Plans for Like Glass

Okay, this’ll be a short one, mainly just to get it out there.  Now that Like Glass is back in my hands, I’ve been debating what – if anything – I’m going to do about getting it back on the market.  So, here’s the preliminary plan for the moment.

1. eBook release, mainly on Kindle and Nook platforms.  I might look into other distributions means; I haven’t decided yet.  Also haven’t planned a release date yet either — that’ll depend on how long it takes to edit everything, and what needs to go into converting for those platforms.  Shouldn’t be terribly long, but at the same time, I still have a full-time job, a wife, and a kid, so there’s no telling how much time I can really devote to it.

That’s it, actually.  I do have some other ideas I’m throwing around, such as:

• Release as a web serial, with chapters coming out periodically.  Haven’t decided how to handle this, especially with the eBooks.  Don’t want to give it away for free one way and charge for another. Maybe a subscription fee?  I dunno…
• Audiobook.  Not really considering this one too seriously, as it’d take a lot more time than I can really invest now, but it’s something I’ve thrown around a little.  It’d be fun, but there’s almost no chance I’d get things quiet enough around the house for any recording, even if I had all the free time in the world.
• Print, primarily self-published.  I really don’t want to futz around with another publisher that’s going to disappear on me, and I know I won’t get an agent (and probably not even a publisher) at the moment.  So it’d be self-published, and that’d take more time than the eBook would — typesetting, cover design, checking proofs and re-submitting any changes, etc.  At least it’s relatively cost-effective, since there’s a few POD publishers who only charge you for what’s ordered (namely the first proofs).

So that’s where I’m at with it.  Hopefully I’ll be able to spend a bit of time editing over the next few days, and I can come back with some more concrete details about when things might be available.

Any suggestions are most welcome, so if you have an idea, don’t be afraid to speak up.

–Matt

Like Glass Update

Okay, straight to the point:

Like Glass is no longer being published through H and E Media.  The company has been going through some changes over the past year or so, and they’re currently going through further changes that have allowed me to consider other options. 

I don’t have a plan at this point, but I’m going to look at the various possibilities over the remainder of the holidays and see where to go from there.

In all honesty, the two main ideas I’m looking at are either self-publishing again or simply doing nothing with it – at least, nothing special.  If I don’t self-publish, then I may well release it here as either an eBook download (probably just PDF; we’ll see) or as an online eBook, maybe released as a serial to give people an excuse to come back to the site more frequently.

I would like to thank the staff at H and E Media.  It’s been an interesting ride to say the least, and while it didn’t pan out like we all would’ve hoped, at least they saw enough in the novel to invest their time and money into trying to make something out of it.

Going Home

It’s true what they say: you never can go home again.  You can revisit the same location, see the same people, but home is just as much – if not more – a state of mind as it is a place.

Moving, a Different Kind of Moving, and a New Project

Okay, I’ve been out of the loop for a little while – moved across town (and thankfully into a rather pleasant house, instead of an apartment), and even though we were completely moved and had the important stuff unpacked and setup (read: computer, tv, blu-ray player, and coffee pot), we didn’t get the cable and internet installed until this past weekend.

I’ve also been trying to figure out where I want to move this blog.  WordPress.com is great unless you want to do anything other than just post stuff; then you gotta part ways with your cash.  Blogger.com – Google’s blogging platform – is pretty good, but just not quite right.  I also looked into Tumblr and Posterous, but I just can’t make sense of how to use them.  I’ve been using WordPress in some fashion or other for pretty much all of my online life, so that’s what I’m used to and everything else mostly gets a blank stare.

But, I’ve found a good (and free) host that I’m gonna try and move to over the next week, so we’ll see how that goes.  I won’t be limited to just having WordPress either – it’s an actual web host with PHP and database support, so I can play with some project ideas I’ve had in mind for a while too.

