The Diamond Island

I finished the Shiva message bracelet and rang that sucker in the sacred woods. The crown-grove with all the humongous trees that go all the way up.

It’s taken a long time for me to settle in to the fact that I’m whole, that I’m myself again. I really never expected this. I was resigned to doing the best I had with what I had left, because somehow I had found a trail within myself.

I think about my past self, and if he could only know what I’m feeling now. What I’m seeing. All I can do is send him encouragement and dreams to strengthen his being. I bless him with all my heart and soul, his desperate muddled seeking to understand and find himself whole.

What’s the blood of the dragon taste like? It’s like a heavy metal concert where you’re both audience and performer at the same time. You taste your own shadow and realize you’re only deceiving yourself if you think that by chasing an image of yourself that you can escape what you are. This is, in a strange way, a relief.

I’d thought the Shiva message bracelet was something you rang when you were done and then you got a message, but now it occurs to me that it’s more about sending a message—that I’m done with the quest. I’m letting good ol’ Shiva know that I’ve completed the assignment.

Now I’m sitting here, letting the change sink in.

Here is the PDX Gingerbread Witch Spider Cookie that I ate.

Sickly sweet with a hint of spice, but definitely not nice. I got a small stomach quese-out after eating her. You’d have to be on serious business to eat a cookie like this.

Looking at one of my old tarot card paintings, I see the word “haiaa” written randomly in the folds of the volcano. Searching for the word on the Internet, the first thing that comes up is that in India it’s a word for “become”.

There’s a great horned owl outside. He’s established a territory in the woods around the secret treehouse I’ve been hiding in. Identified him and what he was doing through the sounds he makes.

Lots of woodpeckers too. Pileated, Northern Flicker, and two others I can’t identify yet. They like the food put out for them, and the plants all around on the porch that make the feeding seem safe.

I obtained a Bee Adventure Kit for the mason bees and put it together. It sits outside amongst the plants waiting for arrivals. A friend of mine also donated a bee hive to a struggling family in my name. More beekeeper experience points.

Lunar full moon in Scorpio releasing so much supportive energy towards me that I felt extra-energzied. Frankie was an absolute terror, escaped the treehouse and had to be recaptured—her favorite game. She needed lots of attention and a walkies to finally settle her down to the OMG level.

Got some horoscope clues about my life destiny. Very strong indicators that what I want match up with the things I’m here for. Getting there is the part that’s unknown to me. Clear goals, not so clear path.

Wore my Shiva message bracelet in the wooded park today, as K and I made our rounds along the crowded trail. I don’t want to be destroyed, but I’m also feeling like the trap I’m still in is greater than my abilities to escape from.

I don’t know what comes next, exactly. Now that I’ve faced my fears and vanquished my dragon, regained myself—deliverance is coming. The form it will take, still unknown. Brontosaur, my trusty UFO, flies on towards home. Soon I’ll know what comes next!

Everybody involved in the industrial production of mediopoly goods (movies, music, books, news) has been wondering what the new model will be for transactions in the age of the Internet.

There isn’t one. There isn’t going to be one.

There has to be one, right? How else will people get paid? Silly Rabbit, the ownership doesn’t care about that. The people who do the work—authors, rock stars, journalists, cameramen—they can all eat cake.

What about the executives and the shareholders and…and…you know, the patricians who have a little bit of ownership?

Nope, sorry ol’ chap. Not just professionals, freelancers, and working stiffs.

Yes, even the companies themselves are going to lose capacity. The movie industry, the publishing industry, the newspapers, all of it is going to shrivel up and break into little cubes. Taking any patricians invested in them down into the black gulf of unprofitability and layoffs with dramatic gnashing of teeth for the commentators.

The reason is simple: The world is going broke and nobody has as much money as they used to.

Rich people too—they’re holding onto their profits for dear life, not giving an inch—but the other 99% of the world didn’t have much to begin with and that’s all been tapped out.

All that’s left to take the hit are standards of living.

