I am happy to announce another of my spin-off sites has gone live this evening: GroovyGizmo.com

What I like most about ConDFW is … well, that it’s so close to where I live. But besides that, it’s a literary con. It’s for us writers.

I spent the whole weekend hanging out with my good friend Bill, who’s a Campbell-nominated SF author as well as the president of the Dallas chapter of the National Space Society. Day 2 found me hob-knobbing with NASA guys, space enthusiasts, and preparing for the NSS room party, while outside a huge dust storm made the Dallas sky look like doomsday. This segues right in with the fact that I spent some fun quality time with the Four Redheads of the Apocalypse. Yeah. Not only did they do interpretive dance to my reading Friday night, but Saturday they all four signed a copy of their book for me.

Yard Dog Press Sci-Fi really does kick ass. If Selina Rosen had her way, SF&F authors would all be more like rock stars. How can I argue with that?

After the panels and dinner, we proceeded to party far into the night … er, morning … and I ended up staying in the party room. Bill and I got up this morning, hit Starbucks, and then jumped right back into it with another NASA panel.

Then lunch, then the final panel of the day. This one interestingly enough was titled “The State of the Industry” which, instead of being about NASA (this was a SF&F con, after all) was about the publishing industry. In a gesture of unintentional but deadly accurate symbolism, only one of the panelists, Teresa Patterson, bothered to show up, and so she grabbed Robert Aspin to step in and help her. She and Robert then proceeded to paint pretty much the same picture I did a few posts back: print publication is choking to death, and while it’s never really going to die, the sad fact is there is far less money in it.

So I stand firm on my resolution. The future of writing is online, and the money is in contextual advertising. You do your best, write your best, edit your best, and you GIVE IT AWAY. Hopefully this draws in readers who will click ads. Your pay comes from the ad clicks.

Just got back from a rowdy night at ConDFW, where I was initiated into the Yard Dog Press family by doing a reading while other authors did interpretive dance to my story.  The story?  A spoof of Alien called It Came From Willy McCracken’s Buttocks, appearing in the upcoming anthology, Houston, We’ve Got Bubbas.

High art, yes indeed.  Thanks go out to all my friends there who supplied moral (and immoral) support.

Going back again tomorrow for more hijinks with the gang.

The way the publishing industry stands today, we’re on the cusp of a new era.  I believe there will always be books and magazines, but they’re competing with the Internet now instead of just each other, and so many of them will wither and die.  This will leave fewer markets for print, and less money to be made for the publishers.  Publishing on paper is evolving into something completely different.

If you want to support yourself by writing (other than writing for hire, which is basically what I do right now … and it’s more editing than writing, by the way) you have to look to see where the publishing money is.  And here’s what I’ve seen:  Google AdSense ads.

To me, Google AdSense has become my path toward world domination. Or at the very least, a nice second income.

My first big experiment with AdSense was GroovyMojo.com.  I made several mistakes when setting it up but it has been a learning experience, and so it served its purpose.  The problem with GroovyMojo is that I tried to incorporate several different interests in one place, which made it a kind of grab-bag website … and had no clear direction.  People look at it and say, “Cool, but … what’s it about?”

That being said, I’ve made more money on that website over the last year than I have in traditional publishing.  Not a lot, mind you, but more. 

Here’s the thing:  writing takes a lot of time and effort.  In traditional publishing, and here I’m speaking of fiction writing, the things you write have only about a 1 in 30 chance of being published, and even then, you only have a 1 in 8 chance of being paid for it (my odds, your results may vary).  I’ve given that up, at least for the time being.  I’ll still work on the occasional story if I feel a passion for it, which includes my current novel, but it’s not going to be my main focus.

What I’ve discovered is that all a writer needs to do is find something (or things) for which you have a passion, set up a web site for that one thing, and concentrate your writing efforts there.  Fill that website full of good, fun, and hopefully timeless content (something that will still be relevant 5 years from now).  Make it so people will come there and read over and over.  Then put contextual Google AdSense ads on the site, unobtrusive and on the side lines, so that after they read something, hopefully an ad will be sitting right beside it for a product or service that they’re truly interested in … especially just having read your article.

They click the ad, and you make money.  The more people who read, the more will end up clicking.  The more clicking, the more money you make.

Set up several websites like this, each one corresponding to one of your passions, and you’ll spend all your time researching and writing about things you are truly interested in, and be paid for it at the same time.  When this happens, it will suddenly feel like you no longer work for a living … you’re just following your passions!

Steve Pavlina over at his website makes five figures A MONTH doing this.  I figure if I could only make 1/10 of what he does, it would be worth it.

So anyway, that’s my next big experiment, the Phase II in my quest for world domination.  I’ve set up five new websites under the umbrella of “GroovyMojo Media” and one of them, MojoLizard.com, went live today.

Yes, it’s about lizards.  I love lizards.  I think they’re some of the coolest little creatures.  And oddly enough there is a huge marketing potential surrounding them because of the multi-million dollar reptile pet industry.

The other websites that will be coming online over the next few months will be about beer, coffee, gizmos and gadgets, and happiness.  Yes, happiness, a website devoted to the study and promotion of being happy.

So, that’s what’s up with me.  What’s new with you?

So, I bought my younger daughter’s Barnes & Noble gift card from her (she wanted cash) and now I find myself there, sitting in the adjacent Starbucks with a coffee, cup of soup, and a stack of books. Five books to be exact, only one of which I can afford. These are the titles in the stack:

• The Anti-Gravity Handbook (3rd Edition) by David Hatcher Childress
• Programing the Universe by Seth Lloyd
• A Vision of Future Space Transportation by Tim McElyea
• The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil
• Life As We Do Not Know It by Peter Ward
• Parallel Worlds by Michio Kaku

I came here specifically to get Programing the Universe, but there are so many fascinating books in the Science section that I decided to pick up a selection and look through them before making a decision. And so now I’ll enjoy my soup before it gets cold then do just that.

