NOW A VIEW OF THE FUTURE

DO YOU WANT THE TRUTH OR SOMETHING YOU WILL LIKE?
By Alex Ness
July 19, 2023

Hello, and welcome to my corner of the asylum, known as blogspot. This edition is to explain what will change in the future, and why I will continue to create, but not like I did before.  I am also dealing with many things. Health remains shit. I've lost 3 family members in 16 months. While I am happy about a number of things but I'm wrapped up in things that steal joy. I plan to figure them out and move on.

THE FUTURE OF MY WORK

I've decided to delete many of my blogs, after downloading the content. Why? Well, the nature of a blogger might be different, blog and creator to other blog and creator. I'm not saying this is a universal nor particularly important decision. But I will say, I am ready to focus on writing books, prose, poetry, comics, or whatever. I have written poetry and a great deal of it, since I was 7 years old. I read a ton of it, along with other formats, and I've proven I can at least claim the title of most obscure poet who wrote a lot of poems. Since I have no real following or known audience, the most I can do with a blog is perhaps inspire or change the opinion of someone on the one day he reads my work. I have been told by someone that I saved his life with one of my poems. That was kind of him to tell me. But I've also been told I can't be a practicing Christian with things that I've written, nor a kind or good person by the theories or ideas I give thought and voice to in my work. I don't care what people like that think of my work.

But I used to get well above 500 views of a poem, on day one of posting it. If a poem gets that many views now, it is 3 months of promotion and having many people share it, for whatever reason they might do that. I've been told that that comes from Blogger being a site that feels old and not at all intuitive. I think it is something else. I don't care who caused it, this is not in any way about blame. I once had tons and tons of friends in the community of poetry on Myspace. It had a wonderful format for following the work of people, and for the most part, the better a poem performed, the more attention it received. I am not suggesting they ruined anything by the changes they made, everyone has to make their own decisions for their own reasons.  My first three years of writing poetry for others to read, (again, I began writing at 7), were made joyful, mostly, and fulfilling well beyond the experiences of blogging and social media responses. Myspace made changes and didn't do well with them. It became overwhelmed by tech issues, by mediocre quality repairs, and in the end, in my case, (I had a really old computer and hard drive) I couldn't read the work of those who I enjoyed, and they perhaps could not see my own poetry. It destroyed the community.

I like blogger in many ways more than other blogging platforms. So when it was modernized and evolved, I lost the ability to post whenever and whatever I wanted, whenever AI was updated poems of mine would get flagged as inappropriate. And ultimately, I learned many social media platforms blocked the spreading of the links to my work. I made a huge effort to return my blog to some sort of exotic but fun destination on the internet, from 2021 to the present. While some countries shot straight up the views by individuals by country, my overall hits did not improve.  While I had worked very hard on my poetry blog, I am utilizing its archive and then will delete it. Blogger doesn't respond to requests, and doesn't encourage interaction within a community. It seems content to let it go extinct. But you will be able to read many of my poems from that blog. I am updating them, editing them, and plan to release books, that had begun, but were not finished yet, with the poems adding to the page count and hopefully worth.

POPLITIKO TOO?

Iron Mike Grell

I am not going to remove Poplitiko as I've already done with my Cthulhu, Lost Kingdoms and in the near future my poetry blog. I began Poplitiko as the successor to PopThought which had been hacked and destroyed by someone in a large Asian country I won't name. The reason is, I began writing poetry for another and different audience than this one, and by my fan journalism, my work appeared at over 10 websites in my prime, I met some of the most awesome, talented, and kind humans in my life. I had wanted to feature their work, but ended up getting so much more for what I gave to them.  When my first book A LIFE OF RAVENS happened, people I'd interviewed, people who mentored me, and more, from the comics and book worlds, offered their images to illustrate my short stories and poems. I never expected to be the new exciting cultural genius and duel pop music or American Idol, but the people I had helped leaped forward and helped me a great deal. So deleting this blog would not hurt me, or likely the audience, but perhaps give new or obscure artists one less venue to share their talents to a different audience. I love when the interviews done are enjoyed by the creative people I get to interview. I don't review everything any longer, and I don't call them reviews but offerings, since I refuse to get trapped in the mire of hating comics that didn't work for me. Someone likely spent time, effort and money to get it published, for me to crap on them? Well I am not going to do that.  (I do have a special offer for Life of Ravens on my facebook page, $30 postpaid in the US).  Contact me here if interested.

Over time larger publishers/companies ask to collect my interviews in book form. When one of them I'd said yes to asked me to get a cover for the book, and refused to pay for the work, I paid the artist and told the publisher to go suck a fat one. I've also been contacted by people in other countries to work for them as an editor or article writer. I always ask, will I get paid. If they say no, I say no in reply. It isn't worth the greater recognition to give away what I do.

HEALTH ISSUES AND OTHER PROBLEMS

I'm no longer in scans and procedures to locate and treat cancer. I'm still dealing with health issues. But I promise, this blog will end when they take my keyboard from my cold, stiff dead hands. The reward of working with great talents, kind and intelligent people, makes working on this blog something other than work. I received hugs from big names. Ashley Wood gave me a signed hardcover with a sketch done on the spot. The then publisher of Image Erik Larsen is now a good friend. Mike Baron creator of Badger and Nexus kicks massive ass and through my last two years health crisis sent me books, for pleasure or review. I have a job writing here that makes life beautiful. So in order to get me to quit, they'll have to pull the keyboard from my cold dead hands. Mike Grell even threatened to track me into the afterlife and kick my ass for dying before him, if the diagnosis of cancer proved true (Thank God it didn't).

IN CASE YOU ARE INTERESTED

I will have four books coming out in 2024. I will have one hard copy CD of music written to my lyrics appearing in 2024, and with a possible 9 more CDs being streamed from the series, regarding a similar set of themes.  I am grateful for all of you reading my work, and buying it.  Oh, wait, we have an anthology set in the North American West called The Darkest Frontier that I am part of a group releasing, I hope by December 2023.  I do hope we have the funds, if not, expect a Kickstarter.  But in the meantime, here is a look at the cover. 

FINALLY...

I can be found on Facebook, Twitter or through email Alexanderness63@gmail.com. I accept hard copies, so when you inquire at any of these places, I'll follow through by telling you my street address.If you send hard copies for review I will try to always review them, but if you prefer to send pdf or ebooks to my email, I will review these at my discretion. I don't share my pdf/ebooks, so you can avoid worry that I'd dispense them for free to others.

My Creative Blogs:

5k poem blog     AlexNessPoetry.Blogspot.Com

Published works   AlexNessPoetry.Blogspot.Com/2007/01/My-Work.html

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