So.  The bag has been tipped over and the cat is loose.  John Anealio and I have been tapped to do a new podcast for sfsignal.com.  On top of that, I’ll be writing for sfsignal.com a couple times a month.

I think it’s going to be a lot of fun and a really good [...]]]> /begin random thoughts

So.  The bag has been tipped over and the cat is loose.  John Anealio and I have been tapped to do a new podcast for sfsignal.com.  On top of that, I’ll be writing for sfsignal.com a couple times a month.

I think it’s going to be a lot of fun and a really good fit for all of us.

There’s still one more secret project out there.  It’ll for sure be live august 5th, but there should be something announced on twitter before then.

Cryptic much?

* * *

I forgot how gross Subway sandwiches has become.  Eating there today and I am not impressed any more.  They used to be my favorite, now they are easily my least favorite, but Tokyo Joe’s was packed floor to ceiling so…

* * *

The short story is coming along nicely, if I do say so myself.  Been a while since I tried to write one.  Usually, I have so much to say, so much story to tell, that I end up going full blown novel, but this one is very definitely a short story.  It felt that way from the moment it popped into my brain.

It’s a space western.  Cowboys in the stars.  What more could you want from a story?!

* * *

It may be that I need a new mattress.  I am just not sleeping well anymore.  Granted, I’ve had that mattress nearly 10 years now, but it was a higher end mattress at the time, cost me a bit more, so I expected it to last a long time.  Maybe 10 years in the life of a mattress is considered a long time.  I don’t know.

Buying tires for mom’s car today to the tune of about $500 – $600 with labor and balancing and rotating and all sort of other things, I’m sure.  I just hope that whoever is doing the work was at mechanics school for lug nut day.

(That’s funnier than it sounds.  Google ‘lug nut day’ sometime and see what comes up…)

So if I do need a new mattress, it’ll have to wait a bit.

* * *

I have not had tons of guests to my new house.  This is because me being me, I keep trying to get everything ‘perfect’.  I know in my head that it’ll never BE perfect, but still I try.

Anyway, all of that goes out the window Friday when I’ll have most of my local family and some friends over for a BBQ.  My older brother is coming into town Thursday, so the BBQ is in honor of that and a chance for everyone to see or meet him, have a burger and see the house..

Should be fun.

* * *

I think it’s the bread and the cheese.  Subway’s bread is terrible now.  I don’t know if they’ve changed the recipe or what.  And the cheese is gritty – no, chalky – yeah, it’s chalky in your mouth.  Bleh.  No wonder Jared lost weight eating this crap – it’s terrible!

* * *

While the short story gets all the love, the novel languishes where I left it.

I need more time in a day.

/end random thoughts

~P

Make me famous:

My mom accidentally locked the cats in the basement for a few hours.  She went down there to look for something, didn’t realized she’d been followed, walked up the stairs, shut the door and then headed up to the second floor to clean her bathroom and bedroom.  She kept hearing them meowing and [...]]]> /begin random thoughts

My mom accidentally locked the cats in the basement for a few hours.  She went down there to look for something, didn’t realized she’d been followed, walked up the stairs, shut the door and then headed up to the second floor to clean her bathroom and bedroom.  She kept hearing them meowing and called to them, telling them she was upstairs, trying to encourage them to come up there.  When they kept crying, she finally decided to go see why there were being lazy and found that they were in the basement.

This resulted in two things: 1) Mom felt horrible; I told her they’re cats and they will survive the ‘trauma’ of being locked in the basement for a couple of hours. 2) The cats were very clingy and well behaved last night; essentially they were all, “First you take us to that man in the white coat who cut our Talons & poured goop in our ears, then you lock us in the basement!? WE’LL BE GOOD FROM NOW ON – WE SWEARS!!!”

