Anyway, here’s my take on Godzilla arriving at Toronto:

So you won’t be surprised to learn that I’ve seen this year’s top grossing US-made film, Godzilla vs. Kong, about seven times (and counting; I’m planning to get a copy soon). Yes, I realize that me seeing this film so many times contributed to its box office status, so that’s a little self congratulatory. I digress.

But the guy in the photo below? True story: That guy showed up to a movie set one day thinking he was going to help train some actors with motion capture, but instead they turned to him and said, “You’re Godzilla.” Some guys have all the luck.

His name is TJ Storm, meaning that he has both a cool job AND a cool name. And if you aren’t a huge Godzilla fan (I’ll try to forgive you), he also has done mo-cap work in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Iron Man, Groot, and Rocket Racoon.

If you want to find out a little more about TJ Storm and what it’s like to be the motion capture actor for big name roles, check out this article: https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/genre-mvp-the-motion-capture-actor-whos-played-groot-godzilla-and-iron-man

And if you care to see my entire ever-evolving collection of personally photoshopped Godzilla images, they can be found at my Facebook page, here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?vanity=KeithSoaresAuthor&set=a.1444717255596313

I’m such a kaiju fan that I’ve even created a few of my own. Their names are Gorgol Alpha, Gorgol Omicron, Gorgol Sigma, and Gorgol Tau, and you can find them in my John Black series of books. Here’s a conceptual look at Gorgol Alpha:

In fact, that’s Gorgol Alpha who appears on the cover of John Black book 2, And It Arose From the Deepest Black.

The post Go Go Godzilla appeared first on Keith Soares.

by Keith Soares

Finally I am a full-fledged wizard, one of the greatest masters of the magical arts in our times.

It wasn’t without substantial effort, believe me.

It started when I found the book. I assure you that this was a completely innocent affair. I was perusing the local thrift shop and certainly not expecting to discover such a life-changing tome. Nevertheless, there it was; near the back, on a dusty shelf so easy to overlook. Perhaps an ancient wizard had died, and in their stupidity, his family or possibly the state had sold off his possessions, not knowing the importance. I’ll simply call it a moment of fate. I bought A Wizard’s Guide to Magicks for two dollars and ninety-seven cents, after tax.

Can you imagine the luck? The doorstep to immutable power for less than three bucks?

I started, as one would expect, from page one. Words of Power. These words must not be spoken aloud without clear intent. I guard them carefully now, as they are the foundation of my abilities. The first one I ever uttered was natruka. It means disruption in the ancient tongue of magicians. I don’t think I pronounced it right at first, because it took several dozen attempts before I had results. When it happened, the signs were small, I admit, but obvious. The light bulb above the kitchen table fizzled out when I spoke the word on perhaps the fiftieth try, and I knew I was on the pathway to an unbelievable future. 

Back then, things were different. My small apartment, 31C in the Coronado complex, the same place I still inhabit, was unpleasant. Infested with bugs. God, I hated them. For weeks, I scoured the book, looking for a way to rid myself of those damned bugs. I found an enchantment, said to control any sort of creature. I repeated it a hundred times a day at least. I didn’t eat, barely slept. A week passed, then several more. The stove sat unused, the fridge empty, even the trash cans devoid of waste. I was obsessed. And then it happened. The bugs disappeared. My spell eradicated them from the apartment. I was positively gleeful.

Still, I moved on. The weather. That was my next fascination. I found a spell for lightning, and repeated it, day after day, perfecting its inflection. On the thirty-seventh day, I succeeded. A storm brought heavy rains, and lightning struck one of the tallest buildings in the city. I saw it on the news. I knew then that I could become a wizard in truth.

I began a new test. Perhaps the thing that would secure my status and confirm my abilities: the death chant. 

I’d hated my elderly neighbor, Timothy, since the day he complained to management that I was too loud. That my repeated shouts and cries in some foreign tongue frightened him. It was then that I swore I would kill him.

Page 247 of the book held the necessary words of power. Bidu nehirus cotina sebari. “I command away your life.” I recited this daily, directed at Timothy, though for so long my inflection, my pronunciation, was inferior. It didn’t work. 

After a year, I knew it would be my final test, the thing that would either make me a wizard or become my albatross. I spoke the words constantly. Still Timothy lived. Three more years went by.

His family came to visit, just about a week ago. There were many of them, as if they felt obligated to come. He greeted them at his door, just across the hallway from mine, with a weak smile. I saw it from my peephole as I repeated the spell in a hushed voice. 

Then, six days later, it happened. Timothy died. The family came once more to his doorway, this time in somber silence, like they knew it was coming. They’re still in his apartment now, mourning his death.

