Tag Archives: yells for ourselves

Literary Endeavors

Yells For Ourselves Available at iTunes

Last week, The Classical published an excerpt from Yells For Ourselves, an alternate history of the 1999-2000 New York Mets. Once again, if you’re curious what “alternate history” means and why this subject warrants one, I direct you to the introduction posted at the book’s official website here.

When the excerpt was posted, I also put up a link that would allow you to download a preview of the book for the iPad containing animations, functionality, and other goodies that will be found in the full product. I really want to get this preview in lots of peoples hands–or devices, I guess–but as you can imagine, that’s difficult to do when I’m the only person distributing it.

That’s why I am now proud to announce that this preview has been accepted by the iTunes Store, which means you can totally, officially get it for your iPad. And it is totally free, so click here to download it, review it, and spread the word.

I can’t stress these last two items enough. iTunes’ arcane algorithms give a lot of weight to reviews, so the more reviews this thing gets, the more attention it will get. If you know anybody with an iPad, let ’em know about this. Grab people on the street if you have to. They’ll be cool about it, probably.

Any and all feedback welcomed on this preview (provided it’s more constructive than YOU SUCK). I hope to have a Kickstarter thingy set up for this project within a month or so and will keep everyone posted. Until then, download it, love it, review it, share it. Deal?

Literary Endeavors

Ebook Seeks Readers for Touchscreen Fun

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For the past few forevers, I’ve been working on an ebook called Yells For Ourselves, a multi-volume alternate history of the 1999-2000 Mets. For more info on exactly what that “alternate history” means, you can glean more details at this here link. The reason it’s taken so long is because I’m trying to make a spiffy, enhanced thing that’s somewhere between a book and an app, something that aims to be both a work of research and fun to interact with. It’s taken a lot of trial and error–mostly error–to figure what I could and could not do, what was feasible, and in what format it was most ideally presented.

My initial plan was to take a regular ebook, crack it open, and add spiffy enhancements to it–primarily, audio and video. That plan fell through when said A/V enhancements proved prohibitively costly to license, and I was forced to rethink exactly what I wanted to do with this thing.

So I started from scratch and created a more design-oriented book using Apple’s iBooks Author tool. I had the iPad primarily in mind for my original plan–it remains one of the few devices that can handle enhanced ebooks–so this was a natural step to take. Apart from allowing me to include all kinds of animations and other goodies, iBooks Author enabled me to create an ebook that actually looks good from a design standpoint, whereas design is not even a remote concern for most ebook interfaces. There are issues with this program, as there are with any Apple product (it definitely reflects their “it’s our way or the highway” approach), but it also necessitated the least amount of compromise between my ideal vision of this work and what was feasible. I do plan to produce a no-frills version of Yells For Ourselves for other devices, but I found the possibilities of producing an iPad-centric enhanced ebook too intriguing to pass up.

Now, I finally have a sample that I’m ready to show to the world. When I say “sample,” I mean that I have an introduction and one chapter that demonstrate what the complete book will look like and be able to do. I’m still not 100 percent decided if I will use Kickstarter initiative to fund this. The biggest costs involved with making this dream a reality are incorporation (so I can sell it), ISBN purchase (so I can sell it at all ebook retailers), and image licensing, which is the really big one. For the moment, most of the artwork in Yells For Ourselves is just that: artwork of my own creation. But I would like to include some for-real iconic imagery from these seasons, and that, friends, runs into money.

If I do Kickstart Yells For Ourselves, I need a tangible slice of it to show the world and say “This is what your money will help make.” If I don’t Kickstart it, I still need to entice potential purchasers. Whichever route I take, I still have to make sure that this thing works and reassure myself that people might actually want it–and will be accepted on the Apple Store. Since I can’t learn these things on my own, I’ve made this sample available for your perusal and beta-testing enjoyment. I am interested in any and all feedback, but I am primarily looking for notes on the interactivity in the ebook.

If you’d like to check out this sample for yourself, it is available via Gumroad at the button below. Before downloading, however, please keep two things in mind:

  1. This book is designed for the iPad, so if you don’t have an iPad, it ain’t gonna work for ya. It’s an iBook file, so there’s a slim chance it’ll work on an iPhone, but I can’t vouch for that and wouldn’t recommend it anyway.
  2. The Gumroad button below brings you to a separate web page where you can download the sample. It will ask you to “name a fair price.” This is FREE. Enter 0 and you’re good to go. Don’t send any money, I beg of you!

