My experience with the two conversations was markedly different. Over on Ryan’s blog, because the conversation was active, and the nesting ran several levels deep (deeper than it gets here), I actually ended up intimidated by it. “Too much to take in!” Which is odd, because threading conversations like that is meant to make it easier to keep track of the various threads of thought going on. Contrast this with my experience of GamePlayWright, where there’s no threading whatsoever. There’s the post, and there’s a “flat” stream of comments below it. But I took the time with that one to read the comments and then say something at the end.

I think my reaction has to do with the many-nested-threads presentation being — in essence — unique to digital conversation. It’s a kind of metastasis, where the conversation can bifurcate and subdivide and so on until it’s this big and (for me) intimidating mass of chatter about the topic at hand.

The GPW conversation could run the same risks for some — it’s big, and it’s undifferentiated, so you can only really take two tacks with it: read it beginning to end, read only the post and respond to that, or read the post and the end of the comments and try to jump in hoping you’re not repeating yourself.  But you know what? That’s a fair bit like a real-life conversation (albeit an asynchronous one where you can start listening in to the whole thing at any time), and that I think is where I ended up feeling like I could participate there, but not over at the place where it started.

Makes me ponder the degree to which I allow nesting/threading on Deadly Fredly.

How about you? How do you react to these modes of online discussion? How do you prefer to configure it in your own space?

http://www.vsca.ca/halfjack/?p=388

But it occurs to me that by this point, if you’re following this blog you know why you’re coming here.

Why is that? And what should I be writing about to keep your particular itch scratched?

It wasn’t, though, because I wanted to give myself a day or two off. It was because I was paralyzed to speak; I sat there, contemplating my soft underbelly, and thought about whether or not I was comfortable presenting it to the world. And I just wasn’t.

My wife took me to see Avatar (3D and in IMAX, thankyouverymuch) for my birthday. When I came back, I wanted to talk about it plenty. But I wanted to have a uniformly positive conversation about it.

And frankly I just can’t trust the Internet to provide that. Nor should I.  As a collective entity, the Internet is in chronic pain, the kind that strips away all kindness and leaves a body making a choice between do I lash out now? and do I lash out later?, no third option. People are wrong on the internet, after all, and the rage that inspires — in me included — is flatly unconscionable and requires the immediate application of said rage to the object of our ire-du-jour.

This makes a blog a terrible, horrible, awful, no-good place to commit acts of pure celebration. Yes, many acts of celebration ala blog come off just fine, but at the end of the day I have to regard that as mainly a matter of luck, akin to throwing a birthday party in a war zone: just because a stray bullet didn’t zip through and kill one of the celebrants is no indication that it wasn’t an incredibly dangerous thing to do.  As Nathan Paoletta has said, the Internet’s supervillain power is its ability to strip away context from any conversation.  Inevitably, someone is going to get accused of white privilege, or of sexism, or some sort of variation of Godwin’s Law is going to break out. It’s enough to send this particular groundhog scurrying back into his hole at the slightest hint of shadow.

Worse, sometimes the interloper, the guy that fires the bullet into the party, has a fine point to be made. But in a mixture of both perception and actuality, the point comes with a stark lack of forgiveness and compromise. I blame the presentation layer, text, for this.  Text often comes without subtext, without tone, and thus a statement that is in contradiction of or otherwise at odds with the object of celebration can only be read in the harshest fashion possible. I say “can only be read” because reading charitably is a skill, and skills are not exercised in the moment of first impression. Skills come in later, if at all. So when you have X, and someone comes in proclaiming Not X, the “not” is the sum total of the message. It is stark, and it gets right the heck up one’s nose.

My gut, not my brain, believes that the immediately correct response is to kick the Not-X-ers in the teeth, to believe with a fiery passion that they are idiots of the lowest order, and to be honest I spend a lot of time even after I wrestle that reaction to the ground still soaking in the negative response.  There has not been a single unpleasant interaction I’ve had on the Internet that hasn’t stuck with me for days on end, even when the guy on the other side of it IS an idiot of the lowest order.  It’s an incredibly uncomfortable way to live and the fact that it happens to me is a strong indication that I should maybe rethink this whole life as a public persona thing. If my emotions are so easily mastered by others to my detriment, it’s stark insanity for me to continue to open myself to that, right?

