in most conventional journals and magazines. But I like it a lot, and it introduces a protagonist and a world that I plan to use in a novel. Too long for conventional publication... but ideal for a chapbook. And then, what if I gave myself a digital base of operations, somewhere where I could write regularly, and try and be interesting, and attract a modest audience, to tie into self-publication and anything else I might do that's of interest?

But I don't exactly know how to start. I've never published a chapbook (although I think I know where to go to start), I've never designed or maintained a website, I have no idea if any of this is going to work.

So now: a desperate plea, to you, the viewer. Please message me or comment or e-mail me if you think you are any of the following:

- someone who knows anything about self-publication, zine publishing, or chapbook design
- someone who is an artist, or likes to draw things (I'm thinking of getting people to do artwork based on moments from the story, for use in the chapbook)
- someone who knows anything about website/blog design
- someone who knows anything about voice acting/voiceover work (that's peripheral to the chapbook, but something I figured I should ask about)
- someone who wants to say hi!

And now that the messy business of me begging wildly for your help is done with, some tidbits for you, you lovely people you.

Firstly, for those interested in the Starcraft II videos I linked to earlier (on Facebook), you might want to go looking for the 22-minute Developer Walkthrough in HD on Gametrailers. It's basically all of the gameplay videos that were available earlier, strung together and put into context with voiceover. It gives you an idea of how they're balancing the game - this unit trumps this unit but is trumped by this unit which is trumped by that unit.

I hope you like the Coen Brothers, because I sure do, and while I've been told their last few films (Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers) apparently weren't that good, I'm excited for their next film, No Country for Old Men. Based on these clips (which you should watch, immediately), it looks like they're returning to noir, which is what I think they've always done best.

And, just for fun, a LOST Season 3 Recap.