I moved, we maintained.
Summers here and there,
Hanging out,
Books, short stories,
Musical remixes,
Endless talk about girls.
The typical teenage stuff.

I thought
We'd share our stories
Forever.

A sudden silence.
A sudden distance.
No explanation.
Decades of mystery,
A sense that I betrayed...
Something.

Still rejected, even today.
Attempts to reconnect
Rebuffed.

I'll never know
(unless I ask)
I'll never ask.

Literally anything can distract me from sitting down and getting some much-overdue writing done. My various projects, including The Nearside Project RPG, are way way behind. Sure, I've published TNP before (a couple of times) but this is a rewrite, expansion and improvement. Or it's intended to be.

Instead, I'm writing a blog entry about not being able to write. 

It's more than just being easily distracted. It's a kind of super-procrastination. I could be writing about paleovirology, something I'm using as a "world killer" for The Nearside Project (one of the various parallel Earth's is going to suffer this tasty consequence). Instead I'm writing here, in a blog. 

It's clearly nothing to do with not being able to write. These words are flowing like water. Water with bad grammar, maybe. Water, nonetheless.

I even find myself making excuses. "I need a Macbook," I think to myself, "in order to really get comfortable with writing." It's clearly a self-delusion. I have my Hackintosh, which is really a tiny Macbook that is completely as good as a Macbook, with the additional benefit of being tiny and portable, allowing me to avoid writing almost anywhere.

There are clearly many subconscious reasons for all of this. Perhaps I'll spend an hour or some contemplating what those reasons may be.

Then I'll be able to write. About things I need to write about. 

You can see my problem.

I would like to hear from anyone reading this blog. I would like to know what you do to get past this kind of thing. I'll be very happy to spend several hours reading responses. 

A childhood less ordinary,
But better than most.
They kept me safe,
Kept the distant thunder
Distant.

I'm quite interested in email marketing. I've been involved in such things for a number of years now, from designing them (and providing copy) to developing email strategy for entire brands.

Recently, the term "cadence" came up in a discussion, and I was both amused and impressed. Initially, it sounds like just another marketing buzzword, but upon deeper consideration, it's actually a fairly descriptive term for some aspects of email marketing. It makes you think of rythmn and tone again, something that's very important when using email to communicate with customers.

In my opinion, cadence in this context can be broken down into the following considerations: what you say, when you say it, how you say it and who you say it to.

Depending upon who you're talking to, pulling out the most important part of (my definition of) cadence is either simple or hard. For those of us concerned with CAN SPAM, "when you say it" and "how you say it" are equally critical. "When" is also "How often" as well as trying to find the most effective timing to send the right message to the right person. Also important, from a technical point of view, is "how you say it" as this can make the difference between an email that's blocked by the email service provider and one that actually gets opened by a real person. That's where good copywriting comes into play, along with good coding. Ineffective writing and code can make an email score poorly in SPAM rating systems.

Almost equally important to "When" is "When not." With a complicated array of triggered and scheduled emails, a consumer could behave in such a way as to activate a number of automatic emails, possibly resulting in several arriving over a few hours. In the case of transactional emails, this is to be expected, but in the case of marketing pieces, it's important to set limits around the maximum number of emails a consumer can receive in the space of a day... or week.

The great thing about email strategy is that you can constantly test all of these things. No two emails ever need to be the same, and if you're clever (and have the right technology platform) you can test multiple emails across your customer base simultaneously. Even something as simple as changing a subject line can make a difference, the results of which can almost be viewed in real time.

I've had the good fortune to work with real geniuses in the email field, and don't claim to be in their league at all. But I'm learning.

The Kindle (actually, the International Kindle 2, technically) is nice to use, easy on the eyes and I've not found the experience of reading a book on it to be particularly alien. As a number of blogs and comics have already said, it's as if "The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" has finally (almost) come to life. The damn thing can even read the entries to you, though we're a year or two away from full color and a refresh rate that would support even simple video.

Still, it's pretty amazing. I bought an encyclopedia for the Kindle and that feels particularly Guide-ish. Likewise, the limited ability to surf the internet using the Kindle is impressive, if only for what hints for the future.

Battery life is amazing (I think I've charged it twice since Christmas) and I enjoy having an electronic copy of the New York Times delivered wireless to my device every morning. Sometimes I even have time to read it...

Since then, of course, the iPad was announced, and many are describing it as a Kindle-killer. Me, I'm not too sure. The iPad was personally a disappointment, given the potential of such a device. The tech blogs had some great ideas about what it might do, but the reality of the device fell short. At least, this time. Obviously, in a couple of years, the iPad 3.0 will be fantastic, and I suspect many will wait until that time. My own personal tech lust has not really registered the iPad (obsessed as I still am with getting a Macbook - even a second hand one). 

Will the iPad kill the Kindle? I don't know. It will, at the very least, force the Kindle 3 to get even better, with more robust features and capabilities. But the Kindle is really just for reading, and it does it better than the iPad will. 

