(Not Quite) Moving On

So, I have to apologize, everyone, but I just got my Very Definitely Final Warning about Blogger, and so things are going to be nuts here for a bit.

For those of you who didn't see my previous post on this subject, Blogger is deprecating its FTP service, which is the current method I use to publish my blog to this site. Their other options are, unfortunately, unworkable for my needs; you see, they want me to stop using the domain I pay for and start using their Blogspot or custom URL, and I simply refuse to do that. So, as of May 1st, Blogger is not going to be the way I communicate with you, the howling masses.

But fear not! The blog is not dead, merely putting on a new hat. You can continue to follow me at my new, shiny WordPress blog. More upgrades and updates to come soon, I swear; the site looks naked because I've been futzing with it in between bouts of Life and have simply not had the time to deal with it just yet. But tonight, my friends...tonight...we code.

In that vein, you may see the site revamp for tyler-hayes.com generally soon, in which case this blog may migrate off the main page. If it does, fear not; we'll make the placement for it nice and easy to find. Thank you for continuing to read, even in these busy times; and as Stan Lee might say, Excelsior!

Not Providence: A Metaphysical Pit Stop

Hey everybody.

So, first of all, the usual Tuesday announcement: Part 22 is up, and Book Two has come to its somewhat troubled conclusion.

Now, the second part: Not Providence is going on another break.

Before anyone panics, this one isn't because I have to move again, or anything scary or stressful like that. It's simpler than that, so much so that I can summarize it in three words: I'm burnt out. Wait, scratch that: I'm burnt out, and I need to focus on my career.

Not Providence is great fun; it's an unusual format for me, and a style I really enjoy writing in, if not the one I tend to default to. It's fun world-building within the confines of my creation and trying to wend my way from where Randall is currently to where I plan to put him at the end of Book Four (which will be the concluding chapter).

Unfortunately, Not Providence is a challenge in more ways than just structurally: it's also a challenge to my schedule. For the past not-quite-year, I've been sacrificing one to two nights of writing every week to getting the following week's update ready to go; this is not including the nights of writing that actually went into the project itself. And near the end of Book Two, I could feel my own satisfaction with the project dropping off as I lost my update buffer and was forced to pour more and more time into it (and getting less and less time to revise plot twists and details).

All told, Not Providence accounts for something like 75% of the writing I did in 2009; and while that's perfectly normal for something of its current (and ever-growing) length, the problem here is that Not Providence is free. That sounds cheap, I know; but honestly, I am just starting out as a writer. I have three publication credits to my name (and counting, we hope). I've just barely gotten agents to start reading my work. I am not yet in a position where 75% of my time can be going to a project I am not and do not plan to be making money or forwarding my career on. Plus, even beyond the money, I have ideas pounding at the back of my brain that have been waiting since last June or so; I need to give them time to come out and dance around and see if they are worthy of my energy and attention.

I in no way plan to stop writing Not Providence; it's planned for four books and four books will happen. And indeed, some energy will still be going into it: a break with two books complete is a great time to start trying to attract new readers, now that the promise of an insurmountable archive panic is not in evidence; and beyond that, as I was riding to work today I had the perfect opening for Book Three. I just need a couple months to work on other projects, try to expand my readership, and get Book Three squared away before I start putting it out on the Webbernets.

For those of you reading now, thank you, and please keep in touch; the site will in no way go dead just because Not Providence is temporarily in stasis, and who knows? I might have some other little tidbits to let you read. Do pimp me ou--er, recommend me when you think it is warranted, and don't hesitate to give me feedback when you want to. Just because it's free doesn't mean I don't care, after all.

In closing, do not fret, and do not chalk this up to yet another one of the half-finished projects littering the Internet. I won't be that guy. Randall will ride again; it'll just take a little time to get him ready for it, and he's got some brothers and sisters who need my attention.

Goodbye for now, my drooling hordes. A real blog post will follow later this week.

Not Providence: Uploadageddon

Alright, my assorted barnyard animals...

It is done.

Since real-life troubles and circuitous legalese have prevented me from having sale-ready, collated copies of Not Providence Book One ready for holiday consumption, I have gone ahead and done it.

As of now, tyler-hayes.com includes the NEW, IMPROVED Prologue, "The Devil Inverted; the entirety of Book One, "The Progress Trap"; and is fully up to date on Book Two, "Magical Thinking". The site updates are not fully complete—the old and much less personally-enjoyable titles are still in evidence here and there—but this will hopefully hold you over. Also, make sure you load my stylesheet; the updates now include some poor man's protection against site-scraping that will make your reading life hellish if it doesn't load, and I promise there is nothing invasive in there.

Read.
Enjoy.
Disseminate.

