I was hit by a train! And other shameless ways to plug your blog.

Sorry about that, now that you are here, no train has hit me yet, but with enough votes I'll make a video that will satisfy this request.  

Here I'll make it up to you:  

Angry Bird of Prey - Ahh, Toby put this up, I'm in love. 

Month 4… already? Where in the hell did the time go? I mean, it’s just gone! 

I look at what I’ve done, never in my life can I look back and say that I’ve been more productive than I have in the last year. Yet I still see a long road before me. I still have a goal (a huge goal) before me.  

I will get and agent! 

I will traditionally publish! 

Ok enough yelling. 

Crowning achievement of the week: Marissa Meyer friended me on goodreads.com, so a shout out to her  New York best seller YA book, take a read of Cinder if you haven't yet, a very cool twist on a story you know rather well! :)

I was driving into work this morning when I looked over to see a guy standing by the side of the road, he was facing away from traffic and for some reason my first thought was that he was reliving himself into a tree. Gawd, don't ask me why, I don't know. Taking a second look I saw that he was looking up at a blossoming cherry tree, he was just enjoying the view. Perhaps I'm going to fast, I need to just sit back and enjoy what life has put in front of me? I've been running myself ragged the last 2 weeks at work and when that is done I enjoy a little sports before I go home and plug into my story for another 3 to 4 hours. I think it just might be time to go out there and experience some of life again. 

But, I'm getting in the death throws of my rewrite, I can see the end in sight, and as long at it's not a train, I'm going to make it! I'm sure that the rewrite for my first book was a lot worse, but that was like a year ago and I don't remember, so it wasn't!  

Another subject on my writing, I've been reading "Super Sad True Love Story" by Gary Shteyngart,(Yes Mr. Spellcheck that is right) If you aren’t reading this book you should be. Pick it up as soon as you can.  

Reading this + thoughts about one liners that I want to use in my Twitter/Facebook/blog/novel that are not appropriate for conversation with anyone. I mean there are some lines in this book that are holy hell funny, but how do you go home for Christmas and hug your mom with those dirty, dirty hands!?  Where is it appropriate to use these? Some people would call it art, others vulgar. I mean I made a racist joke on a friend's Facebook and then I started to wonder if people were judging me. One of the most awkward things I've had to do was write a scene that was kind of personal and watch the person across from me read something that is kind of...personal. In the back of my head I'm going. "OH GOD DON'T READ THAT!" (I'm yelling again, too much coffee) I've slowly been able to pull that feeling back. I can't tell you the jumpiness I felt when I self-published that first book, anyone, ANYONE could read it and I can't wave my hand over the page and say. "You know what, lets just skip past this." 

I’m on Twitter – I never wanted to be, but a lot of authors use it, so maybe I should too. Oh gawd, I'm giving into peer pressure. Sarah Dessen, if you start smoking I'll have to join you! (I thought I said I was going to stop being so loud?) You can’t have too much pride when you are looking to advertise.  Already I've had to get used to the idea that I'm only allowed 140 well chosen charters. I'm going to have to learn bigger words that can fill paragraphs of meaning with just a single word. Currently I'm "Twittering" as a way to let others know how my rewrite efforts are going.  Umm I think I'm supposed to say. @robertdufalo - Follow me, or I'll kill you. (tee hee) No I mean it, when I go on my cocaine induced, 'roid-rage fueled world destruction tour, only my twitter followers will be saved.  

How's that for ad slogan. "Follow me, or else."  

I had a panic moment when I was downloading a new audiobook for my iPod... 

I have so much money wrapped up in digital media that I'm becoming truly worried for it's protection! I don't mean that I'm going to find it beat up in some back ally, I mean that if my raid system has a bad hair day and too many drive heads crash at once (hard drives need airbags) I could be left in a world of media-less hurt! Between my music, movies, and now the ever growing collection of my own manuscripts I have a lot tied up in my computers.  (Fun fact: Rob spends 15+ hours of every day in front of a computer) I'm in trouble! I'm thinking about Amazon for my storage, I need to look at something: large, safe, secure, and don't  cost me two goats a month to keep.  

See you in two weeks with a completed rewrite,

Robert

I shouted and the only reply was my echo.

And Batman said "BAM!"

