Electrolicious

My very first book royalty check on its way! (Can you believe it’s taken this long? That’s what happens when you write for a niche market, apparently.) Interestingly, I’ve made more from the last month of advertising on offbeatbride.com than I have in the last six months of sales from Offbeat Bride: Taffeta-Free Alternatives for Independent Brides.

It’s just so funny: you hear a lot about people starting blogs hoping to get book deals. I got a book deal, started a blog to support the book, and am now finding the blog way more lucrative than the book. For me, the book led to the blog — not the other way around.

Of course this is an overly simplistic way of looking at things: electrolicious led to the book deal which led to offbeatbride.com which fuels more book sales etc. But when people asking me if I’m working on another book, I look at my royalty check and I look at my ad sales and I smile and say, “Nope!”

I don’t doubt I have more books in me, but at this point I’m not totally sure that I wouldn’t self-publish. Honestly, the only reason NOT to self-publish is that I worry that it would somehow look like I couldn’t get a publisher. This means it’s more an issue of pride more than money, because I’m pretty confident I’d make more money from self-publishing … at least, assuming I wrote another niche book, and I do love my niches!

But whatever: no books in the works from me right now. I’m happy puttering away on offbeatbride.com, getting my fix of subcultures and fashion and photography and feminism and all that good stuff.

My unplugging project showed up in the New York Times this morning, quite to my surprise: I Need a Virtual Break. No, Really.

THIS movement to unplug appears to be gaining traction everywhere, from the blogosphere, where wired types like Ariel Meadow Stallings (http://electrolicious.com/unplugged) brag about turning off the screen one day a week (and how many books they’ve read so far this year), to the corporate world.

For the record, I believe the journalist is referring to some other “wired type” with the book reading thing. I could never brag about how many books I’ve read this year, since the number is about, oh, two — the most recent being a vampire novel written for 13 year old girls.

…But speaking of books, cross your fingers that this makes things easier for my literary agent, who’s been shopping around my book pitch for 52 Nights Unplugged: A Digital Junkie’s Rehab.

Anyway, I love the closing paragraph of the article:

Once I moved beyond the fear of being unavailable and what it might cost me, I experienced what, if I wasn’t such a skeptic, I would call a lightness of being. I felt connected to myself rather than my computer. I had time to think, and distance from normal demands. I got to stop.

Read the whole thing: I Need a Virtual Break. No, Really.

I recently did an interview with Kimi Kline on Seattle’s JACKfm 96.5, and we talked about wedding porn, the relativity of what “offbeat” means, bachelor party spelunking, and forgetting your vows. The conversation is now available as a podcast, so take a listen.

(crossposted on offbeatbride.com)

A few months ago I won a charity auction to have my book reviewed by the Seattle’s snarkiest alt-weekly, The Stranger. The review published today, and it’s a win/win … the article is wonderful and I got to donate to Northwest Harvest! Plus, it was fun. Furthermore, one of my favorite Stranger writers, Cienna Madrid, wrote the piece. Is that four wins? Whatever. Here’s a quote:

Offbeat Bride is the perfect book for engaged couples who are grappling with how to buck tradition, bypass the formidable Wedding Industry, and design their own weddings. For such couples, Offbeat Bride is more than a go-to guide; it is a godsend. (Or goddess-send. Or mystical-universal-life-force-connected-to-the-great-mother-earth-send.)

Stallings is a relentless researcher and clever type A who has explored every avenue ending in wedding bells, interviewed every other offbeat bride she could shake a charming stick at, and has the good heart to pass on her smarts so that other brides aching to break from tradition may profit from her knowledge. Stallings doesn’t just pave new bridal paths, she gives couples the tools to forge their own.

Read the whole review.

(crossposted on offbeatbride.com)

Barefoot and Hula Hooping: