From the Desk of the Chief Hairy Ape: Adjust Fire
Let me be straightforward here: Evolutions isn’t working.
The primary reason for that is me because I am Evolutions.
Seriously. Just me. A guy with a measly three published short stories who barely knows how to run Wordpress 2.5 and can’t upgrade to save his ass. (I keep destroying the database on the dummy site I’ve been using to experiment.) Editor? Why do I call myself that? Because I’m the only one doing it. Ergo, that’s the only title I can use. I don’t feel like an editor, but since I write checks and do all the editing and layout crap, editor it is.
But, the key point is, it’s not working. It’s not working for lots of reasons but mostly because I lack the necessary OCD to run something like this solo. Call me an odd duck, if you like, but I’d really prefer to work this in a team environment. I prefer to have people to bounce things off of and listen to. I don’t want to live in an echo chamber. That was never the point of this effort.
Which, oddly, brings me around to what I wanted to talk about.
See, I’ve been spending a bit of time pondering about what the heck I should do with Evolutions since: a) I have no motivation whatsoever to work on it and b) I have no money to spend on it anymore since I’m with the 17-20% of Americans who are more or less still screwed by the recession and unemployed. (Read that last bit as “Darwin ain’t got no money.”
Part of this has to do with the ongoing maelstrom that is e-publishing. Amazon, MacMillan, whatever. The big boys are busy stepping on each others feet to the detriment of authors and genres pretty much everywhere. The thing is, the big boys are so disconnected from their market base that it’d be laughable if it weren’t so damned tragic. Well, emotions start to come to the fore at this point, so I’d best leave off that for a minute otherwise I’ll get a spittle-flecked rant going, and that’s not what I want.
The key is, I deviated pretty wildly from what I originally wanted to do with Evolutions and that deviation has trashed my enthusiasm. See, the point of Evolutions was to provide an alternate path to publication - to open another door, no matter how cramped, for fiction to get out into the world. I never really wanted to follow the traditional “periodical” model, though. I just kind of ended up there, which was the big mistake.
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The primary reason for that is me because I am Evolutions.
Seriously. Just me. A guy with a measly three published short stories who barely knows how to run Wordpress 2.5 and can’t upgrade to save his ass. (I keep destroying the database on the dummy site I’ve been using to experiment.) Editor? Why do I call myself that? Because I’m the only one doing it. Ergo, that’s the only title I can use. I don’t feel like an editor, but since I write checks and do all the editing and layout crap, editor it is.
But, the key point is, it’s not working. It’s not working for lots of reasons but mostly because I lack the necessary OCD to run something like this solo. Call me an odd duck, if you like, but I’d really prefer to work this in a team environment. I prefer to have people to bounce things off of and listen to. I don’t want to live in an echo chamber. That was never the point of this effort.
Which, oddly, brings me around to what I wanted to talk about.
See, I’ve been spending a bit of time pondering about what the heck I should do with Evolutions since: a) I have no motivation whatsoever to work on it and b) I have no money to spend on it anymore since I’m with the 17-20% of Americans who are more or less still screwed by the recession and unemployed. (Read that last bit as “Darwin ain’t got no money.”
Part of this has to do with the ongoing maelstrom that is e-publishing. Amazon, MacMillan, whatever. The big boys are busy stepping on each others feet to the detriment of authors and genres pretty much everywhere. The thing is, the big boys are so disconnected from their market base that it’d be laughable if it weren’t so damned tragic. Well, emotions start to come to the fore at this point, so I’d best leave off that for a minute otherwise I’ll get a spittle-flecked rant going, and that’s not what I want.
The key is, I deviated pretty wildly from what I originally wanted to do with Evolutions and that deviation has trashed my enthusiasm. See, the point of Evolutions was to provide an alternate path to publication - to open another door, no matter how cramped, for fiction to get out into the world. I never really wanted to follow the traditional “periodical” model, though. I just kind of ended up there, which was the big mistake.
Read more...