Well, obviously, no, not right, at least not entirely. There’s value to be had in engaging others, in attempting those acts of celebration.  But man, strategies must be employed to make sure the center holds.

Moving my conversations off of forums has been a big part of the strategy for me. Blogging, at least, carries an implicit authority model with it, one which I am at least in some degree of control over. If I don’t like the direction a commenter is going, I can shut that down — though that’s really an extreme measure and circumstance. More often it just doesn’t come to that because the implicit authority tends to be respected by (most of) the participants in the discussion.  Historically I’ve rarely encountered this “respect effect” in forums (and relatedly, I’ve encountered plenty of forums where the figures of authority evince an utter lack of skill at pleasantly exercising said authority).  While blogging reduces the audience level vs. forums, I think that’s a good thing, and I find it tends to elevate the quality of the material (the initial posts themselves) and of the responses (the comments). The vulnerability problem still exists, but at least I’m strapping on a parachute before diving out of the plane: the risks are better managed.  It’s why I encouraged Rob Donoghue a while back to blog more, forum-post less, and I dunno, I think that’s turned out pretty well.

There’s also the strategy of persona. Not coincidentally, around the time I realized Evil Hat was going to become something of a “real company” (or would at least try to become one), I realized I had to change much of how I conducted myself online.  The gut (the teeth-kicker from above) needed a damn muzzle. I was very much a part of the Internet’s chronic pain problem, and usually went for the lash out now option, because doing immediate damage to an object of ire feels good to the demon gut, even if the brain is smart enough to see the regret inherent in the act.   Rob comes up here again, as someone to emulate: he has vast powers of remaining reasonable that I can only manage a glimmer of at the best of times (I do not know how he does it, but I think there’s something in the water up in Vermont that has something to do with it).  So the last five or so years of me on the internet has mainly been an act of shouting down my gut-response every damn time and firmly, deliberately instructing myself to respond as much like Rob as possible.  Most of the time I even manage to pull it off, and I’m pretty sure it’s worked — enough so that I always laugh when I see folks describe me as a consistently pleasant, reasonable guy on the net. I mean, I know that I’ve been trying to be that, but the internal reality of my success just isn’t as sunny as its outward face.  That’s not to say that there is falseness in that outward face, that outward response. It is who I want to be and in many ways it’s who I am, stripped of the nasty gnashing pointy teeth part that’s trying like hell to defend me from my daily insanity of engaging with the Internet, leaving only the part that wants to like most everything and celebrate the stuff that’s worth celebrating.

But some days the strategies are not enough to overcome the fear, the certainty, that some part of the conversation will just go to places that request the demon’s presence. Respectfully, I shall decline to pursue such opportunities. And thus, my last week’s absence.  Maybe this week will be different. Or maybe some shadows will continue to linger just outside my hole.

So my updates are likely to get more sporadic over the next few weeks. I started layout on the Dresden Files RPG right at the beginning of the year, and all my previously queued blog posts have been run through, so the myth of regularity I’ve been operating under is shortly to evaporate. As a writer, when I’m one, I am very, very bursty.

That said, sometimes the hardest thing is coming up with a topic. You all have an idea of the sorts of things I might cover on this blog by this point; what do you want to see me talk about? Toss me a comment and who knows, you might just get what you ask for.

Art Direction

One of the things that I do as part of my career is art direction. Not something I would have anticipated a few years back (which in retrospect seems a little silly). In doing my own publishing, I discovered I really have a drive and a feel for the work, though. I have a very visual brain, and I tend to communicate in great volume (more on that in a moment), and the two seem to work pretty well together. While I can’t personally execute on the art that I want, I can describe it pretty well, and the more that I work with a particular artist, the more I can tailor how I communicate to what they understand and deliver. (Another reason for doing repeat business with proven-quantity artists.)

