Remember that meme the other day? Well, Random foolishly asked for Urban Nordica! …as it would play out on The Discworld.

This is probably not quite what he was intending but, well…

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Icons. I make them sometimes. You may steal them; I don't mind. Here, have a grid.

Consider these by-nc-sa. You don't have to comment if you take any, but it would be nice.

( Icons: The Authority, DCU, Marvel, Urban Nordica, World of Warcraft and more… )

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Okay, so that Bookhabit thing? Well, the competition closed with us ranked somewhere around #6; high enough to get into Round #3.

Seems like our celebration was premature. I'm just going to dump the email here because it's kinda involved, so…

( The Long Story… )

So, yeah.

At the end of the day turns out Chainbreaker dropped to 24th after all was said and done. Disappointment? I guess so, though I suppose realistically I knew that our chances of winning Round 3 against a batch of non-genre books was fairly slim. C'est la vie.

I'd like to give a big thank-you to anyone and everyone who took the time to support randomredux and I in this; you guys mean the world to us, seriously, so thank you.

I guess the next thing to decide is whether or not to pull Chainbreaker from the site. I've sort of glossed over this before, but I don't like Bookhabit's business model; the idea of them pulling a non-negotiable 60% of our profits when I'm unconvinced that they've earned us any real new exposure has always sat a bit uncomfortably, and from the start we were fairly upfront that we were in things for the competition. So… yeah.

Experiments in advertising, and all that, but we'll always have urbannordica.com.

Thanks again to everyone who came along with us for the ride. And watch this space…

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There's just over three hours of voting left in the Bookhabit Unpublished Competition. It’s been a wild ride, but Chainbreaker is currently holding on to fifth place.

Remember that we need to be in the top ten in order to progress to the next round, so if you haven't voted yet, now's the time to do so!

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First things first: There are only three more days left in the Bookhabit Unpublished Competition. It's been a nail-biting week, and after dropping down to 13th place Chainbreaker has managed to claw its way back up to 8th.

But we still need you help if we're going to remain in the top ten for the next round, so if you're reading this and you haven't voted yet I implore you to please take a few moments and do so. It means a lot.

And to all of you who've already done so, ♥.

My SL skin! Eet eest finished!

Well, finished enough for sale though I'm sure I'll continue to dabble on it; I'm still not entirely happy with the join between the abs and hips, but I think I need some Moar Practice in order to make it better. So for now it's up for sale at OnRez for the low low price of L$50. Huzzah!

And because I needed somewhere to leave my OnRez and SLex dropboxes, I'm now a landowner! A 512 plot in Fenland West called The Haunt. I'd been shopping around for a few days looking for plots and getting more and more despairing at the ugliness of it all. Yesterday, however, I finally got the Lindens to make my buy and, lo, the first (and cheapest) plot I clicked on left me staring right into a neighbour's yard that had been beautifully terraformed with trees and a waterfall/stream and a scattering of throw pillows. Okay, so the floating "beach mansion" on the other side was pretty uninspired, but compared to the previous lots I'd seen this place was bliss. So I staked it out and rezed my treehouse, set up my studio (essentially just a flat L of prims usually coloured either white or black, as a background to take model shots against), put down my drop boxes and patted myself heartily on the back.

While I was at it, I figured out how to edit prims in-game, which was fun. I can now successfully make squares and lay down different textures per side; go me!

Next on the agenda is terraforming the land some more; putting in some rocks and shrubs and a pond (pond is cool). Then getting to work on Loki's kilt thing. Huzzah!

Ganked from amiko-16.

Go here. Click refresh until you hit five quotes that resonate with you, and slap 'em up.

Never deprive someone of hope; it might be all they have.

Quoted From: H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Great minds have purposes, others have wishes.

Quoted From: Washington Irving

Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.

Quoted From: P.J. O'Rourke

The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealised past.

Quoted From: Robertson Davies

Long experience has taught me this about the status of mankind with regard to matters requiring thought: the less people know and understand about them, the more positively they attempt to argue concerning them, while on the other hand to know and understand a multitude of things renders men cautious in passing judgement upon anything new.

Quoted From: Galileo Galilei

And because I can't count:

The welfare of the people is the ultimate law.
(Salus Populi Suprema Est Lex.)

Quoted From: Cicero

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Who likes memes? I do! And severedscythe, apparently.

Comment on this post and I will choose seven interests from your profile. You will then explain what they mean and why you are interested in them. Post this along with your answers in your own journal so that others can play along.

