Hola Crap
Yes, it’s my first blog entry.
People tell me they would be interested in hearing about the various creative, professional and academic projects on which I am working.
People may live to regret this.
But, hey, I’m happy to rattle on about my various obsessions. Here’s what I’m working on these days. I’ll just put up the overview in this post and elaborate in future posts. I’m going to post every Tuesday.
I guess there won’t be much to respond to in this first post, but I do want to hear your comments and suggestions about this stuff and about the things you’re working on. Also, if you don’t know me and you’ve arrived here because you have my book or one of my CDs, please know that you’re more than welcome to post and join in on conversations. I would love to hear from you.
The Day Job: I’m doing PR, Communications and Marketing for a group of technology companies. Does that sound like a lot of things to be doing for just one company, let alone several? Yeah. It’s triage. To be fair, though, the CEO did not disagree when I said this to him.
School: I’m working toward my PR Certification through UVic (University of Victoria) distance education. Currently I’m taking a course called Effective Communication Tools. My assignments so far have been the kinds of things I do at work all the time, so it’s been a walk. It’s a nice change of pace from my previous course, Going Without Sleep For 12 Weeks Because The Megalomaniacal Prof Has Made This Course a Full Time Job And You, As a Working PR Person, Already Have One of Those. That may not be exactly what it was called. The lack of sleep made that period of my life a bit hazy.
Promoting Touch: Did an interview Monday afternoon on CFCR, Saskatoon Community Radio. I have always been very fond of that station. Btw, if you have a community or campus station where you are and you enjoy listening to it, send a kind word to the Program Director. Community radio PDs work very hard for deeply inadequate amounts of money. We all talk about how much we value indie music and alternative viewpoints, but those people walk the walk.
the Sequel to Touch: the working title for this book is Dragon’s Gears. I’m at about 10,000 words, which is where I’ve been for weeks. It’s not that I haven’t been writing, but that I’ve been going up and down by 1000 words. Write 1000 words… realize I moved on too fast from something that needed more attention. Delete 1000 words. Write 1000 words, realize that I wandered somewhere unimportant and lost momentum. Delete 1000 words. Write 1000 words, realize that btajt weltgjao gnaiog aren’t words and that I should try harder to be awake when I write. And so, in the words of Kurt Vonnegut, it goes.
Stamped, Filed, Indexed: This is a three issue comic book miniseries. I have a script for the first issue and beat sheets for the second and third. Some of you may have noticed that I have a call for artists up on my website. Others may have noticed some lovely work Andrew Postnikoff has done for the comic.
Orphans: I adore this. It is my favourite. I hug it and squeeze it and call it George. It’s a joint thing Ryan and I cooked up and it was inspired by a Champions campaign, of all things. It’s massively complicated to get anywhere with and it’s a very current problem for us. Powermann has been helping us out a bit with investigating American production houses, but we may need to take things in a radically different direction.
Three Short Stories About Anton Cagel: This gets better every time we revise it, and every month I get less confident that I’ll ever get to see it made. It started as one short film script I wrote for an Edmonton producer who wanted something simple to shoot as a resume piece. Then Ryan and I added two more short films and three interstitials. It became a feature in six parts. I think it’s a lot of fun, and it’s set in the same fictional universe as Touch. Who wants to shoot an ultra-low budget indie feature in six parts? Anyone? It’s really fuuuuuuuuny. We have some gear and editing software…
The Column: I write a humour column for an industry association’s magazine. I write this pseudonymously, so I’m not going to give a lot of detail about that, but I may mention it sometimes.
Music: Finally freed up a computer for just music. I now have to decide what software to run and how, exactly, to set up my studio. I’ve always used a digital multi-tracker and I don’t know if I want to use it as a mixer now, or try to use it as a Midi-based controller for a software mixer, or bypass it entirely. Comments, questions and suggestions in private email are more than welcome. No songs in progress at the moment. I did a very rough recording of one just before moving back to Edmonton but haven’t listened to it since because I suspect it sucks and I’m in no hurry to confirm this suspicion. Oh, except — I did do a remix of Keep, so that it has a bit more going on in the background. It’s more in line with what I always wanted it to sound like. I’ll put that on my website soon and I’ll let you know when it’s there.
I think that’s all the stuff that’s not on a back burner or in very early development.
So… welcome. Thanks for visiting. Please comment before you go. I’ll see you next Tuesday.
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