Tag Archives: self-promotion

Writing

Volume One Is Done!

Finally!

From The Vaults of Uncle Walt, Volume One is live on Amazon! My very first book! I’m way more excited than I should be! Exclamation points!

I know it’s not the novel I wanted to start with (or a novel at all), but I needed to get started somewhere, and this was how. Thank you to everyone who has been reading along these past several months. You have all inspired me to keep going. I am in the final proofing stages of Terracrats, which I hope to have finished tonight, so that I can put it up for sale tomorrow (just in time for your weekend reading binges). And then there’s the actual novel which I have already begun working on. I’m hoping that this will be my year.

Anyway, I’m sorry that this isn’t something funny or socially engaging, but I felt it was newsworthy, at least to me.

I’ll be back tomorrow with a regular-type column. Have a good night, everyone!

-Tex

I just realized that I only included the link to the US store. If you are living outside of the US, just search for Tex Batmart in your local Amazon.

 

UPDATE

Included are the links to pick up the book in three of the countries in which I am more popular:

Mexico

Canada

The United Kingdom

Writing

One Week on reddit

It’s been kind of an exciting week for me here. I succumbed to the narcissistic pressure within me, and submitted a few columns to reddit.com, figuring that I had gotten more or less back into form, and was ready for a truly global audience. I wasn’t prepared for the result. Amazingly, my column about Star Trek took right off, and has, to date, gotten more views this week by itself, than almost double the total amount of views I’d had in my best week prior to this one. Of course, reddit is a fickle mistress, and large numbers of people reading me there didn’t translate into much voting, in either direction. After spending almost a week in the r/startrek subreddit, I’ve gotten five votes, two-thirds positive, which have garnered me a total score of… 1 imaginary internet point! I’m trying not to get too hung up on that, as redditors can be unforgiving assholes (I should know), but it still kind of hurts that over two hundred people took the time to read what I had written, and only five had rated it positively. Still, I’ve said from Day One that my main goal in all of this was to give people a chance to read my stuff. I wasn’t expecting everyone to love it, but I had kind of imagined that it might have had more of an effect. Still, though, it’s kind of amazing. People with whom I have absolutely no connections in the real world have stopped and read the words and thoughts which have exited my head, and that, to me, is incredible.

The numbers have gone back to normal now, as I made a decision on Wednesday morning not to drink from that particular well anymore, at least not for a while. I wanted to see how many new readers I could maintain, and now, sadly, I know. It’s kind of wild to see just how this week has skewed the numbers, and I know that April is probably going to be the first month since I’ve started where I don’t increase my readership versus the month which came before it. To be honest, the temptation is there to head back to reddit sometime next month, just so I can try to avoid such a dubious distinction. Or I could try to make my stuff better, I suppose. I’m honestly just please with how easily the words are coming, compared to when I started, and how I can just jump in, even if it’s seven in the evening, and pound out words which, at the very least, make some sort of sense. I mean, I’m not really any closer to my larger goal of writing something that I can sell, but I’ve found my groove, and have built the courage to try out several different things over the past few months. And something that will please my wife: I’ve discovered that I can still write in the mornings, and that I can usually pound out an average column in an hour and a half. That basically means that I can now go looking for a job, free from the worry that it will cause my words to suffer.

The downside is that I now have to come to terms with my fear of everybody, and deal with easing myself back into the Food Service Industry, but luckily, I’ve had almost fifteen years of restaurant experience, with a decade of that spent in management. I know what I am doing when it comes to rocking in the kitchen, and the only thing which has held me back has been my exhaustion at the very notion of returning. It’s not the owners, it’s not the employees, and it’s definitely not the distributors; the component which worries me the most is having to deal with a brand-new set of customers. Well, that and doing interviews, but the latter is more a reflection of my personal bi-polarizing issues, so ultimately, it’s sort of just on me to get myself through that process. But when it comes to the customer experience, I think back to every single customer I’ve had the pleasure of not serving these past four months, and I’m reluctant to go back. But restaurants are generally always hiring, and are usually in need of competent management. And the only way that I can pay off all my bills at this point, is to jump into the deep end, and become Mr. Manager once more.

