WHAT TO DO? WHAT TO DO!

Almost as soon as I started writing, some 3 1/2 years ago, I started this blog. In many ways it has been the backbone of my writing. There was an accountability to posting every Sunday with information about what was happening with my writing.

Now, as the excitement of all the things I blogged about here are actually happening, it’s a struggle to find time to do one of the things that got me to where I was trying to go for so long.

With the newfound success of The Bourbon Show, my podcast, and the increasing popularity of my email magazine Bourbon Zeppelin, I simply don’t have time to do the things I once was doing.

Changing things up do not come without self-doubt and worry. My career has always been in sales. Once you get some big accounts, you shouldn’t quit prospecting and doing the basic things you always did to get you there otherwise you end up in trouble if you lose one of those big accounts.

For that reason, I’m not quitting anything, but I am scaling back. The following four changes are steps I am making to ensure I am putting out the best products I can for those who are fans of my work:

1. This blog is going from a weekly posting to sporadic. I’m just going to do it as time allows/check-in when there is something important going on.
2. My other blog, O.P.U.S., the same thing. I will do an occasional interview and post it, but I’m not going to actively look to adhere to a schedule.
3. Currently, I publish a newsletter about my writing 6 times a year. I’m going to publish an issue in December and then scale back to the publishing it from time-to-time.
4. Since I started writing I always had 2, 3, 4, 5… many books I was working on at a time. I still want to write, but one book at a time is enough.

Why now?

What’s changed?

While there is always just an overall sense of always sinking, there was a recent incident, though, that totally could have been avoided with more time to dedicate to focusing on making more things better instead of doing so much.

I had a few phone calls from the good people at Independent Stave Company (ISC)… the barrel manufacturers used by much of the bourbon industry. Just tremendous individuals that run a fine company. I met with three of their people via teleconference. I have a podcast interview set-up with their CEO very soon. I worked with one of their key people on an article for the October 1 issue of Bourbon Zeppelin.

It got published a week ago Saturday. It went out at 7:00 a.m. my time. By 7:04 I got an email from one of my contacts there. I was excited. They finally got to see the article I put together for them.

Instead the note was, “You called us International Stave Company. Can you fix that?”

No, I could not.

Once again, the staff there was great. These people couldn’t be nicer and were very understanding. We’re still good with the interview for the podcast… all of that. I was crushed, though. Twenty-five people are writers for that publication. All of us work for free because we love bourbon and like the idea of promoting it as this group project. We want it to be professional. We want it to have the respect of our friends, family and the industry.

And… I’m calling one of the biggest players in the game by the wrong name.

That can’t happen. Well, at least I have to ensure it can’t happen again.

Look, I know it was a mistake. Mistakes can be made… even if I make these changes. I simply don’t feel I had myself in the best situation to succeed by trying to do to much and I’m taking some steps to correct it.

Again, not going away… just trying to be better… at everything.

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Write Steve Write! is an occasional blog by author Steve Akley. It should be noted it’s posted as a live feed… no editing, no planning beforehand, it’s typed out and the “publish” button is immediately hit. Apologies for any errors but you get this just as Steve thinks it!

Follow/check-in on Steve in a variety of ways:

Steve’s Catalog on Amazon: http://goo.gl/kJpKcP

The OPUS Blog: steveakley.tumblr.com

Sign-up for Bourbon Zeppelin (bourbon newsletter)/See Past Issues: Click here!

ABV Network/A Podcast Channel for Alcohol-Themed Podcasts – abvnetwork.com

The Bourbon Show on iTunes: Download it here!

The Bourbon Show on Google Play: Download it here!

The Bourbon Show on Stitcher: Download it here!

Twitter: @steveakley

Instagram: @steveakley

What’s App: Steve Akley

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PODCAST UPDATE

The biggest thing I have going on in my writing career at the moment is my new podcast, “The Bourbon Show.”

“Whoa!”

“Time out!”

“FOUL!”

“WTF?”

Okay, I realize you may initially be confused about a blog, entitled, “Write Steve Write!” updating you on a podcast. It’s a different form of media, right? You didn’t just click on the “Podcast Steve Podcast!” blog… this is supposed to be about writing.

Okay, just hang with me for a moment. I will get to the tie-in very soon.

