you should definitely maybe buy my new book!

Hey, you should probably know that I just wrote a new book!

And I say “probably” rather than “definitely” here, because I am not about to dictate your priorities to you. Seriously, I am not so arrogant or narcissistic to believe that you should immediately drop everything that you are doing right now, and run as fast as you can, to your nearest bookstore, in order to purchase a copy of my new book.

To be completely honest, I doubt that the book is even available at your local book store. Because I am mostly selling it online. Which is where you can purchase it: By getting online. Which you probably are already. If you are reading this.

Look, I don’t harbor any grandiose assumptions about me being “God’s Gift to Readers,” and that everybody and anybody must simply be dying to read my book. I just figured that, since you were visiting my blog (as demonstrably demonstrated by the fact that you are reading this) then you probably have *some* interest in my work. Even if it is a vague, fleeting, ambivalent, and/or half-hearted sort of interest.

But maybe you’re not really interested in my work? Maybe you’ve just been toying with me this whole entire time? Perhaps, rather than genuinely enjoying all of the odd little pieces that I have been posting here sporadically over the last year or so, you have merely been pretending to like me all along? Perhaps because you have some ulterior motive?

Frankly, I am not exactly sure what that ulterior motive would be. And don’t get me wrong: It’s not that I doubt your Machiavellian nature per se – I am sure you can be quite devious and crafty when you want to be, when you set your mind to it. It’s just that it is unclear to me how you might be able to thoroughly take advantage of me via reading my odd, little, sporadic blog.

Unless you are hacking me right now.

ARE YOU HACKING ME RIGHT NOW?!? LITERALLY AS I WRITE THIS?!?

It just dawned on me that I may have jumped the gun here. Perhaps I have been assuming the worst about you? I sure hope not. But at the same time, I sure hope that I have just assumed the worst about you. Otherwise, that likely means that you are hacking me right now. Literally.

And in addition to jumping the gun, I’m afraid I have also buried the lede. Perhaps because I shot the lede with the gun. I pumped it full of lead, or led, or lede – spelling and idioms be damned. And naturally, I’d have to dispose of that body somehow…

Anyway, the lede was supposed to be: Hey I wrote a new book! It’s called General Surgery and Surgeons General: a Kat Cataclysm chapbook. It’s a modest forty-something-page collection of some of my absurdist short stories, slam poems, and whimsical musings, which touch upon and/or outright tackle diverse topics such as YA dystopian fiction, photosynthesis, mountain climbing, temporal anomalies, bisexuality, Santa Claus, Prince’s song lyrics, malapropisms & paraprosdokians, and the trials and travails of the contemporary author.

the book can be purchased at:
—CreateSpace (which offers the best royalties for the author)
—Amazon.com (where you can “Look Inside” the book by clicking on the cover)

And you can listen to readings of four of the chapters on YouTube:

Poetry Slammed
The Sex Which Is Not One
Mr. Prince
Smells Like Teen Dystopia

And if you’re looking for more general information about the book (e.g., if you happen to be a generalist rather than a specialist, or a general rather than an enlisted person), it can be found here.

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the benefits of unreasonably high expectations

People often cite the importance of lowering expectations. For instance, if I have just begun a writing project that I hope will one day blossom into a full-fledged novel, it might be in my best interest to lower expectations – for instance, by telling family and friends that it will likely turn out to be a lengthy writing exercise, or if I’m lucky, a short story or a self-published chapbook, when all is said and done. That way, if I do fail, no one will hold it against me.

But I have decided to take a different tack. Instead of lowering expectations, I try to raise expectations impossibly high. Like, instead of letting people know that I am trying my hand at writing a novel, I instead proclaim – both boisterously and repeatedly – that I am working on a heptalogy that will sweep the nation and make me heir to the likes of J. K. Rowling and George R. R. Martin, despite the fact that I don’t even have any initials in my pen name. I even promise my family and friends that, once I clear the 50 million books sold globally benchmark, I will take them all out to dinner, to a really really nice restaurant.

Of course, they won’t likely believe that I will reach my stated goal. So essentially, this unreasonably-high-expectation approach accomplishes the same overall effect as lowering expectations: It takes the pressure off me, and allows me wiggle room if I do fail. But on the plus side, it is way more optimistic!

on the virtues of self-editing

I am never quite sure whether I should “punch up” or “spruce up” the language.

So rather than putting the finishing touches on this piece and submitting it for publication, I’ve instead decided to pour myself a glass of wine, take the last remaining Percocet from my root canal last year, stare at the textured patterns in my stucco ceiling, and contemplate all the (if you ask me, quite significant) differing implications of “punching” versus “sprucing” up language as it applies to my forthcoming listicle about the thirteen most unflattering dresses worn at this year’s Academy Awards™. Which will be coming soon to a pop culture, and/or fashion, and/or entertainment, and/or Hollywood gossip, and/or serious news outlet desperate for advertising revenue, website near you.

But not until I finish the damned thing.

My first blog post, wherein I blog about blogging about blogging

You can’t just be a writer anymore. All the websites say so. The days of being an Emily Dickinson or J.D. Salinger – just locking yourself away in a room somewhere, and writing writing writing for the pure unadulterated joy of writing! – are like totally over now.

Writing is not enough anymore. This is what all the websites say. On top of writing, the twenty-first century writer needs to additionally create and sustain a “platform,” which may include (but is not necessarily limited to) a website and a blog, numerous social media accounts, regular public speaking appearances, and so on. And it is upon this writer’s platform that the contemporary writer must metaphorically perch if we wish to develop an online “presence” and to establish our “brand.”

And the websites go on to tell us that it is this very online presence and branding that will help us get “noticed” by the publishers who, upon noticing us, may or may not publish the book that we’ve been meaning to write, but haven’t quite gotten around to just yet, because we’ve been too busy learning HTML in our efforts to create and sustain our burgeoning writer’s platform.

This is what all the websites are saying.

Well, not all the websites. Just the ones whose stated purpose is to help writers with their writing careers. And while these writer-focused websites are generally sincere and often quite helpful, I cannot help but notice that these websites are also invariably written by writers. Specifically, by writers who write about helping writers with their writing careers. In other words, helping writers with their careers is their career. Nay, it is their brand! The brand that will help get them noticed by publishers!

And by reading their extremely helpful blog posts about creating my own writer’s platform so that I can develop my own online presence, I am simultaneously helping them establish their online presence. It is a win-win situation. For both of us.

And now, by reading this – my very first blog post – you, dear reader, are presently participating in my newly acquired online presence. So thank you for the lovely present of your presence!

And if you just so happen to appreciate this blog post – wherein I blog about people who are blogging about blogging – then by all means, feel free to blog about it.

And one day, in the not so distant future, we will all have publishers…