Giando Sigurani's Online Empire

Well, I kinda wanted do something for April Fool's Day, but I realized that I'd just be rehashing a frankly quite tired tradition that even old people don't find funny anymore.  I mean, if the Daily Sun, my former workplace, still does it, how clever can it be?

So instead, I'm going to give you a present! What is it, you ask? Why, it's only an ebook version of The Devil Still Has My Lawnmower, of course! I've been playing around with SIGIL, the Epub editor of the gods (or at least the really BORING gods who like spreadsheets and XHTML), and while I haven't mastered it yet, the file I've just produced is pretty damned satisfactory if I say so m'self. There's even a table of contents!

You know that post earlier about how people want art but that they hate paying artists?

I was talking about me, of course!

Case in point: The Mad Scientist, a short story that's being distributed by a for real publisher (Books To Go Now) is being given away FOR FREE! You can go and get your DRM-riddled copy RIGHT NOW! And I won't even judge you for it very much.

Okay, it won't be YOURS, because it's Amazon, and you're not buying a BOOK, just a license to read it. You can always use a DRM stripper and Calibre in conjuction to MAKE it yours, though! Go ahead! It's OK!

It's difficult for people lacking humility such as myself to admit that they, like all humans, have limitations. One cannot be an expert in everything for the same reason one cannot live in twelve countries at once. You've got to pick your battles, and your areas of accomplishment accordingly.

One of the disadvantages of being a brilliant creative ultra- prodigy is that brilliant creative ultra- prodigies don't often have time to produce their great works as fast as they can conceive them.  I unfortunately don't live in the year 5067, when there will be machines capable of producing fully realized novels complete with likeable characters and coherent motivations just by feeding its basic premise into the input slot.

No. I have to begrudgingly hammer away on physical keyboards, pushing my work upon my friends as if they were drugs (sorry about that), revising, re-revising, and telling myself that it will totally be done in six months even though it's absolutely and definitely been longer than five years since I first said that.

And so the term the back burner was coined for, or possibly by, creative types such as myself. There might be an infinite amount of ideas in the world, but only a finite amount of time with which to work on them. So we put our works on the "back burner," hoping that it's the sort of dish that will still be good after a long simmer instead of, say, a trip to the mental microwave.

I was at a poetry reading recently, when the hostess started handing out pads of papers and markers, telling us to write something, right there, on the spot, to be read that very night. Twenty minutes later this came out. I'm told it's good, but I just think it's silly.

Okay, I admit it. I'm not very good at coming up with blog posts. This is partly because I don't, as a rule, enjoy writing non-fiction, and aside from the manufactured ego problem and the short stories, most of the things I write about in this blog are 100% true. Or at least in the high-90s. So I guess I'll just briefly list a few things that have been on my mind lately.

... But I applied much girlfriend-affection, sleep, Ibuprofen, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (it's her favorite show), and I am whole again.

I will have another post soon. It will probably be about how I'm better than everyone (totally am).

If there exists any "fans" of this story... I assure you I am not one of them.

8 Ball and Ouija Board

By Giando Sigurani