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So I'm writing a book.   About Empire Avenue as a matter of fact.   Honestly,   it is slow going.   EAv is evolving and changing so rapidly that even in the early pages of  draft,  I've had to re-write sections several times due to changes in the rules and procedures.  

I find myself very taken with Empire Avenue as I become more and more involved with and spend more and more time hanging out with great friends like Holly, Jake, Suspiria, Anise, Gina, Casey, Dirk, Scott and Ryan.   Not to mention Shannon, Travis, Hank, Carole, Stu, Sheree, Robert, Peter,  Mike, Paulo, Cyril, Caleb and Adriel.   Or Nakeva, Sharon, Michael and Jeffrey and so on and so on.   Honestly,  I've met so many people from all over the world since joining Empire Avenue that I have to mark it as a life changing experience.  My one gripe is that Empire Avenue can be very confusing to newcomers.   So much so that it  is even a bit off-putting.   Even to people who have mastered Twitter.     Which is why I decided to write a book specifically directed at Empire Avenue newcomers.   I am trying to be definitive without being verbose.   Authoritative without ever talking down to anyone.    A book that is short, useful and cheap.

I hope to have the beta edition  (this is going to be an eBook and I plan to number the frequently updated editions like software) available for sale by mid July.    If you would like to receive a copy of the beta edition, not at the amazingly low list price of  79 cents,  but instead absolutely free of charge,  please sign up for my very low volume mailing list-- using the widget in the right sidebar.   The first message I will send to this list will be when the eBook is published and ready for download,  as I said hopefully in early to mid July.   After that you can expect that I will write to you at most every four to six weeks.   (Yeah,  I am going a bit overboard to avoid being spammish*)

Islands in the Pacific

So you may have noticed that I have not been faithful about the daily #Trust30 assignments.   Honestly,  one of them just did ot speak to me, and I just didn't have time for another.  But this one--which was actually for yesterday does speak to me:

Travel by Chris Guillebeau

If we live truly, we shall see truly. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Not everyone wants to travel the world, but most people can identify at least one place in the world they’d like to visit before they die. Where is that place for you, and what will you do to make sure you get there?

My response:

There are of course a huge number of places on my list of places I'd love to see before I die.   A remarkably large number of them are islands in the Pacific ocean.     In October 2001,  my late spouse and I took a long-planned and saved-for trip to Hawaii.    I got laid off from my job with Earthlink shortly after 9/11,  and there was at times a dream-like quality that I've come to realize is actually common to many trips to the remarkably beautiful Hawaiian islands.    Most visitors fall in love with Hawaii.   Those whose travel agents book them a VIP tour at the Polynesian Cultural Center-- about a two hour drive from Wakikii Beach,  may develop a serious longing to see a number of other islands in the Pacific.

Somewhere I have a photograph of Joel and me,  each under an arm of a big man from the island nation Tonga.    He has tatoos all over both of his huge arms and his handsome smile and beaming goodwill  remind me of just one of the remarkable people whom meeting set me off on a journey of reading about and developing a someday travel list that includes Tonga,  the Maori New Zealand,   Rarotonga,  Easter Island, Tahiti, Bora Bora and also the Aleutian Islands of Alaska.     It is not one great trip I dream of, but rather years of being able to travel to these remote and far away islands,  which have come to call to me.   Honestly,   I don't know if I will ever have the coincidence of time, money and health to get to even a fraction of the places on my islands in the Pacific list.   But it's nice to have big dreams.  

Revisiting: What Is A Blog?

There's been a  very interesting discussion today on a an Empire Avenue-related Facebook group.    Adriel Hampton posted in the X-Bar that he was disappointed that Empire Avenue seems to be permitting "content farms".  

On Empire Avenue,  the seemingly simple question "What Is A Blog?"  can be anything but simple to answer and there was a spirited discussion about, well the morality of having a Tumblelog that consists of embedding videos from YouTube and adding just a one line quote from the lyrics and two tags,  connected to Empire Avenue as a "blog".

I'm a writer.   For years I updated my book review blog about one or more books three to five times per week.    I am very well aware of the difference in terms of time, effort and skill between researching and writing a professional quality three hundred to five hundred word blog article vs re-blogging a picture or a video that someone else has already created.    And yet,  I found myself arguing on behalf of folks like,  well myself,  who regularly "blog" twenty or thirty music videos every day.   It is,  I believe,  a curatorial endeavor.    My music tastes are a bit narrow,  a bit odd and rather well-defined.    I listen to select pop/rock music from the 1960's--1980's for the most part.     And the fact is that I have through Tumblr made a few friends who share at least some of my tastes in music and tell me they enjoy having my videos in their Tumblr stream.   And every day it seems,  there are people who Like and Re-blog the videos that I post.   It seems to me that if what I am posting is reaching out and connecting with an audience,  my posts create real value in my personal social network.     Which is why I don't in any way feel that I am "cheating"  on Empire Avenue.

