Robin Sloan

Exit polls

Right now at this very moment, in a secret sec­tion of this very web­site, Annabel Scheme back­ers are vot­ing to allo­cate the $1000 remix fund. I’m watch­ing the votes stream live into a Google Docs spread­sheet. I can­not tear myself away!

“Robin Sloan decided…”

You know it’s either really good or really bad when the arti­cle begins with “Robin Sloan decided…”—and it all depends on the next few words.

“…one day in Octo­ber that he could be the falafel-​​eating cham­pion of the world.”

“…that the Somali pirates were doing it wrong.”

“…to raise llamas.”

It’s not so dramatic—yet. Here’s the arti­cle: a sharp piece about Kick­starter by Chris­tine Lago­rio in today’s San Fran­cisco Chronicle.

And here is the part of the mod­ern media rit­ual where the blog­ger offers a few small for-​​the-​​records:

• To say “Sloan didn’t have high hopes when he posted to Kick­starter” isn’t exactly right; it seems to pin the doubt on Kick­starter. Rather, that first night, after I had posted the project but before I’d fallen fit­fully to sleep, I had hopes—I just wasn’t sure they’d amount to anything!
• Chris­tine writes that my inspi­ra­tion was “see­ing [my] friend Web entre­pre­neur Andy Baio post a project on Kick­starter” and this is 100% cor­rect, except that I don’t want Andy to think I am claim­ing him as a friend—“Wait, who?”—so let’s be clear: He is merely my nerd guru.

Finally, here is the pic­ture from the paper, for your locker. I feel that I look some­what Gollum-​​like here—

—but that’s my fault, not pho­to­jour­nal­ist Jana Asenbrennerova’s.

33 hours ’til midnight

As of this writ­ing, there are 33 hours left to get in on my Kick­starter project if you haven’t already. Here’s my lat­est post, where I talk about fin­ish­ing the text, share a glimpse of the edited man­u­script, and say thanks.

Fire the ultimate ninja signal flares

Five days left on my Kick­starter project! I have a sense of accel­er­a­tion and increas­ing den­sity; the next week is going to be crazy.

Here’s my lat­est update. I talk about get­ting feed­back on the com­plete manuscript—and about gath­er­ing ULTIMATE NINJA ALLIES.

Ninety-​​three pages

Man­u­script complete!

Which is not to say book com­plete. Or even text com­plete. Mostly it just means I have a coher­ent brick of paper I can give to peo­ple. Which I did, tonight, in tidy lit­tle golden envelopes.

A cover that moves and sings

Not so much a book trailer as an ani­mated book cover… and a love let­ter to my Kick­starter back­ers. (And you can see it even big­ger on YouTube.)

I said this over on Kick­starter, too, but for those of you dis­cov­er­ing it here first: As you watch it, imag­ine some future e-​​book with this ani­ma­tion lit­er­ally built into the cover, writhing on your book­shelf. I want that.

If you’re new to this: You can still join up! The project closes on Octo­ber 31.

The sound­track is Demonic With Horns by Boy Eats Drum Machine, a.k.a. Jon Ragel, who “spins breaks and sur­gi­cally inserts sounds while jug­gling vocals, per­cus­sion, and sax­o­phone” and is one of my cur­rent favorites. Another of his tracks, Ross Island—free to down­load—has been in heavy rota­tion dur­ing the whole writ­ing process. Here he is on Ama­zon MP3. Thanks, BEDM!

The visu­als were gen­er­ated in Pro­cess­ing.

Nerd note: after the rush of this book is over, I need to change the way I do Pro­cess­ing projects. Right now it’s totally strung-​​together, totally depen­dent on weird system-​​specific file-​​paths and vari­ables, which makes it basi­cally impos­si­ble to share the code. And I would like to share it! So that’s on the to-​​do list.

The $10,000 short-​​story throw-​​down in the sky

This is going to be fun: I’m writ­ing a 2,500 (very) short story dur­ing my flight from SFO to JFK on Wednesday.

Building an imaginary tower

Read on…

First glimpse of Fog City

I read a small sec­tion from the story-​​in-​​progress into the cam­era over at Kick­starter. Watch closely; there’s a clue.

(Also, I made that sound effect myself, and I’m pretty proud of it!)

Also: Cara Pow­ers writes a nice post about the project.

Taking it to the streets

New Kick­starter update in which I visit a local printer and am simul­ta­ne­ously dis­ap­pointed and emboldened.

Full dis­clo­sure: Between my Kick­starter update “blog” and Snark­mar­ket, I con­tinue to be unsure what do w/​ robinsloan​.com here. Post­ing will pick up soon, though. Thanks for sub­scrib­ing and/​or click­ing over—I’m glad to have you around and your atten­tion will be better-​​rewarded soon.

Naming characters with Google AdWords

Here’s a new trick.

In this book, I’m try­ing to craft a cen­tral char­ac­ter with some of that same iconic strange­ness that makes Sher­lock Holmes so appeal­ing. There’s a lot that goes into that, but for now, focus on the name. Sher­lock Holmes. It leaves an indeli­ble mark on the brain.

So, I have a name in mind for this char­ac­ter, and I was look­ing for a mean­ing­ful way to test it out—without giv­ing it away.

That’s where AdWords comes in.

Read on…

The super-​​team assembles

I just posted a new update over at Kick­starter. It’s more of a meta-​​update, really, with info about what to expect in the weeks to come.

Kickstarter launch: I’m writing a book

It begins! I’m writ­ing a book, and I’m doing it through Kick­starter.

Here’s the core of it: I’m going to take the techno-​​spooky vibe of Mr. Penumbra’s San Fran­cisco and deepen it—darken it—build it out into some­thing big­ger and better.

There’s a video intro, so come take a peek.

I have to say, build­ing this project has been an oppor­tu­nity to explore Kick­starter more deeply, and wow: I am so impressed. It’s seri­ously becom­ing a data­base of dreams. I’m par­tic­u­larly taken with the projects put forth by peo­ple who clearly aren’t hard-​​core web self-​​promoters. They tend to be sort of ten­ta­tive: “Er, hello? Any­body out there?”

I’m telling you: Find one of those projects, drop a dol­lar or five in the bucket, and you will have made somebody’s day—week—month—life.