I’ve sort of gotten used to living this life of carefree indolence, and loathe to imagine the day when it must come to an end. But all good things must do so, if we are to truly appreciate them. I could be wrong, of course, and the only thing that stands between myself and happiness is my inability to accept myself for who I truly am: someone for whom putting on pants is the moment when he knows that his day will never stand a chance of recovering. If I was single, I suppose that I could travel the country on the backs of couches, seeking out just Wi-Fi, nicotine, and the occasional full belly. But the fact is that I would have never made it this far without the love of my dearest wife, and should the day come when she’s had enough of my shenanigans, I don’t imagine that I’ll be able to really handle anything in the manner expected of an adult. There will be crying, floor-pounding temper tantrums, and snot running down my face like a river flowing freely from my nose. And then I’ll slip back into habits better off forgotten, seeking solace in my liberation from overwhelming pain, and before I know it, I’ll wake up in Billings, Montana with a tattoo of Crying Rose, and naked, save for a strategically placed necktie. Poor Bad Leon Suave, I’m sure that he doesn’t entirely deserve that.

See? Watching the worst case (and yet, strangely entertaining) scenarios play out inside my head is still more comforting than the knowledge that I’m going to have to get (another) job! I’m not sure what that says about me, but I hope that you’ve enjoyed reading all about it. I’d say that I am now heading off to bed, but I think that I’ll do some pity-voting back on reddit.

The cowboy rode off into the sunset, but left his steed behind.
The cowboy rode off into the sunset, but left his steed behind.

-Tex

Writing

Pandering

One of these days I’m going to have to bust out something in Spanish or British (I’m well-versed in the extra “u” and lorries) to accommodate my new readers. I’d love to do something in Norwegian, but aside from an expression or two which I don’t know how to spell, I’m really not conversant (My great-grandmother is turning in her grave). Thank the makers for translation programs. One of these days, I need to read my blog on my wife’s phone to see how the interwebz are doing in their translations of my work. Of course, the collected knowledge of the internet probably has a better vocabulary than I do, but nowhere near my sense of style. Someday I’d like to transfer my consciousness to the very core of the internet, so that my overwhelming snark and acerbic wit can color all of human knowledge. Like if you search for Edgar Guest, your computer or smartphone or neural integration just shuts down and refuses to let you play with others. Ah, a boy can dream, can’t he? Okay, enough pandering, on to the shameless self-promotion:

And while I’m covering things that aren’t entirely relevant to what I’ll be writing about today, I’d like to take a moment to encourage you to “like” my professional page on Facebook, Tex Batmart- Writer, and follow me on Twitter: @texbatmart. They’re not much, but I’m sort of attached to them. In the coming weeks, I’m going to try spending a little more time on both, attempting to build my readership in case the day ever comes that I decide to write something that I can hope to feed my family with (by selling, of course. I wish it was as simple as throwing words down the throats of my family to fill their bellies and keep them healthy). Over the course of these past few months, I’ve seen the number of my readers grow, and though you are all still part of a very exclusive group, at least the word is spreading. It’s probably for the best that almost no one was reading the nonsense that I was putting out in December, just groping around in the dark, trying to remember how to write. And as the year progresses, I hope to continue improving (and entertaining), and make it worth your while to come and give me a visit. Thank you!

So I’ve been trying to think of some sort of project I want to get funded on Kickstarter. I mean, I know what I want to do, but I can’t think of any of the PBS Pledge Drive type gifts to offer to the kind and decent men and women who are good enough to subsidize me. I’d offer an evening spent in my company while I prepare one of the three things that I can cook really well, but I don’t know if I’d be willing to dip into the Fund money to shell out for a plane ticket. I just need to find a couple of wealthy patrons in the Bay Area who like to visit small apartments in the East Bay and throw money at the poor. I’m okay with pity. As a matter of fact, I’d rather be awed for my magnificence, but I’ll take what I can get. I’ve finally gotten into a rhythm I can work with, and having to find a legitimate source of income is going to throw everything into disarray. Heck, I’m almost at the point where I can sit down and think about writing things outside of this blog, and though that may not seem all that impressive, for me it’s kind of huge.

