Hello, campers!

Nine months is a long time to be absent from a blog. A pregnant pause indeed!

Though, in my flimsy defence, I've always been crap at keeping a diary. Diaries are things that other people impose on me.

Anyways: what's up, Rik?

Well, thank you for asking, dear reader. The most important what's up that I need to report is that I am still actively seeking employment. I did manage to get a job last October - seasonal work that took me through to January - though, truth be told, I ended up a lot poorer from the experience. Since then, I average 5-6 job applications a week, and get responses on them maybe 2-3 times a month. I've had 3 job interviews in 6 months.

This may interest you: one employment agent came back with the feedback: 'your online portfolio is a little underwhelming'. Huh? But any feedback is good feedback, so I decided to do something about it. Over three months I developed an entire JavaScript library from scratch. I use it to draw stuff on websites using a canvas element. It's good stuff. I've even overcome my loathing of Twitter to tweet about it! (I currently have 12 followers - ain'tcha just proud of me?)

What I haven't got from all this intense coding activity is ... a job.

Whatever. Here it is. Enjoy!

Vreski Wards website redesign

In my ever-more-desperate attempts to garner a job offer, I've been redesigning bits of my website, to act as a portfolio of what I can do.

The latest update is to the Vreski Wards pages. I originally coded this playful little site as a Facebook App, specifically for promoting my first Novel.

This recode is far more ambitious, as I'm using it as a demonstration both of my coding skills (the code includes jQuery, raphael.js and moment.js tidbits) and my ability to build a fairly pleasing user front-end.

Vreski wards website
Vreski wards facebook app
Vreski wards facebook community page

jQuery gets more fantastic the more it matures. There's AJAX stuff hidden within the slidey pages and snazzy tags magic - who knew that AJAX could be made so simple to code up, huh?

And Raphael makes web graphics do-able - which is a godsend for me as I've never been able to play nicely with flash.

As to the Vreski Wards themselves? It's nice to have finally finished all the text snippets (including 90 sprite descriptions). The new site is finished, and polished, and a vast improvement on the old site. I'm proud to have it as part of my portfolio.

It's a bit of fun - feel free to enjoy it. (And buy my book!)

Dear lordy ...

... look at the dust in this place! Is that a tumbleweed?

Truth is, I've been preoccupied with the real-life stuff, such as trying to find work, scrounging for food ... that usual sort of stuff that penniless poets have to indulge in every now and again.

And seeing as I'm particularly looking for work as a webcoder, I've also been busy with some redesigning of my website -- because every webcoder needs a portfolio, innit!

Anyways, the first results of my work can be found over at poems.rikweb.org.uk - note the change of address from 'co' to 'org'!

So, if anyone has any feedback on the website's design, I'd be most interested to hear it! 'EverImproving' is my motto, for this week at least.

Logos

So which is the better looking logo?

(I'm going for stylish/professional - yeah, har har Rik).

Attempt 1:


Attempt 2:


Attempt 3:


Attempt 4:


Attempt 5:


Either one of you are welcome to respond. Answers in a comment, please.

New Comments pages on Rikweb website

I've added a comments page to the Gods in the Jungle website - all shiny and linked to Facebook and everything.

(I've also (hopefully) fixed the comments pages on the RikVerse website. Please could either of you let me know if things aren't working properly. Thankee, innit.)

Enjoy!

I noticed something strange ...

... as I was updating my eBook download records from the website (yes, I am that anal):



Why the sudden spike in downloads for RikVerse Volume 1? Not that I'm complaining (please do continue downloading my eBooks as many times as you both like! I want you to read and enjoy my poems on your eReaders), but it just seems a bit wierd for the downloads on that one eBook to almost treble in a single month, especially as the latest version was launched back in March and I've been doing zero promotion for the book since then.

All in all, today has been a day of happy surprises. All I need now is for someone to offer me a paying job (or a lottery win) and my happiness will be complete.

