Wednesday, June 11, 2008

New Onyx Sun Web Site

Well, I have finished the second of my three weekly goals for my working-vacation: publish a new and complete Onyx Sun web site.

Check it out at: www.onyxsun.com

Overall, I am pretty happy with the site. I have plans to add a lot more features, but since finishing my book has to be my priority right now, this site will do. I'll have more time later to update it while I wait for my typesetter and printer to finish their respective jobs (about two months of work when I can be doing other things). This site is a marked step up from the last site, which I never had time to finish and had more dead links than Larry King has guests.

Of course, the feature of the site I am most excited to develop is the "Create Your Own Onyx Sun Story" section. I've gotten a lot of great feedback from teachers, parents, and kids that this is the section they are most looking forward to. So, for my readers checking my site to find out when that feature is coming, please know I'll be working on it right after my final edits are done (hopefully this week) and should have more to report soon!

Kalamazoo!





Christopher

Monday, June 9, 2008

My First Work Vacation

I am doing today something I never thought I'd do:

I am working on vacation.

True enough. I am. I'm sitting at a San Francisco cafe down the street from my house, working on the Never-ending Book Edits. I'm sixty pages into the twelfth revision of my manuscript. Only 120 more Word pages to go.

Usually I am the guy who shuns people who work on vacation. My friends who bring Blackberries on our trip Greece..."A plague upon their white-washed house!" in the form of bad reception, I say. If you want to work, work. If you want to play, play. You accomplish neither by trying to do both. I once read that people who run with their cell phones generate fewer endorphins than those who don't. See. There's proof your body wants you to soak up your time off.

So, why am I working on vacation? Actually, I am on vacation SO I can work. This dual-life thing of putting 50-60 hours in at Second Life then working on my manuscript nights and weekends has been taking its toll. So, I took some time I've accrued (I've only taken one vacation in the last three years) and put it toward a week to myself and my book.

And I gotta tell ya, although it's no Santorini, sitting here with my coffee, my words, and the early morning mist is relaxing in its own right. The only way I can justify this time off though, when I could be visiting lands unknown, is if I deliver the goods at the end. So, this week, I have three goals:
  1. Finish the Never-ending Book Edits so I can send my manuscript and the interior artwork off to my typesetter.
  2. Finish building the marketing (non-database driven) pages of the Onyx Sun web site.
  3. (If I have time) Do all the miscellaneous tasks I've been putting off, like mailing out more of my books, contacting more potential reviewers, and updating the Pariah Publishing email newsletter list.
So, off I go!

Kalamazoo!





Christopher