Merry Christmas.

Not Providence: Pardon Our Nonexistent Dust

Point the first: Part Nineteen is alive and kicking. Who pieced that together?

Point the second: Things are going to look weird around tyler-hayes.com for the next few days. I'm doing some site overhauls and my schedule is such that they're happening piecemeal. You'll be seeing some weirdness with formatting (though hopefully not actual breaks in said formatting), places where the titles of Not Providence's books mismatch, and other little oddities; I swear they are temporary and will be made as non-intrusive as possible.

Point the third: We are now beginning our serious push to increase our readership (beginning now so that there's momentum behind the push after the holidays end), so if you aren't reading Not Providence or following the blog, please note that Book One, "The Progress Trap", will be going back up on the site some time today; and if you are reading, I'd love it if you'd recommend it to someone who might like to give it a try. Consider it a very low-budget Christmas present.

And now, off to Real Work. Have a great day, everybody.

Serialization and Business Models

in which our author is pinned between his wallet and his dreams

The fine folks over at Pimp My Novel (I'm sorry, I have forgotten the author's name and don't know if they'd appreciate being called "Mr. Pimp") have posted an excellent entry on the return of serialization and the possibility of low-priced short stories as a valid business model.

I am intrigued by these ideas, and wish to subscribe to their newsletter.

More specifically, I am wondering if there is something here for me; if maybe I can pull off the kind of business model they are describing with some of my short works, for just $1 or $2—not the kind of prices that'd let me quit my job and buy an island, but the sort that would help me build a fanbase, or have some numbers to spit at possible agents and publishers. I'm not sure if this is worth it, but I tell myself that the worst that happens is I waste a couple hours determining that it's fiscally infeasible.

What does this mean for you? Well, it might mean you get bugged about buying stuff off Amazon in a week or two, or start seeing Amazon buttons in the sidebar off to our right. Also for now it means one or two stories are coming down from the "Selected Writings" section while I go over the old contracts for them and see if they'd be viable candidates for said small-ticket sales. They may just get popped right back up to the Interwebs, but we'll see, on all counts. Rest assured you will be kept updated, my loyal fans and constant readers.

Time to roll the dice, I guess. Let's hope for boxcars.

BayCon '09 Wrap-Up

(A quick bit of bookkeeping first of all: for the sake of keeping it easy, I will be adding Not Providence annotations along with tomorrow's update, rather than today. My apologies for the delay; blame the events you are about to see retold.)

This is the first in what I hope is a long line of con wrap-ups, from the point of view of an attendee (though naturally I pray for posts as a panelist, guest, maybe even MC one of these years...oh, such dreams...). I have to be honest and start my con wrap-ups with this: I hated my first con.

To be clear, my first con was not BayCon '09. My first con (not counting an ill-fated adventure in gaming at a con in my freshman year of college) was BayCon '03, which we somewhat unaffectionately referred to as "DramaCon". I was physically at the con, but saw none of the actual con activities; in between being a gofer and pretending I had some idea how to work security at a party (that was already secure enough thanks to hotel staffers and the vigilance of F.L.A.R.E.), I spent my time causing, watching, dodging, or otherwise interacting with people crying, screaming, or moping. So suffice to say I did not have the best time. When I fully committed to the idea of being a writer, I told myself that I would not attend a convention again until I was there as a guest.

Then along came my friend Stephanie, and her boyfriend Glen (a much older friend of mine who does not have a Very Important Website for me to link to). Among other things, Stephanie had some skill in marketing, and insisted that attending a convention was a good thing for a Young Writer in Training like me to do; so I bit my lip, and breathed a sigh, and said, sure, I'll try it.

Everything after that point is pure awesome.

I am not an expert in conventions, so I can't say if BayCon '09 was well run, but I can say I had a great deal of fun. The panels I attended were informative and useful and friendly, the game room seemed to be quite active, the atmosphere was mellow, and drama seemed to be, if not nonexistent, at least not out in the open where everyone could find it. The Not Providence flyers I put on the free tables seemed to disappear at a decent clip (if you're here because of those, hello!), and I got to give two business cards to two people much more successful than me, and one to someone still getting started that I thought I could help (if you're here because of that, hello!). Eyes were rolled at the staid geeky jokes (how many times can "42" be funny?), hands were shaken, a few drinks were had. I do not feel cheated out of the funds spent on registration.

More than all this, though, the best part of the convention for me was seeing what it did for Stephanie. She sold all but one of the pieces she displayed in the art show, with one of them going to the Monday voice auction in a year when only about 20 pieces made it that far; and five major, successful artists all came by and gave her both glowing reviews and helpful pointers. She was beaming when we left con on Saturday, along with intermittently blushing; and frankly, I would have paid any amount of money for first row tickets to watching an artist I know and love meet with such wonderful beginning success.

