Mike Bennett. Old Blog 2006 -2008

Web Developments, Book Developments, Podcast Developments.

Hello.
A very, very excellent fellow (who shall remain hidden behind the curtain along with his magnificent work for the moment) has been chipping quietly away at the granite lump that is slowly becoming my new website. Yes, I am soon to be moving on from the digital compost heap that OneAmongTheSleepless.com has become over the years. Don't get me wrong, I have a certain affection for its scrambled egg logic and 'two dogs fought, shagged and slept in me' appearance, but it's not exactly state of the Internet art is it? (Don't answer that, I can knock it, though if you will, I'll cry all night).

What I'm saying is that something new, slick, logical and interactive is coming. It's still, as I mentioned earlier, waiting in the wings behind the curtain. But the designer and I hope to unveil it within the week. Isn't it exciting??? Well, for me at least.

I spent the morning wrangling with different domain-selling companies and trying to get past the fact that global websites can't get their heads around the fact that a country doesn't have post/zip codes. Ireland doesn't, at least outside of Dublin and Cork. Try telling that to a machine though, or even a customer service operative who really wants to pass you on to someone else in case the call is 'being monitored for training purposes' but can't because you won't let them get away that easily after being in a phone queue for 15 minutes. The upshot was, after three hours or so, I got my domain. Yay! And no, it's not MikeBennett.Com or .net or anything like that as they've all been taken by other Mike Bennetts. This is the problem with having a fairly common name. I should have used my initials or other interesting variations on them when I started out, like M. Stephen Bennett, or M.S. Bennett (looks like Ms Bennett). Or maybe used a pseudonym (many's the time I wish I had) J. Fentonwick, V.C. Cumberpatch, Chester Creosote. Ahh well, what's in a name? (Besides an available dot com?)

Other news.

I'm now up to chapter four of my novel. It's not perfect by any means. I kind of write my first drafts mainly consisting of dialogue and action. Then when I'm done, I go back and tidy up all the logic and chaos I made along the way and make sure that everything logically leads to where it ultimately ends up. Then back again, to tighten the dialogue and action and colour in some description, and then again to try and get a bit of craft into the syntax. And then, when I podcast it and start reading it aloud. I do all of the above again. So when I say I'm on chapter 4, I'm actually kidding myself, I'm technically 4 inches past the starting line. Still, that's 4 inches further than I was last week.

And talking of editing. I recorded the audio of Salvation part 4 today. I re-edited the text of the final version again before reading it, and then throughout the recording as I read aloud (great editing tool, reading aloud). I also did multiple takes on the recording, especially character speech. There's a guy, I can't say who, who I must have about 6 or 7 takes of. I highlighted his lines in the text and read him in-character, over and over again. Tomorrow, I'll start sewing it all together. And then hopefully, by Sunday, I'll have it done. This is why it takes me so long to get stuff finished: I'm obsessive - constantly editing and changing stuff and doing more versions than are necessary... until I run out of time... or sanity... or both.

The upshot of this, I sincerely hope, will be a great episode. I've finished the last 6 seconds, and if that's anything to go by. It rocks!

And no, I'm not going to edit this. It's a blog. I'm just going to click publish and walk away from it.

No, I really am.

Oh hell, where's the edit button? (4 minutes later) There, I edited it :-)