Rickrolled.

..... Okay, so this might not have been my most clever or original April Fool's Day prank ever, but I had fun with it. Thanks to everyone, here and on Twitter, who played along with their comments. You kept a grin on my face all day, and I've been desperately needing that lately. (It's been a really hard couple of weeks, which is why I didn't really have the energy or brainspace to come up with anything that I actually thought would fool anyone -- just something that I thought would make you grin and wonder, "Oh, now what's he up to?")

Extra-special bonus points to anyone who actually spotted this: The purported title of the story, "Tricky Sale", was an anagram for "Rick Astley." (And if you saw my post on Twitter about how the story had a "similar structure and voice" to a story called "Age Proving You Uneven", you can probably guess what that was an anagram for, too.)

Oh, yes, and -- that first link I posted, to episode one? That link was real -- I really am working on starting a podcast, and as soon as I resolve some issues with my currently dead computer (and with me being a lazy bastard), you'll start seeing real updates from me about it. Cheers.

Invasion of the POD People

You know, considering how hard warren_ellis has been banging the print-on-demand drum lately, isn't it interesting that he didn't just put Crooked Little Vein up on Lulu? It came out from a traditional publisher instead, William Morrow. Gosh, why is that, do you think? Do you suppose he wanted, I don't know .... money? Exposure? To have his book carried in bookstores? To have magazines and other media actually review it? To give it some kind of weight and legitimacy, maybe?

I keep thinking to myself, "Maybe I should try all this POD stuff," since the cool kids are doing it, and it's supposed to be impossible to get published these days and no one's reading books anymore any way and and and --

And then I walk into a great big fuckoff bookstore like Barnes & Noble or Borders, and I look around and think, "Hey, wait a minute! Somebody's getting published."

What's my conclusion here? I don't have one.