"Go Fish" by Michele Witchipoo
What’s a four-letter word for intercourse? TALK. That’s what we’re looking at in our upcoming issue of IF-X. I’m compiling the issue tonigh, and I’m pretty pleased as to the contents: sequential-art stories by Adam Wilson, Saul Haberfield, and Rick Lundeen, with prose piece by Drew Pardiac. Plenty of fun and surprises await! Due out this December from Hamtramck Idea Men!
Hamtramck Idea Men is the name of my company, located here in Hamtramck, Michigan, which is a whole other city located in the center of Detroit. We produce our own comics, games, t-shirts, and original art; we also work on other people’s websites, game ideas, silk-screening products (including shirts), copy-editing, and more.
Last night, we helped put on a Halloween-style benefit, featuring the members of WTF. Here’s one of them now, singing, “Welcome to my Nightmare.” Spooky!
The Coolest of the Ghouls!
Come join me in Hamtramck tonight for the Party with the Dead, at the New Dodge Lounge near the south end of Joseph Campau. The party runs from 8pm to 2am, with admission of $10 going toward funding SMACC’s performance room this July.
Party with the Dead, at Hamtramck's New Dodge Lounge
The biggest problem with your average job situation is that more time is spent with toil than enjoyable elements of work. If you do not have this type of problem with your job, congratulations! Move along. This is not meant for you. This is meant for people who are not satisfied with what they are doing.
Before you make any decisions, though, figure out what it is that you’ve always wanted to do for a living. Until you figure this out and are completely sure of the answer, do not make any drastic changes. This way leads to madness and disappointment. Once you have your answer firmly in mind, your next step is research. When I talk about research, I must stress that you research every aspect:
There are many ways to get skills. For example, I met a woman who wanted to get into costuming and wardrobe, but the schools around here wanted her to spend several thousands of dollars on a full course load, prerequisites, and the like, just to get to the point where she could take the two courses she really wanted. Meanwhile, there was an independent fashion designer, right in her neighborhood, who was looking for someone to help her out. An unpaid apprenticeship proved to be a much cheaper way to go.
Materials costs do not only relate to what you’re going to be producing, but also how you’re going to promote it. You can knit all the pillowcases you want, but you won’t sell them unless you can get the word out effectively. Frequently, your success will relate to how you can cut these costs. Depending on your chosen pursuit, there may be some “outside-the-box” ways to reduce these costs significantly.
Consider how much you can do, at least in the short term, in your spare time, and how much you’re going to have to need out of your regular day. If you can keep your job and do your work while relaxing, keep your job and save up as much of that income as you can for now, because once you go full-time, you are really on your own. Quitting your job and jumping directly into business without sufficient funds can result, very quickly, in homelessness.
The fourth item, while (strictly speaking) optional, is a huge portion of how you can convert your savings into money for your work. For example, I used to be the type of person who could go through a two-liter of soda and a pot or so of coffee a day. I was the member of a monthly coffee service. I also subscribed to several magazines, many of which I only read for one or two articles. By switching to water, dropping the coffee service, and getting rid of the magazines, I saved almost a thousand dollars a year. That’s enough for me to create a prototype run of a hundred game sets! Even if it hurts (and it certainly wasn’t easy for me!), drop your expensive habits and funnel it into your work. In the end, you will be glad that you did.
After you have answered these questions and tackled issues of cost, you will be well on your way to making a plan. I’ll be discussing this some time later, though–my own business calls!
Speaking of which, if you need help with your own processes, just drop me a line.
–Michael
Today, I got a set of JPEGS from Alberto Pessoa, one of the artists involved with IF-X #2. About six months ago, he had started an anthology with another friend of his, all set around a town called “Purgatory,” located somewhere in the Old West. Each author covered a story somewhere within 100 years of the town’s history; mine is set somewhere around 1910–the reference to the Nobel Prize is a giveaway. That said, mine was probably going to be the only science-fiction western in the bunch.
Well, as it stands, the anthology isn’t happening, but Alberto worked up my story, “Hard Rain.” Here’s a sneak peek. Click on images to enlarge them–you can do this at least twice to get better views.
The big question is, do we publish it as a one-shot? Save it for a collection of shorts? Submit it for an anthology? Put it up somewhere pay-for-download?
Please tell me what you think.
–Michael
My name is Michael Marcus, and I’m one half of the Hamtramck Idea Men; you might already know me as the inventor of the game, Sudoku: Tactics, or the editor of the popular anthology comic book IF-X. Right now, the biggest project on my plate is SMACC, Southern Michigan’s Arts and Creativity Conference, the goal of which is to develop collaboration amongst the arts–since nobody is helping out the arts industry, it’s up to us to do it ourselves. We’ve still got tables and performance slots available, so please consider signing up. We’re also in the need of some sort of sponsorship–if you can help, please contact me directly.
I plan on using this place as a place to scribble more general thoughts until they’re refined to the level of my $1 Ideas, ideas that have been thought through enough that they’re worth selling. I’ve got thousands of them, no two alike, all worth developing in one sense or another, whether they’re inventions, story concepts, or other types of innovations. Some of them are also TOO IMPORTANT to wait to be bought, too. For example, a partial solution to the problems within the automotive industry:
If you’ve taken the time to understand the electric motor, you know that its process of converting electrical energy into motion is very similar to a turbine’s method of turning motion into electrical energy. Now, Obama and many on the left are concerned with building America’s energy infrastructure. All a smart auto manufacturer has to do is switch some of its processes from manufacturing cars to manufacturing wind turbines of various sorts, and they solve several problems at once:
It isn’t the first time we changed our country’s infrastructure to meet new demands–look at what we did back in World War II, when the crisis of war required us to redesign our factories. With this crisis, we need to do it again.
Tell me what *you* think.
–Michael