OK - it’s been exactly one month since that last, generally-despairing entry, and first of all - I hope you’ve ALL had an amazing holiday and am wishing you the very best for 2017! And though Thanksgiving was a month ago, New Years is usually when I find myself doing more reflection, and I’m very grateful for all of you who have shown some interest in this project of mine. Thanks again to Kyle Bujnicki for encouraging me to do this and then doing ALL the heavy lifting and getting it off the ground. Yeah - this might turn out to be a blog entry where I capitalize the word ALL half the time… Let’s see…
But just speaking for myself, what a year… I was originally going to make this site a way of presenting perhaps three books of short stories, but Kyle’s original mock-up had a place for screenplays, poems & songs, as well as bios & blogs… When it became obvious this is not something we could create overnight, I decided to go over my entire output and see what was worthy of being included and what wasn’t… I became the editor I always suspected I needed (and assumed would be someone else), and after going through enough material to comprise three more books, I had another look at the original three, and spent much-needed time polishing them up as well. Getting this assembled for our hoped-for publication date of May 31st (my mom’s b’day) was actually like trying to get the finishing touches done for a show or a new restaurant. We were very busy for six months.
The reaction has been great and to those of you who have bought one or more of the books, I truly thank you. I’ve spent the past few months getting the screenplays together and I’m confident you’ll be seeing them very soon. And in an amazingly lucky break, the long-lost short film to “Lori and the Landlord’s Grill” - you can view a pic from the rough-cut version on the site now - has ended up in the hands of an editor who is truly bringing it back to life. So - future improvements to michaelaba.com include gift-certificate capabilities, an option to hear entire CDs at a time, and hopefully a “basement section” where I can post old songs made from cassettes and have the option of including occasional podcasts and schedule viewings of the Lori film… And maybe even a CD of NEW songs…
What’s amazing is I didn’t even use the word ALL once since that first paragraph… and I notice the word NEW is the only one I’ve since chosen to capitalize… Hopefully this is a sign that the NEW year is going to be great for ALL of us!!! Wishing everyone at michaelaba.com the very best for 2017!!!