New Rik Publications

... from Rik's Sparky Little Printing Press:

Poetry chapbooks
22 Facets of my Father - £2.49 +p&p from lulu, or free as an eBook
Play Time - £2.49 +p&p from lulu, or free as an eBook
From Each Skull, A Story - £1.99 +p&p from lulu, or free as an eBook
Poems to Quote to your Lover - £1.99 +p&p from lulu, or free as an eBook

The RikVerse: volume 1 - gathers together all four of the above chapbooks into one single, sparkly book. Also a lot cheaper than buying all the chaps individually. £4.99 +p&p from lulu, or free as an eBook

Links to all these goodies are now to the right hand side of your screen.

The eBooks are in pdf format, thus readable by most (sensible) eReaders. They are also available from my Issuu page.

Happy reading!

Revised poetry chapbooks

Here's the covers; details to follow:

Guess what's coming ...

Yep, I'm re-doing the RikVerse book. This new book will:

- include all four chapbooks - Play Time; 22 Facets of my Father; From Each Skull, A Story; and Poems to Quote to your Lover (that's almost double the amount of poetry compared to the old book);

- be available in both hardcopy and eBook versions;

- have a nice new nifty cover - bye, bye chicken; and

- be on sale for £4.99 (hardcover) or $2.99 (eBook) - vastly cheaper than the old book!

What the book won't be is available through Amazon - pushing a book through the Amazon route will automatically double the price of the book, so Amazon can do their '50% off' offer thingy. Bugger to that - who in their right mind would pay a tenner for a book of poems, huh?

Anyways, more news later, alongside links and stuff. Everything has to settle before NaPo strikes us all down ...

The costs of independent publishing

For those who are interested, here are the breakdowns of the costs of self-publishing my tome.

Writing/revising/finalising the book:
4 years; £0.00 (costs of medications and alcohol excluded)

Preparing the book webpage:
1 week; £0.00 (I love coding websites)

Formatting the book for hardcover publication:
3 days; £25.00 (the cost of two books for proofing)

Formatting the book for eBook publication:
2 hours; £0.00

Preparing the cover:
2 days; £0.00 (maybe spend some cash on this in due course)

Cost of distribution packages:
£0.00 (no need for an ISBN with my distribution channels)

Publishing hardcopy (lulu.com):
2 hours; £0.00 (did the process twice)

Publishing eBook (smashwords.com):
1 hour; £0.00

Promotional spend/budget:
£0.00 (ain't got no cash to spend on promotion)

Total cost: £25.00

Published: The Gods in the Jungle

The Gods in the Jungle
a Kalieda novel by Rik Roots.

The jungle city of Bassakesh holds the keys to the future of the Vreski Empire. It is the sole source of the valuable Vedegga dye; it is also home to the mysterious Servants, who harvest the dye.

Delesse, the Bassakesh Governor's daughter, is marrying Loken, heir to one of the most powerful Clans in the Empire - whose leaders, Loken's own Father and uncle, are plotting to disrupt the dye harvest as part of their wider plans to win the aged Emperor's throne.

When those hasty plans go awry a terrible plague is unleashed across Bassakesh, bringing widespread death and chaos.

Aided by a collection of survivors and Servants, Delesse and Loken must travel through the jungles to face down and defeat the people who not only threaten the Empire's stability, but also ruined their wedding.

Set on a planet far from Earth, The Gods in the Jungle is an investigation of the drives and desires, fears and beliefs of the various peoples and classes of a crumbling society, through the eyes of those immediately involved in events which threaten to bring an Empire to its knees.

Published by Rik's Sparky Little Printing Press. Now available online (part), in various eBook formats and also in hardcopy.

Enjoy!

Gods in Jungle publication #2

A little earlier than expected, the proof copy of the hardcopy version of the book landed in my grubby little mits this morning.

Only a few immediate, obvious changes needed:

- The cover absolutely does not work; it gives completely the wrong feel about the book and - I hate to say this - it looks amateur. The cover must change.

- the maps are too dark; they shall be changed too - though that should be an easier job.

