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Welcome to the Newsletter!
Thanks for stopping by for my first newsletter of 2023! I hope you enjoy it and can share it with your friends and family.
Recent Announcements:
In late December of ‘22 I started a “Bookstagram” account on Instagram in an effort to further share news about my writing and do a little review work on the books and media that I spend so much of my time consuming. So far it’s been an interesting experiment, and if you want to check me out there my username is @bloperficiton.
Project Progress:
I’ve moved onto the next stage of editing of my sci-fantasy manuscript, grammar edits to prepare it for my copy editor. However, that process is taking far longer than I anticipated, because I did not get near the amount of writing done during the Christmas/New Year holidays I had intended. It’s likely that that planned deadline is going to have to be moved back to the second half of this month/early Feb.
Other projects are still on hold until this deadline is dealt with.
Recent Fascinations:
After finishing up THE FAR MERIDIAN, which I still highly recommend, I moved on to another podcast-audio drama titled GIVE ME AWAY, which I don’t recommend (check out my review on Instagram). However, as the year wound down and I progressively started focusing more of my free time into my writing, specifically the not-writing part of being a writer, I’ve found myself considering the idea of “being literary” and being a writer in general.
In December, my first story was accepted for publication. While it won’t be in print until the Summer, the guarantee of publication shifted the way I think about being a writer in a way I never thought it would. I had told myself for a long time, years and years, that once I was published I wouldn’t be an aspiring author but a real, proper writer of fiction. Even though I won’t earn a red cent from this publication, it’s still the lifelong realization of a childhood dream. I found out my story was accepted just as I pulled into my driveway after a long week at my day job, and I sat in the car for a minute, telling myself over and over again that I had finally made it.
I’m a writer.
Then I went inside and cooked and tended to my infant the same as any other day. The next Monday I woke up and went to work and did the same work I do Monday-Friday. There were certainly congratulations from friends and family, and I’m still ecstatic to have achieved this, but to me it seems that as soon as I reached that long-chased goal, another appeared just as fast.
I’m a writer, sure. Now let’s find a way to do it for money. And that, dear reader, is the real hat trick.
So I started a Facebook page and this newsletter and an Instagram and suddenly there’s more to all of this than writing. There’s building an audience and posting and being public. And to be quite frank, none of it feels very “literary” at all.
A part of me had always imagined big bookshelves and roll top desks and quiet contemplative writing framed by the chase of publication as the peak literary goal. Certainly that’s part of it, at least part of the mindset, but so too is the marketing and the audiences and the social media of it all. The meaning of “suffer for your art” really seems to have changed, at least for this social media luddite.
Anyway, @bloperficiton, like-share-subscribe, and all that good stuff.
Thanks for Reading!
Thanks for taking the time to read my newsletter.
Check out my website: billyloperhistory.com
Check me out on Twitter at: PineyWoodsHIS
Check me out on Facebook at: Billy Don Loper-Fiction
Check me out on Instagram at: bloperficiton
