All is Quiet on New Year's Day

2009 begins.

The holidays are behind us at last, and by Monday the stores will have Valentine's Day and Easter crap on the shelves and decorating the malls. The United States will celebrate the end of an error when Bush is finally kicked out on his ignominious ass and Obama takes one of the most historic and important oaths of office of our generation.

Here in Canada we will hopefully be rid of Stephen Harper in a few weeks' time, although I'm not holding out much hope for that, given that the new Liberal leader doesn't seem to care much for the coalition or the will of the Canadian electorate--which puts him on an even keel with the Wrong and Dishonourable Stephen Harper, who is possibly the worst and most hated Prime Minister since the King of Graft, Lyin' Brian Mulroney.

I will absolutely continue to post my opinions on the state of Canadian and Quebec politics--it is my right and obligation to do so. However, I intend on focusing my energies and my time on other things, in 2009.

First and foremost, it is my intention to see more of my work get published, this year. The Darkness and the Stars is, for all intents and purposes, ready to roll. I will be submitting that the publishers of The Unearthing, and it is also my intention to finalize Oh Well, Whatever, Nevermind and find a publisher for that book, by the Summer. Both books are, for all intents and purposes, ready to sell. I have spent too much time procrastinating over them, because of The Unearthing's lack of commercial success.

The Unearthing has been successful as an ebook; it has been downloaded thousands of times since being put online in March of last year. While that proves to me I have the skills to write an engrossing story, it is obvious to me I do not have the know-how to successfully market one. Therefore, I am going to be looking for marketing assistance, possibly even representation. An agent or a publicist will go a long way to help me move my "brand" forward, and so this will be an ongoing effort of the New Year.

CONFRONT Magazine continues to be and will continue to be a priority for me. I've just written my first cover article for the magazine, chronicling the up and coming band, Bad Flirt. I will continue to write for the magazine and I will dedicate one blog post per week to CONFRONT; pending Editor approval, I will cross-post that weekly blog to CONFRONT, as well.

I will also continue to reorganize this weblog, to make the Chronicles of an Independent Author more prominent, and as I will once again be working to see my writing published, there will be more updates to the Chronicles.

I intend to post more entries to the blog, as well. Last year I averaged 1 post per week, but I don't feel that that is necessarily adequate. Part of the problem has been that I've spent so much time over the last year and a half since The Unearthing was published worrying about the book's failure and what it means for me. I'm over it now, and I'm working on getting more work out to readers.

So that's it for my first post of the New Year. I hope everyone's had a great holiday, I wish you all the best for 2009 and I promise that there will be more to come, soon.

Brief Update...

So it's been twelve days since I last posted. My bad. A lot of things have been going on; the ever ongoing quest to treat my panic disorder, adjusting to yet another new medication, the relaunch of CONFRONT Magazine, initial feedback from Oh Well Whatever Nevermind's test readers before I polish it off one last time and send it out to prospective publishers...that one I'm going to need some advice on; I"m not sure how best to approach the pubs.

In that time I've been rewriting The Darkness And The Stars, the follow up to The Unearthing. I've also been involved in regular planning sessions for a new phase in CONFRONT Magazine's ventures, garnering some positive reviews for my article on heavy metal music for said same magazine, and toying with an idea to ship to a comic book company I met through Twitter.

The Chapters/Indigo thing was some over-hype by Publish America: Canada's Only Book Seller won't be STOCKING PA titles, but selling them on a par with the US cover prices. I've gotten another 200 downloads of The Unearthing, so I'm around 1750 now...Still trying to figure out the next step on that one.

I'm actually dozing off...guess the anti-anxiety meds are kicking in. More soon...I promise.

Interesting...

...Publish America just announced that the Chapters/Indigo book stores will begin stocking Publish America titles.

...The largest book store chain in Canada will now be a potential new point of sale for The Unearthing.

Now of course the question is how to turn this to my advantage...seems my "break" from marketing The Unearthing is coming to an end...