- the margins are just off; the inner margin (next to the spine) needs to be a centimetre or so wider to make for a more comfortable read.

- text justification ... I forgot to fully justify the text. Oops. Also, there's some orphan words and lines at the end of a couple of chapters, but that can all be sorted out at the same time as I do the margins and check through the file again to make sure each chapter starts on an odd-numbered page.

- headings and page numbers are appearing on the blank pages - this I don't mind so much, though best practice is for blank pages to be, well, blank.

In the good news zone, the redesign of the website to accommodate the book goes well.

QUESTION: is this cover better?

At the crossroads: decision time

As you both know, I have been writing a book. I started writing the book before I took the redundancy money and ran away from the civil service, and I have continued writing the book since then. Over the past year I have been touting the book around agents and publishers, looking for someone to legitimise my wastrel pastime by agreeing to publish and promote my tome. It has certainly been a learning experience, and not only in futility.

Unfortunately, all good things come to an end; as the redundancy money runs out I find myself having to review my goals and reassess what I want to achieve from my endeavours.

And what I most want out of life is for people to read - and enjoy - my book.

Things that don't seem so important to me at this point in time include:

• Recognition - it's the book that's important, not me


• Acclamation - while a small bucket of kudos from fellow writers would be nice, it isn't the keystone of my desires


• Wealth - being able to support my wastrel existence on the back of book sales was (and still is) a nice dream, but was never likely to unfold into a new reality for me

The timescales of getting a book published annoy me. The book publishing industry is built on one of the strangest commercial models I've ever come across - acceptance of the product, its further development, deployment and promotion: it's all a barrel of wierdness, I tell you. The pricing and return strategies are a whole different planet of surreality!

Add to the mix a good dose of disruptive innovations such as the eBook phenomenon and new retail strategies such as the Agency model all the publishing blogs are chattering about ...

I've come to a decision. Over the next few weeks I'm going to self-publish - sorry, independently publish my book, The Gods in the Jungle. This is not me quitting on my original aims; rather I'm adapting to evolving circumstances and realigning my hopes and desires for the book.

I'm not alone: look at what John Wideman's doing.

So, over the next few weeks I'll be finalising the book for publication in hardback format via lulu.com - and only available for purchase from lulu.com, because I don't see why I need to double the retail cost of the book just so Amazon can offer 50% discounts on it; I'll also be providing eBook versions for sale through Smashwords because, as Nathan says, it's the future, innit.

Also, I'll be updating the Kalieda Encyclopaedia section on the Vreski Society, as that is where the story takes place, and additionally developing a brand new section of the Rikweb to give the book it's own home page - with all the information that would otherwise have to be stuffed into appendices and the like (which would drive up the cost of the book).

After that I might dabble in a little promotion work, but my main priority will be to get on with finishing my other two (or three) books - with a goal of publishing them before the end of the year. Oh, and finding paid employment I suppose. Gotta keep up with the calorie intake else nothing's gonna happen.


(With thanks to Reb for helping to clarify things for me).

Tconju Babelen - the Tower of Babel

Do you both like the pretty scriptie? It's new - a brand new conscript I've developed for my Gevey conlang - more info (natch) on this page of the Kalieda Encyclopaedia.

In fact the whole language is undergoing some big changes at the moment - yes, even after three decades, I can still find an excuse to rip up my major conlang to redo things. Like giving the language a whole new latin script orthography. And messing around with prepositions to make them work better. A wholesale revision of the lexicon, changes and updates on lots of pages - though none of that is live at the moment; the key words being 'is undergoing'. Forty day's worth of work so far, and at least another 2-3 weeks to go.

What's this got to do with Babel, I hear you both asking? Well, naturally I have to update the Gevey translation of the Babel story, which of course gives me an opportunity to rewrite it. I've never really been comfortable with the existing translation - even adapting it to meet the needs of my conworld, it still reeks of Genesis. So over the next week I'll be translating a new adaption of the old tale.