As they begin to drop all around the more developed countries, the industries that depended on income from the surplus of leisure spending workers had, well they shrink too. The CEOs of these industries are surprised because they thought they were part of the club. But hey guv’nor, it’s just business. Sorry to hear your son won’t be going to a top school anymore.

All the models that have been proposed so far—paywalls, pay as you go, subscription, kickstarters—they’re all dead ends. People got no money, dude! At best all you’re doing is finding efficiency techniques to redistribute whats left of a declining wage class with fewer dollars to spare.

The Internet is built around a distribution model, not an exchange model. Transactions that slow down the flow lose energy and crash out of the psychological lane of traffic.

Into this setup comes cheap entertainment from the Internet—and it’s all going to be free, all of it—mass produced and easy to make in more variations than you can consume. All you pay is your monthly Internet fee and that’s it.

Oh wait, that’s already here.

Pirates are just a bogeyman, something propped up there for people to blame like communism. The stockholders have to be told something, right?

The mediopoly companies will shift the rising cost of copyright enforcement and surveillance on the providers through the government. Mainly because they’re losing money and can’t afford to keep suing everyone. Yes, even they’re crowdsourcing the old fashioned way—on the public’s bruised back.

How long can they keep that up before they can’t afford the political favors anymore? How much can the government enforce when there’s less tax base to support the enforcement? It’s a turtle race to the bottom.

The providers can raise the prices, but again people are getting poorer and the variety of content naturally overwhelms big business content. If I can’t afford the latest HBO special I’ll just buy the craphound version off Netflix.

That’s another thing. There is no quality and there never was. There’s only your crap and my quality. You can argue that 3D Casablanca is better than Lord of the G Strings, but at the end of the day people will consume what they can afford. Fidelity loses to convenience when you can’t buy a Betamax.

People don’t want a good story. They want a story they believe is good.

That makes connection the only game to play in this environment. Some folks sense this and focus their attention on “reaching the fans” as if this was the new model itself.

Services like Pandora come close to databasing connectivity, but we’re still a long way off from any kind of prototype with which to make a media database standard. A Manhattan style Wikipedia project is probably what’s required.

Until that happens we’re stuck with “the hunt”. Friends as clue finders. I don’t care if I can get it all, I care about if I can get what’s mine.

That’s why services like Spotify don’t work as well as YouTube or Amazon’s recommendations. Tell me what part of the forest to look and I’ll get it myself. If the interface isn’t brute simple you have slowdown and again, you drop out of the psychological lane of traffic.

Even if connection is achieved though, it’ll end up being an efficiency advance. Something to mask the declining revenue pool a little longer.

The industrial age has reached its peak and is starting to decline. This confuses people because they’re used to things trending up, not down.

The owners of the world are extracting more from a smaller and smaller money pool through efficiency and productivity gains. Getting the gold is the goal, even if the river is drying up. The winners just make less.

It’s like that old Lexx episode, “Feeding Pattern.” The house still always wins, but full winnings are now half winnings and half winnings are now quarter winnings. Only in this case there’s no spaceship to take the owners to a new planet to start again.

What industry servants and their patrician managers refuse to accept is that the cost has been shifted. The slush pile has been moved to the public and crowdsourced.

Less pay doesn’t mean the death of publishing, it means more craphounds.

The craphounds see the gates to the river are now open to the public and think their chance to strike it rich has finally come. Then they see what’s left of the river.

The owners are abandoning the mediopoly factories and manipulating the remaining consumers into covering the upfront costs. Rust of media factories and their personnel is the natural outcome. Why invest in new infrastructure when the returns are going down?

Some industry folks think the problem is too many craphounds. No, that was always the cost of doing business.

The problem is that profits are shrinking. There need to be more craphounds to increase the declining pool of wizards that may still exist to be exploited before the enterprise enters the steep end of the decline curve.

You find your biggest wizards in the beginning. Then you plateau. Then you enter decline. This is how life works, folks.

So what’s going to happen?

