Thursday, November 22, 2012

I'm Writing Another Book

I was considering writing a sequel to Blowing It! after letting that first novel find its audience, perhaps in a year or two, because although I have made less money per hour as a balloon-fetish novelists than at any other pursuit aside from, perhaps, taking online surveys, the fact is that I have come to love my characters enough to think that they deserve to live on beyond the one book.

What I absolutely did not intend to do was write a factual book about balloon fetishes. I am no expert, beyond having a balloon fetish myself and the reading I've done, not so much of academic studies and papers, but of correspondence and online postings from the balloon community at large. And that does not give me any deep understanding of the causes of, or the details about, the wide variety of balloon fetishes in the world.

But then along comes Taboo from National Geographic. And Strange Sex on Netflix. And then thinking back to the few times others outside actual participants in balloon fetishism have tried to portray us as if they had a firm grasp of the facts and feelings of our fetish—and failing utterly. Branding us with cute names like "looners," and dividing us into neat categories like "poppers," "non-poppers," and "semi-poppers," as if we are so easily defined.

And worse yet, using the most far-fetched psychological (psycho-illogical?) theories to explain why we feel what we feel, and what balloons represent to us, and passing themselves off as experts. Do you realize the "expert" that Taboo featured is a journalism student?

And so, to combat this nonsense, I am writing a factual book, Not a comprehensive look at balloon fetishism, not an attempt to explain, but an attempt to show the human side of our special fetish, to show some of the great variety of both people and balloon interests. And to dispel some of what has been said about us in other media.

Will I succeed? The only way for me to find out is to write, publish, and wait. You, on the other hand, can help. If you have a balloon fetish, and would like to give me some of the information I need to achieve a realistic and sympathetic (and non-sensational) portrayal of people who love balloons, then drop me a line at balloonfetishauthor@gmail.com and let's start a dialogue.

Don't look for this book in a month. Maybe a year if I'm lucky. But I feel strongly enough that I really don't care how long it takes. At this point it's a book that's begging me to write it.

Saturday, November 17, 2012

Corrections Complete (I Hope)

The corrections to the Kindle edition took far less time than I though they would, thanks to the ease of editing HTML in SubEthaEdit. The corrected Kindle edition is now available. The print edition is available through CreateSpace, but may take a couple of days to become available again on Amazon.com.

With luck I'd found all the errors, and Blowing It! will now be a smoother read.

Friday, November 16, 2012

Corrections, Step One

I have submitted what I hope is the final edition of Blowing It! to CreateSpace to correct the many typographical errors. For up to 48 hours (though in my experience with CS more likely less than 12) the print edition will not be available.

Next step is to correct the Kindle edition, which takes longer because I have to edit the HTML files to avoid changing any of the formatting adjustments I made. But I will be working on it daily until it's done, and I'll post when it's submitted.

Thank you all for your patience and kind words about the book. After I've corrected this book, I have another one coming up. Not the suggested sequel (sorry, not yet), but something else.

But that's a subject for another post.

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Not a Bestseller, But ...

I just noticed today that Blowing It! rose from being ranked around 350,000th among Kindle paid books to 61,588th. And that's from selling all of two copies in the past day. Which means that although my book is by no means a bestseller, it tops an awful lot of other titles in the Kindle catalog.

There may be hope for me yet!