* * *

The channel formerly known as SciFi used to have a web extension of itself known as SciFi Wire; this was the news service for SciFi and had, sprinkled in-between ads for Ghost Hunters and Warehouse 13, bits of news about the SciFi community.  But, alas, they have chosen to give it a new, stupid name (Blastr) because they really don’t care one iota about the fan base that built them.  So from now on, that site (if it ever gets mentioned again around here) shall be known as: the website formerly known as SciFi Wire.

* * *

I am no longer receiving email notifications when someone leaves a comment on the blog.  I don’t know why.  I’m supposed to get one.  I’ve checked my spam / junk folder and they’re not ending up there, so it’s a real mystery as to why they aren’t showing up.

If you leave a comment and don’t see it after a few hours, shoot me an email so I can approve it.  After you’ve been approved once, you’re all good.  Still, I wish WP would tell me there’s a new comment (approved or otherwise) to be read.

* * *

I mentioned before that I’d written a short story; it came out of nowhere last Saturday.  I don’t know what my muse had for dinner Friday night, but by Saturday, she wanted me to write a space Western, which I did.  Well, half of one anyway.  I’ve been itching to get back to it but other things have come up.

Monday at lunch, I went through and edited what I’d already written, fixing some stuff, adding stuff, deleting – that sort of thing.  On paper.  Then I took that home and Monday night, made all the changes in Scrivener.

Tuesday was podcast recording night.  Wednesday was the first half of podcast editing and the morning when I woke up in pain in my right shoulder and back.  No freaking clue what I did, but it persists today (Thursday) and kept me up late last night trying to fall asleep while not moving.  Normally, it only takes Wednesday to edit the podcast, but I skipped a step when I exported it from the software I use to record Skype and had to do it again, which takes forever and set me way back.  Tonight will be the second half of podcast editing because of that little step skip I did, and my weekly glance at Evermist to make sure I haven’t screwed anything up there.

That means it’ll be tomorrow night before I get back to my Space Western.  Sigh.

/end random thoughts

~P

Make me famous:

I’ve been offline more lately than is usual.  Well, I say offline but really I am still online, I’m just staying focused on the tasks at hand and not doing as much Twitter as people are accustomed to seeing from me.  That’s because I’ve been writing.

A lot.

The whole point of this stuff is [...]]]> /begin random thoughts

I’ve been offline more lately than is usual.  Well, I say offline but really I am still online, I’m just staying focused on the tasks at hand and not doing as much Twitter as people are accustomed to seeing from me.  That’s because I’ve been writing.

A lot.

The whole point of this stuff is to write, get published, sell some books so I hope you’ll forgive my absence and silences as the muse takes me, roughs me up a little, and ties me to a keyboard.

* * *

I tend to be a planner when I write, but not a traditional planner – at least, not so far.  I plan in my head.  Sometimes, I will take months if not years to think about something before I put a single word down.  Other times, I will think about something for a few hours, know what I want, where I want the story to go and then I sit down and write.  Not particularly the best way to do things, but there it is.

This past weekend, for example, I just had this idea hit and there was no way it was going to stay in my head for any length of time.  So I sat down Saturday morning and started typing.  By end of day Sunday, I had 9800 words down and Cord Cahill, space cowboy, had been born.

More on that later.  Promise.

* * *

I have turned the daily Functional Nerd News Roundups over to the extremely capable Scott Suehle aka @8bitdad (twitter.com/8bitdad or http://8bitdad.wordpress.com/).  I offered and Scott volunteered.

You rock, dude.

Why turn that over to someone else?  I admit, it was my baby.  I started it back a while ago to help drive some traffic to the Functional Nerds site.  But spotty accessibility at work (I put those together during lunch and the firewall sometimes blocks me/times out when I try to access the site) meant that the posts were becoming few and far between and when I get home from work, my priority is to churn out entertaining writing with an eye on publishing.

So, something had to give.

Luckily, Scott was there to pick up my slack and has been doing a great job.  Thank you!

* * *

One icebreaker is enough.  You don’t need to eat two at a time.  Seriously.  Stop it.