If I had a complaint about con, it is that they did seem somewhat disorganized, though again, take my complaint with a grain of salt. The Artist Guest of Honor's slideshow was rescheduled both temporally and spatially, and had a very small turnout (though that was excellent for Stephanie personally), and both the writing panels I attended had the panel's composition shifted, in one case quite dramatically. The website for the convention was down for a good couple of days during the week leading up to the con, and the schedule of events was not available until near the end of the week before that. And of course, there was a bit of scrambling with the Guests of Honor having to cancel with less than a week to go, though that was beyond the convention's control. Still, this seems like a temporary issue, and it's not something I'm going to let be a real black mark on the con; as evidenced by my decision to come home and almost immediately pre-purchase a membership for BayCon '10, which I hope to attend with slightly more literary pull (fingers crossed).

In the long run, the experiment was a success, and I think I'll be attending panels and poking my head into the game room for a few years to come. BayCon '09 make me break my vow, and I'm glad I did.

Shortcuts

If you have been wanting to share Not Providence but have found the URL too cumbersome to remember, or if you've just been having that second problem, you will be pleased to know that any and all links to notprovidence.com will now dump you out at the Prologue page. Rejoice, for I have brought unto you easier-to-remember URLs!

My website is still hyphenated, though. I blame the generations of mothers who insisted that Tyler Hayes was a good name for someone other than me. Unfortunately, battles to the death are still not legal in the United States.

Not Providence is up.

Happy Tuesday! It's Update Week here at Notes from the Underworld, I guess.

Today's special is Not Providence 9: Randall Stocks Up on Hand Sanitizer.

Not Providence: Hey, at least we're not talking about the swine flu!

Happy Monday, it's a site update.

I haven't tweaked the template yet (we need some images up in this piece), but I have added and mutated a few things. The Curriculum Vitae link actually does take you to my curriculum vitae, not just my short list of published works, so that's a plus (Acrobat Reader required, for the nonce), and I got my contact information up there, too. Let the harassment commence, oh you imagined creepy people.

Not Providence: You know the drill.

Part 8 is up and running. Tommy bothers me.

In other news, HTML is a lot harder than it should be; but you should be seeing Twitter and Facebook links on the right-hand side, under "More from the Intertron". Click in good health.

The Twitter in Repose

For those who were wondering, given the date: no, really, I am on Twitter now. You can find me under the_real_tyler (seriously, the number of people on Twitter named Tyler Hayes is really kind of absurd). A link to the feed will be forthcoming when I have the time for a site update.

Having been on Twitter just under a week, I have a few observations about the process:

• Twitter is a fascinating medium to work in—the character limitation has been analyzed to death, but I really do find that it both forces a different style of writing than the larger and more robust blog format, and also provides a forum in which to relay those events that might not be worth an entry in a normal blog. I try to think of my Twitter feed as a museum of the strange and hilarious in my life, instead of a series of dissertations on same.


• The signal-to-noise ratio really is as terrible as Internet commentators claim. Even the feeds I really enjoy have a tendency to broadcast minutiae that probably wouldn't have made it to the Internet in any other medium.


• This is not the fault of the tweeters themselves, at least not entirely; there is something about Twitter as a medium that encourages one to tweet about trivial events unworthy of a normal blog. I think an inability to post everything at once and the unconscious (and unintended) fact that those who do not tweet get their tweets buried mean that people will do whatever they can to try to fill the gap.

So, there you have it. I'm tweeting now. Will wonders never cease. Feel free to follow my feed if you like; the only thing official and writing-related to take place over there will be announcements of Not Providence updates, though, so don't feel as though you are obligated. And please listen to this, my solemn promise that I will never subject those of you who choose to avoid Twitter to LoudTwitter or its sister programs--I firmly believe that the nature of a Twitter feed means it should be entirely opt-in, and LoudTwitter circumvents that.

And again, in case you thought that was also an April Fool's joke: screw MySpace.

Gadgets and gizmos aplenty

Hey all,

In celebration of me actually living in the 21st century and not feeling like I'm staring at the secret language of voodoo when I read HTML and CSS docs, I have spruced things up a little bit round these parts. As such, if you scroll down you may see a small selection of widgets near the bottom of the sidebar, including but not limited to my Google Reader shared items and the contents of the two GoodReads bookshelves that are a bit less boastful of me to be sharing over the Intervoid. So, welcome to the slightly revamped index page, and enjoy.

