Tag Archives: the biz

Hard earned dimes

Mulling around something I came across, but first wanted to mention a couple bits of news.

First off, Wily Writers has a new story up. This week’s offering is “Valentine,” an urban fantasy tale about a woman who is trying to steal a living supernatural heart to save her mentor’s life. She discovers it’s more difficult than she expected.

Secondly, Rose Lemberg has launched the debut issue of her literary speculative poetry magazine, Stone Telling. I encourage you to check it out.

The bit that I’ve been mulling around is a slightly different model of revenue generating than I’ve usually seen. I’ve pondered it myself, but didn’t think it would work so well for me. But I’ve now seen one author pull it off with one short story, so I figured I’d mention it.

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Art vs. Business! Fight!

I’ve tried to set this blog up so that it automatically posts to Twitter. We’ll see how that goes.

Anyway, last night I went with the girlfriend to the Cyndi Lauper concert. It was one of several outdoor concerts our local zoo puts on. My girlfriend is a big fan, especially of her older stuff, and I have a few of Lauper’s songs that I like a lot. I’m not a huge music geek. I love music, but most of what I love is based more off of nostalgia than technical skill or innovation or whatever. “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” and “She Bop” take me back to the mid-80s, watching wrestling with my grandfather. “Time After Time” reminds me of high school and college when I heard the song for the first time in the soundtrack for Strictly Ballroom. (And, really, that movie is directly responsible for one of my tattoos. Just saying.)

What we didn’t realize prior to buying the tickets was that Cyndi Lauper had just released an album called Memphis Blues in which she sings blues songs. Specifically, she sings blues songs with her thick Bronx accent. It has apparently been at the top of the blues charts for a while. This concert was part of her tour to promote this blues album.

So the opening act was an old blues singer who was part of the blues band that she was touring with. And then when she came on stage she spent almost an hour and a half singing blues songs.

When she did the Obligatory Encore, she sang four or five of her older songs and ended on another blues number. Through most of the show the crowd was pretty mellow, just hanging out on the lawn and listening. A few people, who I suspect were chemically altered, were grooving around like they were at Woodstock again. Or still. But otherwise, really sedate. When Lauper busted out the old songs, everyone sprung to their feet and the entire field was filled with people dancing.

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Lines That Do Death

So, in reviewing my schedule, we determined the easiest spot for me to free up more time would be if I got up at my normal weekday time on the weekend. So I got up at, dear gods, 4:30 this morning to work on my writing. It’s been a slow morning. I’m glad I didn’t go out gaming last night.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to work on next. So this is me talking out loud as I dig through all the stuff I want to submit to and determine the deadlines I’m looking at, while sitting on the couch with a fat and sassy orange cat.

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