So, back to the podcast, it was off to a brief rocky start. I’ve partnered with Seth Brown, a person I met through a friend and I know on Instagram to launch the ABV Network, a podcast channel featuring shows with alcohol themes. Our first equipment test failed miserably when I had problems with the electronics. Something was wrong with Skype for me and we couldn’t connect.

We tried again this past week and boom, it worked perfectly. We even recorded our test and Seth put the call together with theme music just to give it a feel for what our show will sound like.

Okay…the writing. Yes, there is writing. In fact, that’s one of the main attributes I bring to the partnership. Seth and I aren’t professionals. We can just flip on the mics, start talking and assume it’s going to be great content. We have to carefully plan, and put together a true show with segments and topics to discuss.

I have everything scripted including the questions for our guest (our format will have a guest from the bourbon industry on each show). We don’t read the script during the show. We want it to be conversational, but it provides us with the guidance we need to deliver a fun, informative and interesting show.

Our final step prior to our first show occurs tonight. We have a Skype meeting with Evan Haskill, who is joining us on The Bourbon Show as our announcer/news reader. Evan will also interact with us on segments throughout the show. Tonight, the three of us get together for the first time. We’ll do a systems check to make sure Seth can work through what he needs for a call with three people on it. We’ve also got a meeting (with an agenda I wrote… see, more writing) to cover all of the small details we need to get this first show out there (what date will it be available, what bourbon we will be drinking on show #1, finalize the script, etc.).

Assuming everything goes well, we tape our first show on Tuesday, August 23.

Like every adventure my writing has taken me on, this is a wild one. I can’t even believe it’s happening.

But it is.

More details soon because you aren’t going to want to miss this show.

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Write Steve Write! is a weekly blog by author Steve Akley. Typically it is posted on (most) Sundays and features insight about his writing… though there is an occasional movie review or random thought post. It should be noted it’s posted as a live feed… no editing, no planning beforehand, it’s typed out on Sunday morning and the “publish” button is immediately hit. Apologies for any errors but you get this just as Steve thinks it!

Coming Sunday: More random thoughts on my writing career.

In the meantime, follow check in on Steve in a variety of ways:

Steve’s Catalog on Amazon: http://goo.gl/kJpKcP

The OPUS Blog: steveakley.tumblr.com

Evan Haskill’s Blog: I am a contributor here: thebourbonguyandrye.com

Sign Up for Steve’s SAP News (writing updates) Newsletter: Email Registration

Sign up for Bourbon Zeppelin (bourbon newsletter): Email Registration

Check out the latest issue of Bourbon Zeppelin: See it here!

ABV Network/A Podcast Channel for Alcohol-Themed Podcasts – abvnetwork.com

Twitter: @steveakley

Instagram: @steveakley

What’s App: Steve Akley

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IT’S ALL WORKING

There are times when I have an internal battle about this blog. My default posting is best summed up in three words:

I’m __________ busy!

No, that’s not an open spot for an expletive. It’s a blank for an adjective that could be interchanged based on how busy I am with “super” being the lowest setting. It’s kind of like movies have Medium, Large and Jumbo size sodas now.

“Wait, where’s the small?”

“Sir, that’s the medium.”

“The medium is not the medium?”

I don’t want to do some sort of Abbott and Costello routine… you get the idea.

So, when I sit down for my weekly Sunday blog, my first thought is, “I’m going to write about how busy I am…I’m super busy. I’m mega busy. I’m ultra busy. I’m Tyrannosaurus Rex busy.”

“Time out. Tyrannosaurus Rex doesn’t fit your three word busy format Steve.”

Why do I have to have such a smart readership to this blog?

Okay, so I’m not ever Tyrannosaurus Rex busy, but I am always busy and I typically have to fight off the notion to just write about that. Who cares? I mean this is what I signed up for. Everything I’m doing is because I assigned it to myself.

Okay, so I’m chipmunk busy right now, but we’re not talking about that.

What we’re talking about is how great things are going right in my writing career right now.

It’s more than just the books I am working on too. Those are going great. It’s more than the Bourbon Zeppelin newsletter I’ve been talking about as well. That’s going great, too.

“What else is going great?” you ask.

Things.