A Few Examples

So Jennifer Rodgers has been blogging a little bit of an art piece she’s currently working on for the Dresden Files RPG. I’ll give you the links in a moment. But first, here’s what I sent her:

In our Baltimore setting, there’s a quartet of folks who live at the Montrose estate, which existed back in Edgar Allen Poe’s time.  They are:

- Wellington, a “runt” ogre (so he’s only 7-or-so feet tall) who serves as the estate’s butler. An ancient compact compels him never to leave the estate’s grounds.  He usually glamours himself up as a (mostly) human looking guy, a classic butler but for the fact that he’s very tall by human standards.
- Evan Montrose, a young, meticulous wizard who has inherited the estate following his father’s death
- Maya Mckenzie, a thin-boned girl who can shapeshift into a mouse
- Biff Abernathy, a friend of Evan’s from the Ivy Leagues. He’s got old money, is an accomplished athlete, but still lives like he’s at college

We’ll be showing them in the (full page, full color) picture, prominently; I think I’d like Maya to be in human form, though, since if we have her in mouse form we end up with a picture of three dudes, and I’d like to have a lady in there too.

THE IMAGE

(I was originally thinking of something more static, but then I realized that a little more action here would better suit the character of the rest of the pieces in the book.)

An exterior of the mansion at night; a glowing human skeleton is in a fight with Wellington, who’s still dressed as a butler, but his glamours have slipped a bit and we can see a bit of the ogre in him showing through. Wellington has a great big freaking axe and is readying to swing it at the skeleton. The skeleton meanwhile is lunging for him, maybe already tearing into him, rendering his butler’s suit ragged.

Evan is a short distance away looking out of sorts; this is not what he had planned for the evening.  A classic car (like, 1950s or 40s) behind him has had its hood caved in by a big impact, and it’s billowing smoke. He has whipped up some kind of wind spell that is causing big gusts all around him, lifting him a few inches off the ground, and he’s pointing his copper rod at the skeleton, just starting to push power into it, causing a glow.

Biff clearly got into a fight with the skeleton and lost; he’s on the ground, scuffed and bloodied but still conscious.  A soccer ball, ruptured and flattened, should be seen on the ground somewhere nearby.  He’s trying to get up, maybe up on an elbow but otherwise on his back, rubbing his head, trying to shake off whatever was done to him.

Maya is down on one knee near Biff; she was in the middle of checking on him, seeing how hurt he was, but now she’s looking back towards the fight, towards Wellington and the skeleton and Evan.

Perspectivewise, I sort of visualize Maya and Biff foreround, but down in the lower left quadrant of the image, with most of the action deeper in, Evan and the crushed car mid-field, Wellington and the skeleton and the mansion a little further back.  Does that make any kind of sense?

REFERENCE STUFF

Baltimore inspiration — Here’s a flickr of Baltimore that a friend of mine who lives up there has put together. http://www.flickr.com/photos/jwiv/sets/72157600042294212/

The estate itself is a few dozen acres of partially wooded grounds, but some Baltimore skyline over the treetops (if the image’s orientation happens to be able to support it) wouldn’t stink — tho you may need to do more research to get a good view of that. There aren’t a lot of TALL buildings in Baltimore, tho, so I don’t know if that’s even feasible. We’ll survive if so.

Here’s the writeup of the montrose estate:

The Montrose Estate

Threat: Skeletons In The Closet…And Basement

Located on the northern edge of Baltimore, the Montrose house and events that happened there in the early 1800s were the inspiration for Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado.” So, you can imagine that the house is a really great place.

The estate is, on the surface, a well-managed and elegant old-money mansion. (And I mean really, really vast amounts of old money.) Very recently, Old Man Montrose passed on (the cause of death is still mysterious; the medical examiner claimed “natural causes,” but nobody in the know thinks that’s right) and left the entire estate, grounds, and his fortune to his 20-something son Evan.