Well the whole thing looks like a craphound mega-farm to me. This long tail mega-farm is too big for fiefdoms to control and still make a profit. What you need is probably something along the lines of Borg control nodes. That means a larger number of smaller, mid-list way-stations to provide structure and channel libido projections.

There will probably be one or two corporate overlords that remain, only in diminished form; everything else gets divided up into drones and drone units (seven of nine). The overlords will vacu-jack up the most popular and monetizable eruptions of public interest, extract the Gelfling essence. But these will become quarterly or yearly events.

Much as going to the movie theater is now.

The Internet cooperative has formed itself into a way to farm out labor most efficiently to the public leisure spending that still exists. It’s a development that serves the reactive ownership in masking something more significant.

What does crowdsourcing the gatekeepers mean for servants in the mediopoly industry?

I predict extended periods of pressure to work twice as hard with half as much. Professionals will find themselves separated from their skills and positions as an identity. They’ll be expected to adopt a jack-of-all-trades model of independent contracting so they can fit into whatever flavor of the month project their patrician managers want them in.

As individual value is minimized, prestige and bargaining power will be reduced. Wages will shrink. In short, you’ll be a crew chief at Winky Dinky Dog, but it’ll be for less pay!

The patricians themselves will be forced increasingly into a hatchet man role as the owners come down on them hard to “cut costs” and “do things differently”. That’s Secret Langauge Noble for getting rid of servants and turning the treadmill dial up on those who still have jobs.

All standard plays from the ownership dream manual. The usual efforts to summon the psycho goals of free labor, automation of specialists, and value decoded by algorithm.

In short, the ideal vampire world. Fully socialized blood for the members of the Dracula Club! Anything less than 100% domination is a humiliating failure, so if the blood pool shrinks then the difference comes out of your neck first.

Meanwhile, the craphound mega-farm grows a freelance economy of atomization, domination, and zero dignity all hand delivered like a pizza. It’s diabolically brilliant.

There is no next incarnation of distribution that enforces paid transaction. This is it folks. Hold your arm out and let Renfield insert the vacu-jack.

Not just movies, books, comics, newspapers, music and magazines, but even sports will be affected. This is the decline of the second capitol, of the conglomeration of culture. It’s simple economics.

Just wait until prices start to rise on computers again. That’s when things get really interesting.

The Battle of the Galaxies is complete. I’ve done what I came back to Portland to do.

Now I regroup, rest, and reflect. I have other tasks that require my attention. I’ll attend to them in the days to come.

Stay tuned; there’s bound to be some interesting revelations and strange happenings as the transmutation takes hold. This is the year of the snake, after all!

The killer bees are swarming, the vuvuzellas are buzzing, the earth is glowing. There’s some serious party action going on here, kaboom kaboom thunder from beyond the deepest reaches of inner space.

The nightchild is dancing.

That Gingerbread Witch is screaming something fierce, but I keep on tending the fire of that brick oven. What a din! Fire good.

I hear the sound of a bell. Oh! Look, the Gingerbread Witch is done. All burned up to the crisp, nothing but ashes and smoke blowing in the wind.

Oh, and a number of gingerbread spider cookies hovering in the flames. I use my mother’s spatula to bring them out of the brick oven and onto a plate. One of them is the King Mahar cookie I must eat.

You see; if you slay the dragon you are obliged to taste a few drops of its blood.

There it is. Mmm. Tasty.

Hey, look. This Gingerbread Witch had a bunch of treasure in a flowerpot. K and I stuff our pockets. This is now an official cookie party.

Dance, killer bees, dance!

The posts have been scant of late mainly because I’ve been embroiled in the Battle of the Galaxies. Anything that shows up here has been what extra my psychic engineer has been able to coax out of the warp engines, so to speak.

This has been one Hek of an inner-stellar conflict. The entirety of the Booey Fleet versus the forces of the Gingerbread Witch. Several times now I was sure I’d been beat, only to bounce back into the fray with a renewed process.

I’ve been building a brick wall of the mind, followed by a brick oven of the windy spirit with which to throw that Gingerbread Witch into. I found suitable divine fuel in the form of the bountiful Ace of Wands bursting forth with Spring luck and potency. I’m going to blast that witch into ashes and smoke with healing fire ignited from my deepest soul.