I always wanted to do a comic! This might be a close as I get the job! :)
I'm starting to get a very Robot Chicken idea here that won't end well for getting any of my other projects done -_-

With that I welcome you to my 10th blog post here on illiteratemind! It just feels like 2 years ago I started this little thing...because it was! I've moved away from the idea of it, but not heart of what it was, about being an author!

I was starting to get worried that I was running out of things to talk about in my blog. Of course I don’t know what I was worried about, I’m a wind bag with something to say on everything!

Lets get the suck out the way first!

Electric Disease 0 sales, 0 Amazon Prime shares for March.

Ok onto the fun stuff!

Books need outtakes:

I was looking over my millionth typo and I got the idea that I’m going to make a book of the best typos. I may even include notes that I get returned from my editors.

People love the outtake from movies. I could see the same being fun for a book!

I'm starting to think I'm over working my Editor

More promotions!:

I've completed a few awesome things for Electric Disease, I'm done with my work for my Norwescon ad, it's going to show up in their book! To go along with it, I've created 500 post cards that I'm going to hand out to...anyone that wants one! I'm going to look into having a few set out at coffee places that I go to, and maybe a few bars! Anthem Coffee in Puyallup took a few to give away! So come in and buy their coffee!

I say, it feels strange to be doing work for Electric Disease when I'm editing Corporate Policy and I'm working on From Beer to Apocalypse. I haven't even looked at Electric Disease since last October but I'll still be pushing it well into the end of this year. It's like 20% of your time is making the book and the other 80% pushing the book like a drug dealer.

To go along with our publishing effort on FBtA I'm going to be making business cards that we will be able to use to promote our web book and websites. I need to make, or have made, a good AOA Publishing logo. Something all shiny! Anyone out there looking to do a little work? (I don't pay well) :)

I've just finished my guest blog entry for Amber on Lunar I'll add a link to it on my website for this soon. I'll be working on one for Eric's next.

How good of a reader am I?:

I talk with friends and they always tell me about authors I should read. "Have you heard of X because I really like their work!" and no I've never read anything by X, I haven't even heard of X and it makes me feel like I'm not in touch with my trade as I should be! In fact the more I look at it, the more I realize that I don't read that many authors at all! GOD LORD I'M HORABLE AT THIS LITERATURE THING!

Then again maybe not? I've always believe that even if all you do is sit around and read comics, you ARE indeed reading and you are letting your mind paint a lovely story. I read on the order of 300+ manga a year. Around that, I read everything that Kelley Armstrong even thinks about writing before she writes it. (Please no one tell her I found a way to hack into her mind.)

In the end I come the conclusion that I'm really just a little to focused in what I read and that I need to branch out. I'm going to work on this, next time a list of authors I've read that I didn't know about before.

Corporate Policy Updates:

I'm done with Chapter 4 and working on 5 of 8. It was 7 chapters but I hit something that I didn't like and I needed to do some expansion, chapter 5 are always messy for me. I think that I'm going to hit my goal of being in beta by April 1st if I can work a few extra hours on my added chapter to smooth it out. If you haven't looked at May Barry's blog, you should really see the one he just put up about re-writing. I have to totally agree with him! "Rewriting. It’s like writing, only with less visible progress." He makes me laugh and I can relate to his comments more now that I've been doing this for a while. Also he accepted me as a friend on Facebook, that's kind of neat. Most authors including myself just have a public page that people can like. This feels a lot more personal.

Oh right, we were talking about Corporate Policy; with Electric Disease I had a very closed stage for Clara and Dan to play in. That made it easier to write, they were trapped in a building and so the setting was confined to that space. With this one, I'm finding that Dan and Clara have much more space to work with and it almost feels too open, I feel like I should slap them in a cage in order to keep walls around what they could possibly do.

I've started setting timelines of when the art for the cover will be done and I'm thinking that I'm going to do a print on demand for both book one and two in paperback. Once CP is out for beta I'm going to finish up the conversion for the cover on ED and then I think that it will be ready for the print shop.

I'm also really itching to start work on Oil and Water, there is some foot work to do in the prep, people to call, permission to get. It's going to be a nice project. I think I want to get most of the manuscript done by Nov 1st. Because if I can, then I can start work on book three of the Dinatech series.

Other things that are neat:

A'mee found this article, I thought it was great reading for those looking to write anything someone else might look at:

http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2012/03/06/25-things-you-should-know-about-word-choice/

A lot going on right now in my book world! I hope everything is good with you!

Robert