I did it.

I imagine some have felt remorse at crossing this threshold, but all I can think about is my success. I have become a true wizard. It took six and a half years, alone, locked in my apartment, but it happened!

My next enchantment is immortality. I wonder how long that will take.

Copyright 2021 Keith Soares / Bufflegoat Books LLC

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by Keith Soares

Standing high on the fortress wall above my opponent, I deflected his bullet as easily as a thousand before, yet in that moment I knew something had forever changed. As the projectile ricocheted off my blade, it crackled apart, each individual piece emitting a faint, high-pitched drone. I knew the sound despite the unexpected source, and I knew it meant death.

Deliberately I drew a breath, estimating my life had no more than two breaths to go. I tried to think what to do, but a man cannot outrun fate. Life had shown me much.

Summoning the strength of my line, 600 years of Sho-ja, I went into a meditative trance, waiting.

Sho-ja Nonen, Pinnacle of the Pyramid, father of my forefathers, was the first. He didn’t invent the nanosword, but he became its supreme master, wielding it in a way that no other could match. At the height of the War for the Nhin Lands, when Maru and the Hol-nari – marshals of the air – descended upon him, Nonen’s nanosword whirled faster than light, destroying all who faced him. It crackled apart with each blow, then reformed, ready to slay again, until Nonen found himself surrounded by thirteen Hol-nari warriors. In desperation, he splintered his nanosword to deliver death simultaneously, a technique later called doli-ki-wobokai – The Death of the Thirteen. No man had ever seen its equal, and, though it killed his foes, it left Nonen exposed. Maru saw his opening and dove from the sky, but Nonen willed his sword back together at the last moment. The weight of Maru’s own winged steed impaled him upon Nonen’s blade. Victorious, Sho-ja Nonen became the first ka-liph. 

Over the years of Sho-ja rule, our enemies tried to break the ka-lipha to no avail, for the nanosword – thousands of deadly particles controlled by the hilt of a sword, forming a blade, breaking apart, and forming again, endlessly – was given not only to the ruling few but to every soldier in the Sho-ja army. Certainly no commoner matched Nonen’s skill – he was the Pinnacle of the Pyramid – but a thousand nanoswordsmen of average ability could defeat any opposing force.

In time, peace grew, and Nonen ruled by word rather than deed. He begat twins: son Jiku and daughter Loren-wo, who became Grand Masters, the Second and Third Stones of the Pyramid.

Generations of Sho-ja came and went, filling the Pyramid with their revered names. Nanosword masters like Cantu, Hi-ko, and Newa-vuku. Each was ranked for their skill with the blade, yet none surpassed the trio at the top.

As the centuries passed, my family survived countless attempts to end our rule, both from within and from foreign invaders. In the Later Years, ships came, bearing new technologies like the rifle and pistol. But mere bullets were no match for a nanosword properly wielded. 

Forty-nine Sho-ja, my forefathers and mothers, made up the Pyramid by the day I was born, yet only those first three were sacred Grand Masters, as dictated by our lore.

Until I was tested. 

After disease took my father, my mother ruled the Nhin Lands – and raised me – alone. Certainly we had servants, more than I could ever count. But to learn the nanosword, learn to love the high-pitched drone of its deadly particles? To learn to rule? Those things my mother taught me. 

At my test, the elders fell silent. They consulted their scrolls and conferred in whispers. An argument broke out, and my mother interceded. When order was restored, I was given my place – Seventh Stone of the Pyramid – to gasps from the assembled elite. No Sho-ja had ranked higher than Twentieth in a hundred years, yet I was enraged. It should have brought me great joy and unending pride to see my name – Sho-ja Kelen – placed in such a lofty position, but I was too young to understand my folly, that the world does not change gently.

I knew I had excelled at the standard moves and dazzled in free battle. No living soul was my equal, but I desired to best those who were not living – the Grand Masters. I attempted the doli-ki-wobokai – The Death of the Thirteen – and, to the astonishment of all, I succeeded. In history, only Nonen and I had ever done such a thing. Though I didn’t wish to supplant the Pinnacle himself, in my hubris I expected Second Stone; the first Grand Master in almost 600 years. I was denied. 

Many years later, on her deathbed, my mother gave me wise council. “Kelen, you cannot alter history without a cost,” she said. “If you teach the world the Grand Masters can be beaten, you take away their divinity. And if you do that, the world will learn that you, too, can be beaten.”

Now, I was.

Above my head, I heard the nanoparticles of the bullet circle, preparing to loop down upon me, a thousand strong. I couldn’t possibly deflect so many with my blade. The Death of the Thirteen happened only twice in a millennium. I wouldn’t discover a Deflection of the Thousand before I drew my final breath.