Also, yes, that's the first book of the Twilight series sitting in my currently-reading shelf. I figured it'd be best for me to give the series an actual fighting chance before I mock it mercilessly. Unfortunately I think it may get deleted from my shelf before I get past Chapter One. I've read grammar school essays more compelling than this.

Updated!

Part 3 is now up. Meet "the crip".

Also, the site is getting a little makeover to improve readability; unfortunately, this means things may look a little odd here, as I have to focus on the bill-paying work as well as this stuff over here, so a tag or an element may not get attended to right away. Right now, I know that these posts are showing up in Times New Roman, and the rest of the site is in Sans-Serif; and that the footer fonts are ridiculously undersized. If you see anything else, let me know, please, so I can try to attend to it.

Enjoy the reading!

Bookkeeping and Promises

Instead of one of my pithier posts, you get something that is sadly inevitable, and long overdue: announcements, proclamations, and general bulleted noise-making.

Item 1. Site Design: I apologize if anarchy breaks out on the site any time in the next week or two; my Photoshop Maven and I are working on adding a bit of much-needed spice to this two-toned web experience. I'll be vigilant about not making the experience atrocious, but if you simply disagree with design elements, please wait until I've posted to say I've completed my renovations; I'll happily accept input and criticism then.

Item 2. Posting Schedule: This hasn't been entirely clear, partially because it hasn't been entirely clear in my head. So here goes: I try to post weekly, and have been since I really got the site off the ground. From here on out, the weekly post will be aimed at or around the area of Thursday (I'm running on Pacific Time, for those who need such a warning), with super bonus content here and there without warning, as dictated by the need to announce matters literary, link to something topical, or just generally to bibble and whine about something you might actually be coming here to read.

Now, that said, I won't apologize (too much) for missing a posting date; while I'll try to keep you abreast of things that will prevent a post from hitting when it should, and will definitely alert you if I'll be away from the blog for a significant period of time, I have no more interest than you do in seeing post after post that just says "I fail. I'm sorry.". I'd rather spend that time focusing on getting through whatever is delaying me out of the way and moving on to the business of posting again.

There, all that's out of the way. Now, onto issues of content.

What You Will See Here:

Thoughts about being a writer; updates on my life as a writer; movie reviews; book reviews, when I get around to reading newer books; snippets of fiction, here and there as the mood strikes and contracts allow; musings on current events; Internet-based oddities and curiosities, if I think them so excellent that they should go here instead of just sharing them over at Google Reader; occasional fits of bad literary humor; moaning about writer's block.

If any or all of these bothers you, that's why there's a comment function, and I encourage you to tell me what needs to go--I don't publish things on the Internet just for my own benefit.

What You Won't See Here:

• Macros: Cherie Priest can pull this off, but I lack the panache.


• Memes.


• Internet shorthand. Barring irony, leetspeak makes my teeth hurt.


• Posts about my personal life. (I make an exception for marriage and death.)


• Political humor: I get it. Bush is stupid. Hey, Barack Obama doesn't have political experience. Oh gosh, politicians sure do lie a lot! I'm not The Daily Show, and they're one of about three entities whose political jokes aren't flogging a dead horse.


• Posts that do nothing but link to someone else's post, followed by the textual equivalent of smiling and pointing excitedly.


• Any attempt to tell you how to cure writer's block. If you think you have a cure for someone else's writer's block, you're either not a writer or you think everyone thinks the way you do.


• My grocery list.


• Other peoples' fiction.


• Twitter posts: I don't have a Twitter account. Barring one or two decent parodies of the medium, I can't stand Twitter. No-one needs to know which utensil I'm picking up now. No-one needs to hear that I'm on my way somewhere and hear that on my way back. Anything that important is reserved for your closest friends or 911.

That's a solemn promise, down to the letter. Some bloggers can pull those off; sometimes irony can override my distaste for those items I consider mistakes; but I'm not some bloggers, and I prefer to direct my irony to other exercises. Again, if you want some of that, that's why there are comments. (But don't ask for Twitter posts. I won't do it.)

So, after all that content-free content, I don't know if I have another post in me. But soon--no later than next Thursday.

I swear.

A Little Further Down the Road

I apologize, my invisible, possibly nonexistent reading public; I've been so busy writing and tinkering with the website that I've failed to actually put anything on the blog. Hopefully that 18-day gap didn't leave you thinking I was dead somewhere, my fingers and tongue severed and stolen. I know how much you hinge on my words, my imagined readers.

So, my own desperate narcissism aside, I have for you: technical narcissism! The site is now fully live and three pages deep, with some short fictions posted in "Selected Writings" page for your enjoyment. I hope they are enjoyable, and I'm fairly certain that you'll hear more from me soon. For now--links! Stories! Shiny objects! Go go go!