The estate consists of a dozen acres of partially wooded grounds along a tributary of the Patapsco. There are a few cottages used for servants’ residences, a garage/maintenance building, and of course the big house itself. Imagine the classic Old Money Mansion, and you’ll get it: dozens of rooms, a huge hall, a kitchen able to provide a state dinner, high ceilings, sweeping staircases in the entryway, and a vast cellar. The estate is managed by a collection of faceless accountants and maintenance personnel, but an unusual gentleman who goes by the name Wellington serves as the lord of the manor’s personal aide and performer of “odd” jobs.

(The big “secret” of the Montrose Manor is that the family name was originally Montressor, and Poe’s “Cask of Amontillado” was a thinly veiled indictment of Old Man Montrose’s father’s alleged revenge visited upon an enemy. There may quite literally be skeletons in the closet.)

The characters. We don’t have a lot of physical description in the chapter, so I’ll give you some scant notes on my notions of them and an excerpt of the writeup to get the “attitude”:

Evan – You could dress him like your husband in his finest suit, very classic lines and all, but I see him as a sandy-blonde (we don’t want all of our wizards in the book to have the dark hair brooding look, that’s Harry’s turf).  Writeup reads:

Educated in magic by his father and in mundane matters by the finest Baltimore prep schools and European colleges, Evan Montrose’s hope of spending a few post-Oxford years sailing with his best friends Maya McKenzie and “Biff” Abernathy (see below) was interrupted by his father’s mysterious death. He’s returned to the manor (see page XX) as a well trained wizard of the White Council, but lacking the seasoning to go with his power. The Wardens want to recruit him, but he’s managed to evade their attempts thus far. Evan is meticulous, detail-oriented, and a bit of a neat freak. Despite his tendency toward indulging his playboy side, he never does anything without a plan.

Evan’s wizardly implements should be at least somewhat visible: an oak staff (neatly carved and runed, with a few copper bands along its length, not a gnarly thing like Harry’s), a copper rod (like a hand-held lightning rod of sorts), and a quartz pendant (not quite in the new age style, but you get the idea)

Maya – She’s a dress-to-not-impress type, and probably has some “looseness” to the fit of her clothing to suit the shapeshifting (while she’s a shrinker when she shifts, it still helps in terms of “escaping” from her outfit), and also as bit of a social dodge (form fitting stuff attracts attention!).  She doesn’t have a *nervous* demeanor, but her appearance shouldn’t lead one to think it’s surprising her nickname is “Mouse”.

Maya McKenzie met Biff and Evan as a pre-teen at their prep school. Maya was on scholarship at a school of very wealthy people; a trailer park kid among the trust fund crowd, she quickly learned how not to attract attention to herself. One day in ninth grade, Biff Abernathy finally noticed her, and mentioned that she was “Quiet as a mouse.” He’s been calling her Mouse ever since. She thinks of him as her steady boyfriend, but the relationship runs hot and cold depending on how much of a jerk he seems to be in a given month, but her platonic friendship with Evan Montrose, based on their magical talents, has been more consistent.

Biff - An athletic guy with an Ivy League Educated look to him. Old money, like Evan in a way, but more relaxed in his stance and attitude, and build bigger, like a real world athlete (not like a muscle bound comic book guy, tho!).

Biff was a jock through school, and is still quite the athlete. He’s an outstanding soccer and rugby player, as well as an accomplished martial artist — he’s especially skilled at Krav Maga (a form devised by the Israeli Defense Forces), leading to a great deal of speculation about just how he spent that semester abroad. He has an undeserved reputation as a dumb jock. He’s in a long-term but tempestuous relationship with Maya McKenzie (see below); he, she, and Evan are a more or less inseparable trio.

Wellington – As noted above, he’s a smallish (7 foot tall) ogre disguised as a human. The disguise should be a little ill-fitting, though he’ll still be dressed like a butler in a very classic sense, and will hold an incongruous greataxe or massive cudgel in one hand when pictured.