Acafen

A portmanteau of – I suppose – "academic fandom", which I think more-or-less explains what it is. Whenever someone is arguing for the existential lessons in Harry Potter or the deconstruction of gender roles in Battlestar Galactica,¹ they are engaging in acafen. I guess more specifically it's also a semi-derogatory word to refer to the people who do this sort of thing; the same way some conservatives use the term "intellectuals" as an insult.

I think I've always done acafen but I've only had a name and a source for it in the last year or so, thanks mostly to metafandom. The postmodernist in me just loves deconstructing pop culture.

Darkwave

Goth, punk, emo, industrial, cyber, veekay… stuff what is black. Mostly; I'm sure someone's gonna argue my definition ("You can't include emo!") because that's just what we do around here.

I like darkwave precisely because the term is inclusive, no matter what Wikipedia says. Goth getting too velvety and punk too angry? Maybe it's time to try some veekay. Or a little bit of industrial. Column A, column B and all that.

Visual Kei

I'm going to get shot for saying this, but I guess the best way to describe veekay to someone who's never seen it before is that it's sort of like the Japanese version of emo. Of course, the Japanese were doing it first and better, but who's counting. Visual Kei (ヴィジュアル系, literally "visual rock") is another one of those umbrella terms I probably use a bit too umbrella-y. Oh well.

I bought my first Gothic & Lolita Bible fashion magazine in circa 2003; I was sold instantly. I just love the aesthetics of it. And those veekay bands sure do know how to play up the yaoi fanservice!

Urban Nordica

It's my book.

UN started in, um, 2004/2005-ish with this picture of randomredux's character Miriah holding a gun to Loki's head while Sigmund looks on nervously. It was a particularly shit-poor picture, so I'm glad I didn't finish it, but nevertheless it spawned a short fic called "The Wrong Person". randomredux wrote a 'reply post' and it kind of continued on from there. We were originally running it as an RP, but about halfway through we realised that, shit, this might actually be marketable as a novel.

Let's see how that goes, then…

Herebeyond

Oh god. The Herebeyond was the 'series' my grungefur characters came from. It was kind of set halfway between Corner and Et tu, Assiah?. I have a particularly low opinion of the Herebeyond, not just because it wasn't original but because it wasn't even interestingly unoriginal. Almost all the art from the period has gone AWOL, but some of the writing remains preserved forever (as usual).

Still, the Herebeyond occupied a mental space between the end of EtA? and the start of Corner. It has the grungy, glamtrash look of the former and the identity issues of the latter. Actually, the Herebeyond's identity issues were all over the place. Lain is an anthro version of Loki and "father" to the skullkitty, though he doesn't know either of these things. Element is Lokken from EtA?. Loquacia and her brother Loquacious eventually merge to become a single androgynous entity called Loqia, who gives "birth" to the skullkitty by vomiting it up one night. Meanwhile, the skullkitty keeps itself amused by taking off its face to reveal the mask underneath…

It's very deep. Srsly.

Glamdreads

Synthetic dreadlocks, such as these.

I like the look of the ol' synthdread, and I do in fact own one black and red dread wig. I even went through a phase of trying to make the damn thing, but kinda gave up when it turned out to be, a) extremely tedious and b) kinda difficult without a studio. Besides, being extremely anti-social kinda limits the places I could actually wear such things (it used to be uni).

Fun fact: Loki's hair 'naturally' twists itself into a style that is sort of half dreadfall, half heavy ringlets.

Blackstatic

Just an alias I used to use before Infinite Alis (or Alis Infinite, depending on my mood at the time). Mostly I just thought it sounded glamtrashy at the time, and it doesn't have any particularly deep or meaningful associations.

So, there you go.

1. Note: May not be real examples. ^

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Because Corner/Nordica totally needs more fanservice.

This is Lain, the 'human' guise of Loki, though he's looking a little bit wild here. Sketched during the last half-hour of work today and speed-coloured in PhotoShop. Because I can.

Also! Check it out; it's the JLA jumper (minus some members) I found in the mall a couple of weeks ago!

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Imagine how chuffed I was the other day to realise that Lulu does hardback books now too! Schwoit. I think I like this whole book cover production thing. I should totally go into business… or not because, like, that'd be a great way to kill off my fun, hey.

I dunno what we're going to do with these. I ordered a proof – and cleaned up some of the interior formatting issues with both editions that I missed previously – so photos when it arrives. It'll be interesting to check the quality. The v0.1 paperbacks – you remember, the ones with the corrupted text – were interesting in that the interiors were impressive but I was a bit 'meh' over the cover printing. The finish is glossy rather than matte, and the print quality was a bit patchy on the large areas of near-black. Still, what do you want from PoD, right?

