“I’m not going out of my way looking for devils; but I wouldn’t step out of my path to let one go by.”
- Robert E. Howard
I’m never sure this art thing will pay off, and somedays, if not most days, I dream about giving up on it. I will, in fact, try to make myself not write for most of the day, but everything starts to feel wrong. My head starts to fill with ideas, many of them dark lies, and the only way to be free from them is to write. Before, I know, here I am writing.
I guess this whole art thing may never pay off –
In fact, I should plan on it –
But it’s not something I can stop. It is not a hobby or a dream, but a calling, and when you are called, all you can do is answer.
Of course, this doesn’t mean I don’t try to make this art thing pay off. I mean, there is no way I would turn down getting paid for my craft. I would take most of the money and build me a farm to live on. I would take a lot of the money to start my own businesses, a books shop or a meat shop or both, but not in the same building. I would write in the morning, go to work, and come home to edit.
I would be my own boss, and if I needed to go on book tours than I could take time off.
Better yet, I could hire someone to go on them for me. I hate the idea of fame for myself. I love the idea of having it for my work, but I wouldn’t mind if no one knew what I looked like as long as they read my books.
And here … bring us to one of the problems I have been facing as of late.
The book business is in a bit of upheaval at the moment. Self-publishing is doing its damage, and the old world wants to keep their gates locked, not seeing the walls are crumbling down around them. But you still need some of the old publishing houses to reach the greater world, or you can beg, fight, and yell to get a platform online.
Actually, the platform is a need for either path you take. You want to self-published then you need to be online.
You want the old world to notice you. How many followers do you have?
This need for a bloody platform is one of the main reasons I started this blog.
Another death nail to the book world is you people don’t read much anymore. Books aren’t a dying art, but people don’t like giving up the time to read them as much. It is a sad thing for writers to find out.
(I get back to people not reading as much in a moment.)
Some of you might know I was trying to get a Kickstarter off the ground, but kind of started to notice I was throwing my name out into the void. No one knew me, no one would help with my book without seeing who I was, and then it hit me, and I need to build a bigger platform for myself.
I love radio dramas, like The Shadow, Dan Dare, War of the Worlds, Lock & Key, and the list goes on. There is something magical about them, and they still can tell a great story to boot. So, I took a story from way back in the day made it into a radio script, and then asked for help online.
My cousin, Allen, said he would love to help.
But if no one said they would be down for helping me, then I could still do it alone. I simply wanted to try it and toss it up online, which I will do when it is done.
One of my friends asked me if there was a market for radio dramas.
I hope not, but we can make it.
And yet, there is a market for it, not in a podcast way, but in the audiobook way. We are not reading physical books as much anymore, but audiobooks have had an uptick in sells. More people are reading books by listening to them.
Boom, there is my market.
Kind of.
Honesty, right now, I’m just having fun making the show. It is a lot of work for a simple thing. The whole show shouldn’t be more than ten minutes long but is a blast to do. I have written some other scripts for more shows. However, we are trying to get through one before we move on to a bigger project.
The goal of the show is twofold –
The first, have fun, making something fun, and see where it will take us.
The second, use the show as a tool to get my name out there for my books. I don’t care about money. I don’t care about any kind of fame from it. I simply want people to see what kind of stories I can write and, hopefully, want to read more of my work.
I have dreamed about the show getting bigger and doing something great with it, but those are dreams to help me get through bad days. I want the radio show to be the best I can do, but I still want to mainly write books.
By the way, I have never done this before and have no idea what I’m doing with the show. I’m simply putting it in the Lord’s hands.
I hope the show or shows will drop in May. I plan on putting them up on YouTube, Soundcloud, or anywhere else that will allow me to do so. I hope you will find ten minutes during your day to give it a listen when they are out. You can help grow this little project of ours.
In the meantime, here is a little preview of what we have done … enjoy. (Note: this is a rough draft of the show and nowhere near being done. I throw it together to help Allen see my vision of the whole thing.)
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