Wellington is actually an ogre in the guise of a human — a creature of Faerie, bound to serve the Montrose Family. While he is somewhat dry in his wit, his loyalty is absolute. Unfortunately, most of the Secrets of the House are things he has been bound not to reveal, so he can be frustratingly unhelpful when it comes to providing information. He currently serves as aide to Evan Montrose.

So, one thing to note is that I’ve worked enough with Jenn to know she is a master of detail and color. I communicate a lot of up front to get her imagination fired, and I tend to over-ask for details in the picture mainly as an effort to fire off her imagination. I know not everything is necessarily going to make it in, but that she’ll still make the image feel very “populated”. So keep that in mind as you see how things go.

• Here’s the sketch that came about from that.
• And here’s the color study.
• You should follow her LJ to see more updates as the piece comes together. It’s pretty incredible to watch her work.

The other thing you may have noticed is that I provide what might be called an insane amount of information. (At least, that’s how it’s been described to me.) More than one artist has mentioned that I provide reams more information than they’re used to from other art directors. The above is sort of an extreme example (maybe), but we’re talking a full page piece here, so the amount of detail tends to be proportional to that. That said…

Extensive Up Front Communication Is A Ninja Tool For Control Freaks

I’m a not-so-closet control freak to some extent. Honestly that’s part of why I love doing the layout and art direction for my own publishing: I’m there at the very start and at the very end to make sure the final product matches the version I’m visualizing as much as possible. So how do I exercise that without some of the more negative aspects of control-freakery? I take care of it all up front.

I write uber long emails, extensive art specs, etc, because I’m a control freak. I put everything I’m looking for in there right from go (I honestly hate asking for corrections, and I usually don’t have to as a result).  I establish a multi-stage process with the artist (e.g., sketch, pencils, final inks) so any course-correction needed is done as early into the process as possible. Because ultimately, if you’re not the artist, you have to be willing to lose a little control over the course of the process. Even if you’re a control freak you have to acknowledge this. Art is a process of exploration, and the product between two collaborators (art director and artist in this case) is a result of that mutual exploration. So to get that freak-itch scratched, I put it all out there as early as possible. That’s when I have the most control over how things will turn out, with the art. That, really, is about momentum; it’s the direction part of art direction.

When you shoot a gun, the most control you have over where the bullet goes is right there when you pull the trigger, after all.

I’ll probably come back to this topic a bit more over time on this blog, as I do more AD work. It’ll be worth talking about how the Hero Games art direction is a different beast, and what I do there vs. with my own Evil Hat art direction projects.

Today I push two things at you that deserve your money, and which may well work as excellent, cheap, last minute gifts.

I’ll likely return to these subjects again in later posts, but for now, I’m focusing solely on putting them out there and getting your eyeballs on ‘em.

Jennifer Rodgers’ Etsy Store: Jennifer is one of my favorite people and a very talented artist. When it turned out that we wanted to go for color in the Dresden Files RPG instead of our original notions of a black and white book, Jennifer’s the first artist I thought of, and with good reason: she has an incredible eye for color, and her art trends towards the twisted, supernatural, and dark. All good things in my book, and she did not disappoint with the DF work.  Her Etsy store features gift cards and the occasional print or other art object. Anyway: Give her your dollars, stat, via her store!

Josh Roby’s Rooksbridge: Josh has designed some great games that bang around in the “indie” scene — Full Light, Full Steam and Sons of Liberty to name two.  But so what? He has clearly missed, and now hopefully found, his calling as a fiction writer. Rooksbridge is his venture into this, publishing a series of interlinked but free-standing short stories set in a fantasy world that’s a lot of dirt and politics and a little bit of magic. Sort of like an episodic fantasy TV show in text form. Really solid stuff. I’m still reading through the stories, but I was taken with the free-in-PDF story Dirty Work and I think you will be, too. (I’m less taken with the audio versions of the fiction so far but there’s a lot that goes into whether or not that presentation will click for an individual. For my taset I’d rather Josh focus on the text alone.) The rest of the Rooksbridge stories can be bought cheaply, which makes them perfect stocking stuffers in an age when stockings can be virtual and your friends and family are scattered all over creation. Take a few minutes to become part of the Rooksbridge audience — if not as a holiday present to you or family and friends, then as a present to Josh for the work he’s doing here. It’s worth noting (and perhaps legally mandated) that I mention that I got my hands on the Rooksbridge stories for free via Josh, but there’s no way in hell I’d be talking about them if they hadn’t punched my buttons.

