Look over here! Look over here!

That’s  it! I am done waiting. It’s time to…Sell Some Fiction!

My first book is up for sale now, in both digital and physical form. It’s a young adult book with modern-day magic and daring high school adventures. Daring! And what is this book like, a prospective reader may ask. Well, There’s some Hardy Boys in its DNA (though there are no pirates, smugglers or chubby kids named ‘Chet’), and a bit of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, but without vampires. And if, in the process of reading the book it reminds you of any other works of fiction, please let me know. Without further ado, here are the links:

For the eBook:

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/54859

For the physical book:

http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/witchkids/15841059

(If you’re in my local area and you want to buy a physical copy, let me know. I’m ordering a bunch, and I can save you the shipping costs)

So, dear minions (if I may call you minions) please dig into your change pocket and buy a copy. If you like the book, and I think you will, please recommend it to your friends. My marketing budget is zero dollars, so I’m hoping that you wonderful people will be the wind beneath my commercial wings. And, if you have a moment, please leave a review or give the book a rating on the site. Higher rankings mean more visibility. I read that on a billboard or something. Oh, and if your kids are old enough to handle YA fiction, please let them read your copy (I should have said ‘buy them a copy too’. Dang it!) I would really like to know what they think of it.

If you’re on the fence about buying a copy, consider it an investment in my potential. This book is good, but it isn’t the best thing that I will ever do. My writing is going to keep improving as I grind away at it, and your financial support gives me the time to practice. In the fall, the little dude will be attending pre-school for 3 full days a week if we can afford it, and I can hardly imagine how much I will be able to get done with that much time. Also, I love each and every one of you, and I’d buy a book from you if you had one 🙂

I’d like to thank all of you once again, my strangely faithful readers. Knowing that there is an audience out there watching me and following my antics has kept me motivated, and helped give this whole process meaning. Good work, internet friends!

Shoot the Moon!

Whew, that was a heck of a week. Busy, busy busy. But now we are here with some time on our hands. Fantastic!
I had a friend lament to me in an email this week that his life was boring, full of work he didn’t really enjoy and leisure pursuits that didn’t actually entertain him. In the olden days before our modern age of convenience, this kind of boredom was kept at bay by the vicious struggle to simply survive from day-to-day. Working a back-breaking 12 hour day doesn’t leave you with very much energy to fret about anything other than tomorrow. You don’t really have any spare time to waste. As a side-effect to our comfort and light work load here in the first-world, we have a lot of time to fill.
But, even during my sensationalized version of  the past, there were people who had excess capacity, people who could manage to survive and thrive and still have the mental and emotional energy left over to look for something more. And I’m sure many of them had ye olde same problem of being bored: it would explain the bewildering aspects of popular fashion and culture, like giant powdered wigs or white face makeup full of lead. A lot of a civilization’s spare time is used up by disposable and empty fun, but some people are lucky enough to find something more fulfilling to occupy that time. They decide upon a bigger purpose, an overall theme to their life narrative. Very simply, they have a big, long-term goal.There are a few pitfalls to avoid when you look for your Big Goal.
Don’t set your sights too low, for a start. Achieving your Big Goal will throw you for a loop, and put you back in the position of searching for a new direction, so aim a little higher than “my big goal is to re-carpet the living room”.
Have some kind of timeline in mind. If there’s no structure at all to your Big Goal plan, then it’s really just a meandering daydream.
Pick something that you’ll have to do a significant amount of work in several different areas to achieve. If it only requires the skills you already possess, it won’t work.
Pick something that seems almost impossible, based on your current abilities. You’re going to grow into it, trust me.
Learn to accept the wisdom in the saying “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey” even if it sounds trite.

You may never achieve your Big Goal, but that is beside the point. You are aiming to accumulate the skills and experience that you would need to reach your Big Goal, skills and experiences that are rewarding and useful on their own. I will give you my crazy Big Goal: are you prepared? It;s pretty out there. Ready?

I want to be Prime Minister.
Whoa. That is one giant goal. Pretty unlikely too. But, let’s look at the composite elements before we throw the whole idea away.
Most Prime Ministers assumed office in their early 50s. I am 36 now, so I have 16 years. That’sa lotta time.
You need to  be an active part of your community to be suitable for public office. I want to increase my volunteer and charity efforts anyway.
You need to be comfortable talking with strangers in person and on the phone. I need and want to beat my telephone/ stranger fear, and you only overcome anxiety like that by practicing.
You need to be active within your political party of choice. I love the idea of rebuilding the Liberal party from the ass-whuppin’ it took in the election. Plus, I could do charity work in my LIberal shirt and kill 2 birds with 1 stone.
You need to be bilingual to run the whole country. I’ve thought about improving my high school-level Francais before, and now I have a reason to etudie le belle langue. I know, I have a lot of work to do.
You need an understanding of how government and Canadian law work. I did a practice Law School Admissions Test out of curiosity the other day, and I liked it. I did pretty well too.
To go to law school, you need good marks in your completed undergraduate degree. I have thought about finishing my degree, but I never really had a compelling reason to do so. I have that reason now.
To pay for all of this schooling, I need to earn money. My first book is going up for sale shortly, and I’ll see how much of an audience I can count on for future books.
To sell future books, I need to keep writing. Luckily, I like writing and I’m thrilled with my continuing improvement.
To accomplish any of this, I need to have a loving family, and I need to be a good dad. Check and check.

It’s funny that I imagine a chorus of disapproving and shocked naysayers, all shouting at the ridiculousness and audacity of my Big Goal, when everyone around me has actually been pretty supportive. There’s that pesky internal criticism and lack of self-esteem. Self-esteem is on the list of things I need to  improve. Will I ever actually become the Prime Minister of Canada? Who knows, and more importantly, who cares? I have a lot of cool things to do.

Sweet Victory!

I think that I will never seem something so delightful and just than a young fellow caught in his own logic trap. You’ll remember that Max has placed a complete singing ban on both the wife and myself, citing ‘too noisy’ as the reason. When he explains it in detail, he mentioned that our singing made it too hard to hear the things he was trying to li.
Friday night, the wife and I were trying to have a conversation after dinner while an energetic young man attempted to monopolize his mother’s attention. After a long week, he wants 100% of her attention, and I presume that I’m supposed to fade into the background with an occasional appearance as the family chef. So he was standing at the open window, hollering some sort of very loud song. I asked him to quiet down, so that we could keep talking, and he replied ‘but I like singing’. Oh really? Well, of course I had to point out that we were having a talk and he was making it too noisy to hear each other. Oh, the look on his face was worth a million bucks. I could see the idea enter his thoughts, roll around for a second, and then end up in the unpleasant conclusion that he was doing exactly the same thing that he himself complains about. To see a 3-year-old realize that he was trapped by his own rule, and that he didn’t like the taste of his own medicine, was so funny to watch that I just started laughing and laughing. He didn’t try to argue against it or create a rule modification that would work in his favour. He just backed down from the window and went over to a new activity. I swear I saw him kick the ground in a ‘dang it’ manner on his way over.