That’s right, things are just going great right now. In addition to the projects I’ve been talking about my O.P.U.S. interviews are really getting a lot of attention. People really like what I’m doing. I’m 47 interviews into this social experiment and for some reason it’s just taking off.

I woke up to a direct message today, for instance, on Instagram from a person telling me how special those interviews are and to keep on doing it. Little things like that really make the effort so worthwhile.

Recently, my buddy Hasse Berg, a blogger from Denmark I am friends with from Instagram interviewed me for his website. I really took the time to answer his questions and the response from that interview has been fantastic. Hasse reports a 70% uptick in traffic on his site since it’s been posted. That’s amazing. Check out my Hasse Berg interview on his blog by clicking here.

Besides all of this great stuff going on the friendships I continue to make are awesome. It’s truly been a pleasure getting to know so many new people from Twitter and Instagram.

With all of this great stuff going on, I would say things are going pretty well. It may even be safe to say things are even Tyrannosaurus Rex well right now.

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Write Steve Write! is a weekly blog by author Steve Akley. Typically it is posted on (most) Sundays and features insight about his writing… though there is an occasional movie review or random thought post. It should be noted it’s posted as a live feed… no editing, no planning beforehand, it’s typed out on Sunday morning and the “publish” button is immediately hit. Apologies for any errors but you get this just as Steve thinks it!

Coming Sunday: I don’t know what I’ll be talking about on here next week, but something will come up I am sure.

In the meantime, follow check in on Steve in a variety of ways:

Steve’s Catalog on Amazon: http://goo.gl/kJpKcP

The OPUS Blog: steveakley.tumblr.com

Evan Haskill’s Blog: I am a contributor here: thebourbonguyandrye.com

Sign Up for Steve’s Newsletters: Email Registration

Twitter: @steveakley

Instagram: @steveakley

What’s App: Steve Akley

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ZOMBIES + BOURBON

 

Recently, I did the impossible. I managed to combine two personal and seemingly unrelated favorites together and it was the best thing since peanut butter met chocolate.

Yep, I managed to combine zombies and bourbon.

I’m on the team over at Evan Haskill’s thebourbonguyandrye.com blog. I put together a post where I, Evan and the Bourbon Virgin rated some of our friends bourbon hoards in terms of preparedness for the zombie apocalypse.

For some reason this piece just worked. I guess it was just the perfect storm of everything working. Obviously, the bourbon component is a no-brainer. People who are reading a bourbon blog expect that part of the equation. I would say zombies are probably as hot as they ever have been based on the number of TV shows dedicated to them so it’s a safe bet to loop them in.

There were a couple of keys that really made the piece work. First, our friends are awesome. They provided us the photos whether they had a great stash or not knowing we were going to be evaluating and judging them in a public forum. That’s pretty cool.

Second, the solid writing of Evan Haskill and Amanda Hoppes, combined with our banter back-and-forth made this comedy gold.

If you haven’t done so already, hop on over to thebourbonguyandrye.com and check it out!

_______________________

Write Steve Write! is a weekly blog by author Steve Akley. Typically it is posted on (most) Sundays and features insight about his writing… though there is an occasional movie review or random thought post. It should be noted it’s posted as a live feed… no editing, no planning beforehand, it’s typed out on Sunday morning and the “publish” button is immediately hit. Apologies for any errors but you get this just as Steve thinks it!

Coming Sunday: I don’t know what I’ll be talking about on here next week, but something will come up I am sure.

In the meantime, follow check in on Steve in a variety of ways:

Steve’s Catalog on Amazon: http://goo.gl/kJpKcP

The OPUS Blog: steveakley.tumblr.com

Evan Haskill’s Blog: I am a contributor here: thebourbonguyandrye.com

Sign Up for Steve’s Newsletters: Email Registration

Twitter: @steveakley

Instagram: @steveakley

What’s App: Steve Akley

Untappd: steveakley

Home Phone: I’m not giving you that!

MY OTHER LOVE

You know, you can never quite be sure where life is going to take you. A while back, I made the bold move to write about something that I deeply love: that “something” is bourbon. For those of you who are regular readers here, you have read about my success in self-publishing on Amazon, Bourbon Mixology, and my most recent project, Bourbon Zeppelin.

I’m going to venture a guess that many of you find yourselves here reading these words in the hopes that I will share a new “must-have” offering or point you to a wonderful new way to enjoy this magical elixir.