Looking at this from a completely mercenary perspective, being loud in this fashion is very much about establishing a presence and a “brand of me”.  In the Internet Age, silence is equivalent to invisibility.  You might be out there producing great things and doing interesting stuff, but if you aren’t talking about it, and if other people aren’t talking about it, it may as well not be happening. Audience is king.

But beyond the whole “I’m loud so I’m seen” thing, I’m also loud in service of the things I like and love.  I’m loud so those things are seen, too.

Silence, as they’re fond of saying, is complicity. That’s complicity with things as they are and are going to be.  When I’m loud, I’m casting a vote.  I’m voting to support the continuation of things I enjoy, or to change the things I don’t.  By gathering that audience and being loud, I’m able — occasionally — to transfer parts of that audience to the stuff I dig.  That grows its base, and a growing base begets an ongoing effort.  TV shows get renewed (not always, sure; but viewers sure help).  Podcasts continue putting out new shows.  Authors write more books (and get asked to write more books by the publishers).

But that silence equals invisibility principle applies not just as a broadcaster, but as an audience member.  As a fan of something you can either be a lurker — i.e., invisible for all intents and purposes — or a participant.  This is what I had in mind when I talked on twitter about being “no silent fan”.  I’m doing my best to be a participating audience member (I’m not always succeeding, but the effort is important).

This is particularly important at the small audience end of the scale.  If I read a blog post I like or a podcast that says something that clicks for me, I take the time to comment on it.  In smaller audiences (and let’s be real here, almost all gaming audiences qualify, among many others), each individual member counts as a nontrivial percentage of the whole.  Loud-talkin’ participant members are few (despite appearances); one comment, one tweet, can carry a lot of weight.  And that’s weight that’s felt both by the producer (say, a game’s author) and by the rest of the audience.

On the producer’s side, active fan participation undercuts that one thing that all creative types have to some degree: doubt.  Your favorite author might benefit from seeing that positive review you posted on your blog (or on the book’s Amazon listing for that matter).  It tells her that she’s reaching someone.  That she’s doing something right.  Participating as a fan is an act of giving the gift of confidence.  It’s a potent feedback loop, and the internet and social media make it possible — so long as you make the effort to be a part of it.

On the audience side, comments stimulate conversation, and conversation evokes emotional response. Get enough emotional response going and you’re guaranteed to push the conversation — and by association the thing that got you excited — out of the Zone of Mediocrity.  That’s what marketroid types call “grass roots” and “word of mouth” and all that, and most of them will also tell you it’s the most powerful force for making something succeed in today’s economy.  Advertising doesn’t do it any more (unless it’s lucky enough to move enough folks to talk about the product).  The product itself can do it with its intrinsic awesomeness (something Seth Godin calls “being remarkable”, i.e., being-worth-remarking-upon), but that’s a hard thing to do deliberately.  Only you, as a participating audience member, can deliberately make it happen.  When they’re talking about the word of mouth, the words and the mouths they’re talking about are us, the fans.  When we talk, we make more fans, and the feedback loop grows.

Participation also changes the what you’re participating in, like that whole quantum physics thang (“the act of observing changes the observed”).  No comment, no retweet, no blog review is a neutral thing. It adds context; it reframes.  That participation feedback loop includes the creator/producer you’re responding to as well as the product itself, and that’s bound to affect them both, as I’ve already said above.  How you talk elsewhere about the things you’re a fan of will affect how the word of mouth spreads (or fails to spread) and what the message is. When you talk about the stuff that excites you, you’re making it personal for the folks who read what you have to say. It’s one thing to read a product description by someone you don’t know; it’s another thing to see that a friend has gotten excited about something.

