There is absolutely no progress to report on the publication of my labour of love that I sweated blood over all winter, The Paths Life Takes. As I had mentioned in the last installment of this series, as an attempt to prevent myself from dwelling on the inertia of the publishing industry, I had decided to take another stab at self-publishing by binding together installments of NaNoWriMo Notes into book form and trying to flog some copies through Lulu.com.

Due to the surprising fact I lack the financial resources of even the smallest of publishing houses, part of this process is to see how much of a response I can get spending as little money as possible. The Internet is a big place and I figured if you hunt long enough you're bound to find places where you can access free advertising and information distribution.

Of course the first thing I needed to do was come up with a snappy press release, thankfully I'm luckier than most in that I spent a good deal of time doing publicity in a previous incarnation (about 20 years ago) and can still knock off a press release easily enough. The first thing to remember is hardly anyone reads more then the first two or three paragraphs and the bottom for the contact information. So you really need to top-load it.

Richard Marcus, Contributing Editor at Blogcritics.org, contributor to Desicritics.org, and the iconoclastic mind behind the Blog "Leap In The Dark," is pleased to announce the publication of NaNoWriMo Notes.

Subtitled an exercise in creative insanity, Notes details Mr. Marcus' participation in the annual National Novel Writing Month competition where participants are challenged to write 50,000 words in a month. As that didn't seem a sufficient challenge on its own, Mr. Marcus decided he should also attempt to continue his pace of writing an article a day for blog publication as well, including keeping a record of his attempt to complete the contest: Hence NaNoWriMo Notes.

Ashok K. Banker, author of the new Ramayana has this to say about Leap In The Dark and it's author: "Take my word for it, Leap In The Dark is the most refreshing and invigorating blog you're likely to read today - or any other day." (Press release NaNoWriMo Notes 2006 Richard Marcus)