Gossip [&] the Devil

As of yesterday, I’ve received my first copy of The Poet’s Place: A Collection of Works, my first official publication of 2009:

A peek inside The Poet's Place. (xxoo)

Copies of the book are still available here, and right now you can get them on sale for $11. (Or you can find the link on my side bar under “where to buy.”)

Apparently I have more librarian friends than I realized, and many of them are ordering copies of the book for their local libraries to stock. Thank you, you know who you are!

I’ve been receiving a lot of emails lately from friends and teachers long past asking how I’ve been. I can only hope this site provides any answers I may have left out in our conversations. Hopefully as you peruse my word designs, you can read between the increasingly small lines, and fuzzy pictures can be made clear.

Currently, aside from the other artists in The Poet’s Place, I’m reading a mind-blowing book called Chasing Cool: Standing Out in Today’s Cluttered Marketplace by Noah Kerner (former DJ and now CEO of Noise marketing agency) and Gene Pressman (former CEO and creative director of Barneys New York):

What I'm reading during downtime at work. Never mind the vodka, that came later.

Nearly from page one this book has given me the reassurance I need every so often that indeed following your gut is the best way to go, and that there’s inspiration everywhere, the best parts just begging to be plucked and re-molded into something better. A few quotes from the book:

• “There’s always another way to break through.”
• “There are a lot of people who are too far ahead of the curve and are unsuccessful because of it. Success happens when a person like me, who looks at those types of people, can create a business that works.”
• “Being a creative leader is a really out-there place to be. By definition, it’s a step beyond where people have been and there’s no path. But if you can come second and make something better, that’s no less valid. You’re gonna take first place by doing the same thing with 20/20 vision. There’s something to be said for watching and learning.”
• “Thinking you’ll achieve specialness by emulating someone else’s terms (or simply inverting them) isn’t much different than applying a coat of paint to a cracked wall.”
• “…all that time yielded one common thread: none of these people (those successful in their respective marketing) chased anything. They trusted their guts, put their names on the line, and followed their personal passions…They pursued a vision and, then, somewhere down the road, cool found them.”
• “Things are moving fast. The white noise is deafening.”

I may steal that last one and use it as a sub-header sometime, it’s goregous. I’m hardly halfway thru the book, but it’s already giving me ideas about how to work the site, how to sell my product and my art, and have it reflect my true intentions, since, I realized, my audience ultimately is myself. If I’m not happy with my product or my look, how on earth can I expect anyone else to be?

Also, in keeping with the positives, I’ve now gone global:

Who'd have ever thought people in New Zealand would be looking at my site?

It’s true, from Mexico to Latvia, New Zealand to Canada I’ve had visitors from around the globe thus far. That just blows my fucking mind, frankly, and I’m excited as hell to continue to put up new work.

Expect submission updates very shortly, and I’m also hard at work brainstorming ideas for a new site layout, one that better reflects my writing style and personality, and a new page outlining some of my biggest inspirations so look forward to that!

Until then, carry on, always.

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