Above is some new AI art I generated using NightCafe's 'artistic' engine. The image was created with the oil painting below and the prompt 'Standing against an abstract background.' Although the painting is a figure, I didn't label it NSFW due to the abstract nature of the art. Hopefully you're not offended. The painting itself was done on canvas and measures 18 x 24 inches. It currently resides in a private collection.
Today was fine. I just worked and ran errands, skipping the coffee shop due to the sub zero temps. Now I'm waiting for the bathroom to be vacant so I can shower. Elsewhere in the house, my uncle and his girlfriend recently decided to convert our dining room into a Christmas extravaganza with a big dinner on the 24th. I'm obligated to attend and it'll probably be okay, but this thwarts my previous plan of doing nothing.
Part of me is still in shock over having met my goal of ten novels in five years. Part of me is processing other big changes happening in my life, including new love and the hospitalization of an elderly relative. In general, I feel more hopeful about the future than I have in a long time. More hopeful, but also acutely aware of the serious challenges I'm facing. Not the least of which is how to effectively market my books.
My tentative plan for doing this seems like a long shot. I'm looking at doing a fundraiser to raise the funds to pay a marketing company to generate media mentions and attention, which would theoretically translate into book sales. Part of the fundraiser may be for having high quality audiobooks produced. Working backwards from there, my next steps become apparent.
In order to run a successful fundraiser, I'll need more supporters than I currently have. A dedicated author website and a high quality shareable video are in the works, but getting new people to look at these things will be tricky. So I'm thinking deeply about how best to reach them.
I've all but abandoned the idea of signing over my IP to a company I control and raising funds by selling shares. I'd do this if the US was a Libertarian paradise. I'm even exploring the idea of trying this with Prospera, on the Honduran island of Roatan, outside the regulatory parameter of the Securities and Exchange Commission. I was recently tapped for advice on possible Prospera NFTs, which is the only reason it's on my radar. Yet realistically, incorporating a company in Prospera's private fiefdom probably isn't happening.
One thing I've been thinking about today is how insulated people have become in their social networks. Big Tech manufactured this situation at the algorithmic level, presumably for advertising purposes. Most people walking around right now live in their own little worlds, reliant on the facts of those worlds, which may not be universally recognized. The only common ground is physical reality, and even information about that may be grossly distorted or misrepresented altogether by social media's selective presentations of reality.
This issue is clearly related to the difficulty of expanding my readership. With everyone living in different information environments, what might connect one such environment with another, cutting across the boundaries established by corporate algorithms? I don't know the answer to this question, but it's what I'm thinking about.
Read my novels:
- Small Gods of Time Travel is available as a web book on IPFS.
- The Paradise Anomaly is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- Psychic Avalanche is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- One Man Embassy is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- Flying Saucer Shenanigans is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- Rainbow Lullaby is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- The Ostermann Method is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- Blue Dragon Mississippi is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
See my NFTs:
- Small Gods of Time Travel is a 41 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt that goes with my book by the same name.
- History and the Machine is a 20 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt based on my series of oil paintings of interesting people from history.
- Artifacts of Mind Control is a 15 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt based on declassified CIA documents from the MKULTRA program.