Sunday, April 12, 2009

From the depths of the Easter long weekend

'Tis a season of chocolate rabbits and eggs you could never make an omelet with; days prompting that old classic joke about "Save me a hot cross bun, I'll be back on Monday." A four-day weekend where the country is closed, Thursday to Tuesday, and if you happen to have forgotten to get a printer cartridge or a spindle of DVD blanks, tough luck.

It's Easter. That time of picnic horse races and the aroma of Aztec mild hallucinogens wafting out of the malls, and blazing-eyed zealots actually, physically, in reality, having themselves nailed (with real nails and real hammers) to big wooden crosses on the beach in major cities, while the crowd looks on in aghast awe, wondering at their sanity, and perhaps asking themselves the inevitable question. Think about it. Or, don't. It's a subject that'll cost you sleep.

Anyway --

Keegan is still alive, still working! Just not blogging here as much as I used to -- Google having buried me in the page rankings! In fact --

I've been blogging elsewhere in the last week:

I've been contributing to this blog, which lives over at http://write-edit-publish.blogspot.com/ ... and it's a lot of fun, actually. It's interesting to quantify the subjects of writing, editing, publishing. It's also a great blog, and growing like a mushroom. From here on, when readers ask questions about the trade of the writer, editor, publisher, this is where I'll be answering them -- I'll just post briefly here and give the link.

And I've been on Digital Kosmos too:

The dome of the sky

Focus and contrast: red hot pokers imitate art

Cafe culture goes way upmarket

In the time warp ... Adelaide, of course!

Fossils, front and center!

Reflections teasing eyes and brain

...and in the background I'm working on the ebook/paperback version of the first of the LEGENDS novels; and if I can ever get a spare afternoon or two, I'll be rereading the Hellgate novels, ready to start writing. I hope to get a start in May. If I get get a start then, and nothing too bad happens, I can be done by Christmas -- both books. Personally, I can't wait to have them finished. This project has been "on" for about 20 years, at least for me. I wrote the first version of The Rabelais Alliance in 1989, about the same time as Ice, Wind and Fire came out with GMP. Naturally, I had high hopes of being able to sell a gay SF series to them ... and/but the rest is history. Rabelais has a longer pedigree than the British Royal Family, and having the whole story told will be a dream come true.

Little else is happening in the Mel-o-Sphere. Life is mostly about work, right now. Family is okay, if you stretch a point. Some are limping around waiting to heal, some are being deployed in the military, some are waiting for eye surgery! Me? Oh, surviving. Wishing I could crack some code and crank up sales, so I could tell the day job to go buzz off (and that's a euphemism).

Look for updates, tweaks, additions and rebuilds in the main website in the next few weeks, too. The work has been mapped and planned, just has to be done. I think LEGENDS goes to press first, and then the website gets its work next. April or May.

In short, life is a yawn, so --

Ciao for now,
MK

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hey, er. Hate to rain on your Easter parade, but Amazon appears to be pulling sales rankings from books with GLBT content regardless of sexual content or literary merit on the grounds that they are "adult".

James Baldwin, Brokeback Mountain and some autobiographies and YA lit have gotten hit, among others.

http://community.livejournal.com/meta_writer/11369.html

Mel Keegan said...

Hi Kate --

Hey, we could use the rain! We're actually praying for rain and hand-watering the gardens...

Don't worry about Keegan's Amazon sales: The Big A only ever accounted for 30% of what I sell, so they can only hurt me a little bit. It smarts, but it's not crippling.

Also, they haven't yanked my rankings (yet??) because they seem to be reading Amazon Search tags ... and none of my titles is tagged for A-Search.

I'm blogging about this momentarily, and will cross-post to LJ -- short of time, as per usual!

And I know, I'm just plain lucky. Most of my sales are driven via my own bookstore, and about 70% are from other sources, not Amazon or Kindle. (I only have 12 titles ar Amazon, while my full list is 27). However, I'm painfully aware that other writers are extremely Amazon dependent, and the inequity of the situation is enough to make you weep tears of blood.

Behind the scenes, I have my Thinking Cap on, and have some ideas, Things To Do, to use this whole situation not just to my own advantage, but to the advantage of all glbt writers ...

When I've worked it out, I'll be on LJ with some shrewd, canny, sneaky, happy thoughts!

Cheers,
Mel

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