Myth, the Universe, and Everything

Two projects have been keeping me busy enough to take up blog time, but both are coming to a head. The first is my Choice of Games kung fu project, which is coming to the concluding chapters and is planned for a before-Christmas release. Which means you all will be able to see what it is I've been working on! I'm very grateful to my playtesters, who have been helpful not only in finding errors and typos and parts of the game that freeze up, but also because their enthusiasm makes me want to keep going.

The last chapter I wrote necessitated rewatching some kung fu favorites -- mostly just scenes of battles where the hero is fighting a rival. Three-stripe and I chose some battles from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero, and Ip Man 2 as starters, but it was really Jet Li's Fearless that helped the most. Early in that film, Jet Li's character meets a challenger atop a tall tower where the two battle it out, and I used that setting as the basis for a fight between the player character of the game and a challenger character.



I had wanted to do a bamboo forest fight, like in Crouching Tiger or House of Flying Daggers, but it didn't work out for this chapter. There's always the next one!

Meanwhile, I'm preparing for my own black belt test, which is happening this Sunday, and I've been spending a lot more time at the gym in preparation for it. I've never been a heavy gym user, but our local Y has been great for me, not only in keeping up with physical therapy for injuries I've had to my knee and shoulder that I've finally been dealing with, but also for providing a great place to take Bug swimming. At any rate, I am repeating my "Noodles, don't noodles" mantra and trying to be serene about the coming challenge on Sunday. It is working in some moments better than others, but I suppose that is why we take things one moment at a time!

I was talking to Miss Mary, the storytime librarian at our local library (where I formerly worked), about how my Mom-Baby Fitness class in Branford has started off very slowly. She reassured me that word of mouth is what it really takes to get a class going on the Shoreline in Connecticut, and then gestured around to her baby storytime, the birth to two crowd, which often has twenty to thirty babies/toddlers attending, along with parents. It's a great crowd, and Bug and I love going. I don't think the space we have for Mom-Baby Fitness could handle that size population, but it's nice to think that things do grow by word of mouth.

That said, word of mouth seems to be a really elusive form of marketing that there's no clear way on how to develop it. Now, I haven't taken any formal classes in business -- in another life, that would have been my college major, but alas, that other me can't magically send tips back from the alternate universe in which I was a huge corporate success. I have read about marketing and about the challenges of hitting the right population by the two consumer-driven forms of advertising: word of mouth and (Internet based) viral marketing. Man, when that sort of campaign works, does it ever work! But when it goes nowhere, there's really no telling why it didn't make it.

With Haunted just being released, I've of course been thinking about word of mouth and viral marketing again, in context of the writing world. We had a fantastic review posted -- a four out of five stars, but with such thoughtful comments that it's clear the reader really got what the collection was about. It's just posted up on the product itself, as far as I know, but now word of mouth about books can spread in a multitude of ways: Goodreads, book blogs, facebook, wherever.

How do you reach your target audience? And how do you utilize social networking tools to accomplish what you want (rather than spending so much time on them that you lose work hours instead of gaining consumers)? If anyone out there has already found a balance they like, I'd love to hear about it! Otherwise, I'll just continue wading in these waters and trying to figure out whether or not I'm ready to swim.

I am very, very lucky to have my mother, code-named Maesi for purposes of the blog, visiting this week, because keeping track of my freelance assignments, teaching the Mommy-Baby fitness class, and being the guest editor at Branford Patch means wearing a lot of hats. If I thought that being a freelance writer meant a lot of multitasking, I had no idea how much more multitasking was required for a web editor. The job has been fantastically fun so far: I've gotten to do an interview about an upcoming animal summer camp hosted by our local animal shelter, and Bug, Maesi, and I did a photo shoot for an upcoming fundraiser in some gorgeous gardens. (Bug will not appear in any of the photos for the site, but she did make her way into a few that we'll keep for posterity.)

The thing that requires getting used to as an editor on this scale is that I'm even more attached to the computer than normal. There's no time to keep up with my web comics (I'll check them next week -- I can't even think about reading them right now), and games are an absolute no-no. I only have a few chapters left in Mythsoc Award finalist Megan Whelan Turner's A Conspiracy of Kings, and I've made very little progress in the last few days. The freelance assignment I expected to have completely wrapped up yesterday is still almost done -- I keep getting alerts that an article has been posted and needs to be edited, or remembering that I need to tweet a new article link or post recent news on the Branford Patch facebook page.

In short, I have a new appreciation for my editor (Nicole Ball), who made sure I'd have a light content week as her sub. She makes staying on top of the news look so easy -- and I'm glad she's getting her well-deserved vacation!

Richard Castle just keeps making the news. In today's TV Guide, it was announced that Marvel Entertainment is going to be "adapting" Castle's "early novels" as graphic novels -- the first, Richard Castle's Deadly Storm, features Castle's "famous hero" Derrick Storm in one of his early adventures. The world just keeps getting more meta! (Castle isn't the only one who has a graphic novel coming soon. Real-life writer mdhenry -- supposedly the ghost writer for his character, glamazombie Amanda Feral -- announced a while ago that Amanda will be starring in a comic book adaptation of her memoirs from Dabel Brothers. Can't wait for more news on that front!)

In news from the Abbott Office, work has been pouring in. The life of a freelancer is full of this phenomenon: in January, I had almost no work and was trying like mad to find new clients. This month, I've had work come in from old clients and some new editors who I'd been recommended to by folks I've worked with in the past. Some of the new assignments are brilliantly fun, and I'm excited about having a full plate.

I was talking to Max Gladstone about how this has impacted my fiction writing schedule (which is, as you might guess, rather nonexistent lately). jeff_duntemann has given these words of wisdom more than once: "That's key, kiddies: If you want to be an SF writer, don't be a writer in your day job." To say that I'm beginning to see from his point of view would be an understatement -- I've felt the danger of being a freelance writer impacting my fiction writing for some time. It's come to a head recently as other aspects of my life have also demanded more of my time. Max suggested that writing copy and writing creatively can come from different parts of the brain, and if the computer burn out is keeping me from writing (which is sometimes the case), why not try long hand? I've not yet tried it, but it instantly struck me as a brilliant idea. If there were ever a way to get my brain in a different gear, longhand would be it. So, I may be giving that a try.

I'm also getting closer and closer to my start date as a teacher for Mommy-Baby Fitness, which means prep in that area and meetings with founder Ann Cowlin, who had an interview with new instructor Lauren Hefez posted today. My favorite quote is this one, which I think applies to more than just fitness: "At Dancing Thru Pregnancy® we are fond of the notion that if you know a certain behavior is the best for a situation, it is smart to chose that behavior. If you do not, you are sabotaging yourself."

If only I applied that better to all aspects of my life!