A Chaotic Week
We’ve had an extraordinary stressful past week here in the Twin Cities. Between the killing of Duante Wright by a Brooklyn Center police officer and the Derek Chauvin trial our city, or should I say cities (St. Paul and Minneapolis) have been on edge. Everyone, especially business owners, were keeping their fingers crossed that protests wouldn’t turn violent.
So far, so good. Our neighborhood, Cathedral Hill, so far has been peaceful. We’ll be keeping our fingers crossed that it stays that way. Between the riots last spring and forced closures due to Covid-19, I don’t think our small businesses could survive another hit.
As a society, let’s hope we begin working together towards some kind of substantial change in racial equality.
Make Sure Your Tray Tables Are In The Upright and Locked Position
Lord how I miss that that preflight speech. After the J&J vaccine getting “paused” just hours before our appointments my wife and I found appointments at separate facilities this past week for the Pfizer vaccine. With the first dose in our arms thoughts have turned to world travel again.
I can’t think of anyone better to reignite the spark of that wanderlust than someone I consider a mentor, Anthony Bourdain. I preordered this book a LONG time ago and it was just delivered yesterday.
Tony had the initial meeting with the co-author, Laurie Woolever, a few months before the world tragically lost him in June of 2018. Laurie vowed to complete the manuscript after his passing. It looks like an amazing read and I can’t wait to dig in.
Vella
Those of you who have been with me for a while might remember my quest to get a short story published by The New Yorker. I’ve submitted countless stories to them throughout the years and all have been rejected. I’ve actually been considering gathering all these stories together and publishing them in book form and calling it, “The New Yorker Rejects”.
The universe handed me an opportunity late last week. I’m excited to share that I was invited by Amazon to try a pilot publishing platform called Kindle Vella. My original short story, “The Bridge” (published in 7 installments) will be amongst the first batch of content to appear on Vella. The first episode will be free but you have to purchase tokens to read episodes 2-6. It seems everyone is jumping on the crypto bandwagon. It’ll be interesting to see how this works. If Vella shows promise I’ll publish more short stories there but I’m reserving judgement until I see proof. I’ll share a link when it goes live in a few months!
Ephemera Updates!
Ophelia is on the home stretch of designing a cover image for this new book.
Beta readers have finished providing all their feedback and the manuscript is ready to hand off to LuCe, the book designer!
I should have a publication date to share with you all very soon. I’m so excited about this project! Although my time away has been super productive, I'm starting to really miss regularly blogging. I should be returning to producing 3-4 blogs per week after this book is published.
Hive Silver Bloggers
Are you between the ages of 40 and 100? Do you have a passion for blogging and cryptocurrency?? Do you have some wisdom to share??? If the answer is Yes to any of these questions please stop by my friend @lizelle's new Hive community Hive Silver Bloggers and hit subscribe!
Another Chapter Closes
My wife Raymi and I have been skating at the Roller Garden since 2012. That year was a particularly tough one for me. I had been working an extremely stressful job for the previous three years, 70-80 hour weeks, getting way too little sleep. Skating helped get me through that rough patch. We got into the best physical shape of our lives from those two hour skating sessions. The skating community welcomed us with open arms and throughout those past nine years we’ve made some great friends and wonderful memories.
The pandemic brought it all to a screeching halt. We haven’t skated since early December 2019. A large part of our ‘return to normalcy’ was going to be skating at the RG again and reconnecting with all the friends we haven’t seen in over a year. There are a few other rinks in the Twin Cities area but none compare to this one. Add this news to the list of things from 2020/2021 that just plain suck. Roller Garden you will be missed by many!
Here’s an article with some great history on the Roller Garden.
--
All for now.
With Gratitude,
Eric Vance Walton
(Gif sourced from Giphy.com)
Most of us have experienced a moment of perfect peace at least once in our lives. In these moments we lose ourselves and feel connected to everything. I call these mindful moments. Words can’t describe how complete they make us feel.
These moments are usually fragile, evaporating in seconds. What if there was a way to train your mind to experience more of them? It’s deceptively easy and requires nothing more than a subtle shift in mindset. My new book, Mindful Moments, will teach you to be much more content despite the chaos and imperfect circumstances continuing to unfold around you. Upgrade your life experience today for only $15.99 on Amazon.com.
Let’s Keep In Touch
hello dear friend @ericvancewalton good afternoon
Good to know that you and your wife have gotten the shots; Although in different places, the good thing is that they were vaccinated and have advanced a step further
I think it would be a good idea, put all these presentations together and make a single book, you never know when a book can lead sales and become the most read.