* * *

A lot of people get pocket dialed.  I don’t know of many who get baby dialed.  I get baby dialed, have for years.

Quinn has let both of his sons play with his cell phones and as such, I get baby dialed.

The other night, I got a call from him, answered it, and heard his youngest ‘la la la’ ing while Quinn, in the background, said things like, “Who’s a baby boy?  Who’s a baby boy?” or some such.

It was funny.  I should’ve recorded it…

* * *

My aunt and uncle sent me a stack of comic books out of the blue.

You hear those stories, ya know?  About how people move into a new house, head up into the attic, into the crawlspace or the basement, and come across a dusty box shoved into a corner or nook.  They dig the box out, blow the dust and dirt from it and wonder what sort of treasure they may have uncovered (or whose dead pet).

Upon opening the box, they find a mint condition 1st appearance of Superman, or a copy of Amazing Fantasy #16.  Suddenly, they are rich.  All because of the box of comics left behind by someone who is probably kicking themselves.

…these weren’t those comics.  These were some Captain America’s from the early 90’s.

Sigh.

/end random thoughts

~P

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Do you remember when vans were cool?

Scooby Doo rode around in one, so did the A-Team.  Heck, my aunt and uncle came to town one year and had one that was really tricked out.  You had the shag carpet (floor AND walls, of course), the swivel chair (very Bond.), the booth in the [...]]]> /begin random thoughts

Do you remember when vans were cool?

Scooby Doo rode around in one, so did the A-Team.  Heck, my aunt and uncle came to town one year and had one that was really tricked out.  You had the shag carpet (floor AND walls, of course), the swivel chair (very Bond.), the booth in the back with the table (“…and the kids can sit back here and play games when we’re on long trips!”).  Vans were ~cool~.

Now, vans are creepy.

I mean, you see a van going down your street and what’s the first thing that pops into your head?  I know what pops into mine.  “CREEPY VAN!  HEY EVERYONE – LOOK!  CREEPY VAN!  CREEPY SERIAL KILLER VAN GOING DOWN THE STREET!  RIGHT THERE – DO YOU SEE IT? OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD!”

* * *

Passion overrules reason with the majority of people (my own, humble opinon, of course).

When someone is passionate about something, anything, they tend to not like anyone who disagrees with them or contradicts what they believe.  This leads to attacks; attacking the person verbally, dismissing them, undermining them, attempting to lower their value and worth which raises your own (right?).  In the extreme, this can lead to violence.

Politics is a perfect example of passion overruling reason.  My mom will tell you how much she hates people on the opposite side of the aisle.  She will spout what is really just political rhetoric; that sort of grandiose, all encompassing statements meant to fuel peoples passions and dull the reason centers of their brains (all sides do this, btw).  She’ll bandy about words and prhases like: evil, nazi, hate, uncaring, despicable, they don’t care about people, they only care about themselves, they don’t listen, they only want to hear themselves talking, talk, talk, talk.  But she can’t point to specific or rational examples of these points and gets flustered and angry when anyone points that out or tries to draw more out of her.  it’s not just my mom, though.  I think everyone reacts in a similar fashion, regardless of subject, when their passion is enflamed and people around them don’t immediately agree and bolster them.

Passion isn’t necessarily about things making sense in a rational, logical way.  Passion is about emotion.  We can ignore a lot when engulfed in passion, and that’s when we get into trouble.

* * *

I installed Scrivener on my Macs a little bit ago.  Scrivener is this program for writers that is intended to help you write by taking away the burden of all the other stuff that comes with writing.

Let me esplain.  One could spend hours playing with Word.  I, for one, have dug through all the little settings in Word and stripped out things like ‘convert single quotes to curly quotes’ because that breaks web browsers and I do a lot of web stuff.  You can also setup things like: margins, indents, text size, headers, footers, fonts, blah, blah, blah and when you’re all done and it’s time to submit your piece to someone for consideration, you have to go through and redo everything to match the submission guidelines.

