Okay, so I recently cut my manuscript down from 130,000+ words to less than100,000. Subsequently, a rewrite became necessary on my proposal.While revamping my marketing and promotion section I was doing research on social networking and bookmarking sites when I came across a gem, BoockCrossing.com. The concept is simple and exciting all at once. You register a book with the site and in turn are given a BC number. Using either a downloadable label, a fancy label from the BC store, or just by leaving a handwritten note inside the cover, you label the book with its new BC number. This is where the fun really begins.
At this point you can get creative, because the whole idea is to try and figure out the best way to get your books into the hands of someone who is going to read it, register it, and release it back into the wild. In my mind though, it would be far better still to get it into the hands of someone who will do that and travel with the book. I have yet to “release” my first book and already I’m daydreaming about sending my books around the World. If I actually succeed at getting a book to circumnavigate the globe I might just explode! I’m not sure why I am so giddy about this idea, but I am in like Flynn.
Okay, so I do have a more selfish motivation for bing so excited about BookCrossing than just being a book nerd and getting an honest kick out of it. Think of the viral marketing potential for a brand new book if you could find a tried and true method for sending a title around the World, literally. I’m making my first release later today and I think I’ll begin with the train station. That should make a suitable release site and increase the potential for the book to travel. We’ll see how it all works out. Wish me luck! And if you are excited about this idea too, please join BookCrossing! I hope to see you there.
in the darkness that pervades
when things have gone afoul
and government has failed you
cast you of with solemn scowl
you cannot help but notice
there are so many signs
that there is a kind of vital need
for those below to rise—
rise up in social class
accept no more morass
be not the human fodder
of the old Aristocrats,
go forth from slums and ghettos
return as gallant knights
put up your best defenses
and fight the good fight!
let not the sticky darkness
hold fast the honest truth
and never let the heroes
become the evil goons
when in creep the demons
and out go the rules
then up rise the people
and down go the fools!
a story has the ending
that its puppets bring to bear
and the lives that are caught in it
are the only ones who care
will the ending be a happy one?
we have yet to really see
but the pendulum is swinging
and The People will be free.
This morning I signed my entire family of four up for a trip to the Moon later this year! Isn’t that exciting? It will be myself, my wife, my daughter Payton, and my son Hunter—and 1.5 Million others, give or take a few thousand. The best part of it is, my tax dollars are paying for the whole thing! Talk about getting your money’s worth.
No, I’m not being sarcastic about the money, sending the one and one half million space geeks to the Moon will cost a nominal amount of money, because we’re all hitching a ride aboard NASA’s LRO by way of microchip. Since the LRO is going there anyway, adding the microchip couldn’t cost us too much, right? Our names will be installed on the lunar satellite and will remain in orbit of the Moon for roughly 5 years.
Now my kids can say that they have stars named after them (Parum Lux Lucis of Payton, Parum Lux Lucis of Hunter) and that they have been to the moon! NASA even provides a printable or PDF formatted certificate as proof of your participation in the “Send Your Name to the Moon” campaign.
My only regret is that I did not learn of this sooner. You can still get your name included on the chip with the rest of us space pioneers (Maybe in fifty years NASA will grant all 1.5M of us a claim on the moon?), but not for long. In fact, the deadline for inclusion is 27 June 2008—tomorrow. If you do happen to read this and decide to sign up, please come back and leave a comment to let me know! Maybe we can work a deal: I’ll give you my roasted peanuts if I can sit by the window. I want to watch as the earth shrinks away into the distance.
June 24, 2008 at 6:46 am · Filed under Humor, Video
Well, to be honest I don’t have a whole of specific things to say about George. I loved his comedy. George was a man that just wasn’t afraid to speak his mind, and most of the time what came out made pretty damned good sense — plus, it was funny. But because I’m a bit younger than his longest standing fans, and perhaps because I haven’t had cable TV in my home for years, I really can’t say much else about the man. I know that I don’t want to forget him, and so I’ll let him speak for himself by posting a YouTube video of him reciting his poem, “Modern Man.”