Nice to hear that you have been summoned by Amazon on that new platform
I didn't remember reading that you and your wife liked to skate, that's great. It has always interested me, my wife did it at some point, now it is my granddaughter who asked us to pimar her pati.
Yes, I have been invited to participate in this new Hive Silver Bloggers community, I am 52 years old and ready to participate.
Thank you very much for letting us know all this update, I take this opportunity to wish you a happy start to the end of the week
Good morning! I'm looking forward to being free of the worry of this virus. We love to skate, I'm not very good but enjoy it. Pretty much all I can do is go fast in a straight line. : ) I hope your week was a wonderful one! Take care my friend.
Vella sounds like an amazing opportunity and you're the perfect author to publish on this pilot platform, wishing you all the best that this will be a great success!
There have been so many casualties with the number of amazing places closing down, just so tragic and I'm really not playing down the number of lives lost!
Thank you so much for the little promo for Silver Bloggers, I really like how you've worked it so am taking the liberty of copying it almost word for word, sure you won't mind😉
Thank you Lizelle! Vella is definitely intriguing. The royalty structure isn't that attractive but I think they're hoping that it's designed to be more of a publicity tool to direct readers to books published by Amazon authors.
We've had so many people lost and businesses closing here. When all this is over it really will be a different world.
You're very welcome! I'm glad that it was something you could use. Best of luck building that awesome community!
Good to check in with you and wishing you best of luck with your Amazon project.
Bourdain book sounds interesting, was just reading a review of it the other day...
Thank you! I think it's taking them longer than they originally planned to roll it out. Now they're saying it'll be live sometime this summer.
I'm about 40 pages in and it wasn't exactly what I envisioned. The author created the book after just a single one-hour meeting with Anthony Bourdain to discuss his wishes about the book. She relies heavily on his material from past television shows, filling in the gaps with her own words. It's still an amazing read but seems more like a summary of his older work versus something new.
Hope you are well!
All good to know, nice to explore different avenues & reach new audiences. Speaking of books, out of curiosity, Eric, did you dislike mine (I’m a big boy & can take it ;)
Absolutely! I have to apologize but I haven't gotten around to reading it yet but will. We lost my Dad to Covid in November and I've been really throwing myself into my work lately. I'm still looking forward to reading it and will let you know as soon as I'm done.
I’m sorry for your loss, Eric... Wishing you healing & serenity. Thanks, for still being interested in my book; I look forward to hearing from you, when you get around to it ✌🏼
Thank you very much!
I’m excited for you, for many reasons. Cool to hear about your Kindle Vella adventure. I looked into it and am already looking forward to hearing about your future experience with this format. It sure sounds like the future ;<)
A hug from Portugal!
Thank you Vincent! It'll be interesting to see how this Vella venture goes. It's a good idea. After learning about the royalty structure I'm not counting on making much but it might end up being a good funnel to introduce people to some of my other books. I hope all is well in Portugal! Is the virus still raging over there?
That sucks about your roller skating place. My wife and I have one just down the road from our house, but we don't ever go. I am honestly guessing we would both die because neither of us have been on skates in years. I was never that good when I was a kid anyway. That is cool about the Vella platform and I will definitely jump over and join that community!
I am glad you were able to at least get your first dose!
It really does, the floor here was HUGE. I hadn’t been on skates for decades prior to 2012. It was actually scary at first but, as they say, practice makes everything easier. There was nothing like the endorphin rush and then the incredible night of sleep that followed a two hour skate session. Thanks! Side effects for me were like the beginnings of a flu. Fatigue, brain fog, and chills in the evenings for a couple days. I feel fine now though.
That sounds like what I had with the second shot. It sounds like a pretty cool place. I can't imagine skating for two hours straight, but I guess if the music is good and you are having a good time, then anything is possible!
The anger of the clever is in his deeds. (Arabic proverb) That's right, sometimes you need to get very angry to start doing
You cannot stay angry.
It is bad for your health and your life.
What is best to do with anger is use it to push you into motivation.
Now that you are angry, what are you angry at?
The thing that most people say they are angry at is actually nothing.
Many are angry at govern-cement. But what is, where is govern-cement?
Angry at society? Show me society...
The only way to change any of these structures is to
build a new structure and occupy it leaving the old structure to turn to dust.
Amen. That anger should be used only as a motivator to rebuild something better. I think this is in large part why things never substantially improve for the masses, you can't fix a systemically broken system (or more accurately a system that was never designed for most to thrive in the first place.)
Your post is reblogged and upvoted by me. It is a good post. Thank you @ericvancewalton