Whistling in the Dark

March 21st is the launch date of Gossamer Commons. For the record.

I'd be worried about that leaking to the press, until it occurred to me that I am the press.

It's going astoundingly well. Greg is fantastic. He has great ideas and great interpretations. I've seen the first six strips and I love them. That's two weeks. We're already two weeks ahead.

I'm a little concerned that it's a slow play start. A prologue. This has nothing to do with Greg and everything to do with how I wrote it. But if we manage to keep people to that sixth strip, they'll stay for the next six, I'm willing to bet.

We'll see. This thrills me and terrifies me, all at once.

I'm going to need to bounce all this off Greg, mind, but I have a thought on the GC launch.

We're going to start up dating on 21 March, as I said yesterday. However, things'll really kick in after six strips/two weeks.

Maybe the thing to do is announce it as prologue, over on Snark, but hold off on advertising/pimping/heavy rotation until April 1, when the chapter one splash page goes up. That way, there'll be five strips in the archive for people to read, giving them some sense of what's going on, and then the actual strip will begin doing interesting things for them.

I'm making up a list of where I want to advertise (I'll see if Som*Pos is willing, I figure, check PvP's cheapest rates, do the Thing on Joey Manley's new adthingy -- stuff like that) as well as see if I can set a date for the (crappy) ad banner I have for Websnark on Comixpedia (I have it purely because that's part of my compensation for doing 'Pedia in the first place) to be swapped for the (hopefully stylish) Gossamer Commons adbanner, and get some traction on April 1st going forward. That's a Friday, so if I can get eyeballs then, and maybe some backtracking, there's a chance I can set some new habits on Monday for people to read this thing.

It's easier to start planning now that I have those six strips in hand to look at. I also do a lot of bouncing in my chair. Greg is good at this. Life is going to rock so much.

A long time back, I got the "you're just a loser who works in fast food and lives in his parents' basement" comment. I crossed that off the checklist.

Today, I finally got the "you're just a fanboy who can't take criticism of your idols" comment. And I get to cross that off the checklist.

Success is measured by the provincialism of your trolls.