One of the features of Scrivener is that it takes all that out of your hands.  You can setup your writing environment however you like, but when you export, it’s always gonna export it according to submission guidelines, which it keeps separate from your gui settings.  That’s #1.

The second cool thing that it does is organization.  When I first started using Word to write, I would do one chapter per doc, save each chapter in a folder for the project, then move on.  Jumping from chapter to chapter involved opening multiple docs.  Later, I started keeping a ‘running file’ where I would copy/paste each chapter so I had the piece I was working on, and a reference piece in a single doc.  The more complicated the project, the more complicated and messy this system got.  Plus, I never figured out how to do notes and stuff like that, so I also would have a little notepad going or another doc with my notes in it running, so at least 3 Word docs going at any one time.

Moving to Mac when I dumped Windows, my methods didn’t change much.

Enter Scrivener.  It organizes things really well.  You can have chapters broken down by scenes, each scene its own piece but still part of the whole.  You can have scenes nested with other scenes or in folders.  You can edit all the scenes of your chapter at once (a slight color change from scene to scene tells you where the breaks are), or one at a time, or two at a time with a split screen or you can even have the same scene open at different parts – very, very slick.

You can have notes and synopsis without having to dig around for it, flag things, mark the stage in revisions where a particular piece is at (draft,revised draft, final draft) or create your own, custom stage names (crap, utter crap, volcanic neon crapola).  You can attach photos and articles and pdf’s and a slew of other things to your manuscript in a handy research area.  Best of all, you can switch between different views of your manuscript including outlines or storyboard / cork-board.

I want to say that it has already made me more productive because I feel more productive.  I dumped my WIP in and immediately starting playing around and learning how things worked and what worked for me.  Soon, I found myself taking full advantage of the features I didn’t think I’d ever use (like the outline piece and notes).  In the middle of a scene and need to remember something you’ve written ten chapters ago?  No problem – it’s all right there in the doc and there’s a couple ways to find it.

I think I’m in love…

/end random thoughts

~P

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The balance between work and not work is always a tricky one. You have to work in order to succeed (sorry if I just burst a bubble there for you – it really is true. Promise). You have to enjoy your work or you won’t do it well and, therefore, won’t [...]]]> /begin random thoughts

The balance between work and not work is always a tricky one. You have to work in order to succeed (sorry if I just burst a bubble there for you – it really is true. Promise). You have to enjoy your work or you won’t do it well and, therefore, won’t succeed.

If you want to be a published author, which I do, you have to work at it and you have to enjoy it. When your day job brings you down, it can be hard to get yourself into the right frame of mind to work on the writing – but you HAVE to.

There are so many things in the world to distract us each and every day, we can’t let the day job become one of them. It is easily the most time consuming part of your day and, therefore, it has the most potential to overwhelm. It’s also what pays the bills so you can pursue the dream.

Balance. I can’t explain how to do it because everyone is unique, but it’s something we all have to think about.

* * *

We become conditioned to certain things, we fall into routines. Routines aren’t necessarily bad things, but I like to shake them up whenever I can. Keeps things fresh and interesting.

I don’t have the ‘home office / writing space’ I’ve always wanted – not yet. (I’m working on that) So I tend to change up where I write. My bedroom is on the 2nd floor, poorly insulated (I am assuming this, I don’t know for sure) and, therefore, cold in the winter, hot in the summer. Constantly being aware of the temperature of the room can be a whole new and different kind of distracting. So can climbing the stairs back and forth to futz with the thermostat.

So I’ve been writing on the couch, in the comfy chair, at the kitchen table, on the back porch – anywhere, really, where I can stop being distracted and focus on the task at hand. Writing.

* * *

It never ceases to amaze me when someone is resistant to new(ish) technologies or when I am confronted with someone who has their feet firmly planted in the past (and by ‘past’, I could mean fifty years or just ten).