Here's the English version:

---

The Tower of Babele

During the age of the four Grandsons all the people of the world spoke the same language. Humanity had spread across the continents and oceans, for in that time all the soils of Kalieda were sweet and productive. And where people gathered they built themselves towns and even cities.

It is said that the youngest of the Grandsons, the Lord of Storms, lived in the east of our continent, in the area we now call Cantane. People whispered that he was the least of the four Grandsons, being the last born. When the rumours reached his ears, he grew angry and wrathful. Many people died.

Then a man, seeing the slaughter, went to his Lord and said: 'If I tell you of a way to prove to all people that you are the greatest of Lords, will you stop the killing?'

'Tell me,' said the Lord of Storms, 'and I shall consider it.'

'Let us build a tower, my Lord, a tower so strong and so high that it shall touch the stars. Then no one will doubt that you are the greatest man in the world. But you must stop killing your people, otherwise there will be nobody left to witness your worth and your wisdom.'

'Build me this tower,' he commanded. And so the slaughter was stopped and everybody was set to work scouring the forests around them for wood, gouging the earth for clay and blocking wide rivers for water.

Seasons passed, and slowly the tower grew. Young boys became grandfathers and still the tower grew, passing through the clouds that gathered around to watch this strange activity. Such was the wonder that people from across the world flocked to its base, and the city of the Lord of Storms became the biggest and richest city in the world.

One day an old beggar wandered into the city, and stood to look up at the tower. 'What is the meaning of this thing?' he asked.

'We call it the Tower of Babele, the Lord of Storms,' a man told him. 'It is the greatest thing in the world.'

'Why is it so tall?'

'It is as tall as our Lord's pride.'

'Is it a temple?'

'Who needs temples when we have the tower?'

'But what need do you have of such towers when the Creator has given you mountains to marvel at?'

'We can build our own mountains,' laughed the man. 'We are now more than the Creator could ever have imagined, if he had ever existed!'

And the Creator smiled at the man, and breathed in deeply, and grew, and grew, and grew. Tornadoes formed around him as his height increased, buildings collapsed at the stretch of his feet. Storm clouds built a crown of lightning for his brow. Within minutes he was as tall as the tower, and still he grew.

The Creator said: 'Listen to my judgment! I have seen a man's greatest work, and I see nothing worthy of mankind. There is more beauty and power, grace and honour in the building and birthing of a new baby! This tower shall die today,' and with a touch of His finger the great erection collapsed.

'Go now,' ordered the Creator, 'and learn once again the purpose I gave to your ancestors. See with fresh eyes the world around you. Worship with new words the wonders of the sea, and the air, and the soil upon which you live!'

This is the story of how the over-pride of humanity led to the loss of our common ears and our common tongues. For from that moment, the peoples of the world were scattered, and none could understand the words of their neighbours, their friends, their children. Only one word did the Creator permit all people to keep: babele, that is confusion, to remind us all of how we allowed ourselves to be mesmerised by our own works, forgetting the world about us.

Poetry and Cory Doctorow

If Cory Doctorow can make a living by getting his books into as many people's hands and heads and hard-drives as possible, through both conventional and unconventional means - then why not poets?

What does the average (heh) poet fear from doing Cory-Doctorow-like stuff such as giving their work away free to anyone who wants it, and maybe also sell a few copies of the book for those who want something a little more on the permanent side of things?

Rik has a new Hero - and best of all, his Hero writes science fiction!

(Hat tip thingy: Mister Ron Silliman)

Rikweb website statistics

So last December, as I was sorting things out with my webhost, I got them to add Matrixstats to my service so I could keep track of comings and goings at the Rikweb website. They were offering it for free, and I'm not a person to turn down free stuff - especially shiny free stuff like Matrixstats.

And then, after I got it all set up and running, I promptly forgot about it. Until today, when I stumbled upon the wonderful shininess of website statistics once again. Completely by accident, of course, but then that's often the best way to do these things.

Now webstats, in my view, are pretty meaningless in their raw state. The total number of hits is not a measure of web-worthiness. Especially if a lot of those hits are coming from spiders and other creepy crawlies clambering all round the site to feed snippets back to the Google mothernest. But some of the stats are interesting.

