Fear, Loathing, & Publishing

To sleep or to die, that is the question.

Day Five of vacation begins with something of a whimper. My nose just keeps running which is finally beginning to make me think I have a cold or something as opposed to it being my ever-present allergies. Or, it could be the allergies given that the weather has been unseasonably warm. Anyway, vacation began as most of them do: I left work all wound up and whoopin' and then tried to plan for other work for the whole vacation and then felt overwhelmed and then decided to do nothing since it was vacation and now my immune system is compromised enough from work/stress that now my allergies and/or a cold (see above) have finally kicked in. Even Mel(ody) was so disgusted with my rolling around in exhaustion that she went up to Brutha Drain's last night to watch the Cowboys game. (It was only on satellite TV so I listened to it here on the old dairy barn radio.) It was quite the thriller.

If I had anything else to say I would say it. But I don't. So there it is.

Goodbye.  

You get the idea. Maybe. (Or maybe not.) Who cares! I'm on vacation until next year, baby!

My God. I almost can't believe it: I'm on three weeks of vacation. This is like the first vacation kind of vacation and/or time I've taken off that will be worth a damn since I moved out of the English department. Every other time I've taken off either there was all kinds of work being left half-finished waiting impatiently for me or I would be so sick and/or worn out that the time off wasn't worth the hassle. But, this semester, finally, we got our work done exactly on schedule and the rest of the crew is back at the office working busily for the next week and a half. There it is. I was just screaming at the top of my lungs cranking Witch up on the G-Mobile's stereo as I left the campus. I mean, why can't leaving at five o'clock every day be like that? It seems like it ought to be able to be that way. But it's just not. Before I left I gave the various cacti that Mel(ody) had potted to various folks. The DS (Departmental Secretary) was kind enough to get me a 20-pack of Bud Light. Now those are the kind of people you like to have work for you! 

Then, my buddy who just got shitcanned by the school came by the house last night. He had finally been let back in to his old office and was able to get his stuff out. We bought him dinner and he crashed here until taking off to Paris, TX, this morning. Who knows what's going to happen to that poor bastard? 

I brought tons of new publishing books home to read over the break. I have several internet marketing books but the best one so far is called something like The Web-Savvy Writer. Basically, Mel(ody) and I were talking this week and now that I've gone through all aspects of book publishing from beginning to end and am getting a handle on the business/marketing end, I think I'm finally ready to start my own small publishing company. Knowing what I've figured out, I think we can get the company, its Web site, e-commerce site, other odds and ends of organization stuff and a book published for between $1000 and $1500. The first main thing--and Mel(ody) and I have been kicking this around amongst ourselves and a few other folks--is to find some content to publish that we can really get behind. She has an idea for a supplemental reader for her history classes that would probably instantly break even. I'm wanting to publish post-apocalyptic stories of despair, loss and . . . more loss. Plus, at Books-A-Milion today, I bought a copy of Starting a Small Business in an edition which is, happily, specific to our state. After the lawn mowing service catastrophe, I have a great desire to never pay a goddamn $4,000 tax lien to the State (or anyone else) ever again. Man, that was a serious case of the dumbass.