I finally got the mixer up and running today on the laptop. I even started the audiobook version that my wife keeps badgering me about. I know she is right, it is the most realistic next step. I have no idea what I'm doing, so even if I successfully finish it? What the hell am I going to do with it? Its a shame, I used to podcast quite a bit in my early twenties and I never had the equipment like I do now. I started entertaining the idea of scrapping an audio book entirely and doing a limited run podcast where I pick out specific passages from the book and extrapolate where they came from...I even like the idea of adding in different sound effects and maybe getting the help of others to play the characters and recite their lines. All I know, is that this is the idea stage of everything. I just don't want to get stuck in trying to promote this thing. I've stated before, I'd love to start writing and submitting poems again and I do have another manuscript I had planned to write after I finished Nostalgic back in 2018. I have to keep reminding myself that there is no rush. This book took three years to come to fruition.
I want to do what I never do, I want to be present for once rather than dwelling ten years ago or freaking out about what I should be doing ten years from now. My old radio mentor and very favorite human being Mike had messaged me on Instagram today to tell me he finally got his copy in the mail. He was (as always) very supportive and told me that he thinks I did something very special. I don't know exactly what that is, but I hope its something that can resonate with others. I was in a really awful place from 2000 until the end of summer 2018. By 2018, I was as full-time stay at home parent to my oldest and I finally managed to finish my fifth manuscript. This one was different, this was by far the most vulnerable I had been in writing even more so than the poems I had published. It was also largely motivated by what my graduate poetry professor Melanie Faith was getting out of me for my thesis work. At the time, I stopped talking to my two older sisters. I just needed to figure out what was making me so awful about being me and why I needed to destroy me. I then wound up with this story about three siblings trying to survive their family and navigate the doomed future they all seemed inevitable to succumb to. It removed so much emotional baggage from me, and that October? My wife handed me a pregnancy test and I learned that we had another baby on the way. It all seemed to fit, having spent so much time with my oldest I was finding my confidence as a man and a parent and learning that another was on the way made me realize I had more to live for now. I eventually forgot about this book until November of 2019 when Atmosphere Press were looking for manuscripts and I took a chance. The following month? I ran into the bedroom to wake my wife up and show her the acceptance letter. I don't know what happens next. I hope it finds its readers. I hope people walk away from it with something more than they read an okay book. I am both excited and terrified, but I have to be honest with you? As someone with more farewell attempts under his belt than Cher and Motley Crue combined? I am at peace with being a published author who might not sell hundreds of books, than being someone who couldn't exist feeling like such a failure and never knowing if it would happen. So, I will work on an audio book...I will do this reading next Friday (which I decided I'll do as both a ZOOM and Instagram live) and who knows. All I know? Every day above ground is a good day.
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