Wednesday 3 August 2016

A Good Week for Self Publishing

If you read the blog, then you've already gone on our ride around the Superstition Mountains in Arizona.  Motorcycle Mojo picked up the story to run in this month's (August) edition.

I then got an email from the editor of noplacelikeout.com saying that I'd been included in their recent list of top 25 motorcycle bloggers.  It's always nice to get a compliment, and I'm in the company of some pretty major bloggers on that list (you'll find many of them in the blog roll on the right side of this page).


http://noplacelikeout.com/top-25-motorcycle-bloggers/
Top 25
Five or so years ago I stopped playing video games after wracking up 1000 hours on Left For Dead 2 (I was really good!), and then reading Chris Hardwick's excerpt of The Nerdist's Way on Wired.  Gaming never got in the way of my career like it did with Hardwick (the breaks I got involved manual labour in 100° warehouses), but that thousand hours spent shooting zombies had me asking myself a difficult question, "what the fuck are you doing with your time?"

Hardwick Nerdist Wisdom

I went cold turkey on video games. I'll occasionally play with my son, but a single game and not often.  What I did instead was kick off a hobby that I'd always wanted to do (motorcycling) and reinvigorate my dream of getting published as a writer.  A few less electron zombies have been killed by me, but the things I've done instead feel a lot more satisfying because they are, you know, actual things.

One of these times I'll find an angle and get the support to take one of the dream trips I fantasize about over the winter months...
http://tkmotorcyclediaries.blogspot.ca/2016/04/a-year-of-living-dangerously.html
http://tkmotorcyclediaries.blogspot.ca/2016/05/dash-to-ushuaia.html
http://tkmotorcyclediaries.blogspot.ca/2016/05/wanderlust-travel-motorcycle-production.html

...or get a chance to ride one of those dream bikes I read about....
http://tkmotorcyclediaries.blogspot.ca/2016/08/pretty-things.html
http://tkmotorcyclediaries.blogspot.ca/2015/05/money-to-burn-wish-list.html

I do pretty well with what I make, but anything like those opportunities only empowers the writing, giving me more to explore and write about.  Where ever possible I'll keep pouring gasoline on the fire to make that happen.  It's easy when you love what you're doing, and what you're doing produces real world results.