My friend Jake,  whose Tumblr curates amazing landscape photographs from all over the world pointed out that he has made real friendships through sharing amazing pictures-- which he pointed out he spends a great deal of time selecting and in the cases of photographs he takes himself editing.   Jake argues, and I am inclined to agree,  that he does put as much time and effort into his photo blog as any of us writers do on cranking out those 300--500 word posts that many people do in fact find challenging to do more than once a day.     One thing that many folks in that discussion did seem to agree on, is that Empire Avenue should regard Tumblr as another content site,  like Twitter and Facebook, etc.  rather than as "blogs".    As my new friend  Roger Hoyt and I agreed-- we're supposed to be networking and making friends--not arguing over what a blog is.   So how about a nice, non-spammy campaign to convince Dups and the EAv team to make Tumblr another top level network.

cc: @adriel  @dups

Today I Face The Future

Today is day 2 in the #Trust30 challenge at ralphwaldoemerson.me.   Today's prompt from Liz Danzico:

Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. The force of character is cumulative. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

If ‘the voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tracks,’ then it is more genuine to be present today than to recount yesterdays. How would you describe today using only one sentence? Tell today’s sentence to one other person. Repeat each day.

My sentence:

Today I face the future,  scarred by my battles with the past,  weary from my encounters with reality,  yet ready to deal with whatever comes my way and as always hopeful for a brighter tomorrow.

15 Minutes To Live

I'm participating in #Trust30.    #Trust30 is an online initiative and 30-day writing challenge that encourages you to look within and trust yourself. Use this as an opportunity to reflect on your now, and to create direction for your future. 30 prompts from inspiring thought-leaders will guide you on your writing journey.    

Today's prompt by Gwen Bell:

We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and perfect persons. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

You just discovered you have fifteen minutes to live.

1. Set a timer for fifteen minutes.
2. Write the story that has to be written.

-----------My Story----------

I should be in New Orleans.   When the judge told me I was to be executed in fifteen minutes,  I found myself thinking about my home town.   Thinking about the taste of a shrimp po boy, dressed with lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise;  of sticky, muggy, HOT nights, riding the Zephyr at Pontchartrain Beach.   Remembering Mardi Gras parades,  Hurricanes at Pat O'Briens and the ever-changing spectacle of people-watching on Bourbon Street.   I found myself thinking that if I had never left New Orleans,  I never would have ended up  being executed for breathing without a license on a space habitat no one back home ever heard of.     I tried to remember the taste of oysters Bienville,  to hear the sound of the streetcars sling-slanging down St. Charles Avenue, to recall the wonderful iciness of a chocolate snowball on hot summer day.   

As the air-tight door closed behind me I pictured myself as a child,  on a day trip on the paddle-wheel riverboat Mark Twain,  recalled my senior prom at the Roosevelt Hotel and pictured the double shotgun house where I grew up on Iberville Street.  As I tried to remember the names of the brother and sister who had lived down on the corner,   were they Dawn and Ken,  or were they Frank and Ruth, or...the air tight door ahead of me opened,  and I was spaced.

Social Media Plan

My friend Holly is participating the We Blog Better guest posting contest this month.    Her article  Failure To Plan, Planning To Fail: Why You Need A Social Media Plan  was just the inspiration I needed,  after all these years socializing online to come up with my very own social media plan:

Continue participating on Twitter, Facebook and Empire Avenue. Continue to attract new friends and followers. Continue policy of accepting all friend requests on Facebook but only selectively follow back on Twitter.

Begin getting people to sign up for my new e-mail list on Mail Chimp.

Continue writing e-book about Empire Avenue. Send a link for free e-book to everyone on list, once it is published.

Write more articles for BrooWaha.com It appears these articles continue to attract regular readers month after month, making the site a good place to create content and backlinks.

My plan contains NO numbers. No metrics. But it is specific and achievable and I believe it will enable me to further my goals.    It seems to me I meet so many metrics-obsessed folks on Empire Avenue these days.   They are SO involved in how many days it will take them to reach a 100 share price,  that many of them seem to quite fail to notice that they are getting their share prices out of sync with their daily dividends.    Reaching a 100 share price in less than a month is wonderful,  but if your daily dividends are only .50,   you are a very poor value proposition and certainly not displaying the kind of understanding and savvy that a "social media professional"  would want to display.

I am definitely Not a social media professional,  not even the copy/paste variety.   But I believe that I am doing well on Empire Avenue.   I am so pleased with all of the great people I've met and I am definitely continuing to have fun.   I've said before that Having Fun is my first priority,  and honestly I place all of my social media goals above secondary to it.

Were You Planning To Fail?

Today,  you rally need to go read my friend Holly Jahangiri's guest post on We Blog Better:

 Failure To Plan, Planning To Fail: Why You Need A Social Media Plan

Holly is fantastic writer and blogger who does an amazing job of making each interaction feel up close and personal,  yet she still manages the trick of seeming to be everywhere at once.   Whether you're a social media wiz with 20,000 Twitter followers or a brand newbie blogger who is still puzzled by  'tweet' as a verb,  Holly's most excellent post will tell you things you really need to know and link you to some of the best information out there.  

Once you've read Holly's piece,  be sure to leave her a comment and join in the discussion.