Last week (or maybe it was the week before), I started on piece that had nothing to do with anything that I had planned on writing. For the first time in years, the words just dripped from my fingertips, and as I helped the characters to dance, I found myself genuinely interested in discovering where the story might be headed. I don’t know how far I’ll get in this, as I haven’t been sticking with it (and yes, I am aware that I need to write things that exist outside of this website if I intend to someday be financially independent), and I don’t know if it will pan out. But it felt really good to just set the stage and let things happen as the may.

Part of my problem, I believe, is that I really don’t have a dedicated area which is respected as off-limits to everyone who isn’t me trying to write. That includes my son, and wife, and the me that is catching up on T.V. shows that I recorded back when I was working and now need to watch to free up my D.V.R. Since I’ve come to learn how to write in the morning hours, when no one else is up, I may have to push this blog back a little further in the day, and start off with a couple of hours on whatever fiction I’ve got going. Mind you, that would involve taking positive and intelligent steps toward building a better future, so I can guarantee that I’ll even try it. But hey, at least I’ve given it some thought, and I’m not too obese yet to be unable to pat myself on the back.

It’s kind of weird: when I was younger, I literally couldn’t shut up for all the ideas that were jockeying to get out of my head. I had so much that I wanted to tell the world, and I had the energy of youth to propel me. Now, I think, I’ve got better things to say, but almost two decades of compromise and waiting for the future have made me a little gun-shy. I talked a little about it yesterday, when I mentioned my abject terror at the very concept of speaking to another person on the telephone. I’m so caught up in worrying about all the stupid things that I never seem to get around to trying. I mean, the worst thing that someone could do is to say that they didn’t like what I had written, and tell all of their friends that I was some sort of pretentious hack. Okay. That might actually crush me. I was hoping to allay my fears by holding silly outcomes up to ridicule, but that one seems genuinely plausible.

And I’m not fishing for compliments. Sure, everyone likes to hear nice things about themselves, but I’m just trying to save a couple bucks on therapy by cutting out the middleman and asking myself directly what I think.

*  *  *

I got a call from my son’s school informing me that he is sick, and wants to come home. I’ve just gone and picked him up, and he does, in fact, look Epically Pathetic. I’ve laid him down in bed, and he’s been kind enough to let me finish typing up this column before starting in on what programs he’d like to have wash over him as he lays curled up in a vegetating state (as opposed to a vegetative state, which would be entirely more worrisome). I hate this part about being a dad. I just want to know that he’s okay, so we can get back to our regularly scheduled fights over who is the Alpha Male (hint: under my roof, it’s still me. And, strictly speaking, his twenty-six year old (or is he older?) brother-in-law is next in line for the job, should I become incapacitated. Don’t get me wrong: I’m always down with quiet time. But I hate to see my little Minkey suffer, and wish him a speedy recovery.

Tomorrow evening, I’ll be posting the third installment of Blast From The Past, my After Dark series featuring the very best of my old blog on MySpace. This next chapter will pick up where the last one left off (with a possible flashback to an earlier post or two), and carry on until the birth of David William. Also, at some point I’ll be writing up a review of the weekly comic book series, Injustice: Gods Among Us (and yes, I know that it was created to hype up the fighting game of the same name, but that in no way diminishes just how awesome it has become). I’ll also be reviewing Doctor Who: Legacy and probably something else, when I get the chance.

For my new readers, The After Dark series are usually posted between 5 and 8 p.m., Pacific. I don’t really have a schedule for what days I will be posting them, aside from Blast From The Past, which I’ve been doing as an homage to #throwbackthursday. If you want to catch up on that series, the first chapter is here and the second is here. I hope you all have a wonderful Wednesday, and I look forward to seeing you all back here tomorrow.

Same Batmart Time, Same Batmart Channel

-Tex