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Updates

Let’s Prevent American Internet Censorship!

Dec 13th, 2011
by Nick Meador.
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FightForTheFuture.org (click image to visit site) has information and suggestions for fighting the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)

[Note: This post has been censored by the author in protest of the "rogue sites legislation" (i.e., Internet censorship) currently being considered by U.S. Congress. The full text will be made available soon.]

Dear Internet friends,

As you may already know, I create audio/video mash-ups by crossing older films and music videos with newer music, with varying levels of editing to the original visual content. In a sense, it has become a hobby of mine over the past few years, and I find it very rewarding. My own activity has been inspired in some ways by the mash-up culture more prevalent in music during the last decade.

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Excerpts Galore

Nov 13th, 2011
by Nick Meador.
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Pieces of my manuscript-in-progress are suddenly scattered all over the web, so I wanted to provide an update in case you’ve lost track. The third excerpt that appeared in Beatdom issue 9 is now online at their website.

A shorter version entitled “Kerouac: A Psychonaut in Denial” just appeared on Reality Sandwich this week. If you’re not quite ready for the long version, you might want to check that one out first.

As a reminder, the fourth excerpt appeared on Reality Sandwich in September. And I’m happy to announce that the fifth excerpt will be published in Beatdom issue 10 sometime in the next month or two. For more information about my book, please visit nickmeador.org/madness.

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Shadow Dancing

Oct 18th, 2011
by Nick Meador.
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I created FIVE audio/video mash-ups in September. This was the last of them!

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Reality Sandwich Runs My Next Book Excerpt

Sep 21st, 2011
by Nick Meador.
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On September 19, the web magazine Reality Sandwich published the fourth excerpt from my book-in-progress. I titled it “Doublethink and the Mental Construction of Reality.” It’s actually the third excerpt to appear on their website, but the fourth overall. The third excerpt overall appeared in Beatdom Magazine earlier this summer.

Because I condensed a 22,000-word chapter into a 3,900-word excerpt, it’s a pretty heady piece of reading. And because I had to take it out of the context of my book, it’s mostly abstract information. However, those who read this and the Beatdom piece together will likely notice many important parallels. (more…)

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Second Book Excerpt on Reality Sandwich

Mar 29th, 2011
by Nick Meador.
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Today the web magazine Reality Sandwich published a second excerpt from my upcoming book All These Serious Faces Will Only Drive You Mad. I created the essay from a portion of my second chapter. The piece is called “The Not-So-Comfortable Concentration Camp,” which is a slight spin on a phrase that Betty Friedan used in her book The Feminine Mystique. Her book helped launch the second-wave feminist movement of the 1960s that demanded more rights for women in the home, the workplace, and elsewhere in society. (more…)

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Looking For Magazines to Publish My Work

Mar 8th, 2011
by Nick Meador.
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Web 2.0 technology has created a strange predicament for writers. There are more ways to publish than ever before–but all selective publications are swamped with submissions, and almost none are able to pay writers.

A few of my essays were published on Reality Sandwich last year, but they haven’t responded about my last few submissions. I tend to write essays in the 2,000-8,000 word range, based on a mix of documented research (I prefer to use citations) and personal experience. (more…)

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My Year in Review, 2010

Jan 27th, 2011
by Nick Meador.
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2010 was a crazy year for me, with some of the highest highs and lowest lows that I’ve ever experienced. I moved out of the country, got published in a real (albeit online) magazine, began writing my first book…and even bottle-fed three foster puppies! By the holidays I was totally worn out. But now that I’m settled in the new year and working steadily on the book, I thought I would write a quick summary of what I did last year. I’ll provide links, in case you missed anything or want to read one again.

A quick calculation revealed that in 2010 I wrote about 50,000 words in essays and stories, as well as 31,000 words on the book manuscript!!! That doesn’t even count the articles on my MusicEdge blog (which I closed last April), my Refractor blog (which has been on hiatus, with a few sporadic posts, since last July), my notebooks, or my dream journal. I have to say, I’m excited by the thought that I probably topped 100,000 words in 2010—especially because that’s my goal for the book manuscript. When I lacked a first-hand sense of how much work it would take to create a book, the idea was a lot more terrifying. (more…)

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Book Excerpt: The Agent of Apathy

Dec 16th, 2010
by Nick Meador.
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As some of you may know, I’m running a project on the creative funding site Kickstarter.com in hopes of self-publishing a first edition of my debut book once I’m done writing. Since the minimum funding deadline is Saturday, it doesn’t look like that project will survive. However, I’m still writing the book, and Reality Sandwich just published an excerpt from my first chapter. It’s a historical look at the “hipster” figure in Western culture called “The Agent of Apathy.” Here’s how it begins:

Over the last decade the cultural figure known as the “hipster” has increasingly turned into a target of scorn, despite an apparent disagreement over what the term means and to whom it refers. In his 2008 Adbusters article, “Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization,” Douglas Haddow provides one of the keenest descriptions of this trend in its current form. (more…)

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Debut Book Announcement!

Nov 14th, 2010
by Nick Meador.
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I’m working on my first feature-length book and I need your help! I recently stopped working as a web manager in order to focus on writing full-time. The Internet allows creative workers to gather micro-payments to help support their work, and I think this is the perfect opportunity to try it for myself. I’ll be offering various gift packages for people who donate to support my project.

It will be a nonfiction work about where mankind is stuck, examined through the topics such as creative evolution, madness, and Jack Kerouac. I expect to be done with the first draft of the manuscript by late spring 2011, at which time I’ll be seeking a publisher. However, I’m perfectly capable of making my own e-book (see below), and micro-publishing makes it possible to produce paperback and hardcover books on demand, even one at a time!

For more information or to make a donation to this project, please visit my new book micro-site at nickmeador.org/madness.

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Downward Is the Only Way Forward

Sep 23rd, 2010
by Nick Meador.
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A third essay of mine was published by Reality Sandwich on 9/9/10. It’s called “Downward Is the Only Way Forward: Following Inception’s Dream Trail” (the magazine added the subtitle, but I think it works well). It was inspired by the film Inception, and in it I discuss topics as various as Eastern philosophy, psychology, quantum mechanics, and Godel’s theorems. It’s about 7,000 words long, and I consider it a landmark in my personal development as a writer. Here are the first few paragraphs for your reading pleasure.

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