I need to get organised and checklisted in terms of what to do with the whole City of Complications/HIPPIEverse indie-pub thing. So much to do, and not all of it is stuff that I'm actually sure I
can do, at least not without serious help or tearing my hair out in frustration. And so, there be a checklist.
1) I need to do something about the CoC website. I am not exactly skilled in the gentle art of HTML/CSS or web design in general, and I haven't been able to make anything like Wordpress work on my site. (Of course, it doesn't help that my ISP refuses to support anything like that, though apparently that just means it's your own problem if you fuck it up. Mostly I just think I'm doing the install wrong and have no idea how to fix it.) In any case, fact remains that the site, while halfway adequate, isn't as good as I'd like it to be. At the very least, I need to get a link to
my sales page on Lulu up there, but at least that's not the work of more than a minute or two and a very basic knowledge of HTML. I'd just like the site to look more professional than it does. If I had the faintest clue of how I wanted it to look (beyond something in the vein of
Variant Frequencies or
JC Hutchins' website), I could scream for help with a little more confidence. As it is, all I can do is whimper and consider my options.
2)
Podiobooks omg. I think I have a workable Chapter One of Chaos Magic to send to Evo Terra (the poor bastard), but after the horrorshow that was trying to send him a Joint Stereo version that never actually turned out to
be a Joint Stereo version, I guess I've been reluctant. The time for reluctance is over, really. I just need to convert the other twenty or so chapters that aren't in Joint Stereo
into Joint Stereo and muck around with MP3Tag for awhile to get them all in order so that when I do finally get the thing accepted, there won't be any delays in sending further chapters while I do said mucking around. I did also want to re-record Chapter Three, but the problem with that will become a bit more apparent further down this little checklist from hell.
3) I need to pimp Chaos Magic like whoa. I have a few venues in which I can do so, but I would still encourage word of mouth - arguably the most powerful source of advertising that anyone could ask for. I'd be really grateful if those charming folks on my flist would consider a line or two in LJ, a quick tweet or whatever your preferred method is of spreading the word that there's a new urban fantasy/horror novelist in town. In aid of this, I will flag up the review that
the podcast of the novel got in
issue 91 of
Hub magazine. This review starts with the following: "It’s very easy to do modern horror or urban fantasy badly. It’s extremely difficult to do it well and it’s all but impossible to do it well and make it look easy. Janet Neilson makes it look very easy indeed with
Chaos Magic..." (of which I am almost obscenely proud) and then goes on to talk about the "gleeful, uniquely English sense of the absurd to a lot of
Chaos Magic that evokes not only the best elements of
Neverwhere and its ilk but also the sort of surrealism that lay at the heart of TV shows like
The Avengers and
The Prisoner. This is the absurd wearing a nice hat and smiling with a few too many teeth, a polite Armageddon that can only be stopped by five unique and uniquely likable people" before wrapping up with "
Chaos Magic is smart, frequently very funny and shot through with both darkness and a real sense of place. If you’re even remotely a fan of urban fantasy or horror then you need to listen to this. Just be prepared to never look at a cuddly toy the same way again..." Those are the highlights for the link-phobic, but the entire review gives me the warm fuzzies even as it flags up the reasons to actually give the podcast, or the novel, a try.
4) At some point, I need to start recording the podcast of Birth Rites. I mean, I know I need to finish the book first, but I found with Chaos Magic that having a deadline of the sort that a mostly-weekly podcast schedule imposes really helped with getting the thing written, and there is no better way to pick out the bits that desperately need editing than to read it aloud. This is a minor problem in that right this moment, I have no real way of recording a podcast, because I was fool enough to sit on my pretty Advent headphone microphone set. I have another microphone but it's a really crappy clip-on lapel mic that doesn't really sound very good. I think I can afford a reasonable desktop microphone, having looked at what Maplin has on offer, but there will be some serious comparison shopping before I actually lay out money on such things.
The microphone is the key element, really, when all is said and done. (Well, apart from the word of mouth advertising, and I don't really know if I can pay for that except by word-of-mouthing in kind.) I constantly underestimate just how much I actually
need one. It's not just the podcast, though that's certainly an issue - it's advertising blurbs as well. Recording those means that I can get them onto other podcasts, and that's some pretty awesome word of mouth advertising right there. I'd rather not record on a cheap-arse lapel mic and try to fix it all up in Audacity, but I will if I have to. I may suck balls at HTML and be unable to design a website to save my pathetic little life, but I get better at sound editing every time I sit down to work at it. Besides, it would give me time to circumvent the 'Vimes Boots theory of economics' - how a rich person can afford to pay fifty dollars for good boots that will last for years while he spent ten dollars on cheap boots that fall apart after a few months, thereby spending more than the rich person does on his boots while only having soggy feet to show for it. What I mean to say is that if I can hold off on getting a desktop microphone until I can afford a really
good one, I will not have to put up with this bullshit anymore. (At least not unless or until I manage to wreck the good one too, but that's neither here nor there just now.)
So ... that's what I need to do. It's only four little items, but they're four really important and potentially iffy little items. Of course, all of this is the serious problem with the whole indie publishing bit, but I am determined. I am FEARLESS. Or ... y'know, something to that effect.
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