Breaking from my trance, I studied the moment, the last things this life would give to me. I blinked at the setting sun telling me my days were ending, and smelled the brine of the nearby sea. I felt the chill of the evening air on my cheeks, and the familiar texture of leather on the hilt of my sword. I listened to the whir of the particles shepherding in my demise.

This new and deadly swarm fell toward me, something I’d never seen before – a nanobullet. Far below, my opponent smiled. Yet I still held the sword passed down to me from my mother, and knew one thing: the world does not change gently. If this was the end of the Sho-ja, then I would make it worthy of my line. I echoed the smile of my opponent, placing one foot upon the ledge directly above him, and his grin faded. As death rained down, I knew it was time to see if Sho-ja Kelen truly deserved the title Grand Master.

I jumped.

Copyright 2021 Keith Soares / Bufflegoat Books LLC

The post Flash Fiction: “The Setting Sun” appeared first on Keith Soares.

by Keith Soares

Because the world was unjust.

That’s why he created the machine.

“Will you help me build it?” he asked his son.

“I don’t understand any of it.”

“But you agree we need it?”

“Of course. Our leaders lie to us, they only want to make themselves seem greater. They try to divide us, not unite us, to maintain their power.”

“Yes,” the father said.

“And the people who should protect us too often only protect themselves. Especially when one of their kind does something terrible.”

“Yes, that too. The machine will fix all of that.”

“But, father, there are other problems. Our climate is changing. Won’t your machine make that worse?”

“No. The heat of the world itself powers it, and the machine will change things. Make them better.”

“What will it do?” the son asked. He followed his father to their garage where the machine sat unfinished, a boxy thing no bigger than the car that used to fill this space.

“Once the machine is turned on, fossil fuels won’t burn anymore. It will force the world to use renewable energy sources. Once it’s on, people won’t be able to say angry words. Their voice will be silenced. They won’t be able to harm one another. Their muscles won’t work to perform those acts. People’s minds will be made to forget ideas of cruelty and hatred. Any terrible thoughts will simply disappear. Things will be as they should be. As they always should have been.”

“How can one machine do all that?”

“It’s very smart. It has to be.”

“But it just looks like a metal box, wires.”

“It is right now. It doesn’t have its brain yet. That’s why I need your help.”

“I told you. I don’t understand any of this. I don’t know how it works, so I can’t help you. Not really.”

“You can,” the father said. “I’ll tell you exactly what to do. I’ll get inside the machine, and when I’m ready, you’ll turn it on.”

“With you inside?”

“Yes. I told you it needs a brain.”

“How long will it take? How long will you be inside?”

“Forever, son.”

“But I don’t want you to go!”

“Son, you yourself said we need this. The world needs this.”

“And I need a father!”

“I’ll still be here. Just in the machine. My brain will be its brain, saving the world from itself.” The father climbed into the machine and carefully connected himself to it. “I’m ready now. Turn it on.”

The son started to cry, but he knew his father was right. The world had to change. Had to be made better. He turned on the machine.

It took a few seconds, but only a few. Out on the street, the son heard a car sputter and die. He looked at his father, trapped in the machine, but the sadness vanished from his mind. He wiped the tears from his cheeks and walked away, leaving his father forever forgotten and alone.

Because the world was unjust.

Copyright 2021 Keith Soares / Bufflegoat Books LLC

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I’ve already posted that the book begins in Geneva, Switzerland. Extra credit for anyone who can guess another location from the book, based on the cover image. It’s a notably more obscure location, but recognizable from the image, and (once you get it), it makes perfect sense for the series.

The post Cover & Title Reveal: Lightning Hopkins book 3: Thunder appeared first on Keith Soares.

At long last, John Black has entered a new medium. Now, instead of merely reading his story, you can be immersed in it through the performance of voice actor Jacob McNatt.

The audiobook is rolling out on a whole slew of audiobook sales platforms – 43 to be exact, including (hopefully) all your favorites like Audible, Apple Books, Nook, Chirp, and many others. Not all of them are available as of this writing, so I’m including a list below with all the links I know about.

And you can check it out at the library via Bibliotheca!