So when you get loud, make the context you add something good. Don’t bust on other things in comparison.  Tthat’s taking a crap on something other people are excited about, and you want them to respect the things you’re excited about, so be reciprocal — just as everyone can be seen as an ass by someone else, everything that you see as crap is likely seen as awesome by someone else. So instead, focus on what rocks your socks, not the stuff that leaves your socks unmolested. And don’t fail to add context when you can: a straight up retweet is okay, but a retweet that includes your own thoughts about the link/widget/idea is better: you’re making it matter more to folks who know you.

All of this touches on what Chuck Wendig’s “pebble” post is talking about: a fan spoke up and made a comment. That moved someone else to talk about it. That moved someone else to do something because of it. That something got noticed by other people. And as a result, more eyeballs (more potential fans) make it back to Chuck’s blog.  And all that that first fan did was support Chuck’s efforts by commenting rather than sitting silent. By participating.

It also connects to things I’ve done, directly, as a fan of Jim Butcher’s work.  I’m his friend from before he was Himself and all, but I was also a fan of the stuff he was writing, early on.  I started up a fan site before his first book was out (I’d had the chance to read the manuscript in advance); eventually it became Jim’s official website.  I got a mailing list for his fans going that years down the line got so hectic with the back and forth communication of the community that grew there that it had to transition into an active forum with thousands of posts. No silent fan was I.

But even in the early days, when the site was just a fan site, and the list traffic was steady but not unmanageable, we made sure that as a community we were no silent fans.  A culture of “buy the book for a friend, first one’s free” emerged — a deliberate effort to put our money where our mouths were. Inevitably plenty of the folks who got that first free book went out and bought the rest.  The audience grew.  And we weren’t content to see Jim’s work get invisible in stores.  Several of us did the whole “bookstore commando” thing, where we’d go in, locate the section where Jim’s books were, and rearranged things a little so his books got an outward rather than spine-on facing.  These are all little things, but you get enough people doing it and it adds up, especially as new fans are created and continue the same thing.

This is not to say that we can take credit for Jim’s success, but we definitely voted for that success, definitely participated in it, definitely were some of the words of mouth that pushed him forward.  Today, we don’t need to “face out” Jim’s books — the stores know to do that. Today, we don’t truly need to tell other folks to pick up the books — Jim’s latest ones have been showing up on the New York Times bestseller lists.  But he started small like anyone, and it was loud, participating fans that got him to where he is.

So what small thing are you a fan of, today? And how are you going to be loud about it?

Be no silent fan.

After I discovered Twitter, my blogging in general largely fell by the wayside. Really, I think that’s something that’s good about Twitter, when it comes down to it: like a magnet, it draws away much of the content that really had no business being a blog post in the first place. But I digress.

I’ve been watching with admiration as a few of my friends — I’m thinking of Rob Donoghue in paticular — have taken up the habits of deliberate, daily posting. I’m not sure yet if that’s the thing I’m looking to do here, at least not that “aggressively”.  I can’t switch over to a new mode where my blogging becomes as much of a time-demand as the stuff I’m getting paid to do.  But all the same, given how well it’s been working for Rob, something in the same ballpark will work as an initial goal.

Part of the trick I think is that while blogging is suitable to content too big for twitter, that doesn’t mean it should rise up and demand incredibly lengthy posting.  Or as Rob quite nicely put it:

… the big lesson has been that I need to write less. Not less often, but rather, shorter material.

So that’s going to be my initial aim here at Deadly Fredly.  Short subjects, quick snapshots of thought, done as regularly as I can manage. Once I’ve done enough of these that I can get a grip on how often is reasonable (twice a week? three times? once a day Monday to Friday? the daily insanity of my good friends?), I’ll turn that particular emergent property into a policy of practice.

Baby steps, for now. Stay tuned.