Daniel J. Hogan's Blog

Tomorrow is going to be a pretty amazing day: I'm seeing Indiana Jones in the morning with Lovely Assistant and later that night I'm going Game One of the Stanley Cup Finals! Woooo! Let's Go Red Wings! (and a special thanks to my buddy Jon for getting me a ticket)

AND to kick off this awesome weekend, Lovely Assistant and I are going to Famous Dave's for dinner tonight. Hmmm, BBQ. We ate there last weekend at Motor City Comic Con and loved it (NOTE: not going back to the same one). I'm usually not one for chain resturants but Famous Dave's is a tasty exception, along with Red Robin.  I'm a sucker for good BBQ (and good burgers).

On the subject of writing related news, I'm almost done with the revision of my short story, Slow and Steady. Lovely Assistant checked the spelling and grammar last night, so after those many changes are made I'm gonna send it off to Jay at Comics Obscura so he can decide if he wants to adapt it into a comic. I'm excited.

And I  sent Michael a list of what drawings I want for the first ten chapters of The Magic of Eyri. I think I did a good job at keeping my requests simple. I'm looking forward to what he comes up with, I'm sure it'll be nothing less  than amazing. These will be for the long promised 2nd Edition (or Special Edition, whatever I end up calling it) and the serializing of it on magicofeyri.com

Great news! I talked to Michael Church, my cover artist, and he agreed to do drawings for each of the chapters of the second edition of The Magic of Eyri that I'm planning. This means 50 drawings kids, which I know is quite the task. But I told him just black and white and no shading, so that'll make things a little bit easier for him.

I'm also decided that I am going to serialize the book with weekly chapters on magicofeyri.com, and use Michael's art for that--which was the main reason I asked him to do it. People like his art and it'll add an extra li'l somthin' to the whole affair. Yep, a free chapter a week, for 50 weeks. Although, I may considering doing two a week (maybe two chapters once a week). We'll see.

This isn't something I'm going to start tomorrow, that's for sure. I want to plan this all out and have an actual start date so I can advertise it, and I want to have the second edition ready for sale when I start serializing it (so if people don't want to wait, they can just buy the whole thing, which would be nice).

My reasons for doing this are:

1. the book has been out for over a year.
2. people do like it (and the idea of it based on the reactions I got last weekend at Motor City Comic Con).
3. giving it away for free will help get me more attention, and create more of an Internet Buzz.
4. the book keeps selling, which means I'm doing something right.
   
5. it is a good excuse to revise the book.
6. getting a good fan base for the first book will help me with the second book.
7. I don't have any other convention appearances planned until the fall.

Now, which I say revise, I don't mean I'm going to change the story. I'm gonna clean up the grammar a bit and cut out some of the wordiness. I may reword a few things here and there, perhaps even rewrite some things, but the overall story isn't going to change. Y'know what that means for those of you who already have a copy? You'll have a collector's item ;)

I'm toying with the notion of serializing The Magic of Eyri on my websites. I'd put up a chapter a week, for 50 weeks (the amount of chapters in the book). But, I wouldn't keep up the old chapters--so if you miss a week, you'd be in trouble (I may considering just having the previous weeks available tho).

We'll see. I gotta think this over. Tomorrow, May 1st, The Magic of Eyri is a year old!

That's part of the reason I'm considering this serializing thing. It'd be a way to keep people coming back to my website every week--I'd have almost a year's worth of content ready to go. The thing I have to worry about tho is would I be giving too much away? Probably not. Since I wouldn't be keep all the chapters available, the whole book wouldn't be online. At least not at once. And if someone wants to come back to my site every week for almost a year to copy and paste each chapter to their machine, well more power to 'em I guess.

I haven't decided that if I were to do it, just how I would present the chapters. The easy way would be for just adjust the free preview on my lulu page each week, but someone going to that site randomly wouldn't get why they can only read chapter 11. And lulu would be getting all the traffic too. I really want to have it on my sites, so I could either do the chapters as just a basic text page on my site, or perhaps a downloadable PDF.

I gotta figure this out, and soon. I'm on the fence about doing it though.

Neither danieljhogan.com or magicofeyri.com are loading at the moment. I am worried. I'll let it go tonight and check them tomorrow morning, I don't feel like calling tech support at 10:30 on a Sunday night. I want to put up more ads through Project Wonderful this week, so this better work itself out.

EDIT: both are working again. Phew, that was a bit scary.

Borrowing a tactic from Kim Harrison, I'm giving away Free Mini-Pins through my websites. All ya gotta do is send me a Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope and I'll send you a pin. Easy. I have a bunch left over from ConFusion, so I thought this would be a fun idea. You can request a certain design, but it all depends on what I have left when I get your letter. Only one pin per request kiddies. If you don't specify what you want, then I'll just pick one for you (everyone loves a mystery).

I kind of have an idea now as to which designs people liked most at the con, so when I do these again I'll change things up a bit. No one really went for the "Are You Hot?" pins (I have six of ten left) but people really liked the pins with the Blue Heron amulet on it - I only have two left (of ten).

GREAT NEWS - I sold a copy of The Magic of Eyri through Lulu.com this week. Combined with my sales from ConFusion, I'm "officially" at 97 copies sold. Almost at 100 kids. I may have sold copies that I don't have the data yet, hence officially being in quotes.

A few days ago I put up what could be considered my first ever advertising on magicofeyri.com.

I could argue that all of my links to other places are advertising, although free advertising (especially for all the comics and blogs I have links to). This was the first time however, I put something up that I could potentially get money back from. I put up ads for RetroDuck.com, a t-shirt website - and a business based right here in Lansing (well, East Lansing). I've known Adam, who is the CEO, for a while now and I recently met Luke who is in charge of marketing (...and also found out we were at Grand Valley State University at the same time and know some of the same people).

They aren't paying me for ad space by any means, I get 10% of every order placed by someone following the links to RetroDuck on my site - and even then, I only get paid after I reach $30 in sales. And they didn't ask me either, this was my own idea. I'm all about helping out my fellow independent artist types. And heck, they sell a shirt based on Jim Henson's film, The Dark Crystal. That makes 'em all kinds of awesome in my book.

The funny thing is I'm making this sound like I'm doing them a huge favor - when I know they easily get more traffic and sales than I'll ever get :)

I did draw the line at having an animated ad, so I tweaked theirs a bit and made it just a still picture (I'm not a fan of animated ads). They do custom shirts too, and I keep meaning to have them print up some shirts for me (even just a couple).

Christmas is over, and I'm beat.