Here’s the full list of distributors, with links as known (note that many of these are outside the US or app-based, so I will not be able to post links for those):

1. 24Symbols
2. Anyplay
3. Apple
4. Audible/Amazon
5. Audiobooks.com
6. AudiobooksNow
7. AudiobooksNZ
8. Authors-Direct.com
9. BajaLibros.com
10. Beek
11. Bokus Play
12. BookBeat
13. Bookmate
14. Chirp
15. Downpour
16. eStories
17. Fuuze
18. Google Play
19. Hibooks
20. Hummingbird Digital Media
21. Instaread
22. Rakuten Kobo
23. Leamos
24. Libro.fm
25. Nextory
26. Nook
27. Papaya FM
28. Scribd
29. Storytel
30. Ubook
31. 3 Leaf Group
32. Axiell
33. Baker & Taylor
34. Bibliotheca
35. Bidi
36. Ebsco
37. Follett
38. Hoopla
39. Mlol
40. Odilo
41. OverDrive
42. Perma-Bound
43. Wheelers

The post A John Black Audiobook! appeared first on Keith Soares.

Take a look!

Depending on how this goes, maybe I’ll offer John Black t-shirts or Oasis of Filth coffee mugs.

Cheers,

K.

The post Autographed and Limited Edition Books Available Now appeared first on Keith Soares.

STRUCK (Lightning Hopkins book 1): https://amzn.to/3alZlSr

TWICE (Lightning Hopkins book 2): https://amzn.to/2JhT4v6

This time around, Lyn and her electromagician friends end up in Paris, France. Not too coincidentally, I took a trip to Paris with my family last summer (before… well, you know, the current world situation…). Many of the things I saw influenced parts of the story. Here are a few photos from my trip. Once you read the new book, you should notice their Lightning Hopkins connection.

First, of course, is the world-famous Eiffel Tower, but more specifically, what it feels like to be BELOW the tower. It’s really a gigantic pile of intertwined metalwork. And its elevators sway. Not cool, Monsieur Eiffel.

At night, the tower is beautifully lit, and I particularly liked the rotating beams coming from the top platform, circling around like some lighthouse for alien ship landings.

The circle surrounding the Arc de Triomphe (barely seen on the left here) is often overrun with cars. Here, even on a rather miserable, rainy day, it’s quite busy. Notice that there are no lane markers. It’s a free-for-all. Fun to look down upon from atop the Arc.

It’s an overstatement, but not much of one, to say there is a cafe on every street corner. Here are just two. If you own the supply company for these chairs, tables, and umbrellas, you have a constant business stream.

Despite the devastating fire, Notre Dame Cathedral still stands. It’s undergoing a massive effort for renovation and repair, but still dominates many views along the Seine.

According to the musical, high on a hill lives a lonely goatherd. Well, in Paris, it’s not a goatherd, but the white-domed structure of Sacre Coeur that stands high on a hill, overlooking much of the city. It’s a very popular place for photos, selfies, panoramas, and probably some pickpockets.

When you’re in front of Sacre Coeur, this is the view of Paris you get. I didn’t manage to get the Eiffel Tower in this shot, but it’s out there. And you never know who might be around you in one of these crowds.

While you’re staying in Paris, get the top-floor flat. Unless of course you don’t like heights and have to carry all of your luggage up a staircase like this for five floors.

Last but not least, get outside the city, where there is beautiful countryside very close by. We didn’t expect to stumble across a glider airstrip, but here one is. Moments later, a glider swooped down and landed, just beside us. Then the two people inside hopped out, grabbed a wing, and dragged it into the hangar. So, that’s a thing that happens…

Hope you enjoy the continuing adventures of Lightning Hopkins in my new book, TWICE. As for flying around using electromagic in Paris, this is about as high up as you’re going to find me. I think my hair alone here represents my level of concern at being halfway up the Eiffel Tower.

Cheers,

K.

The post TWICE (Lightning Hopkins book 2) is now available in print and ebook appeared first on Keith Soares.

Take a look at this video (3:50 long) for some behind the scenes footage from the photoshoot and from the Photoshopping that had to happen afterward to put the model into an appropriate background and add effects for the book cover:

And finally, here are the new covers!

Struck (Lightning Hopkins book 1) – Available now on Amazon

Twice (Lightning Hopkins book 2) – expected release March 2020 (yep, this month!)

Finally, here are a few more shots from the photoshoot:

The post New Lightning Hopkins book covers: Photoshoot and Photoshop appeared first on Keith Soares.

It will be challenging. Hell, it may even be a downright slog and I could utterly fail. But at least I’m trying.

My day job has been at my own company for the last 22 years, and if you’ve ever been self-employed you know that the one rule of running a small company is that you are responsible for EVERYTHING. Getting work, overseeing work, doing hands-on work, doing work while you are supposedly on vacation, doing work when normal humans are sleeping, getting paid, chasing down late payments, hiring staff, paying staff, fringe benefits, taxes, legalities, office culture, office supplies, leases, cleaning crews, electricity, internet service, running water, making sure we have toilet paper, etc, etc, etc…

Plus, as a digital agency, we wouldn’t exist without our clients. Which meant that the clients ruled everything. That is its own special flavor of fun.

