Yawn
Originally published at Confessions of a Half-baked Talemaker. You can comment here or there.
Does someone want to tell me why it’s 0300 hours and I’ve been trying to sleep for hours? And why is it that just when I finally DO fall asleep, the damn dog has to go potty - and the person who has potty duty won’t roll out of bed? Leaving me, the insomniac, forced to deal with the potty. And thus. I’m not quite wide awake, but I won’t be getting any sleep until dawn.
There have been wars, divorces and murders for less.
It’s rolling onto a month, and I just haven’t been able to get work done the way I want to. I keep trying, and time every day is being put into my commissions. I’ve once again put taking on any new work on hold until I’m done. And yet, despite my best efforts, I can’t seem to make any headway. Maybe it’s my online forensics class, which promised me it would only take up a couple of hours a week but has turned into a bit of a time-eating bear. Maybe it’s the fact that lately I sit at the computer and blink, only to realize I can’t remember how much time has passed. I dunno. Whatever it is, when sitting at your computer at 0300 hours you feel that maybe someone needs to get to the bottom of this.
Man I hate these insomniac spells because I can’t get anything done in the day, when I’m okay with being wide awake. People don’t realize that insomnia can be quite the obstacle in leading what most consider a normal and healthy lifestyle. I dunno. I haven’t even worked out for three days. It’s getting that bad.
I shouldn’t sit here bitching, though. I’m up. In a minute I’ll open my jobs and see what I can finish before 5 in the morning. I’m yawning my fool head off. But if I lay back down, the fat of my fat body will literally keep me awake. So I won’t bother just yet.
I’ve explored here and there the notion of expanding The Writers of the Apocalypse into a full publishing house over the years. I toy with the idea. I’m not serious about it. But lately one of my clients has a conundrum and, in asking for my help, has put me back to looking at the publishing house idea.
There are a lot of small publishers out there. A plethora, in fact. But my client’s work doesn’t quite fit their niches. Erotica? Oh hell no. Romance? Not quite. Just about everything out there is romance, actually. Historical fiction? I found two possibilities for him. One had too many misspellings on their professional website and the other’s covers were… eeeh… let’s just say that when I examine a publisher, I’m going to look at how they do their covers. If their covers suck, I’m going to think twice - because this means they don’t know jack about marketing. Or perhaps they expect you to.
In my daily leaping to solve this problem, I’ve found a lot of resources that other self-publishers aren’t familiar with. And so it is that over time I’ve managed to develop quite the self-publishing distribution plan. It’s pretty far reaching. And part of it involves getting your stuff into the Asian market.
I’m currently in the testing phase of my plan. Depending on how things turn out, I might have some good things to share with the rest of the class.
The Asian market ain’t all that if you’re writing prose - although the German market sort of is. (I also found out how to get into that.) For me, though, it’s all that because of The Heavenly Bride. I’ve always felt that the one place The Heavenly Bride might find more readers was overseas - although not Japan. Definitely not Japan.
Consequently I’ve been pondering tonight what kind of publishing house I’d have: What kind of content would we specialize in? Fiction, yeah. Most likely. Fantasy and Sci-fi would be a must. Old school would be pretty awesome. I hate just about all of the modern day conventions. Har. But also I think an Amer-manga arm, because no one has one. It’s either “match how Japan does it 100% or not at all” - but you know, The Heavenly Bride isn’t how it is because I’m trying to match Japan. It’s how it is because of cultural exchange, which you’ve seen me talk about here before, and how such things influence other people.
Kind of like how manga got started in the first place. Yo, American comics! As a result, I tend to see how The Heavenly Bride is as an influence coming full circle back where it came from. I think to myself, well I guess the Amer-manga section would have some often-stated philosophy: Draw like you mean it, not like you copied it. Or, I dunno: We here at the Writers of the Apocalypse feel that manga-influenced comics are a natural evolution of the sequential art world and look forward to giving a home to each and every well-written book that never felt like it fit in anywhere else. Something like that.
Another thing that’s been eating my time of late is that I’ve found myself involved in a very special project for my tribe. I’m one of a few that’s working towards bringing back the use of our mother tongue, Mohegan. So I think to myself, well then The Writers of the Apocalypse has to have an ethnic imprint. Pestilence and I talked about it a while tonight and decided we’d call it Wôks Prints - Wôks meaning Fox. Fox prints, see. For the Native American literature branch, something that really makes going full on publisher appealing to me.
But I hesitate with this idea. First off, I’d want to offer the traditional advance - and uh… the most I can think to offer of that would be a whopping $200. And that would be a financial hurt of stretch for us. Secondly, although leaving the commission world would make me sad what would make me sadder would be not having any time to do my own thing ever again. I worry this sort of venture would do that to me.
Hell I dunno. I’m so fucking tired and sleepy. Someone come hit me on the head with a tire iron until my body obeys and lets me sleep. Okay, don’t do that. Just appreciate the sentiment.