Rainy Road Warrior Newsletter
Mark Your Calendars!
September 13, 2022!
Barring any unforseen events, that’s the date for launching the Epic of Darkness Kickstarter campaign.
As I mentioned before, I’m going to try a strategy of making sure the campaign ends in the middle of the month to see if this cuts down on the number of people who back out at the last minute. My theory is that, when a campaign wraps up at the end of a month, people might pull their pledge because they suddenly realize they don’t have enough money in their bank account to pay all their bills.
So, we’ll see what happens with that.
That’s What I Call ‘Em, Anyway
I came across this company called “Moo” on Facebook that was offering miniature business cards, with the ability to have a variety of designs on the front and back within the same order at no additional charge.
So, for whatever reason, my mind immediately thought of making them as miniature bookmarks instead. I’ve always felt that business cards are generally useless because, more often than not, people just throw them in the trash. This is why, instead, I offer a full-page flyer that describes all my various projects. And if people buy a book, I include the flyer in the bag.
I went ahead and ordered 100 (25 each of the designs you see below) just to see how they’d come out. It took about a month to get them (because the printing is done in Sweden, I believe) but they came out really nice. The images are sharp and the colors are vivid.
I’ll be offering these as a stretch goal so every physical-tier backer will get a set of them if we hit that mark. If not, I might just go ahead an throw one randomly into each shipment.
The Amazing Con-Man
I recently secured a table at SC Comicon Jr, which is in Greenville, SC on October 9th. So that leaves 3 more conventions for this year and that might be the last I’ll ever do since it’s been a massive financial drain with almost no return. Also, I know it’s not fun for my kids to get up early on their days off from school just to go sit at a table for 7 or 8 hours.
I’ll reassess things next year. Maybe if the overall state of the economy is better, I’ll try doing cons again. But it seems to me that things are just going to get worse.
Hot take! Pick it up!
I’ve just about finished reading The Green Mile by Stephen King and I think I’ve had enough of his work. I’ve given him so many chances but I always come away thoroughly disappointed and confused as to why he’s so popular and revered.
I never read any of his books when I was a kid but I was aware of The Stand because of Anthrax’s “Among The Living”, which I listened to about 10,000 times in middle school. A few years later, in high school, I finally read the book and had to force myself to finish it. More time passed and my cousin suggested I try him out again so I trudged through The Dark Half, Needful Things and some other crap I want to spare my mind from revisiting. (For what it’s worth, she also suggested Dean Koontz and I found his work to be more enjoyable.)
Even after all this disappointment, there was still one book of his that I had always wanted to read. It was the Dark Tower series. From what I had gathered, it seemed like it would be my kind of jam: sci-fi, dystopia, supernatural, western. Sounded to me like a recipe for three heaping servings of awesome!
Well, earlier this year, I finally got around to getting a copy of the first book in the series and let’s just say that if that book was the child of a broken home, I would have been its father who went out for cigarettes and never came back.
A little while ago, I had read some comments online that The Green Mile was a completely different type of Stephen King story so, in spite of everything, I figured I would give it a shot. And, once again, I’m having to force myself to get through this book. When I do, I’ll bury it and make sure NOT to do so in a pet sematary because I do not want anymore of Mr. King’s stuff coming back to me.
The icing on the cake of this little rant is this ironic twist: there IS a Stephen King book that I DID enjoy and WOULD recommend. It’s called …On Writing and contains his tips, tricks and other general advice for aspiring writers.
So, yeah. Go figure.
~Michael T Gonzalez