So, yeah. No idea what we're going to do with the hardback edition. Give them away to our most dedicated fans? Contest prize? Rewards for people who get us back up from #5 in the comp?¹ Who knows.

I was in the bookstore the other day – as I am almost every lunch – and it occurred to me how many books nowadays are getting released in the 6″ × 9″ paperback format; the size that Lulu uses. I always used to wonder why that size in particular, as opposed to a more standard paperback, and I guess I still do, but… it's interesting. The 6″ × 9″ format seems to have replaced hardbacks for the initial releases of most books; the smaller-sized paperbacks either following later or, occasionally, not at all.

I'm not really sure what relevance that has to anything. The stuff I notice, hey?

1. See how subtle that was? I so schneaky! ^

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Yesterday I typed up this whole big post about the Bookhabit Competition. It was all about advertising and popularity and genre and objective versus subjective critique ("this is good" versus "I like it").

It's all kinda pointless now because the dynamics of the competition have changed so much in the last 24 hours. It's nail-bitingly crazy. Chainbreaker has been sitting in the number one spot for about 12 hours now and randomredux and I are pretty much running around throwing our little arms up in the air making squeeing noises. Because, like, OMG! Number one! Imma gonna go track down every one of you who voted for us and… uh… give you all a great big hug! Because you guys rule, seriously.

It brings a tear to this author's eye.

Seriously, though, this whole experience has gotten me thinking back again to that whole popularity versus quality chestnut. You know, like with Harry Potter or the daily top favs on dA. Something invariably gets popular and then all the critics come out of the woodwork whining about how, "That's not art!" or whatever as if something like that actually matters when it comes to what people like or not. Popular culture, welcome to it and all that. I guess it's kinda niggling on me a bit because while I think (hope) that Chainbreaker is an enjoyable (and marketable) book, I'm in no way under the impression that it's Literature. When I write all I really want to do is entertain people, not fill their heads with MY THOUGHTS ON YAOI SOCIETY. I write stories with punching and explosions and swearing and blood and hot boys regarding each other soulfully, because that's the sort of thing I enjoy reading. And even after all this time, the person I write for is still primarily me.

When we entered this whole Bookhabit thing, our initial plans were – quite explicitly – to attempt to rely on our existing fanbase (friendbase?) in order to get through the first two rounds. I'm totally unapologetic about this, and the deeply cynical part of me is convinced that this is exactly the sort of behaviour Bookhabit was looking for. Because I really don't think this contest is about the authors per se; it's about Bookhabit outsourcing its marketing in the form of a competition. I mean, that's what I'd do if I were in their position and had an extra $5,000 lying around that I thought I could easily recoup by taking 60% of author profits.

Is this unfair to the other authors in the comp? Well, yeah, of course it is. People entered hoping to get chosen on merit and instead they're essentially getting steamrolled by a couple of authors who can pull in a big pool of friends and family. Do I feel guilty about that? Not at all, because randomredux and I have worked hard to build up the networks that we're currently cashing in on. Not just the promo stuff we've been doing for Urban Nordica itself – which has been a not-insubstantial effort on and off over the last three years – but the general friend- and fanbases we've accrued. There's nothing particularly special about what we've done; nothing that other content producers can't replicate.

Note that I'm not even talking quality of product, here. Quality of product is only a fraction of the story; what people like us really need in this fancy twenty-first century world is quality of fans. And that's how we've been marketing Chainbreaker. If you look at the success stories to come out of the long tail – and believe me, I do – it seems almost obvious that what you need to focus on is the fen, not the money. You don't make money in the long tail; at least, not enough to justify the effort you need to put in to get it.¹

I think a lot of long tail producers don't really get this; they sort of assume that because they've got a "quality product" (and, let's face it, who doesn't think their own product is quality) people are just going to magically flock to their Lulu store to buy it. Um. No. The people who make it out of the tail do it because they worked their way out. Okay, so maybe one in a blue moon someone's press release makes it seem like they got magically picked out of the hat but come on, that person is not you. It's like waiting to win lotto to become a millionaire; truth is, most millionaires got that way through hard work (and most lotto winners blow their money after the first 18 months).

This is the stuff I've gotta think about now. Every author knows finding an agent and a publisher is hard work but, I dunno, I reckon this stuff – this engaging-with-the-fanbase thing – is way harder.

Two years ago, I wrote a book. That was the easy part.

1. That being said… ^

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