Almost There

I just finished this last edit of The Flower of Knighthood, and am going to do one more starting tomorrow to look for any lingering typos and to make sure of the changes I made. My web design friend is still working on building the page to put the book up online, so I still have a little bit of time to look over the manuscript again before he is ready to plug it into the site. I made a few additions to the notes section in the back, not on this pass-through but on the previous one, and I think they really helped get my point across on a few concepts. Amazing that this late in the game that is still happening, which is the reason I have not called this done yet but instead keep working on it. I designed some business cards today exclusively for the book which direct the recipient to the website page. They look sharp. I am going to have them printed this weekend and take them with me to France to pass out along with the ten-page samples I also intend to print shortly. Everything is coming together.

Progress On All Fronts

I made another sale on Etsy yesterday, to someone in Central Texas near where I grew up. I also am two-thirds through this edit draft of my book, and I got my materials to my web designer friend for the books page on my website. I designed the layout and wrote the text and he's going to format the text stuff and link the page to my PayPal account so I can take orders online by the end of this week. I packed most of my things for France, too. I spent some time streamlining exactly which clothes are the best to take with me, the ones that pack well and are versatile enough to mix together so I look good and don't get bored but also don't have to take too much. I have lots of clothes at home but I prefer to travel light. I may be running around Paris some with a wheelie suitcase, so it has to be manageable.

And Yet Another Edit Readthrough Finished

In my endless round of edit drafts on The Flower of Knighthood, I just finished another one on the train this morning. I am going to print out the book for one more onceover to proofread the changes I just made, and then that is it, it goes online next week. I'm taking about fifty samples with me to the conference to hand out to anyone who is interested, and I'm printing business cards, too, to direct people to the "Books" page on my main website so they can download a free sample or the paid complete text.

My Etsy shipment to the Land Down Under arrived, and the purchaser loved the item, so I've now got 100% positive feedback from all of my customers. Sweet. No more sales yet, but I'll work on the shop this weekend. I have an idea how to improve the presentation of some of my arts and crafts items and I'll see if I think it works. I plan to start packing for my trip this weekend, too, and I'm going to the Los Angeles downtown library this Friday or Saturday afternoon to do some travel magazine research. The pitch template I wrote sounds good, and I just need to configure it to some particular publications. I wish I'd been able to send it out sooner, but with the book editing, setting up the online shop and planning the trip itself, I just haven't had the time until now.

Yet Another Progress Report

I'm two thirds done with this edit round on The Flower of Knighthood, and in the last fifty pages I've only made three changes - adding one comma, changing "over" to "above" because it made the line flow a little better and changing "that" to "his" where either would do. So I'd say it's going quite well, if it's down to such trivial changes, and so few of them.

I got my train tickets in the mail yesterday for the round-trip from Paris to Rennes and back, and that made the trip more real to me. I also wrote a really good pitch letter for travel magazines to try to wring some paid work out of this journey, as well. I've had a mental block on that, and yesterday it suddenly just poured out in about an hour. I think I needed to finalize a little bit more of my exact itinerary in Paris and in the area around Rennes and Mont St. Michel in order to be able to write it. I did that this week, narrowing down the sites in Paris that I really want to see (St. Denis, Montmartre, Montparnasse, the Ile de la Cite, the Champs-Elysees, the Louvre, and the Latin Quarter) and the small side trips I am going to try to complete in Brittany and Normandy (Avranches, Saint-Malo and the Forest of Broceliande). I only have three days in Paris and six in Rennes, and a conference to go to, so I have to cram in a lot in limited time, and until I sat down and got online and figured it all out, I was a bit befuddled. I looked at the Metro website and got a sense of the subway system and how to use it, and I looked up the things I want to see and how to get to them and also how close they are to each other so I could come up with a realistic timetable. I want to use every second in Paris to see stuff because I don't know when I will be back, and I definitely feel the same way about northern France, because I may never go there again, if I have no compelling reason. I am going to try to hit the things that interest me the most. Avranches has a museum that houses the manuscripts from Mont St. Michel cathedral and that would truly complement my confirmed visit to the Mont. The forest is in a lot of the Arthurian stories, and I really want to see it. It's also very ancient and beautiful, a true Old World oak forest with Druidic history. Saint-Malo is negotiable for me, I'd rather see the other two, but if I have time, it looks cool. It's a walled medieval city that was a center of coastal pirate activity.