Yells For Ourselves: Sample

Again, any and all feedback is welcomed, and you can send that feedback to yellsforourselves at gmail dot com. If you do not have an iPad, that is your right as an American. But if you’d still like to see check out the book’s content, you have a couple of options. First off, over at the book’s blog, you can read its full introduction, which serves as a sort of manifesto/statement of purpose for the larger work. You can also check out an excerpt from the book that at The Classical. The excerpt is a condensed version of a pivotal chapter in the book, the same chapter that’s contained in the sample.

If you’re more the visual type, I’ve provided some screenshots from the ebook after the jump.

Continue reading Ebook Seeks Readers for Touchscreen Fun →

Endeavors Elsewhere, Shameless Self Promotion

What’s Been Doin’

Hey! I haven’t written here in a while. Nor have I been writing all that much at Scratchbomb in calendar year 2012. One large reason is that, for the last bit and a half, I’ve been concentrating alternately on finishing my novel and working on a large-ish non-fiction thing.

As far as the novel goes, it is 98 percent done. I’ve completed a second draft, and will soon begin a third so I can dot the i’s, cross the t’s, remove superfluous adverbs, and so on. However, all the really hard work (the actual writing of stuff) is done, and very soon I will send it out to the world and onto a slush pile near you. I am close enough to completion that I feel confident enough to tell the world the following facts about this novel:

  1. The title is Love and a Short Leash.
  2. It is a spy novel that involves baseball.

Speaking of baseball, the large-ish non-fiction thing I mentioned above involves The Great American Pastime and it too has been consuming me of late. I’ve been kinda squirrely about exactly what this thing is on Twitter and elsewhere. I realize that vagueness such as this is maddening and I apologize for that. Here is what I can say about it:

  1. It is called Yells For Ourselves.
  2. It is a multi-volume ebook about the 1999/2000 Mets, or rather, about the narratives and media perceptions thereof.
  3. It will be available in a no-frills version and a souped-up version for the iPad that will include lots of extra goodies, the technical aspects of which I’ve (mostly) figured out.
  4. More details will become available upon the official launch of YellsForOurselves.com. (Nothing there right now, really, except a “watch this space” notice and one of my favorite Mets-related pics ever.)

I am pursuing traditional channels to get my novel published. (Speaking of which, if you’re involved with traditional channels, hey, hit me up, wouldja?) The non-fiction book will be self-published, more or less to prove that the souped-up version is something can be done, from a technical standpoint.

The other big reason I’ve been delinquent in my posts here is because I’ve been writing for other sites. (Scratchbomb and I have an open relationship.) I realize this has endangered my goal for Scratchbomb to be the M*A*S*H of the Internet (“where hilarity meets brooding introspection!”). However, I’m pretty proud of the stuff I’ve done elsewhere of late. Apart from my regular stuff at Amazin’ Avenue (which should ramp up now that spring training is upon us). here’s where you could have seen me so far in 2012.

  • Last Friday I eulogized Gary Carter at The Classical. The Kid was the first athlete I loved, and his death, while sadly unexpected, hit me hard. I hope did his memory justice here. On a less serious tip, I also took a look at how Ray Manzarek’s brought an otherwise fine HBO doc about John Wooden and the UCLA basketball dynasty to a screeching halt.
  • For Vice, I penned a brief assessment of the Marlins’ home run monstrosity as a sign of the impending apocalypse. If you think that take is a bit hyperbolic, I assume you have not seen this thing.
  • For Splitsider, I looked back at the Looney Tunes 50th Anniversary Special, possibly the greatest thing Bill Murray has ever done, if not humanity itself.
  • Last but certainly not least, I’ve scribbled a few things for Low Times: a review of Mitch Miller’s prog record, and an in-depth study of which exact city was built on rock and roll. And if you’re not listening to the Low Times podcast, get on the stick, fella. I have to say the Worst Lyrics discussion with Ted Leo and DC Pierson is one of the funniest things I’ve heard in many a moon.

Will I be posting here with more regularity in the near future? Possibly. What I can promise is that if I don’t, I will definitely put up another post apologizing for not posting.