I am going to be revamping this site soon. I always intended christopher.jorgensen.name to be nothing more than a permanent biography of me. A constantly undated website that showcases my life. Yeah, not really.

What I do want this site to be is a simple site that I can point to from my jackassletters.com site and my thisflapfirst.com site (and any other site that needs an “About the author” page).

First up will be getting my sites to the current version of ExpressionEngine, then getting my thisflapfirst.com site actually updated!

I got accepted as an Apple Content Provider a while back. This means you will be able to buy my writing on the iBookstore. So expect to see a collection of letters or bad fiction soon. I already have some poetry up there. This Flap First! will become the branded side of my publishing house. At some point I plan to produce or distribute more of my stuff through that site. It’ll be total vanity publishing, but I figure I see no reason to give a cut to some other publisher. Actually, I don’t see another publisher taking on any of the things I want out there, so for now I am perfectly happy to work with Apple.

I own the following domains:

• jackassletters.com: my letters and ongoing related projects.
• thisflapfirst.com: Promotion of my writings wherever they may be. Also hopefully some base tutorials on ePub and such.
• puppypotpie.com: Testing ground for new designs. Perhaps eventually a joke site.
• fervorflower.com: A site of my writing and seldom updated.
• socialmediamonkey.com: A one joke pony that makes me laugh. I wish I had more time for it.
• gawkerblocker.com: Eventually I will create a site that tells you how to block all things gawker. Eventually.

I think that’s all of the domains I plan to keep. I have others, but they are expiring soon.

I have an EE non-commercial license with the Multi-Site Manager, so I can run many of my sites through that. I also own a freelancer license, so I could use that for a project, and I own a mojomotor license. I have no idea how all this will shake out.

I like to write. I wrote a book once. I dream of doing that again someday, but if there’s anything I learned from writing that thing is it is a lot of work to put together a book. I used to write a few poems a month. I dream of doing that again someday, but if there’s one thing I learned from writing poems is I am no poet. I generally like my own poems, and I enjoy writing them, but they don’t stick with me. Next year I won’t really care what I wrote last year (the answer will be none, but even if I had…). I haven’t written a short story in years. I could look up when, since I know what the last story was. I’m sure I’ve learned something from short stories too, but I have no idea what it is. Probably that I like writing them and think it would be cool if a person could make a living being a short story writer (and by person I mean me).

I don’t write as much as I would like to. I discovered an easy way out when it comes to writing. I have a need to put word after word down on paper and have a need to show these words to someone. Lately I’ve been satisfying this need by writing stupid letters to people and companies. It doesn’t take me long to knock out a letter. I’ve written 12 in one day before (my previous letter was 11). I send these out and sometimes get replies. I’ve written roughly 400 letters so far. 60 in the last 6 weeks. On average I am doing a letter about every-other-day, but I’ve also taken off large swathes of time during this period.

Anyway, rambling way of saying I am thinking of putting together a book of my letters. One of my goals is to figure out a way to monetize my letters site. Ads make me little. Asking for donations nets me a small amount (about half what it costs me to run). So I’ve been casting about looking for a way to fund the site (and hopefully my rock and roll lifestyle as well). A book seems like a cool answer. I figure write a few letters every day for a few months and I would have a large portion of what I need written.

Problem here is that it took me two years to write 350 letters. I’m looking at wanting to be done with the writing part by February 1. That’s three months of writing (I won’t compete with the holiday mail, so mailing will have to stop for a month in there) and a month of waiting for the stragglers to come in. Add another month or so to do layouts and such and I am looking at April for this thing to be ready.

I’m not sure it’s doable. I am sure it’ll be a lot of work.

I’m working on a book with @mindofchester (Anthony Imperioli). There’s that’s it. Almost short enough to tweet. But for the longer version keep reading:

As most anyone who follows me online knows I string sentences together like the best of them. I’d call it typing, not writing. I like playing with words, like trying to be clever, funny, moving, like to get a reaction. Usually this is accomplished by being an idiot. Sort of like masturbation it’s the easiest way to get off. I’d like to do more sophisticated writing, short stories, poetry and the like, but that requires a lot more effort, so I tend to just go for the quick fix.

I have a website dedicated to this very goal: jackassletters. So a while back I created a twitter account (@jackassletters) with the goal of promoting my letter writing stupidity.

continue reading...

I threw out an offer (on twitter) to guest post on someone else’s site and was kindly taken up by @weirdenough (Barbara Bailey) and @mindofchester (Anthony Imperioli). Barbara apologized for not updating her site as often as she should, but that just means I get to park on her front page for a longer time! She also tend to write more in depth essays than most sites, so I can see why she has a reduced frequency of updates. Her humor is generally a bit more sophisticated than mine (this alone makes her site worth reading).

Anyway, I provided her with a letter I wrote to Amnesty International where I questioned the efficacy of letter writing. It’s subtle, but please stick with me here, and note the irony, since it was intentional. I hope you read it, hope you enjoy her site, and hope you leave a comment over there as well.

And in case you missed it (and are too lazy to scan the post one down) I did do a guest post on thezimp.mindofchester.com as well.

weirdenough.com

Somehow I’ve managed to acquire a twitter addiction. I can be followed @cjorgensen I am also @jackassletters The first twitter stream is just my personal updates, and since I tend to live the same day over and over again (I’m not complaining) it doesn’t get much updating. The second stream is related to an ongoing project I’ve had going for 253 days now. I send stupid letters to people and companies and see what kind of responses I get. This project can be found at jackassletters.com.

Well, while signed on as @jackassletters I threw out an offer to guest post on other sites, and @mindofchester and @weirdenough took me up on it. My guest post is up on thezimp.mindofchester.com and I will post again when the weirdenough.com article goes live.

Read my letter to The Archbishop of Canterbury. This is how it should be done folks. Dr. Rowan Williams has accounted for himself wonderfully. I am going to order “The Poems of Rowan Williams.” I am also going to send him some chapbooks of my poetry and an autographed photo of me! I don’t rightly expect he’ll care, but I still plan to do it.

My thanks to Anthony Imperioli (the man behind mindofchester.com) for hosting the article for me, and for creating this wonderful graphic:

(You can click it to go to the Archbishop post.)

I hope you enjoy reading the letter. Yes, I do know I am probably going to hell now, and yes, I also know I am dragging Anthony down with me. I see no reason for hell to be a lonely place.