To be clear, I worked with A LOT of amazing people, both as clients and as colleagues. The company staff was routinely wonderful, which I am ever thankful for. If there had been office bickering and culture issues, I probably would have gone insane long ago. I enjoyed countless moments with the people around me.

This post is more about the job…

So, to remind myself of the things I won’t be missing about my 9-to-5 job (that was really more of a round-the-clock job), here are The Top 24 Things I’m Not Going to Miss About Working My Day Job:

1. Pitch Meetings

A lot of authors are introverted, so count me among them. I don’t like having to be “ON” in front of spectators, unless I choose it (me playing guitar in public is a totally different beast). However, in my agency job, it was a regular requirement for me to go out and pitch new clients, basically the industry equivalent of singing for your supper. Bad pitch = no job, no job = no money. I’ve done it multiple times in a day, on back-to-back days, for projects I could do in my sleep, for projects I had no idea how to do, and in all kinds of health, including feeling like I might keel over and die while talking. I managed to have success at these for 2+ decades, so I imagine I’ve done a decent job, but still, I have nightmares where I am in a pitch meeting.

2. Conference Calls

Similar to pitch meetings, but with the added benefit of happening weekly or every two weeks. My job was typically to run the conference calls, which meant I had to know everything that’s happening, and all the next steps – not just what happens tomorrow, but everything from A to Z, so that when clients come up with a question out of the blue, or they decide their COO has to be on the call one morning, I have answers. Again, I did it, and did it well, but it was always stressful. Plus, it’s a chunk of time out of your day you don’t get back. And don’t get me started on the clients who were ALWAYS late getting started and ALWAYS ran over time.

It was said on many occasions that conference calls were just therapy sessions – that the client would vent all kinds of bizarre and unrelated things going on in their organization on a call, just to have someone to hear them. So my job meant having to know all the details of a project, and be some people’s accidental therapist. Count that as another hat to wear.

3. Being On-Call 365/24/7

When you run the show, the show can run you back. In the early days of my agency, in the 1990s, connectivity was a lot harder. If I went on vacation to the Caribbean, let’s say, it was very likely that they had little to no Internet service. An Internet cafe was the best option, and all I had to do was avoid those and pray the folks back home had things under control. Thankfully, they usually did. But later, especially into the 2010s, everywhere I went there was service. This meant that I found myself working at 3am in Barcelona, Spain, while supposedly on vacation, so that my work would be done in time for folks waking up on the east coast of the US that morning. I already noted my dislike of conference calls; you can only imagine how much I disliked doing conference calls when I was in another country and my entire family was off having fun.

4. People Who Don’t Understand My Job Telling Me How to Do My Job

As the head of a digital agency, it was my job to be on top of the technology we used and recommended to our clients. That ended up being a pretty daunting proposition, as virtually every client used something different. (Admittedly, we made it a point of pride to have diverse clients, so we sort of brought this on ourselves.) Still, I put a lot of time and effort into knowing what I was talking about. I hated most the pitch meetings or conference calls when I felt even a little bit unprepared. So when I was certain I knew my stuff, it was infinitely frustrating to have someone come along and tell me how wrong I was. Often, this was a higher-up on the client end, and typically one with debatable technology skills. I knew I should sit back and let them make bad tech decisions, so that I could charge more to clean up the mess, but frankly, I don’t like cleaning up messes. Still, it happened all the time. And believe it or not, some of the worst offenders were people in technology positions who should know better: CTOs, programmers, third party vendors doing tech and development work, IT directors.

5. People Who Don’t Keep Track of What’s Happening With Their Own Project Needing an Update on Their Project

I mentioned conference calls, above. In general, those calls were status updates, and one of the more frustrating thing was that certain clients typically had no idea what their status was. Worse, they often had zero updates from their end. Trust me, any agency project requires collaboration between the agency and the client. If the client has NO UPDATES on their end, it is very likely the project is standing still. And that creates all kinds of hell at the agency.

Still, one of the more ridiculous moments I had on a conference call was a client who was LIVID about the status of their project. Furious that we were not getting things done in what they considered a timely fashion. I spent an hour explaining where things stood, and politely but firmly pointed out how the client was not providing information and content we needed to make progress. When I finally finished, waiting for a new batch of ire to be sent in my direction, I heard silence. After a moment, I did the old “hello, hello, are you there?” at which point the client un-muted themselves and admitted they had been distracted and weren’t listening. For the entire hour.

