Talking About Stuff, with Mike and Christiana

Nina Kimberly Chapter 8 is now online at www.ninakimberly.com and coming this weekend to www.podiobooks.com!

If you haven't been listening along, it's not too late to hear Nina's adventures from the beginning! Just pick one of the above links and check out chapter 1 to hear how it all got started! Or even just check out the pickle page!

In chapter 8, the party is finally out of the woods... Um, that's literally, not figuratively. It's time to head into town, but Tyrnon's not going to be happy about staying behind, and is that an arena in the distance?

Also, check out The Poddog Show this weekend to hear an exclusive Nina-related skit!

Also, make sure you sign up for the Nina Kimberly mailing list, and you'll get access to the Subscriber's Only area of the website, where you can check out some of the preliminary artwork that will soon be the new cover!

Finally, remember to check out King Francis's Livejournal, and send your questions for "Ask Francis!" to askFrancisIX@gmail.com!

Finally, I just wanted to thank you all for listening! Without you guys listening, I'm just a tree falling in the forest with no one there to hear me. Thanks!

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Mur Lafferty, over at I Should Be Writing, had an interesting podcast recently about how to manage multiple projects.

Now, I was interested in this subject right off the bat, because it's definitely something I've had (and still have) trouble with. Take my writing for example, I successfully finished my first novel, Nina Kimberly the Merciless, relatively easily. Which is not to say easily, but relatively so, compared to my subsequent projects.

Why is that? Well, it's not because I'm blocked. In fact, it's almost the opposite. With Nina, I had only the one idea that I was working on. The one project. So when I felt like writing, or wanted to do something creative, I knew what it should be. So I worked on Nina until I'd finished that first book, then the same for the first editing pass-through.

When the time came though to take on a new project, I've got too many! Right now, I have not one, not two, but three unfinished novels, and I'm intrigued and excited by all three! Not to mention my podcasts. The problem, however, is that I'm a writer that enjoys the result more than the process, and so the times that I really FEEL like writing are often fleeting. Unfortunately, with multiple projects, it suddenly makes it harder to get as deeply focused on one, because I'm always second-guessing which one I should work on. End result, I often give up without writing much on ANY of them. Definitely not what I want.

Anyway, in Mur's show, she mentioned a couple of strategies for juggling multiple projects. The first, is relatively simple, which is to break your tasks up into more manageable-sounding chunks. For example, instead of saying "Okay, I'm going to work on finishing Call It A Gift", I should say "I'm going to write 1000 words on Call It A Gift." Instead of saying, "I've got to finish the recording draft of Nina", I say "I've got to edit chapter 10."

Seems almost too simple to be effective, but hey, I'm going to give it a shot.

The other strategy she mentioned that I think I'm going to try is the "eat a frog" model. Namely, "If you eat a frog as soon as you wake up in the morning, everything else you do that day will seem pleasant and easy by comparison." In other words, you do the stuff that you don't want to do first, and then everything else seems fun. And not only that, but in my experience, lots of the things that we put off, (exercise, for example,) really aren't that bad if you just go ahead and do them instead of procrastinating forever and a day. For example, adding to one of my novels. I just need to make it a priority. Do it first, before the things that are extraneous. Odds are, I'll actually have fun doing it anyway, and plus, it'll get done!

Anyway, I just thought those were some interesting tips, and I'm going to try them out. I'll let you know how it goes.

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No, this is a legitimate thanks, but it requires some explanation...

You see, I've been named an honorary "condom for the ears."

Lemme 'splain.

Eban Crawford does a great music podcast called Reaching for Lucidity. In it, he plays the best of the best of all the really great independent and "podsafe" music, themed based on the day of the week. Hard rock one day, mellow stuff the next, etc. 5 shows a week!

Anyway, you know those times when you hear a really awful, insipid song on the radio, and you just can't get it out of your head? Well, according to Eban, that is what is known as an STD, a Sonically Transmitted Disease. The cure is great independent music, but of course, the key is prevention! Thus, you need a "condum for your ears". Now Reaching for Lucidity is the original, but in today's show, he named me and my podcasts as an "honorary condum for the ears."

It's a good thing. ^_^

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So I'm sitting here, Sunday evening, and I'm feeling good about my life right now.

I mean, I'm not completely where I want to be, but I'm happy with my direction.

This is true on a number of fronts. For example my weight loss attempt. (Just put up a new ep of my vidcast 50 Pounds, 6 Months, by the way). Now, I've actually not been seeing a lot of progress for over a month now, so why am I feeling good about it? Well, because I realized that I'm doing the right things and that the REAL goal is developing a healthier lifestyle, which I've been doing, regardless of whether the number on the scale is changing as quickly as I would like.

Then there's work. I've been in a holding pattern for a while, and now it's broken and I can actually move forward. Good stuff.

