At the beginning of the three day weekend (Happy Presidents Day!), I opened a poll allowing you, the people, the opportunity to vote and tell me which of my projects you would like to see finished next. I have to say that I’m a little surprised by the results, which can be grouped into “two that got a lot of votes”, “two that didn’t get many votes”, and “the one in the middle.”
The two that got the least votes were “Lapband Book” and “Commodore Games Review Book”. I get why the Lapband book placed where it did as this isn’t really its target audience, but I was surprised that the C64 book ranked as low as it did. I probably should have put more effort into explaining the details of each book/project.
“Finishing the text adventure” landed almost exactly in the middle. I think I have had conversations about text adventures with everyone who voted for me to finish my text adventure, so the people who voted on this one were not all that surprising.
That leaves the “Music Production” book, and the “fictional hacker story”, each of which got a total of eight votes. And so, based on that, here’s what I’m gonna do.
(Not the actual artwork. I made this in 3 minutes.)
01. Finish the text adventure. Yes, I realize it didn’t get the most votes. I’m putting this first because I think I can finish it in about two weeks. For those that asked, the game is being programmed in Inform 6 which will make it playable on most computers and anything with a web browser. Finishing this up (a) gets it out of the way and (b) gives me time to mentally get my next project lined up. And that will be …
02. The Music Production Book. The people who know the stories behind this one all agree that it should be a good read. It’ll be funny and personal, in the vein of Commodork, but as Earl noted should have a slightly wider reader base than a book dedicated to old computer bulletin boards. When I finish this one up, it’ll be time for …
03. The fictional hacker book. No promises of quality on this one, guys. I’ve written lots of non-fiction over the years and my share of short stories, but nothing fictional of any length. I’ll try my best on this one — I’ve got some good ideas, but I’ve had trouble in the past linking a few good ideas into something the length of a novel.
The goal is to crank out all three of these within 2011.
Now that the voting’s over, I’d be interested to hear on why you didn’t vote for what you didn’t vote for. Maybe that will help me with my future marketing and pitches.
yeah! I am not disenfranchised
I was going to come here to vote for the C64 book. I guess I’m a little late haha.
I picked the lapband because I thought that was going to be the most insightful look into something that not everyone can emphasize with, but that also resonates with a lot of people too. It would have been the most introspective thing you probably have ever written. I am very familiar with your recording stories with Oil Filter and the such, so and I know they’re funny, but I just wanted to see something different.
Oh and i didn’t vote for C64 reviews and text adventure stuff because I just have zero interest in those. I’m not real big on retro gaming, so not much for me in those realms.
I think you are a better writer as a narrative writer than fiction, so I prefer the non-fiction topics to the fiction idea.
I personally don’t read much for pleasure in my spare time, and I prefer humor. Plus, I am really interested in music; and I know how funny you are. I AM interested in the title “Hanger 22.” To what does it refer?