6. Waiting for a Payment/s

So the job itself isn’t stressful enough, eh? Okay, let’s add a wrinkle. As business owner, you also need to pay attention to organizational cashflow, and oh, by the way, 6 clients are 30 days or more late on payment. But your staff still gets paid every two weeks no matter what. Fantastic. Kill me.

7. Catastrophes As Soon As Not Convenient

Everything ALWAYS worked fine when I was sitting at my desk, rested and refreshed, and ready to take on the day. ALWAYS. But put me in a car going to an airport, or taking the afternoon off to attend a baseball game? BOOM! That’s when the shit always hit the fan. I remember vividly hiding in a back room at Nationals Park (a party room no one was currently using), on my phone tediously trying to debug server issues for 2 hours while the fans cheered outside. I remember vividly using a WiFi hacking antenna to sap remote strangers’ Internet service just to finally be able to get online to fix problems while out of town.

8. Angry Clients

Look, for the most part, the clients were easy to work with. But, just as in every day life, you meet some nice folks and some not so nice. An agency needs clients to make income. You don’t often get to choose based on whether they’re “nice” or not. So, if you started a project and one of your client contacts rubbed you the wrong way, well, buckle in, because they aren’t going away. And grumpy clients at the outset often turn into angry clients if anything at all goes wrong. In the course of a six-month or twelve-month project, SOMETHING is going to go wrong. That’s when you can either work together on a solution or start fighting. The angry clients always made this experience terrible, and made their project worse for it. Was it sometimes my fault? Of course. But we spent a lot of effort to be on the ball and conscientious, so the times it was “my fault” are fairly limited. Does that matter to a client who has decided to be angry? Nope.

9. No Boss? Try Dozens!

One of the things people always say to business owners is that it “must be great to have no boss.” That’s hilarious. Sure, there was no cigar-puffing J. Jonah Jameson yelling at you from his corner office while you toiled away, but here’s the thing: EVERY client is your boss. EVERY client can fire you. And that has serious implications… Had a crappy conference call with an angry client (who may or may not have paid attention and may or may not understand that they themselves are integral to the success or failure of their project) and they decide it’s time to fire your agency? That’s money, gone. Money gone might mean people gone. People gone might mean you can’t do the next job. It’s a delicate and stressful cycle, all controlled by your many client “bosses.”

10. Random Technology Changes

Technology is always evolving, for countless reasons. Code patches, new features, new functionality, security updates, yeah. But also mega corporations deciding to reinvent themselves with no real concern what that does to a smaller organization who already put a lot of time into a product and now has to do it all over again with no additional budget. Plus, clients in general have no concept what this means. Tell a client that you need money to update their app from iOS 10 to 13, and they turn around and ask you why you didn’t program it correctly. Why it wasn’t future proof and made to last. Will they understand that Apple deprecated an important method and now advises code be altered in specific ways that have widespread ramifications? Nah. It’s easier just to be mad.

11. Random Technology Failures

This is even more fun than random changes. What’s the one thing computers are supposed to be good at? Following rules. If you code something to produce XYZ today, it should produce XYZ tomorrow, the next day, and on until infinity, assuming the environment stays the same. And yet… Ever had your laptop freeze up for no apparent reason? Ever seen a glitch where there never was a glitch before? Yep. And it’s not even a joke that the go-to response from people in tech is always the simplest: if you can do so, reboot. Three times. Bad news, though. In production environments, that can be a very, very bad idea, and no client wants to hear that you lost data (sales, user records, whatever) because of some random occurrence. They will want to know what went wrong, and they will want a sacrifice for the trouble. That was me. Have you ever asked Microsoft for a sacrifice when MS Word crashed and you lost that doc you’d been working on for 3 hours? No. But if your web server randomly crashed one day, that was clearly my fault.

12. Hackers

Even worse that any random change or failure, hackers screw up things on purpose. In my opinion, hackers are the worst of the worst. And what’s even sillier is that we’ve had massive hacker issues based on mistaken identity – I remember one group of hackers attacking my client endlessly because of the acronym their organization used. It happened to be the same as another org in another country that the hackers didn’t like. Rather than find the right one, they hit my client, hard. It takes a lot of time and effort to thwart an attack, and even more to clean up after a successful attack. Ever tried to manually scan every file in a filesystem containing thousands? I’ve wasted so many hours of my life dealing with hacking. What would I do with that time back?