I fulfilled my first two Etsy sales, and got positive feedback, very nice feedback, actually, so I'm golden with that. I was a little worried because each package took longer to arrive than I expected, but they got there. I'm just waiting for the Australia mailing at this point. I have fifty-four items posted and more to list this weekend. I bought a pretty necklace on Etsy, too, a vintage 1970's mother of pearl dove that looks like the Holy Spirit. The Holy Ghost plays a huge role in my Parsifal book, because it's associated with the Grail, and I really wanted the necklace. It was $12.99, who could argue? I love '70's stuff, too, the really elegant things like pretty disco dresses and little suede shoulder bags and some of the boho stuff that's very feminine. The necklace falls into that category. The bird is about three inches long and hangs on a necklace of beads. It's so pretty I can't believe it did not cost more.

Weekend Update

I posted more stuff in my Etsy shop over the weekend, and noticed I now have eleven fans. Yaay, it's gone viral! I don't know how people are finding me because I've done no promotion yet within the Etsy site community, but they are indeed finding me. Once I get everything posted that I have to sell, I will look into promoting the store. I've found Etsy shops in searches I did for one particular kind of item so maybe the same thing is happening with mine. I may just start conversations with all of them and ask. Nothing wrong with doing a little market research.

I'm almost one quarter through another edit of The Flower of Knighthood, too, and aiming for June 30 to go live online with the book. I was telling more people (also writers) last night about my books and they got really interested, which is a good sign.

I also watched four movies this weekend, numbers two, three and four in the Harry Potter series, and The Illusionist, which is one of the best movies I have ever seen. My brain is so fried from reading and from writing shop listings that I am craving visual stimulation and relaxation. I've watched more movies in the last month than I have in the past year and a half, maybe longer, and I feel better for it. I've worked so hard for so long on my books that I severely needed to blow off steam. I'm noticing that I am going back fresher to this latest (last? hopefully) book edit because of the diversion and input of images. The well is collecting rainwater again. It was running a little dry from me pulling up bucket after bucket of creative wellspring. I am refilling it now so I will have inner resources to go back and get to work again on editing Parsifal and on writing the next book, The Engagement of Sir Gawain. I've also got to focus on my music again at some point. I was leafing through my lyric book the other night and flipping out on how many songs I have and how long it has been since I worked on them. That's another part of my life well-deserving of some real attention.

Status Update

I finished another edit readthrough of The Flower of Knighthood this morning. I'm also moving forward with getting it online, and when I ran out of manuscript on the train this morning, finishing it before I reached my destination, I started in again on Parsifal, which I also carry around with me for just such occasions. I don't know how good an idea it is to try to go back and forth on two separate book edits, but I've been wanting badly to get back to Parsifal and it felt good to do so even for just a few minutes. I'm very proud of it, too, and writing it was intensely personal.

I am getting very excited about going to France. It's only three weeks away as of today. I've been planning my two and a half days in Paris to maximize my time, and also the excursions I will be taking in Brittany and, hopefully, Normandy as well. I am staying in Rennes, and I hope to go to Avranches, Saint Malo and the Forest of Broceliande as well as the day trip I have already booked to Mont St. Michel. I have the conference for five days and several events in Rennes, so I have plenty to do. In Paris, it's all about Notre Dame and Saint Chapelles on the Ile de la Cite, the Champs Elysees, Saint Denis and the royal chapel, the Louvre and the Latin Quarter. I am staying three nights near Pere Lachaise so I plan a brief trip there, too. I am pitching the trip to travel magazines, hope someone takes me up on it.

I've now got ten fans on Etsy, though I have not made any further sales. I took some great pictures of new items a few days ago and I will list more this weekend.

Intellectual Property

Here is a really good interlinking chain of intellectual property articles:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tim-berry/ebooks-copyright-piracy_b_108319.html

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/the-e-book-test-do-electronic-versions-deter-piracy/

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/22/can-e-publishing-overcome-copyright-concerns/

http://stevenpoole.net/blog/free-your-mind

I am all for the internet and the free dissemination of ideas, but there is the reality that people who spend the bulk of their work time generating content need at some point to get paid if they are to continue to do so. I've spent years of my life working on my books and I hope people find enough of value in them to want to pay to read them. It's not vanity or ego, it's simple reality. I have earned absolutely nothing so far on my books, and I sacrificed the pursuit of moneymaking activities while I wrote them because I felt they had greater value than anything else I could generate. I'd like to earn something material from them to put towards my retirement. Making art is something of a luxury but so is consuming it, and if a content consumer benefits from what he reads, he should be willing to pay for the value. Making art is also not entirely a luxury, it's a driving need for some of us that is as important as air or food or water, and I feel that what it contributes to human culture and development is important enough to pay for.