One bowl of vegetable soup later…

I made my decision via process of elimination:

The Anti-Gravity Handbook: it turned out to be nothing but a rehash of UFO conspiracy theories, not anything to do with actual research, and so it’s just too kooky for my interests.

Programing the Universe: about the universe as a giant computer, which I find fascinating, but it’s too expensive … must wait for paperback edition.

A Vision of Future Space Transportation: rehash of information I have been reading about for years.

Life As We Do Not Know It: fascinating book about the search for extraterrestrial life, but also a rehash of information I have been reading about for years.

Parallel Worlds: about parallel universes, the possibility and proof thereof, all incredibly fascinating and it would have been my choice had it been more relevant to something I am already working on.

The Singularity is Near: about the impending merger of man and machine intelligence, incredibly fascinating and very relevant to a current project. The winner!

I’m keeping Kaku’s Parallel Worlds on my list, as well as Programing the Universe.

Now if that gift card I bought from my daughter turns out to be worthless I am going to be pissed.

Oh my God, it’s 2007! Wow. I didn’t really expect to live this long.

I managed to send a bunch of stories out before the end of the year, and need to send several more out now that the new year is upon us … because now is when they started accepting submissions again. In fact, I should do that tonight. But, no, I also should really go to bed early because I need to go into the office tomorrow. No working from home for me on Friday. At least not in the morning.

Speaking of work… A big “Hello!” to anyone who might be visiting from Linden Labs. Hire me! You won’t regret it!

Ahem. Yes. Anyway, I have a new writing instrument. An HP iPaq with Windows Mobile 5.0, a 500-something Mhz processor, gigs of RAM, etc. It’s replacing my iPod, which is gone. Also gone is my trusty old Sony Clie.

Gotta love eBay. Out with the old, in with the new.

One thing I love about this iPaq is that it has WiFi, and I’ve loaded Skype on it, and anywhere near a wireless network it becomes a phone, and a really good phone at that. In fact it’s a better phone than a web browser. It’s also a great little writing machine, being that it does Graffiti better than even a Palm device.

Progress has slowed on the current novel. There’s been lots of personal events, and holidays, and all that. But really, I need to get back to writing.

And so that’s about it for this update! If you want any juicy personal stuff you have to email me for it. This is my professional blog, after all.

I have always had a fascination with writing instruments.

It’s funny how things come full circle.  I remember loving a specific mechanical pencil, which in my early teens I turned out pages upon pages of scribbled words.  Later I developed a love of beautiful fountain pens, and assembled a collection of them … long since lost.

I had a portable manual typewriter that I used for a few years before acquiring a coveted IBM Selectric of my very own.  I used that until, much later, getting myself an Olivetti that had — oh wonder of wonders! — two lines of memory that allowed me to hit a backspace key and ERASE TYPOS without having to resort to Liquid Paper.  This typewriter, in turn, had a parallel port on the back of it, and after getting my first computer (an IBM PCjr with IBM Writing Assistant word processing software) I was able to use it as a daisy wheel printer!

Which was far too slow.

Printers went from daisy wheel to dot matrix, to ink jet, and to finally my very own HP Laserjet.  IBM Writing Assistant made way for WordPerfect, which after years finally crumpled under the might of Microsoft Word.  My IBM PCjr died, being replaced by a computer I built myself.  I upgraded that computer over, and over, and over, until finally I’d decided it was cheaper just to replace it … being that computers had become such a cheap commodity.

This was followed by a series of laptops and PDAs.  I love my PDA!

Ironically I ended up finding a place on eBay that sold beautiful, high-quality fountain pens at bargain prices, and bought myself a couple of them.  I can’t describe the joy and satisfaction I get making solid lines of smoothly flowing Higgins Eternal permanent black ink.  Each letter a small piece of art, each word crafted as a picture.  Even if I end up crumpling the paper and tossing it away, the joy still remains.

And so on many of my current shorter works, including this one, I write the first draft with a fountain pen.

I keep saying to my friends and family that I intend to stop writing genre fiction, but I realized now that is not going to happen. Most of my fiction ideas are either SF or Fantasy. They’re the ones I really get excited about, too.

All the other stuff I write is based on my own life, and that isn’t fiction. It’s fictionalized, but not fiction.

I love SF and Fantasy stories and ideas. It’s just that I hate reading 95% of the stuff that’s being published. I don’t know if that makes me a snob or if I’m just some sort of literary jerk, but I don’t think it’s good enough. I’ve been spoiled by some very excellent writers, and they don’t write enough, or they’re dead. Or some of their latest stuff is drivel and I’m disappointed.

It makes me want to be more publisher and less writer. But I’ve never seen myself going into that field professionally. Ever. The fact that I publish a SF website is more the result of an experiment than anything else.

So, as for my fascination with the fantastic, I don’t know if I’m doomed or blessed. I love the fantastic. I love the surreal. I want more.

But I also want it to be very well done.

Is that too much to ask?

In a rare turn of events, someone wrote about me. A columnist I’ve been following on and off for years named Michael Fitzgerald in my old home town of Stockton, California did a nice little write up about yours truly in his blog. I’m honored!

Read it here quick before he changes his mind and takes it down: RecordNet Blogs

I’m yet “another crazy Stockton writer.” Big smiles here. I like that description.

To all my friends and family out in Stockton, let me be the first to wish you “Happy Holidays!”