For instance, over the past 10 months over 23,000 sessions requested more than one page on the website, which probably translates into over 20 thousand people (ie humans with pulses and suchlike) visiting the site. Thats 2,000 people knocking on the door each month.

Yes, I know, that's peanuts for a website. But then rikweb.co.uk is not trying to sell anything to anyone, nor am I paying for adverts to get people to visit the RikVerse or the Kalieda Encyclopaedia, nor do I spam my links (much).

More exciting to me, 6,000 sessions (people) have spent more than 15 minutes browsing through the website during their visit - which translates to 600 people a month, or 20 people a day. This is ten times more people than I ever hoped for: I'd be happy if just 2 people a day popped by for a browse!

And then I found the statistics for downloads (in other words how many times my poetry chapbook files have been downloaded) ... and I was blown away.

Over the past 10 months:

• 22 Facets of my Father has been downloaded 177 times


• Play Time has been downloaded an amazing 218 times


• From Each Skull, a Story has been downloaded 168 times


• and that raunchy little tome Poems to Quote to your Lover has been downloaded 172 times

So even if only 10% of those downloads were by people who wanted to download my poems, that's still a lot of people who cared enough about my poems to download them. If you were one of those people, can I just say: thank you! I hope you enjoyed reading my poems.

... and no, you can't have a refund.

Fresh maps

... for the Lands section of the Kalieda Encyclopaedia. All the Lands now have three maps: place on continent; general; and habitat/cultivations. For instance, the maps for the Land of Rhindose ...

Place on continent


General map


Habitats and cultivations

The RikVerse and Creative Commons licences

As you may have both spotted already, I've never been comfortable with the 20th century view of a poem being a tradable commodity; all the stuff about poems having to be gathered into books and published and traded in shops before they can be considered to be real or proper or significant or noteworthy - c'mon, let's be honest with ourselves here: it's all a pile of bollocks, innit!

In the Rik view of the world a poem is a poem when somebody reads it, or hears it, or watches it being performed and they turn round to their mates and say: "now that's a poem!" I can sit here typing until I'm blue in the fingertips claiming that my poems are poems, but until they're validated by other people as poems, they're just collections of words on the page or screen.

In short: poems need people, and people need poems.

But people aren't going to get the poems they need if those poems are trapped inside a book or a magazine. A book which they have to go out and buy, or borrow from a library, or nick off a friend. A book which they probably don't know exists, because for most people in the real world, seeking out books of poems is not high on their list of things to do. I mean, why should it be?

The living book

I came to the conclusion years back that I had no interest in pressing the life out of my poems between the pages of a book. I rarely submit work to print journals; I've never (forgetting one moment of madness) sought a publisher for my poetry. I don't need to: I've got a website.

The RikVerse Website isn't just a webpage where I shove all my poems. Oh, no! My overriding vision for the RikVerse Website has been that of a living book - a place where I can showcase my poems to the world, where I can share the development of the poems with visitors, and where I can promote the finished works through as many different channels as possible. That's why I've spent so much time and effort to make sure the site's accessible and welcoming to the casual browser: it's about the poems, innit, not the geezer wot wrote them.

My poems are on webpages and in pdf documents; a number have audio and some have video. If visitors don't like the website, they can perhaps check out the poems via Scribd, or Issuu, or Google books. They can even buy a portion of the RikVerse in dead tree format, if that's what they want (though it kinda misses the point of the ever-evolving 'living book' concept, but hey ho). And as soon as I work out the technicalities, RikVerse poems will be available for eReaders such as BeBook, Kindle and eSlick.

Copyrights and stuff

But I don't think the RikVerse website and all these other delivery channels is enough - I want people to be sharing my poems with their mates. But the one thing that stops such sharing (legally speaking) is the copyright issue.

