One for the money...

ver the years my sister has told me, in no uncertain terms, that I have no control over my facial expressions and that eventually, if they hadn't already, they would get me in trouble. That there were so many of them that she, after all these years, still had a hard time interpreting each eye-brow raise, twist of lips and rapid eye movement.

Yesterday, I finally saw with my own eyes what she meant.

In the morning, Judson Matthews and I shot my portion of the forthcoming Kickstarter video proposal. The last time I had to do anything akin to acting was Shakespeare & Company in fourth grade. Fortunately, Jud's an old hand and after a few rounds of takes we closed it out. He now needs about a week to edit those takes with footage he took the previous two days of B roll (time with little kids and their families, shots of an illustrator sketching out dry-erase board images) before I can then submit the project to Kickstarter for their approval.

After the shoot, I caught some of our session's playback. Jud did a great job making the scene look crisp and professional. But man, I had no idea that the face had so many moving parts. I also noticed the big difference I felt as a viewer when watching the presenter smile as opposed to being serious. Needless to say, you are all right: I should smile more.

The other good news from yesterday is that I now have an illustrator, Claudia Santillan, who put together this sketch of my pseudonym, Hooey Savvy. I look forward to working with Claudia as Hooey starts to hover off the ground.

The Calm Before The Storm

log's been awfully quiet since leaving Corpus Christi, but that, hopefully, is about to change. In the next few days the Kickstarter video proposal will be in the can, I'll submit the entire project for approval and then around Tuesday, June 12th the project should go live to the public.

Since starting Hooey this past fall, I've set out on a journey of a thousand steps. Finally submitting the project to Kickstarter and then, hopefully, to the public are the next big steps. Ideally, they represent steps #76 or #77, not #998 or #999. The next six weeks or so will be tell-tale.

Moment of Clarity

y last post, about twenty hours ago, asserted that, "the way forward is clear." After writing those words and before falling asleep I figured within 24 hours something would come along and muddle everything up.

On the contrary, the way forward has become more clear and simple. Go figure.

I've been banging my head against the wall under the assumption that the next step required landing an illustrator before I could start Hooey's Kickstarter campaign. This fell under the idea that the book had to be completely done, or at least appear so, to shop it.

I am a fool.

The emphasis now puts the focus on the Kickstarter campaign as the way to complete the project. Of course, the Kickstarter campaign will hopefully answer an even more important question: Does this project have popular support?

So what now? Now I revisit the script I've written for the Kickstarter video, I talk to videographers, tighten up the choreography of the Budget Dance, find some eight year old talent and maybe even a band to play a little ditty. I focus on the video, get it rolling and continue to monitor the rest.

Project Update: In search of an English to Mexican-Spanish translator, I posted a project description on Guru and have already received one application. Getting the translation done while I work on the video et al should be a time saver.

Your Community on Hooey

s I work on the Kickstarter proposal and marketing plan for Hooey Savvy's Cookie-Wise Pablo, my kids book on financial education, I really want to show that it can have an impact on a community. To that end, I'd like to quantify that impact by tracking one community that reads Hooey against another similar community that does not.

Unfortunately, I sincerely doubt a single kids book can improve the average credit scores of a community in one, three, six or twelve months. It may take years. But, hey, you never know. Long story short, I'd like to show folks the progress they've made in a tangible and/or quantifiable way. What I do know is that it shouldn't take millions of tax payer dollars to achieve.

In Nudge, a book about libertarian paternalism, the authors, economists at the University of Chicago, give numerous examples of clever government initiatives that yield big results at little cost. Competition and public humiliation always seem to go down well. In this case, we could pit two communities against each other to see who can improve their average credit scores the most in a year...with the scores updated monthly in the local paper or painted on a wall in a very public place for all to see. Throwing in a prize for the winner (other than better credit scores and lending rates) never hurts. Getting elected officials to line up behind an out-of-towner might hurt.

Project Updates: Got a rather uncompetitive quote from the L.A. illustrator and so the search continues. Am hoping folks in Texas will be up to the task. Floramay Holliday is interested in giving some of Hooey's songs a go. She's got a great voice, lots of experience and a natural way about her music. I'm excited to hear what she comes up with. Thank you, Dewey Ervin, for bringing her talent to my attention. Have a meeting with Equifax next week in Atlanta. Looking forward to learning more about the company. Early work on my baseball work of fiction, The Boston Squeeze, continues to come together a little everyday.

The Squeeze Is On

n recent years it has become de rigueur for authors - rookies in particular - to handle their own marketing. At first the idea grated on me, especially when it made the marketing folks of publishing companies look redundant which didn't stop them from taking their cut. Now with groups such as Kickstarter, I like the idea of putting together my own marketing campaign (probably because I'm not paying some clown to watch me work).

I mention this because as you may have noticed my posts recently now bounce back and forth between the business end of getting Hooey Savvy off the ground and writing the next book. So for Hooey, I'm working on how to present my project on Kickstarter and acting as project manager.

The next project, a collection of baseball short stories I'm tentatively calling The Boston Squeeze, is coming along. I originally wrote it as 10-12 independent short stories, but now I'm working them together under the umbrella of the Squeeze, Boston's fictional National League expansion squad. That idea alone has me tickled, but I'm also excited about the new process I've developed to write this one which I'll discuss next week.