I recently encountered someone who, though they use computers, they do not go too far in embracing them. Nor do they necessarily embrace all the smart phones, cell phones, etc and so on. I can live with some of that, but the rest blows me away.

I haven’t had a land line in a long time. By ‘land line’ I mean, of course, a phone plugged into the wall of your home or office. I was trying to think back to when I last had such a line (never an easy feat for me, my memory for certain things can be horrid) and I came up with a 2000 / 2001 sort of time frame. I remember having a phone at home primarily for work, even had an answering machine and a fax on it, but mostly I was on the road at the time and using a cell phone heavily (Nokia, black, AT&T service – see, I remember that no problem! Sigh.).

I later switched to Sprint for their Palm phone and dropped the land line soon after because I had an ephinany wherein I thought to myself, “Why am I paying for two phones when I really only need the one I carry with me all the time?” Plus, I’d switched to eFax by then.

Haven’t had a land line since.

So when confronted with someone who is sort of the opposite of that, I have to pause and take a breath.

To throw you a curve ball on this thought – I miss having a typewriter.

* * *

I really wanted a second cat in the house because I wanted to provide a distraction for Shadow, my beloved cat who drives me up a wall on a nightly basis. I cleverly decided to hit two birds with one stone (I am suddenly realizing how violent a phrase that is) and have the second cat be a companion / gift for my mother who, as any regular reader to the blog or the twitter feed is aware, had to move in with me a few years ago.

Not a bad plan, if I do say so myself.

What I didn’t plan on, was Dakota. Dakota is 11 years old, he’s overweight and a complete and total attention grabbing hog.

Everywhere you sit, he sits. Example:

*sit down on the couch. Dakota looks up from wherever he’s been sleeping. Stands. Waddle-waddle-waddle* Merr? *jump in lap* Merr? *nudge hand with nose* Merrrr?

Sigh.

This has made writing on the couch or the comfy chair, of late, difficult (hence the kitchen table move).

Also, he doesn’t want to play with Shadow the way I’d hoped he would. It’s more of a ‘get away from me you heathen child I want no part in your tomfoolery!’ sort of relationship that almost always, and quite quickly, devolves into a fight for supremacy.

I pray for a mellowing or, at the least, some sort of armistice soon.

/end random thoughts

~P

Make me famous:

I don’t know a thing about carpentry, but I’d really like to learn.  The problem with going so digital all the time is that the analog can absolutely baffle us.  I don’t know a thing about cutting and sanding and all the stuff that goes along with building something with your own hands.

I’m [...]]]> /begin random thoughts

I don’t know a thing about carpentry, but I’d really like to learn.  The problem with going so digital all the time is that the analog can absolutely baffle us.  I don’t know a thing about cutting and sanding and all the stuff that goes along with building something with your own hands.

I’m going to learn though.  My cousin and I are going to put bookshelves into my basement office area to be.  I told him I really wanted it to be a learning experience and he agreed to teach me.  I’m very psyched about the whole thing.  Hopefully, this will be just the beginning.  Also very hopeful I don’t come out of it with the new nickname ‘3-fingered Patrick’ cuz that would make typing suck.

# # #

It’s easier than ever to let yourself ignore your writing.  Myself, I am always balancing too many things and stuff falls out of my hands and lays on the carpet, forgotten and unloved for far too long before I pick it up again, dust it off and see where I was when I dropped it.

…did that metaphor even make sense? *shakes brain*

I’ve been burning the midnight oil a lot lately, pushing hard on writing projects and letting other things go.  This makes for a grumpy ATFMB in other aspects of life.

What I hate more than anything else is truly being on a roll, everything flowing, but knowing that you need to stop now and get some sleep because there is work tomorrow and you really do need to go.  The next day, all you can think about is where you stopped, where you still need to go, and how long before the day is over so you can pick it up again?  But then dinner needs to be cooked and oh, look at that, the sink is full of dishes that need a washin and don’t forget about that pile of laundry that needs some attention.  And why are the cats howling?  Oh yeah – litterbox needs cleaning and OH MY GOD HOW CAN SOMETHING SO FREAKING NASTY COME OUT A BUTT AS TINY AS YOURS?!