It's really too soon to say. I realized when I asked for a Kindle that it would probably be replaceable in a year or two by an even better e-reader. The iPad isn't that replacement, to be honest.

And as for Steve Jobs' comment regarding netbooks, that they don't do anything better than a laptop, I would say that my Dell Mini 10 that runs OS X 10.6.2 does that pretty well - and miles cheaper - than anything Apple puts out.

Yet when the snowflakes fall
I still feel a surge of wonder
A quickening, in awe
That's when I realize
No heart stays broken forever. 

This might actually be the most important new device since the iPhone, but until this afternoon, when it finally gets revealed, the speculation is all we have.

I've been pretty sure that I'd not need or want one of these. I don't really know if my feelings enter into it. It might just have to be obtained, regardless...

Here's the things I'd like to do. Or love to do. Or simply hope to do. I'll keep it clean. I'm also trying to keep things realistic, which is why it's a short list.

1) Publish a book of poetry.

I've always wanted to do this. I don't know if I'm a poet, really - I think that's a title that gets given to you by someone else, though I'm not entirely sure who that might be. I've sold fiction and non-fiction, but I've never sold a poem. I have nearly fifty poems written and ready to go, and I hope that Greymalkin Designs can publish the collection as an experiment in more traditional publishing. Also, I dearly want to get this out as a Kindle book. E-publishing, for the win.

2) Finish the first draft of my second novel.

I've mentioned this before, but many years ago I wrote a couple of short stories. They're pretty good, and the second one has a Colin Bateman feel that was entirely intentional. They involved the same characters (mostly) and always felt like a novel with bits missing. So now I've been filling in those missing bits. I got a lot written when I was home, but some of it felt too close to reality. It's not really a story about me, but I am tapping into a lot of my own experiences. I've not touched it in a few weeks, to let things settle and I'll get back into it next month, for another twenty thousand word burst of writing.

I need to think about how to shop it around. I've not done that since I moved to the US, and I'm hoping it'll be easier here.

3) Get The Nearside Project written and ready for art and layout.

God bless Scrivener. It's really helping me get my thoughts down and organized. I've started meeting with the Greymalkin Crew to get things moving along, and that feels good. It feels good to have forward momentum. We left Desolation (and survivors) too late each time and rushed the finish, so I want to get TNP ready for a 2011 release in good time and to let us get the art sorted out when the book is mostly finished. A modern/horror/conspiracy game is going to need a whole different style and type of artwork.

4) Get back to the gym and go regularly.

This is self-explanatory. I am creaking and spherical and need to fix both of those things. My brief stint with WeightWatchers set me up with some better eating habits than I've had before, but that alone won't do it.

5) Get a Macbook.

I love my Hackintosh. Really love it. But I do want a real Macbook to work on. Scrivener has basically converted me to the Mac for writing projects, and I want some extra screen space to work on with a portable Mac. I have 23" and 21" monitors connected to the Mac Mini, and that's just wonderful.

I am currently considering how to get one. Remember, I will work for tech, and I am not proud!

1) I turn 40 in August.

Yeah, the big Four Oh. Fortunately, somewhere along the way, fifty turned into the new forty, so I guess I'm in the new thirties, which is handy. That really means that my twenties were my teens, which explains so much. I am marginally freaked out by the idea of turning forty, because I still feel thirty six years old. Mind you, I felt thirty six when I was in my twenties. Hmm.

Turning thirty was exceptionally weird, but I had just moved to a new country and got married. I spent that birthday in Marietta, Ohio, on a paddle boat. One of the big ones. It was quite nice.

2) 10th Wedding Anniversary in May.

All my previous relationships add up to about eight or nine years, total. I still find it a bit odd that, between the ages of seventeen and twenty five (eight years) I spent six of those in two relationships.

Being married has been everything I thought it would be, good and bad. But ultimately, it probably saved me from myself.

3) 10 years of living in Ohio.

Ten continuous years, that is. I spent three months here in 1999, leaving early in 2000. But this April, I'll have been here for a full ten. The US has been very good to me. She let me in, asked me what I could do, and then told me to prove it. And I think I have. Maybe hard work is rewarded elsewhere, but I'd not know. Maybe I changed, and it wasn't just down to the United States being what it is. It's corny to talk about the American Dream, but I think I get it.

4) Gen Con 2010

This will be Greymalkin's third year selling product at Gen Con 2010, but we may or may not attend in the capacity of booth-owners. Still figuring it out. I like the idea of a "fallow year" where we can relax, play and run games, and start the hype for The Nearside Project re-release next year. We shall see. I have yet to play in a game at Gen Con, but I'm pretty idle, and the idea of booking into a game session eight months in advance really annoys me.

Oh, and my fortieth birthday will be while I'm at Gen Con. Woo!

5) Some kind of return visit home.

It's become a yearly thing, but I think I'm done with winter visits. It's too damn dark, too damn cold and too damn risky. September/October is lovely there, and it's been a very long time since I've experienced that.