Not today.

Because I think today it’s important for you to understand that I made a difficult choice some time ago. There are, in fact, two things I truly love, but presuming one would gain more traction than the other, I chose bourbon over my other love.

Had it been a different morning, had I been in a gentler mindset, had I the courage to take the “road less travelled,” I may have put bourbon to the side and chosen differently. Alas, I did not, but I am here today to tell you about that secret love of mine.

I am a noodler.

At first blush, you might be thinking to yourself, “Hey, who doesn’t like a big plate of spaghetti,” or maybe you prefer something a little more exotic, say udon or lo mein. And while I have always been a huge fan of carbs, I’m not talking about pasta.

Noodling is not about something as trivial and mundane as loving a certain sort of food.

Noodling is a lifestyle, a passion, a love.

For those of you not familiar, noodling is basically fishing with your hands. A noodler feels around snake-infested water with his hands and feet searching for a large hole. Then, the noodler goes underwater to ram his fist into the discovered hole. The result is usually the sensation of teeth latching onto the noodler’s hand. You see, the hole is the catfish’s home and it chomps on the intruder to get it to go away. But we noodlers don’t shy away from this attempt to scare us off. The latching on by the catfish is the signal to the noodler to start with the extraction. The noodler then has the task of dragging his catch—still latched onto his arm—out of the water and either onto shore, or into a boat. This must be done quickly, and certainly quickly enough so that the submersed noodler does not run out of breath. If the noodler can retrieve his arm from the grip of the catfish’s many teeth, then he’s having fish for dinner.

I might have chosen to write about the fifty greatest noodling adventures I’ve been on. (I have hundreds to choose from.) I might have even thought to tell about the minor amputation I suffered over a thirty-two pound Massachusetts bottom dweller. Had I gone the noodle route, I could have written volumes of recipes and shared tips for long-term storage of catfish who weigh in over twenty pounds. My largest “pull”—that’s what we call it—was a sixty-four pounder out of the Tennessee River. I’ve got two deep scars to solidify the memory, and the smell of that beast roasting over the July campfire will not soon be forgotten.

Here I am, pulling a good one!

There is a lot of information out there on noodling. Some good, some bad. I long considered becoming a force of advocacy for the ancient skill.

But instead, I went with my other love. Bourbon.

I’m not sure if it was the better choice. But I had to pick one: there simply isn’t time in one’s short lifespan to do justice to both.

Please know that every time I raise my snifter to sample a new variation on this beverage, I silently toast the catfish—both those I caught and those that didn’t try to scare me away by latching on. It is not lost on me that those who remained quiet kept themselves safe in their silence.

Not ever once did one scream out, and certainly there was never an occasion when I heard anything that sounded even remotely like: “APRIL FOOLS!”

This is not Steve Akley writing this post. This is his friend and fellow writer Jenna Brownson. Steve came up with this idea to guest blog—or maybe guest blog bomb—today. I was happy to play along.

You can find me blogging at www.jennabrownson.com, tweeting under @jennabrownson, and facebooking at jenna.brownson.author.

You get good ol’ Steve back with his next post. Ask him to share the photo of his chomped right pinky finger.

Happy April 1^st.

See where Steve took over Jenna’s blog for April Fool’s Day by clicking here!

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Write Steve Write! is a weekly blog by author Steve Akley. Typically it is posted on (most) Sundays and features insight about his writing… though there is an occasional movie review or random thought post. It should be noted it’s posted as a live feed… no editing, no planning beforehand, it’s typed out on Sunday morning and the “publish” button is immediately hit. Apologies for any errors but you get this just as Steve thinks it!

Coming Sunday: My fiscal year ends April 1st. What am I spending my book money on this year?

In the meantime, follow check in on Steve in a variety of ways:

Steve’s Catalog on Amazon: http://goo.gl/kJpKcP

The OPUS Blog: steveakley.tumblr.com

Evan Haskill’s Blog: I am a contributor here: thebourbonguyandrye.com

Sign Up for Steve’s Newsletters: Email Registration

Twitter: @steveakley

Instagram: @steveakley

What’s App: Steve Akley

Untappd: steveakley

Home Phone: I’m not giving you that!