deadxstop

i remember coming up with a "retrospective" book idea years ago. i even had my friend stephanie collate every journal entry as far back as jan 2004. i put it off and put it off until basically this fall. honestly, because i figured it would be easy, just throw my favorite journal entries in a book and off it goes to the printer...

see, this is where i fuck up every time.
its like warped tour, it comes around so infrequently that it leaves you with juuuust enough time to forget how fucking bad it sucks. well, i put out a book, roughly, once a year... juuuuust long enough to forget that writing the goddamn thing is only 25% of the effort it takes to go from 'idea' to 'book in paw'.

so many little things you will probably never even notice:
are the margins set correctly?
did you offset the ditch of the book?
will the text transfer over from a word.doc to a pdf?
all pictures must be on the right hand side, if you add that page you forgot, will it throw off the picture pages?
why is there a break in the middle of this paragraph?
wait, why is part of the text missing?
why are there weirdo symbols now in place of quotation marks?
is there enough bleed for the cover?
what are the specs for a barcode box?
do you still have your ISBN numbers?
oh fuck, i forgot to edit that sentence, can i remake another pdf?
60 pound paper is too flimsy, can i do 70 pound on such a large book?
i need a 12 point cover on a book this big? how much extra is that?
will this dude ever finish the foreword he said he would write last month?
is clandan going to kill me if i ask for just <i>one more</i> pdf edit?
wait, paper prices went up how much?

i used to look at cds and think, "what a ripoff, $14 for a cd... i know that shit only cost them like $1 to make that shit."
thats like looking at a painting and judging its value based upon the price of the canvas and paints.
i get this now. i see that its not about the production, manufacturing and shipping of a product... but the time, energy, passion, enthusiasm, heart and soul one pours into their art. yet in the end, inevitably have their party pissed upon by some bratty teen who thinks having to drop the five extra bucks is "selling-out".
sigh.

ive been so stressed out lately that my neck and shoulders feel like worn out rubberbands.
my deodorant refuses to work.
ive ditched out on so many people to sit in a starbucks and "work" that i doubt i have any friends left.
i havent gone running since ive been back from europe.
and im literally taking <i>every last dime</i> i have to pay for the production of this simple coffee table book.
but...
i met the deadline i set for myself.

if you get the impression you have read this book, you're wrong.
this is the beginning,
the heart,
the reason why,
and the man behind the curtain of every meaningful entry i have ever written.
it is a beginners guide to who, what, when, where and why i am who i am now.
it is every entry you've printed out... and why it was written.
it has a brief history written by me looking back five years later and a foreword written by someone who is directly responsible for you reading these words at this very moment.

to me this book is worth far more than $30. it is priceless. it is the most important book i have ever released, because it makes all of this, me, make sense. without it, there wouldnt have been any of my other books, dvds, cds, radio shows, tours or speakings.

this book is my scrapbook. it is my history.


limited to 250.
available december 1st - 8th only at askheychris.livejournal.com