That’s all I’m capable of doing now. It’s the only way to live my life and let those who love me live theirs. Everything else I tried bounced off her like dynamite or missile explosions against the giant tarantula. A psychic napalm of lava-storm is all I got left.

Kicked that Gingerbread Witch into the oven and I’ve shut the hatch! I never wanted to do this, but here I go. It’s time.

There is a flash of lightning, followed by the boom of thunder. The brick oven fire is ignited!

Here we go.

There are countless hidden workshops, dockyards and sanctuaries in this world. If you’re fortunate you may get to see one of them and bear witness to its wonders.

At the heart of many of these concealed places is often a personality of power. Someone who naturally embodies or has attained a certain degree of mastery in learning, healing, and understanding.

J.R.R. Tolkien introduces good examples of this kind of archetype on a grand fantasy scale in his Lord of the Rings books. For example, the elf Lady Galadriel or the inscrutable Tom Bombadil. Hidden from the world at large, yet influencing it through their work, or as the case may be, their play.

The Starship Snipe has something resembling a beagle active probe in its sensor array, so my computer is always receiving sensor readings on hidden units. It’s good to be able to do the total dodge on incoming brain-drains. No pain-pain in the brain-brain for me, thank you very much!

However, there are also many hidden things that are delightful. Always remember to check for secret doors, so say I. Fabulous treasures beyond compare, beautiful places that defy description, and the most amazing people are all around us without our knowing it.

My wily and resourceful friend Kimaroo always has the scoop on interesting tidbits and clues of possible quest importance. She told me to check out this pirate queen’s puzzling website because it looked like my kind of thing. Hey, I’m all about deciphering the strange and elusive. Ogopogo? The Swamp Monster? Lemmie at ’em!

Then…pow!

It’s been a long time since I ran into a direction confusion magic like this. It’s strictly old school D&D stuff that is difficult to throw off. Took me over a year to accumulate enough information about activity zones and artistic stance to fill out a character sheet on this pirate queen.

That’s when I got an invitation to visit her ultra-secret clearance level special project: Stompopolis.

What the hek is a Stompopolis, you ask? The Mr. Spock explanation is that it’s a playroom for adults who need a sacred space in which to work with states of creativity in safety.

It’s a zone in which folks can enter an open space of free imagination without jackup, and then withdraw to a closed space in order to reach creative goals without distraction. All while receiving wizard-level tools, training, and encouragement.

This is major civilization stuff we’re talking here.

To describe such a place feels almost like sacrilege. Stompopolis is a temple of childhood power, an explosion of details that wash over the senses even as an invisible aura of warmth surrounds and protects you.

There’s a gumball machine with special prizes inside, which is always a good sign in my book. There are small hidden doors for the fairies to use, which shows courtesy and foresight. Colorful flags and banners fly, which to me displays an appreciation for romantic pageantry. The pirate queen knows her stuff.

The place is filled like a sack of gold doubloons with goodies like this, yet through some miracle of transdimensional engineering has vast free space. There’s no foolin’ around here; this is adventure time that understands the need for “fun now”. All that “fun maybe” stuff was checked at the door and given a complimentary pizza with some cartoons to watch.

There are emergency nap hammocks, specially prepared retreat tents to hide in, and of course a friendly kitchen capable of summoning hot beverages when a break is called for. Doing nothing is the most important heavy lifting research and development you can do and this pirate ship of the mind has got it covered.

The super fun pack of creative supplies, the spontaneous free-flow of inventive activities, and the magic of self-discovery that emerges in a hallowed moment—these are things that simply have to be experienced to believe them. I can only speculate on what kinds of incredible marvels lay just beyond my gaze.

All this and a pirate crew to boot. Yarr!

Alas, I forgot my camera and tape recorder. When the time came for me to leave this playground of delight and my bumper car deposited me outside the invisible castle, I found myself with naught but the incredible experience of it. A worthy mystery nonetheless, and well satisfying to come upon too.

