One Million Cups Eve.

Alrighty, this is it.

Either I find a larger community to help me figure out this crazy dream… or we keep getting it out of the mud…

Fingers crossed.

We Came. We Saw. We Captured.

I’m currently on the plane back, like RIGHT NOW RIGHT NOW. I’d say this is my first international flight, but I guess technically it’s my fourth? 1) USA to Turkey, 2) Turkey to Greece, 3) Greece to Turkey, and lastly, 4) Turkey back to Freedom Land.

Soooooo, yeah, kinda pretty good at this whole flying thing now. I’ve taken pictures and videos of so many Grecian scenes and places that I never even thought POSSIBLE over the last week. I look forward to getting an actual microphone and explaining what I saw in my head as I was surrounded by Mediterranean beauty.

I posted a little bit while I was in Houston, but I was fighting for my LIFE in that country. It’s like they’ve never heard of a bulldozer. Why is EVERYTHING on a FRICKING HILL? The whole country is on a 40 degree incline. You think those stories about your parents having to walk uphill to school both ways are a lie?? NOT IN GREECE! Athens or Santorini, doesn’t matter, the whole country is built like a stale mound of Play-doh. My quads and calves may NEVER recover.

Also, on my last day, I learned how to say, “Thank you” in Greek and I got to watch the shopkeeps I bought stuff from light up and say it back to me correctly (since I had the emphasis on the wrong part of the phrase). That was really nice.

Road to 10k Followers

I’ve finished the story! One I’m actually super proud of! I’ve had a few people read through it and outside of some small mistakes (that I’ll do my best to fix, but I’m not an editor) That’s the story I’ll be releasing.

I have an international business trip to Greece and Santorini coming up soon. I’m planning to get tons of travel and B-footage to do promotional voiceovers to reach out to people with a sense of adventure and exploration. I’m planning to post as often as I can. I’m hoping I can at least make ONE post a day, but we’ll see. How AMAZING would it be if I could say I had INTERNATIONAL connections??

That being said, I’m a fan of Hamilton (it’s the only musical I know, so don’t come for me) and sooooo I thought it would be funny to name it after the Schuyler Sisters: Angelica, Peggy, ELIIIIIIZA work.

You can find it under the Socials tab, it’s called The Skyhawk Sisters.

Also, while we’re on that note: why is “SCHUY” pronounced “SKY”?? What is the U doing there?? I’ve never heard of a Silent U??

A New TikTok Forward

I was struggling to figure out how exactly to make that thing on the front page a reality BUT I’VE GOT IT NOW! You know how there are all these Instagram and TikTok pages that have “I’ll do one push-up for every follower”? Well I want to gather a reading and writing community, so if I made a 10k word story, I could release one word per follower!

And I could do something like a Novalock Literary Universe of short stories, an NLU, if you will. Not the National Louis University, but ya know? I can start by 3 short stories using 3 subjects you’ve already seen. The woman in the logo, the man in the logo, and the BOOKS in the logo. Maybe the man is up north and survives a plane crash and meets a village of native people and falls in love, Pocahontas-style. And he has to sacrifice his books for heat and learn about the culture.

I don’t know, I’ll keep working on it.

Community Involvement

I’ve recently gotten involved in my local poetry community. Some of these poets write things I genuinely couldn’t dream of and honestly drive me to explore a little poetry on my own. Maybe one day you’ll see a blog post of poetry on here.

Also, I proposed the idea of the business and GOODNESS ME, THE RECEPTION WAS PHENOMENAL. I’m talking about I was offered 2 or 3 manuscripts IMMEDIATELY. If nothing else, I have a guaranteed customer base and community support within this group.

+1 Car added to Inventory

Finally! At long last! We’re back in action and goddangit, we’re DRIVING again!

Now I can finally get back to working on this again cause I’ve genuinely missed it.

Car Problems

So there hasn’t been an update in a while, I know. I’m sorry. I’ve suffered a great loss.

My car, after 10 years of dedicated service to me in its lifelong career of 20 years and almost 260,000 miles, is on its last legs. It’s yet another bill to pay to get it to hobble along for the next few months. New challenges means new focuses and as much I’d like to promise due dates and deliverables, I have been forced to shift gears and car shop.

Here’s hoping this is fixed by the end of July? It’s kinda hard to focus on a passion project with no car.

Crowdfunding Confusion

Hey everyone! So if you click the Donate link in the top left, you’ll find a GoFundMe for the project. You can also donate directly to me through this website.

BUT!

I am getting a Kickstarter ready and if you have any ideas on what you’d want to see in it, please reach out to me via email at contact@novalockpublishing.com.

Getting Started

FINALLY! It’s so nice to have people looking at this thing. Do you have any idea how long it took me to get the ideas on the page for this? Or filing with the government? Or making a business plan or elevator pitch? And I didn’t even have a website then! Of course, I have family and friends who’ve been very helpful thus far and I’m beyond grateful for them.

BUT NO ONE I KNOW HAS EVER DONE ANYTHING LIKE THIS

I’m basically getting it out of the MUD over here. But I’ll tell you what, getting this website functioning and updating it to get a stronger following is so important and I’m so excited to get this done. So stay tuned for more updates, for more information, and especially for more news regarding the business.