13. “I Quit”

While I did very much enjoy working with my colleagues, I can tell you as the person running the show that someone quitting always hit hard. For the most part, people didn’t quit in anger, but for more money, a change of scenery, or an opportunity more in line with what they wanted to do in life. Sure, some left because they were sick of it, or sick of me perhaps – that happens. Nonetheless, when any individual quits in a small organization, it has an immediate effect; there is suddenly a hole to fill. Jobs have to be rerouted, future plans changed. I had people quit immediately after a 2 week vacation, or even while ON an extended holiday. While there’s never a great time for someone to leave a small organization, there are ways that are a little better than others. Ah well. Then, once someone leaves, the great search begins for the next person, which leads me to…

14. Finding Staff

I’d like to think I did a decent job of this over the decades, as I can really only think of one or two people who simply didn’t pan out. Still, every single time there was a job to fill, I had to solicit resumes (and figure out where to solicit, as well as how much budget to allot for advertising), review resumes, interview, and negotiate. In today’s era of automated resume submission, this meant I got a LOT of really inappropriate resumes. A lot of people submitting who really had no qualifications, or who had great qualifications for a completely different job. And I had a lot of headhunters calling me, trying to make their commissions by placing someone with my company. It always boiled down to a combination of skills and cost. Will this person provide reasonable skills at a cost my company can try to make money on? Another tricky and stressful task among so many. And that’s not even considering the ever-present issue of office culture. Hire someone to disrupt it, and it could mean someone else wants to find a new job. Like juggling chainsaws. That are on fire.

15. An Avalanche of Email

I am well aware that email addresses get snatched up and sold in bulk all the time, and this only gets worse the longer you have an email address. My company email was set up (by me, of course) in 1997, and remains unchanged to this day. That means that I’ve had my email address sold to untold numbers of related organizations, marketers, and of course, outright spammers and would-be-thieves. On a daily basis, I would have hundreds of messages that I had to sift through because they were at least somewhat relevant for me. That’s not counting the literal thousands of spam emails per day. Thankfully, I have tools in place to make the vast majority go away before I even see them, but the flood continues. Now, as I change my job focus, I am blissfully unsubscribing to anything and everything I can, plus, as you would expect, my volume of legitimate work email has dropped dramatically. I can’t explain how liberating it is…

16. Constant Contact

As technology evolved, so did our ability to annoy one another without delay. Still, while I always carry a smartphone, and I’m pretty much connected 100% of the time, it never failed that the moment when someone needed to talk to me was the exact worst moment. For example, given that I was the business owner, I intentionally made my home and office very close together – 1.25 miles to be exact. That meant that my commute was no more than 5 minutes. And invariably, in those exact 5 minutes, when I was driving and unable to answer, my phone would endlessly buzz in my pocket. Not one little buzz, but eight or ten in a row. Sure, I could check messages the moment I arrived, but to know that somehow, some way, the moment to contact me was exactly the wrong one? Ugh. Plus, having constant access to email and messaging meant that anyone – colleague or client – could contact me at any time, weekday, weekend, day, night, home or away. Clients would routinely ask me for my personal cell phone number, so they could get in touch with me whenever they wanted, and while I never, ever liked doing it, I always gave them the number because I ran the agency, and that’s what you had to do to make the client – you know, one of your MANY BOSSES – happy.

17. The Quirks of an Old Office Building

Obviously, this is specific to my job, but I bet I’m not the only person who has dealt with a creaky building. Our office, built in the 1940s, had the kind of electrical service where running the microwave and toaster oven at the same time would not only blow the fuse to the kitchen, it would power down an office where someone was working. Oops, there goes 3 hours of work, sorry.

Not to mention the water issues. Over time, water finds its way everywhere, meaning sometimes it’s running down walls, sometimes it’s dripping on heads.

Between electrical updates and water-proofing, we spent a ridiculous amount of money and time, and there remained issues.

The worst situation I ever faced was an evening of torrential rain. I had built a server room in the office basement, and intentionally had it raised 6 inches off the main floor, assuming that it would save me from up to 6 inches of unexpected flooding. One night, I had TWO FEET of flooding, and absolutely foolishly jumped in the water to save my servers from their demise. I managed to do it, knowing that if those servers were destroyed, my business was likely done for. In retrospect, I could have very easily been electrocuted that night. Thankfully, it didn’t happen. Still, sleeping on the floor of the conference room as a tiny pump tried to overcome pounding rain water by shooting it out an open door… that was no fun at all.

18. Wearing All the Hats

Jack of all trades, master of none. It’s both true, and not the entire story. I’d like to think I mastered a trade or two, but my job involved trying to be competent at virtually everything. Of course, I had strengths. Of course, I had weaknesses. But when you run a small company and you only have the people you have, someone has to pick up unexpected slack. Take a look in the mirror, friend. That slack picker-upper is you. Programmer, designer, writer, marketer, network engineer, database developer, SEO expert, systems integration specialist, project planner, presenter, client liaison, hand-shaking networker, HR chief, office culture czar, QA tester, debugger, on-site inspector, analytics agent, feedback translator, head of the team, and decider of all internal decisions. Chief cook and bottle washer, at your service.