You’ll just have to take my word for it.

Then again, maybe YOU will happen across the mysterious Stompopolis and find the gold!

Today is my birthday. Holy cats, these things creep up on you like The Behinder!

Lots of new plant energy coming in as Spring activates more by the day. Winter Wolf is starting to get the sleepies; been a most mysterious and unusual Winter this time. Me, I’m just glad to still be kicking it and capable of having another round from the Slack Bar.

Great cards, including one with a Bigfoot on it that says, “Believe.” There’s a message I can believe in! Thanks Duke, you’re awesomesauce.

Speaking of Bigfoot, got the complete series of In Search Of… on DVD from K’s dad. I scored me the ancient tome of imagination and inner discovery. My kid self is squeeing loud enough to be heard all the way from the past, this is so cool.

Yeah, time to sit down with some eerie music, Leonard Nimoy, and crazy psychic investigation. This is the X-Files before the days of Twin Peaks, yo. I’ll be doing some serious wizard research with this pup, let me tell you.

Also cool, lots of well wishes from friends and family over on the social media channels. I’m always warmed and pleased by the words of the people I care about. That’s a reminder to count my blessings and give thanks for the gold in my life. That stuff shines brighter than any physical treasure.

In the meantime, I’m taking it low key and staying home to watch 22 minute episodes on UFOs, the Loch Ness Monster, Ghosts, and the Abominable Snowman, among others. Tasty snacks, delicious beverages, cats all over me on the newly named Cat Couch, and K snuggled up with me under a blankee. Time to take some time and just be.

Today I sent out the books for the five winners of my Goodreads giveaway. 620 people signed up for the giveaway and 273 of them put me on their to-read list. I’ve gone from a complete unknown to a mostly unknown author, hooray!

Today was a wonderful, sunny day. The bird feeder was refreshed, and the birds came in like gangbusters. They picked the corn and sunflower seeds out and went back to the nest. Good times. I gave Frankie a taste of the air and the sunlight; she was stunned, but purred and soaked it in like a little solar panel.

The cats all got love today; pet-downs and cat-grass. All of them calmly purring and happy, dozing off into sleep in the sun-filled apartment. Very soothing.

I also sent out a birthday card, so bonus round!

If you need to allocate ship energy, then put main power into giveaways to strangers. That’s what I’ve found out while working on my personal potion of promotion.

I was putting main power into friends and family, since I figured they’d be the easiest and strongest advocates for my art. Certainly they have been supportive, but way less than I thought. I was kind of surprised, actually.

Ads seemed dubious to me, mainly because I had already read how the marketing landscape has changed in the last ten years. However, what do I know? It’s one thing to read about it, but another altogether to experience things for yourself.

Enter Goodreads, a website with about two and half million people who like books signed up. It’s a place where authors and readers can intermingle. Friends can share what they are reading with each other. Folks can rate and review the books they’ve read.

Basically, it’s BOOK MOUNTAIN on the internets!

I became a librarian and then an author on their site. Wooo! They have various tools I’ve been trying out to see how they work. This is worthwhile delving for clues because the audience is ideal and you can get stats.

The audience is made up of people who at least like the medium you are working in (books). And transactions can be measured to a certain degree through the website.

Both of these are assumptions, of course. I myself know how webstats don’t really tell you anything concrete—you make them up as you go along. And there’s no way to measure the intent of the Goodreads members, or to precisely quantify their creative agendas.

The sensor readings you pick up always carry with them the possible danger of getting it wrong.

Where Things Started
My book has been going nowhere. This is understandable because my promotion strategy from about April 2010 to September 2011 has been no-promotion. No technique, just posting and see what happens.

If it’s any good people will share and spread it right? Except my website has few visitors—less than 100 uniques a month for years which makes my website POOR on my own web ranking system.

So in September 2011 I get my book out on Amazon Kindle and then on Lulu as a print book. Approximately 50 likes on Facebook, two reviews on Amazon and two reviews on Lulu is all I get as far as reaction all the way into January 2013.