So I've decided to start using Creative Commons licences. As the CC folk say on their website: "Creative Commons licenses are not an alternative to copyright. They work alongside copyright, so you can modify your copyright terms to best suit your needs. We've collaborated with intellectual property experts all around the world to ensure that our licenses work globally." I like those words.

Look at what CC licences have done for photos - arguably the visual equivalent of a poem. People don't think twice about uploading their photos to venues like Flickr, thus offering them to others to use in their own venues or in their own work. And it's all legal, thanks to the CC licence. There's no payments as such, but rather a kind of gift economy where payment is made in kudos and respect. And nobody (except the commercial photographic libraries, I'm guessing) has a problem with this massive change in the way images are traded between folk around the globe.

I see no reason why it shouldn't be different for poems.

Now don't get me wrong: I'm not one of those raving lunatics who thinks all poems should be released into the wild for swapping and sharing. There's good reasons why copyright laws were established over the past couple of centuries, and if some people can make money from their poems by selling books and stuff then more strength to their elbows, say I.

But equally, why should poems remain copyrighted for seventy years after their authors have died? I mean, how does that benefit the writer? Are they expecting the royalties to pay for fresh flowers on their grave for generations to come?

It's a tricky question. I want to retain copyright over my poems, yet I don't need floral tributes to celebrate my death day after I've gone, and at the same time I do want my poems to be read and shared by people while I still breathe. Which is why, after fretting about these issues for years, I decided that the best option for me was to move all my poems onto a Creative Commons licence.

What does all this mean?

In practical terms, what I'm saying is:

• if you want to post one of my poems to your website or blog, go right ahead - as long as you remember to give me credit for the poem by making sure you say "This poem was written by Rik Roots"


• feel free to take one of my poems into class for your 'found poem' project


• you can reuse a poem, for instance in a leaflet or pamphlet - as long as they're not for sale!

And the best bit is you can do all this fun stuff with my poems without having to pay me! Check out the Creative Commons website for more information for what can and can't be done to works released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales Licence.

But wait! There's more!

You know how you're supposed to progress as a poet as time goes by? Well, I've been thinking about those poems I wrote more than 15 years ago and, well, I think it's about time they started to make their own way in the world. So I've decided to release those poems written more than 15 years ago under the much sexier Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 UK: England & Wales Licence.

Which means that for these poems I'm going to be brave and let people copy, distribute, display, and perform them - and derivative works based upon them - as long as people mention my name somewhere where folks can spot it. And yes, people can use those poems for their own commercial work, and no, I don't expect to be paid.

It's a brave new world out there. I look forward to seeing how this all works out.

Why are you begging for money, Rik?

#1: How dare you! I'm not begging for money!

#2: 'Kay, yes, I have added a "donate" button to the RikVerse Website pages. So what?

#3: Anyways, it's not as if I'm asking something for nothing. There's been big changes on the Rikverse Website which I think merit the addition of a "donate" button.

#4: What do you mean, 'what changes?' Go and see; stop bugging me to do all the hard work for you!

#5: Of course the changes are easy to spot! Go look again ... have you seen it yet?

#6: Yes indeedy! It's the copyright notice thingy. That is new!

#7: What do you mean, 'what's so special about the copyright notices?'

#8: They're not just any old copyright notices, I'll have you know; these are Creative Commons Licences - by switching to these licences, I'm giving folks permission to use my poems in various ways for non-commercial purposes ...

#9: No, I haven't lost the plot, thank you very much! It doesn't mean people can start doing silly things like changing my poems or plagiarising them or profiting from them ...

#10: Well okay, people can use some of the poems for commercial purposes without having to seek my permission first, or paying me, but those are just the older, more feeble poems ...

#11: Yes, yes. I know it sounds like a stupid thing to do, but that's the way the world is going and by giving people a licence to do stuff with my poems I'll hopefully be gaining a bit of name recognition and getting more visitors to the website ...

#12: And yes, some of them might just make a donation. Good point, there! Wish I had thought about it first. Now go and play in the garden, or the motorway, or something. Rik has a world to conquer and he doesn't need interruptions, 'kay?

The Rik Videos: Empress