Cartoon Gravity 30
The 30th edition of this particular incarnation of the newsletter. A milestone, of sorts, and one I intend to celebrate with brevity, as I already wrote a 2000 word piece yesterday (which is why this is coming to you a day late).
That piece was Fiction as Warfare and it went out under the Development Hell banner but, in the interest of broadening that base a little, I have made it free to everyone for the next seven days. I think it's a good piece, go read!
At time of writing, we are now three days from the launch of the Crowley Kickstarter on Thursday 1st May (Midday, UK-time, if anyone is keen to scoop up the more limited rewards). If you're interested in that, please click the link and register that interest now. The numbers really help us to generate some heat on launch. If you're not interested, but know someone who might be, please pass the link along to them.
I'm still on the fence about what to do with the Crowley show when it's made. Obviously there needs to be an exclusivity period during which those who backed it get to listen before it goes wide. But right now, I'm wondering if that exclusivity period shouldn't be... Infinite? If we were marketing a book or a game on Kickstarter, there would not be a period after which we just gave the thing away for free, even if it was "good publicity".
As I have written elsewhere, podcasts and audio fiction have fallen prey to some fairly lazy thinking as regards a sustainable business model, and have let people think that these things should be free. I'm not sure they should be, and I don't like the idea of monetising the listeners by selling ads on our shows. My thinking on this is still embryonic, but I'm starting to think that maybe a thing that a bunch of people worked hard to produce might have some kind of monetary value in order to make it sustainable.
No decision has been made on this yet, but I am determined that, should we charge for the show post-release, the price point will be higher than that incurred by the original Kickstarter backers - pay now, pay less.
The round up of the week's posts:
- On Tuesday, I wrote about the Collins Score, which looks set to transform my life.
- On Wednesday, I wrote about future plans.
- On Friday, I nerded out about apps, for those interested in such things.
Last Sunday, we visited the Evelyn De Morgan exhibition at the Guildhall Art Gallery. The work on display was stunning (my daughter had discovered De Morgan in a book the day before, so her paintings were new to all of us). The Guildhall's collection of Victorian Art is also amazing AND they have a section of the excavated Roman Amphitheatre in their basement - this place is well worth a visit.
This weekend, my daughter and I went to see the Victor Hugo exhibition at the Royal Academy. If you get the chance, this one is a must-see; Hugo's drawings and sketches have obviously received a lot less attention than his books and poems, but his artwork is amazing, atmospheric and hugely imaginative.
Saturday also saw my return to bullet journaling, thanks to a trip to the London Graphic Centre, where I bought some pocket bullet journals and then, on our return home, discovered the best pen I have used in ages, just languishing in a pot on my desk (it was a free gift with something and I had left it ignored for years)
Monday Supplement
Some videos this week; the result of a trawl through my MyMind database (If you don't have this app, we can't be friends).
This last one is just a few days old; the first colossal squid caught on film:
There you go, I promised brevity and I delivered.
Fuck it, send.