I already mentioned I sold about 32 copies and did a giveaway of 2 copies (which was on Facebook to friends and family, I failed to mention), besides giving 12 copies to friends/family I really liked.

So let us get the lead out and see what we shall see, right? RIGHT?!

Ads Are Only Worth Reserve Power
I ran an ad on Goodreads twice in 2012 for two months each, which was about how long it took for the credit to be used up. The first run was for fifty bucks of credit with a bid of fifty cents and a max bid of five bucks. The second run was for another fifty bucks with a bid of a dollar and the same max bid.

I did targeting to science fiction and fantasy members for the first run, and no targeting for the second run.

I got 500,597 views, 95 total clicks, with a click through rate of 0.02% and a cost per click of $1.07.

What did I get? One person added me to their to-read list—and they have hundreds of books on that list so probably not anytime soon if ever.

Hey, it’s something at least—and it’s data from which I can extrapolate what my overall success rate is with the ads. The add to the to-read list is pretty much as far as you can track for a transaction.

I think I estimated that I would need to spend at least fifty thousand dollars in Goodreads ads in order to get enough people far along in the transaction cycle to generate sales to see ultimately if it’s worthwhile.

I started another ad in February of this year—new copy, new image, with a hundred bucks of credit. I bid fifty cents, max spend of ten bucks, and no targeting.

After a week I’ve gotten 94,131 views, 28 clicks, and a clickthrough rate of .o3%—which looks to me to be only slightly better. I might do more refinements, but I expect I’ll only get incrementally small returns.

I’ll keep working on this, but at this point I can only see someone with a crack advertising team and/or a large budget as being able to break through with this system.

It’s a system for a handful of winners and a whole lot of losers.

Friends and Family Get Auxiliary Power
I’ve only got 9 friends and 1 relative on Goodreads, but I think it’s a more accurate representation of what I can expect in terms of potential audience engagement.

I got two text reviews and four ratings out of them (4 total reactions), so this mirrors how much interest I got out of my Facebook circle (about 40%).

I’m imagining that I’ll get half as much of even that engagement on the second book when it comes out. It’s just diminishing returns as far as reminding folks goes.

I mean, if I have to nag my friends and family to spend a few minutes clicking a rating line or writing a few sentences, what’s the point?

My guess is that friends and family are a one time only resource. Like a free healing potion every adventurer starts with on their book journey.

I use them up at the beginning to sustain my enthusiasm. After that, I have to fly on my own.

Damn, that is some sad commentary. But there it is.

Free Is The Magic Word That Gets Main Power
So I start this giveaway on February 13. It stays open until March 6. I make it open to folks in the US, Canada, Great Britain, and Australia. Five copies of the slightly revised Lulu print book (adjusted spine, a spacing issue resolved, and an actual ISBN), wooo!

So far 177 folks have signed up and that’s cool exposure. I at least know these are people who clicked “I’m interested in this enough to sign up for a free copy chance.”

And for some reason I can’t fathom, 76 folks have put me on their to-read list. WHUT!? That makes ads complete junk by comparison.

Granted, I’m on some to-read lists with hundreds of titles again. Not likely they’ll ever get to me. But their vote still counts in a nice unexpected way: people have suddenly voted me a safer bet.

What would you take a chance on? A person who has 2 people interested in them (probably their mom and best friend) or 76 people?

That’s the best feeling of all. All I want is a chance; if people don’t dig me after trying me then okay cool beans.

Mind you, I should also add that all of this is from the PROMISE of a free goodie. A lottery. we enter them everyday because even though the odds are against us we love to dream.

I should also add that over on Smashwords, the free ebook has gotten 259 downloads and is in 13 personal libraries since it was released on Dec 30, 2012. That’s the real free right there—more people have given me a try there than anywhere else.

So after this giveaway is done I’m going to do another. And another until I see where this thing plateaus out. It’s the most worthwhile thing I’ve done yet to promote my book and it only just started.

It’s just…better.