Weekly Briefing from the North Texas Apocalypse Bunker, 9/19/22
Better Late Than Never Edition
Note: we have bumped the Division of Media Review’s normal Monday offering so that we might file the weekly report in a more timely manner. These are unusual circumstances and we don’t expect to have to do this very often.
Suffice to say, the boys in Media Review did not take it well. Their report will arrive tomorrow, and we look forward to whatever barbs and jabs they will undoubtedly fling at the front office.
Field Report: Bacon City, USA
The North Texas Apocalypse Bunker was inextricably entwined with the Centennial Celebration of Wright brand bacon (a premium breakfast meat, for those of you unaware of such things), which coincidentally started exactly one hundred years ago in little Vernon, Texas by the Wright family.
Tyson Foods decided to do it up right (or is that “wright”?) and turned downtown Vernon (meaning: everything surrounding the Apocalypse Bunker) into the aforementioned Bacon City. The street they blocked off to allow for foot traffic? The Bacon Strip.
Food trucks? Everyone had bacon on the menu, including the funnel cake booth: funnel cakes with bacon inside their golden goodness. I’ve never fought against my better self so hard in my life.
Live Bands? Check. Photo ops? Check. Why, even the Vernon Plaza got loose, foot loose, and kicked off our Sunday shoes with the biggest bacon of all, Kevin Bacon. A free showing of Footloose and bacon popcorn to enjoy with it? What more do you want, man?
At some point, I was interviewed by a crew of young people from out of town who were making a documentary. I have no idea if it will end up being a thing that other people can see, or if it will be something that never makes it out of a quarterly boardroom meeting when someone looks at the line item and says, “Uh, Mitch? What the hell is ‘Bacon City, USA, and why did we spend your entire year’s promotional budget on it?’”
They were a lot of fun, all wide-eyed and citified, and did the appropriate “ooh-ing” and “aaah-ing” over the theater. One of their people with a clipboard noticed my books in the concession stand and said, “You write, too?” She bought a book, the first of the Con-Dorks Trilogy.
Suffice to say, we were tied up for the day. Bunker Ops was a big help with logistics, as Administration was responsible for the Bacon Popcorn recipe being handled just (w)right. I’ll drop the recipe at the end of this newsletter. Maybe. Just know: it’s a game changer.
No Ordinary Mortals: A Super Hero Anthology is Here
You can get a copy of it right now if you are so inclined. I may have mentioned this already; this is one of the stories I sold last year that got me back in the saddle. I was pretty pleased with it; it’s an old idea that I have been wanting to develop for a long time now, and I’m glad it found a home here.
I know many of you are fellow artists of one flavor or another, and so you know all about the love-hate relationship with feedback, reviews, etc. While it’s great to have reviews and endorsements and likes and retweets from people you know (and it really is), it’s even better when you get one from someone you do not know, especially a fellow writer or artist. In this case, it was Tom Jolly, a game designer and author who created the cult classic beer and pretzels game Wiz-War.” He tweeted:
That tweet kept me going for two days straight, no fooling.
I always try to do shout-outs whenever I can, but I know it’s not often enough. Not at the trench warfare level, where it matters how many eyes see a book title or a cover picture. No one at Amazon cares what I think about The Rings of Power (it’s still got glacial pacing problems, thanks to those bloody elves), and your decision to watch or not watch based on my learned opinions won’t impact their bottom line one fraction of a percent.
But if I mention a book, and just four or five of you go check out that book? That’s a bump. And yeah, we can have a separate conversation about how five copies sold constitutes a “bump” and what kind of numbers the book trade is existing on at the moment, but the point is, every sale counts for people like me, like Tom Jolly, like so many of you reading and commenting on this newsletter every week.
I'm not doing this to be a pitch man for anyone. But considering that a portion of all of our conversations, online and in meat space, revolves around media consumption, I would like to think that we are all at least tacitly aware of what a good recommendation can do for a project, both for the artist and the person consuming the art. I still get a bit of a runner’s high from someone coming back to me and thanking me for recommending a book or show to them. My old retail sales days were full of those interactions and I miss them. Having a person that you can rely on for book and music recommendations, even if you don’t have anything else in common, is a relationship worth cultivating and maintaining; these days, in a world of endless content, it’s a valuable hook-up to have. And you can feel good about buying people’s projects at this level because they feel it, and you are keeping the guerrilla movement alive with your patronage.
Starting soon, I’m going to publish on the blog some conversations with fellow creatives I know. Stay tuned!
the lady with the clipboard leaned over to me and said, “he does a really good interview.” I just smiled and said “this isn’t his first time in front of a camera. And he really does like an audience.”
The bacon popcorn was soooooo good!!!