Speaking of projects, I’ve started doinking around with HTML5 for a little video game, just to get a feel for what you can do with the new toys it brings to the table.  So far it isn’t anything worth showing off, but it’s a “Flood It” style game, where you’re presented with a board of randomly colored squares and you change the colors of a group of squares each turn until the board is a single color.  If you’ve got an Android phone, you can get an example here, and I’m sure there’s plenty of others for iOS or Windows Mobile, to say nothing of online versions.  (It’s an excellent time waster – trust me.)

Like I said, it’s giving me a chance to play with HTML5’s features.  Right now I’ve got it set to draw the board and change colors, all using the new canvas element and JavaScript.  I’m looking at adding some other stuff that’ll make use of local storage – tracking how well you did in a given board, for example – and maybe other features as I think of it.  I haven’t played with any of the new CSS3 stuff yet, but that’s mainly because I’m just trying to get it running – all in due time 🙂

I’ve also taken this opportunity to explore other JavaScript libraries, and I’m using MooTools for this project.  I really wanted to use Prototype, but it hasn’t been touched in quite some time (at least by web development standards), so that was a bit of a turn off.  Dojo is an awesome library, but it’s overkill for this – I’ll probably use it for other projects I have in mind, just not this one.  And to be perfectly honest, I can’t stand jQuery – I like some of the concepts it encourages (plugins and method chaining) but the lack of built-in class declaration features and its focus on DOM manipulation just kill it for me.  (I’m definitely an OOP kinda guy, and more programmer than web designer.)

MooTools looks good so far though.  It’s got OOP features and a custom eventing mechanism (which I’m sure the other libraries provide as well), and those are worth playing with.  And it’s something new to me – I’ve used all three of those other ones in projects before.

It time to earn food for my daughter, so this little babble fest must end.  Stay tuned though – I’ll definitely put up the game when it’s ready, and when I get the blog moved over I’m gonna probably be more active (which means flooding the internet with shameless pleas for you to buy my book).

Catch you on the flip side.

–Matt

Oldies but Goodies

One thing I’m definitely thankful for about Denver is that they have a good oldies station.  Most of the time I listen to ESPN radio, with hard rock my usual backup.  Some times I’ll get tired of both of them though, and see what else I have for my pre-sets.  One of those is an oldies station.

El Paso didn’t have one – at least, not that I ever found (maybe AM, but who the hell listens to music on AM if you’re not on a roadtrip?).  And that’s a damned shame – even if you just play the big names, like the Beatles or the Beach Boys, there’s some really good music that’s getting forgotten about.  And that’s to say nothing of all the one-hit wonders or smaller time groups.

So this morning I got to rock out to “Hang On Sloopy”, and it really took me back.  Growing up, I listened to very little other than oldies whenever I was staying with my mom.  Sure, as I got older and got a CD player of my own (remember the Sony Discman?  And how if you looked at it wrong it would either skip or open?  Good times…), I started listening to my own choices – classical music, alternative rock, “regular” rock, a little of the mainstream punk in there for good measure (i.e. Blink182’s Dude Ranch and Greenday’s Dookie).  But whenever we would drive somewhere, it was almost invariably some good old surfer music, or doo wop, or motown playing on the car’s radio.

And of course we’d always sing along when we knew the words.  Neither of us could sing to save our lives – I believe my mom was the first person I heard say “I couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket” – but that wasn’t the point.  We weren’t auditioning for American Idol.  We weren’t trying to impress each other – we had no reason to – or practice for an upcoming concert.  It was just the two of us, sailing on the Sloop John B with Brian Wilson or Leaving on a Jet Plane with Peter, Paul, and Mary.  She’d “sing” in her gravelly voice, and I’d voice the melody as best as I could, skipping the words because I hadn’t really learned them most of the time (that’s a skill that served me quite well in high school choir, by the way).

So, for the moment at least, the greatest thing about living in Denver isn’t the job, or the scenery, or the people.  It’s once again turinging on the radio and hearing Three Dog Night sing about throwing away the cars, the bars, and the wars.  What else could you ask for from your radio anyways?