Hello, Watchers! There’s no ‘Avatar’ review today.

Yes, this is the saddest news of all time. But yesterday, I was stuck waiting around to find out if I’d have to sit on a jury! Despite that it would have been the funniest thing ever had I actually gotten the chance to be on a jury, alas, my group was dismissed as a whole. But between that and trying to catch up on all the work I missed doing my ~real job~ in the ~real world~, I still have not seen the next episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender.

This never happens! I pride myself on being consistent and delivering posts daily to both my sites, but for once, things not on the Internet actually interfered! Blast it! Anyway, I apologize for this one day delay. Generally, I’m pretty good at managing my time and getting this stuff done ahead of time, but the past few days have involved the following things:

• A fifty mile training ride here in the East Bay, which is training for my fourth time doing the AIDS/LifeCycle, which you should totally donate to! You should! I need lots more money and you’re helping keep people alive! Anyway, I did a pretty gnarly ride. I should mention at this point that I ride a fixed gear bicycle only on all my long distance rides, which is both foolish and….foolish. I don’t have any other adjectives to use. They look like this:

• That’s right! No gears, no freewheel. REALLY FOOLISH, AMIRITE. But it’s fun! And I love it! And, aside from a few small modifications, that’s actually the bicycle I ride.
• Ok, there’s a point to telling you this. I found a hill here in Oakland that provided me with the first time I have flat out given up. I’m a great hill climber, but this one defeated me and I didn’t ride one foot on it. It was so steep I almost threw up just from the sight of it. It basically was this:

So I looked at Skyline Blvd after managing to climb up Golf Links and was seriously like I AM DONE. JESUS TAKE THE WHEEL NOW.

 

• On Sunday, I did a fantastic, eleven-mile hike in Big Basin Mountains in Santa Cruz! It was lovely and you should add me on Flickr so you can see a small collection of photos from this gorgeous spot here in Northern California.
• Watching “Day of the Moon” late Sunday night because Comcast is awful, so I didn’t get my normal head start on Mark Watches stuff AT ALL.
• Accidentally falling asleep on my friend’s couch on Sunday after “Day of the Moon” was over because I’d just done this SUPER INTENSE HIKE and ridden fifty miles in one weekend and LOOK, I WAS FUCKING EXHAUSTED.
• The best part about that? I fell asleep just after 9pm on Sunday and woke up at 5:30am and I had no clue where I was or why I was in this strange place and, I swear to you, I immediately thought that I had been kidnapped. what is my brain.

So all of this is to explain that, more so than usual, I was incredibly busy and I hope that y’all will forgive me for this momentary lapse in Avatar-y goodness. And I didn’t just want to put up some bullshit post! Why not give you all something to read in the meantime?

So, on that point, I’d like to talk about something rather exciting! No new projects or anything because SERIOUSLY, I COULD NOT FIT ONE MORE THING IN MY LIFE AT THIS POINT. I had posted something about it on my Twitter last week and the response was FANTASTICAL, so I thought I’d have an open forum for this sort of thing here on Mark Watches so we can discuss! I love talking with you folks and I think this is something that would only work if a lot of you were on board.

So! (I’ve started three paragraphs with that word. COME AT ME BRO.) I make very, very, very little money doing all of this. I can’t tell you how much because then Google Analytics will come at me, bro, and kick me out of their program. Which is bad. But suffice to say it is not anything I could even remotely live on. And I mean that in the purest sense: I could not even afford to eat off of it if all of my other expenses were paid for. But that’s ok! This shit is SO FUN AND REWARDING and I am not saying this as a preface to asking anyone to donate money for this or to suggest that I’ll make you pay for this. THIS WILL ALWAYS BE FREE FOR YOU, FINE WATCHER. And I plan to keep it that way!

I have recently come into possession (AND QUITE LEGALLY, I MIGHT ADD) software to create e-books! Once I discovered this fabulous technology, an idea popped into my head! Here is that idea, spelled out in bullet points because bullet points are gorgeous things and they are round and they make me smile:

• I would like to start a Mark Does Stuff weekly newsletter. It would include links to all my reviews for the past seven days, will include lots of more personal ramblings and info, will also share stuff that I’ve created for places like Tumblr and Flickr, and will serve as the MASTER ANNOUNCEMENT LOCATION. Having three sites means that sometimes I repeat myself and I hate that. They are three very different communities and I don’t like when I can’t acknowledge that.  Additionally, I just want a place to keep everyone updated about when I am starting a new series, when liveblogs are, and maybe include some neat stuff just for the newsletter. So! (There you are again.) My question is: Would you sign up for such a newsletter?
• Here’s the second half. Included in the newsletter, I would like to start offering my reviews as e-book collections. I plan to start retroactively, wayyyyy back at the beginning, and bundle each set of reviews as a “book” to have as a companion for all of you who have e-readers. I’ll start with one “book” for each of the Twilight books, then work on Harry Potter, then move on to The Hunger Games and Firefly and Doctor Who. Each season/series would have it’s own book as well. They’ll be in a format to read on the Kindle or iBooks or Google Books and not only will I offer them for download on my sites and in the newsletter, they should be in all three of those book stores! (Amazon, iTunes, Google.)
• Now, for the reason why I mentioned money. If I charged a mere 0.99 for each book (one book for a single book in a series, with chapters and footnotes included, and one book for each series/season of a show), would you pay a dollar for them? When I am adapting these reviews for the e-book, they will largely remain what they are, but the e-book is not the same as a blog, so certain reviews will have to be re-adapted. That means if you buy them, THERE WILL BE NEW STUFF IN THEM. Which is kind of exciting! I’m also going to include a lot more Author’s Notes and footnotes to give a bit more insight into the process of writing all of the reviews.

So that’s what I’m thinking. I don’t want to make a fortune and a dollar is inexpensive. But it’s a lot of work to adapt them into e-books and I should be starting that next week, once I’m done The Book Thief, and I don’t think it’s entirely ludicrous to ask for a dollar for each book.

Anyway, I’d like to know what you think! As I finish a series of a show here on Mark Watches, it will be much easier to format them for a publishable e-book because I now use that program to write all of my reviews, so they’re already ready to be formatted. So, for example, once I’m done season one of Avatar, I could post an e-book of that season’s reviews within a few days of being done!

Again, this is just an idea I think is pretty neat, but what I think is secondary to what you think. And I’d like to know what those thoughts are! Anyway, this isn’t an Avatar review, but it’s virtually the same length, so it’s almost like you got a review today! Ok, it’s not, but the next episode will be updated tomorrow afternoon. I PROMISE, MY FELLOW WATCHERS.

Just to make this clear, too, thanks to each and every one of you who read this site and pass it along to your friends, to those who comment and make it so much more than just a blog, and to all of you who joke with me on Tumblr and make me enjoy my life. And that’s really true: I have never felt so good about my life ever. You all bring a joy to my life that I have been seeking out for the last twenty years, and I will never, ever forget this. Every day is a reminder that people care about reading and writing and watching quality TV and caring about the world, and honestly, all of you who are apart of this community and Mark Reads are making me tear up in a coffee shop right now.

I have never been this happy, and all of you mean the fucking world to me. Thank you, from the bottom of my sometimes-cynical-but-foolishly-hopeful heart, for being you. You’re saving my life every day and that’s a beautiful thing.

Until tomorrow, happy watching and reading!