Hello, internet and all the ships at sea!
Been a while since I’ve blogged on here regularly. I mean to start again in 2019, and normally when I’m going to start a new thing in the new year, I start it before the new year. This is both because of a superstition about not starting anything new on January 1st (it’s an elective superstition; I don’t have any beliefs attached to it but I choose to follow it) and because I think a good resolution requires some momentum.
The trajectory of my life has been such that this wasn’t a good month for blogging. It was, however, a great month for journaling, which has given me some habits in terms of both writing and presence of mind that I think will help me with the whole blogging habit. This first blog post is just to say hey, I’m blogging here again, and to drop a couple of recent professional developments.
One is that I have Kickstarted (successfully!) FIRST DATES, LAST CALLS, which is (or will be) a physical, print collection of some of my best short stories. The Kickstarter is almost 200% funded and still has three weeks left to go. Note that I took a very simple, streamlined approach to this, my first Kickstarted product. Due to a lack of experience when it comes to things like shipping prices and logistics, I’ve chosen to absorb the cost of shipping physical copies of the book to backers into the tier price, and I’m limiting the physical copy reward tier to US only.
This does not mean that the book will only be available in the US! Once the book is out, it will be offered through every e-tail platform I can get it onto, and ship everywhere they will ship to.
The purpose of this Kickstarter was just to pay for the cover art (a beautifully hand-painted image by professional illustrator Amanda Sharpe) and an initial stock of the book for myself, so I have the copies to send to backers and patrons who qualify and then have on hand for conventions where I can hand-sell them. This was one of the reasons I wanted to do this: I keep going to conventions and people keep asking if I have anything they can buy and have signed, and since my work is all digital and mostly ephemeral, the answer has been no.
The official delivery date for the project is June but I am going to try my hardest to have them ready for WisCon (end of May), so I can instead say yes.
Isn’t it the bees’ knees? And also the rest of them. The entire bees.
Separate and yet related: I have found a couple of event spaces (read: bars) in the area that will host readings and book signings for area authors and I am planning on sending out some feelers to do some such events in like the middle of June (when I’m recovered from WisCon travels but before any prospective 4th of July family trips that may happen).
I will see if I can also swing a dry venue like a coffee shop or the library or something, if I can manage it. Sorry to make that sound conditional; I do see that as an important priority, but it’s still not certain I’ll have any events.
Anyway, one of the two bars, the Flying Camel, is in town even, and I have been attending their open mic nights the past two weeks and will do so the next few weeks and then probably off and on.
Watch my Twitter on Thursdays if you’re in the area and want to know if I’ll be making an appearance. As I noted on Twitter, the open mic readings are done in very short time slots, so my part will be 5 minutes or less. Don’t road trip for it. Buuut I’ll try to give as much lead time as possible for larger, more me-centric events that might happen around the book release.
Anyway, that’s what’s going on. I think my next post will be more of a personal update, but if I don’t get it up tomorrow or Sunday, it probably won’t see light until a couple of days into January.
Kickstarter link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/alexandraerin/first-dates-last-calls-short-stories-by-alexandra
Amanda Sharpe portfolio: http://www.amandasharpe.com
Flying Camel webpage: https://flyingcamelcafe.com/