Before you know it, the night has passed you by and it’s time to go to bed again so you can start the day over tomorrow fresh and well rested.

…or stay up another hour and a half and be slightly stale and bleary eyed.

# # #

I finally hooked up my surround sound system.  It’s not new or anything, it’s just that I didn’t hook it up when I moved into the new house.  I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, how the room would be arranged – that sort of thing.

Really, there’s only one way for the room to be arranged that makes any sense given the space available and the furniture, so I went ahead and hooked everything up.  Sounds great.

I still haven’t hooked up the ol’ X-Box though.  I can’t afford the distraction that it offers, not right now when I’m pushing so hard to complete writing projects.  So, alas, it sits in its little green and white box collecting dust until such time as I feel it’s safe to let it see the light of day again.

# # #

On a slightly related note to the above random thought, speaker wire irks me.  My surround sound system came with wire colored red and black for the ‘front’ speakers, and white and black for the ‘back’ speakers.  The red and black wires aren’t very long whereas the white and black are very long, but not long enough for my new house.  Also, all the wires no matter the color, stood out against the walls like a sore thumb.

SO, I went where all new home owners spend their weekends – Home Depot.

The first thing I learned about speaker wire was that there were at least 3 (all that Home Depot carried, anyway) different sizes/gauges.

Joy.

The second thing?  It’s all in gold casings.  So instead of white and black, or red and black, it’s all goldish brown.  I wanted plain white.  Plain white would’ve been easy to work with.  Plain white would’ve BLENDED a little bit.  I could hide it against the baseboard or something.  But, NOOOOOO – they have to have only goldish brown stinkey poo crapface color.

Sigh.

I read or saw once that they were making crown molding now that actually had slits to hide wires.  Excited by this, I decided to look around Home Depot and see what options they might have to hide wires.

Home Depot sales /customer service person guy: Um.  What?

Bleh.

/end random thoughts

~P

Make me famous:

The first person to take me up on this was Brian over at The New [...]]]> A little while ago, I put up a post titled ‘I’d like to blog for you’.  The concept was simple – I’d write a blog post for your blog, based on a subject or topic of your choosing, and vice versa.

The first person to take me up on this was Brian over at The New Author.  I suggested that he write up a little something about the Author Platform, a new concept running around these days.  Here’s his guest post.

The Author Platform
By Brian Knight

Congratulations; your book is done. As you sit back and enjoy the euphoria of finishing your very first novel a cruel specter creeps into your mind. How are you going to get noticed?

Wait a minute; I need to get an agent or a publisher first. They will take care of all that business. My work is done; all I need to do is sit back and wait for the royalty checks to come in.

Hang on partner. You’re not even close to done. The easy part is writing the story. Yep, I said it, writing the story is the easy part. Part of the puzzle when looking for an agent or publisher is your ability to identify an audience or platform for your book. They want to know that people are eager and ready to purchase your book right now; as soon as it rolls off the press.

Well, that sounds great, how do I develop an audience or platform? I’m glad you asked. First you need to understand that there are no magical bullets when it comes to getting readers to buy your book. What you can do is target the audience who will enjoy your book the most and focus on them. For example, if you are writing a mystery/thriller novel then you don’t want to introduce yourself or your book to a book group discussing romance novels. You can but it will not produce much in the way of results. If you wrote a Science Fiction novel then look for groups, functions, networks and individuals who enjoy and discuss Science Fiction novels.

Okay, we’ve identified our audience but that is a little different from an author’s platform. Building a platform is the method in which we gain name recognition. How do we do that? In the age of blogging and social networking, building a platform has gained a global reach. We need to remember though that a platform can start right in our own neighborhood. What I’m getting at is this – start a blog, get on Twitter and other social networks but also get involved in book clubs, libraries and functions in your neighborhood. This grass roots effort will pay off in the end.