19. Developing a Great Process, Only to Need to Dismantle It and Start Over

This goes along with the randomness of technology changes above, but I can’t even count how many times I spent the effort to create an effective process only to have to redo it relatively soon after. Internally, examples include the many, many hours setting up networks and servers to support the staff, only to soon need to upgrade them all (which was never a simple upgrade, but more like a do-over). Eventually, I outsourced them all to the cloud, but that was like another complete re-do. Externally, this means creating de facto guidelines on how to develop a client project, outlining exactly where to start and what to include, only to have the next half dozen projects have such specific needs that my guidelines no longer applied.

20. Better/Cheaper/Faster

That’s the old adage: better/cheaper/faster, pick two. Yet I know of so few clients who actually understood this. Almost universally, they wanted all three, even if they said they understood that getting something cheaper would mean they weren’t buying a Ferrari. How many times did I hear, “well, we understand our budget doesn’t support the complete functionality we want, but how do we get it anyway?” Actually, that means you DON’T understand. Often times, this would involve passing the buck. “Our board of directors is demanding the project have all the features we want, and be done at this budget, in time for their next board meeting.” I’ll admit, I probably tried to accommodate too many times. I don’t like to have relationships where I disappoint people. But over time, the realities of how this sort of work impacts everything made it impossible. There’s only one answer to an unreasonable question: No.

21. “We’re out of toilet paper”

This is a catch-all for all the mundane, necessary-but-stupid tasks required of a small business owner. I’ve replaced toilet paper, paper towels, light bulbs, ceiling tiles, batteries, computer mice, keyboards, monitors. Climbed under desks in a suit to figure out wiring issues. I’ve climbed on the roof to squeegee excess water toward the drain. I was in charge of specifying and buying every computer – desktop, laptop, and server – we ever bought. Plus, the supply closet doesn’t fill itself. I’ve had to keep on top of buying that toilet paper, and pens, and paper clips…

22. No Time to Focus

Every project I ever worked on required focus. Whether I was simply managing the project (“simply”? ahahahahaha) or doing development work myself, there absolutely had to be uninterrupted time devoted to that single project. Yet, the needs of the day continued to happen – colleagues needed my input or help, other clients needed information, things caught on fire, and even just random, unimportant conversations broke out. Any one of those things could derail me for a few minutes to a few hours to maybe even days.

Focus is critical. I’ve heard it said that there is no such thing as multitasking – there is only single-tasking with rapid changes in focus, meaning each task is done a little worse than it would be if you just spent time on a single thing. I think that’s true. Bouncing from one task to another very quickly diminishes the time and thought given to each task, to their detriment.

In writing, it’s the same. I have to consciously hide email and social media while writing, or else I’ll find my focus wander when that next email comes in, or when that next post shows up. At the least, this makes the task (storytelling, now) slower; at worst, it stops the flow completely, and you have to try again another day.

23. The Domino Effect

One thing bumps another and another and another, until they all fall down. Like when I had to take 3 hours out of my day to go to a pitch meeting, meaning that I couldn’t be present to oversee important work on another project before a critical deadline, potentially resulting in a problem that delayed delivery… which in turn might have stirred up a client’s ire, and delayed payment. And, once one project wasn’t completed on time, the next one couldn’t begin on time, so its deadlines also get pushed, as did payments for meeting those deadlines. Each domino knocks down the next, trickling off so far into the future with so many permutations that it’s almost impossible to anticipate them all. So you manage what you can, and you put your foot on the gas wherever you can. Sometimes you make up lost time, and sometimes you plow into another speed trap. John Muir once said, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” The same is true in agency work – if any one thing goes wrong, you find out it’s hitched to everything else you’re doing.

24. STRESS!

All of the above add up to one major thing in life: stress. If there is one single thing I’m looking forward to, it’s a serious and significant reduction in stress starting in 2020.

So here I am, beginning something wild and new, but happily shedding all of the above in favor of trying to succeed in something I enjoy. A new role of creativity that is placed on my shoulders, to succeed or not.

That’s it. Twenty-four things I won’t miss as I embark on a new career, an Act Two as it were for my working life. Maybe some of these resonate with you. If you’re a small business owner with staff, I suspect a lot do. What did I miss? In 20+ years, there are things that have come and gone that simply have fallen out of my brain…

There are countless happy memories from the past couple of decades, and there are some moments I never want to think about again. Nonetheless, it’s over. Next.

And now, back to writing my next novel.

K.

The post Quitting My Day Job: The Top 24 Things I’m Not Going to Miss appeared first on Keith Soares.