Then there's Nina Kimberly the Merciless. The response so far has been awesome. Lots of really great feedback from people and numbers growing every day. By the way, anyone who wants to help me out with that, you can do so by adding me to your favorites at Podcast Pickle, voting for me at Podcast Alley, and reviewing me on iTunes and Podiobooks.com!

Plus, I've been trying to increase my presence on my Livejournal and MySpace pages, and that's been a lot of fun so far. Getting to interact with a lot of really cool people.

Probably the most fun right now was putting together a Livejournal blog page for King Francis, one of my Nina Kimberly characters.

Then, there was the Pickle party last night, where a whole bunch of awesome people, linked only by their love of podcasting got together in a chat room and a live audio stream for a virtual party. Much fun and talking and laughing and drinking was had by all.

This morning, I got plenty of sleep, but got up early enough to go help out in my church's Sunday school class for the 2 year olds. They were awfully cute.

I had a good taco salad for lunch, chatted with some cool people on Skype (my Skype is christianaellis), got some podcast stuff done, and now I'm sitting here just thinking, I like where I'm at right now. Not perfect, but moving in the right direction.

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My God, it takes all the work out of googling yourself!

Just got an email on the mailing list for Podiobooks.com authors, and it contained some helpful little tools for self promotion / vanity searching!

The first: http://www.google.com/alerts

Essentially, you just go there (you may need a gmail sign-in), enter the search term you are interested in, and Google will email you whenever it finds new web content with your term in it!

So naturally, I signed up for both "Christiana Ellis" and "Nina Kimberly the Merciless". Since I only just signed up, I don't really have a good sense of how well it works yet, but heck if it isn't a cool idea.

You can do a similar thing at http://technorati.com/signup/
with "Watch List's" but I kinda knew about those already, just wasn't really using them effectively before.

In other news, I went ahead and recorded a new promo for Nina, (You can check it out right here: Nina Kimberly the Merciless promo!) and I'm really happy with how it turned out.

The numbers for it have been gradually building, and I tell you, watching the charts over at Podiobooks.com is a complete roller-coaster ride! Up-down-up-down!
"Whee / Eeek!"

So today, I think I'm going to try to go see "V for Vendetta", and I'll let you guys know how it goes.

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Jeez, just look at this place! Dust everywhere! You'd think I hadn't posted in a while or something.

Anyway, just thought I'd post here with a little update. Naturally, I've had a hard time for the last couple of weeks thinking of anything except Nina Kimberly the Merciless!

I should point out, by the way, that it's doing relatively well over on the Podiobooks.com charts already. Been on the Top 10 downloads of the day since it launched there, and as of this writing, it's number 5 on the Top Rated Podiobooks! (That is based, by the way on ratings given right here. *wink wink*) Of course, don't give me a rating if you haven't listened, and if you have, give me an honest one. But I'm aching for feedback here! I've gotten some great feedback already, by the way, but my heart is a bottomless hole, and I'm always hungry for more.

Anyway, I'm planning on releasing chapter 6 either tonight or tomorrow, and then over the weekend, I'm going to start adding some more extra content to ninakimberly.com.

Also, you all may have noticed no Survivor posts for a couple of weeks. Well, that's been part business and part laziness. I'll catch up, I promise!

On other fronts, last weekend was the second episode of Hey, want to watch a movie? in which Mike and I were joined by The Right Reverend Chumley from Cult of UHF and Shelly from Shelly's Podcast in watching Top Gun!

It was a rousing success in terms of how much fun it was. The number of downloads was a little disappointing so far, only based on the huge number there had been for the first episode. Hmm, not sure why.

Anyway, it was enough fun that I'm sure we'll do it again. Heck, it's worth it if nobody listens and we're just having fun watching movies!

I've also been trying to become a little more disciplined with my exercising and eating habits for the last week or so. I'll try to keep everyone posted on that, but right now, I'm fairly significantly behind where I want to be on my weight loss goals. BUT... that by no means should suggest that I'm giving up, or even that I do not remain optimistic. It just means I need to get back to work!

Speaking of work, I'm doing okay there too, but my current project is starting to come towards the end. Hopefully we'll get more stuff here in a timely fashion! Once again, however, I remain optimistic.

The last thing I want to mention is that I finally did some serious cleaning in my apartment over the weekend. I didn't finish, but I took a big chunk out of it, and though that may not seem like a big deal to any of you, it has made a big difference to me. I had let my place get pretty messy. So messy that I was really starting to feel bad about it, and now that I've made it much cleaner, I can already just tell a difference in how I feel when I'm sitting at home. I feel less stressed!

So of course, I take the stress that I was feeling about that, and turn it to something more productive, like thinking of any and every way that I can possibly spread the word about Nina Kimberly the Merciless! (Please, tell your friends, tell your enemies, tell everybody! Thanks!)

I'll try to post a little more regularly too.

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