This begs the question when do I start developing my platform? Unlike targeting your audience, which you do while you are writing or shortly after completion, we should begin building our platform as soon as we decide we want to be an author. It is never too early to start networking and making connections. The bigger your platform is the better.

You now have your book ready but you’ve also started a blog and jumped on Twitter. Hang on for a second here, you don’t have to start a blog or get on Twitter; look around and find networks you are comfortable with and start there. Alright, back to our regularly scheduled post; once you’re on these sites and you’re making the rounds in your neighborhood there are a few important things to remember.

• We are making connections not selling a soon to be published book or a newly published book. If people feel as if all you are doing is pushing your book on them then they will turn away and reject you. I know, you’ve seen/heard it before and I’m sure it got on your nerves but it’s amazing how easy it is to fall into this practice.

• Be honest. Honesty and sincerity go a long way. Don’t be anything you’re not; just be yourself and everything will work out for the better.

• Get to know those you are connecting with. You never know what you’ll learn from these connections.

• This is the most important one; have fun. Connecting with people and meeting new people is an enjoyable experience. Have fun; let your personality show through in your blog, tweets and social events.

So what we are looking at when building an author platform is making connections in our neighborhood and on the Internet. Reach out to everyone but as soon as you identify your audience make a focused effort to reach out to them too. Don’t sell your book to them; get to know them and allow them to get to know you as an author and regular person. Be honest at all times. Finally, make sure you have fun. If you’re having fun you’ll want to continue building your platform long after your first book is published.

Promoting your name and book(s) starts with the author’s platform. Building this platform is not a sprint; it’s a marathon that will last as long as your passion for writing does. So what are you waiting for? Get out there and build that platform.

About Brian Knight:

Brian Knight is the creator of ‘The New Author;’ a blog for new writers trying to understand the world of publishing. He is also co-owner of Premium Promotional Services which is geared to provide massive exposure for authors and their books.

Brian has dreams of becoming a published author. His first novel is currently being reviewed by a publisher while his second is in the works. Aside from fiction, Brian is a published poet; having poems in both books and magazine.

You can find him on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/thenewauthor

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/sb.knight1

Make me famous:

See, I have All Things From My Brain here so that, when the urge takes me, I can write about whatever happens to come to mind. Which is convenient. [...]]]> You know, I got to thinking the other day about blogging and I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be neat to write something for somebody else?

See, I have All Things From My Brain here so that, when the urge takes me, I can write about whatever happens to come to mind. Which is convenient. And enough of you come check it out that really, it’s worthwhile.

But this is the house that I built and sometimes, sometimes it’s just fun to go hang out at someone else’s house for a while; eat their snacks, drink their beverages, see what they’ve got on the ol’ tele… You get the drift.

So I propose an exchange – I’ll write something for your blog and you can write something for mine. You can either name the topic or let me find something that flows with your normal everyday stuff – I’m quite good at that. I’ll submit it to you on your deadline and you can post it on your blog. Then, you do the same for me here.

Sound like a plan?

Oh, I see. I’m getting some ‘What’s in it for me?’ looks from some of you. Let me see if I can tackle that.

First up, if there are folks who come here or follow me on Twitter who might not visit your site or follow you on Twitter, my writing a piece for you (and vice versa) might bring them over to your site to check out what I did there or what you do there on a regular basis. Heck, I’ll even do a piece here linking to the piece there to help that traffic spike.

Second, it’ll be fun. Shake off the shackles of what you normally do and try something different. Who knows? You might enjoy it…

If you’re interested – you can leave a comment here or shoot me an email. It’s an easy one to remember but I don’t like robots finding it so I usually break it out when telling people about it like so: my first name is patrick, so that’s a good place to start – type that out – then hold down shift and press the ‘2′ key to get the old at symbol, then finish it off with thenewuniverse.com.

Put that together, shoot me an email and let’s do a little exchange.

What’dya say?

~P

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