Well, it's been a crazy day. Crazy isn't always a bad thing, by the way, Granted, we humans tend to yearn for steadiness and stability in our lives, and "crazy" usually implies the absolute lack of both. But sometimes, as Seal said, you have to get a little crazy.
It started last night, when Kat and I decided to try and implement the "Checkout by Amazon" payment system for our web store that we'd been tinkering with. Up until that point, we'd had nothing to confirm that the system was functional. As the saying goes, nothing risked, nothing gained, so I decided to take it online and actually placed an order for my own CD. The first encouraging news was that it seemed to ding my credit card (yay! I guess). A little while later, Kat and I were sitting here when my email chimed, letting me know that I had an order for one "Zak Claxton CD" and that I should ship it.
Joy!
So that was the first cool thing. It meant that we were actually capable of taking orders for my CD. The next one happened this morning, when I heard back from NationWide Disc,the company who we chose to replicate the CD. We knew that it was getting close to the time that I should expect to receive my run of discs, and I'd dropped them a line yesterday to get a status update. Lo and behold, my timing was impeccable; NationWide let me know that my discs would be shipping today, and I was likely to receive them early next week.
Joy!
So, with those two pieces of good news in mind, we decided to announce the availability of my album, and began taking pre-orders at the Zak Claxton Store. The thing I like the most about using Amazon's checkout system is that Amazon is such a trusted name in retail that there's never a worry about the payment info being used inappropriately. In fact, I never see the actual payment info. I just get notified that an order has come in, and I ship the CD.
What all this is leading up to is that after many, many years as a musician, and a year and a half spent recording (on and off), we finally have something to show for it. I'm a little shellshocked by this moment of effort coming to fruition.
BUT WAIT... there's more.
As I told you just the other day, I spent some time after Thanksgiving making a new promo video for my shows in SL, and included quite a lot of general info on SL and the live music scene. Little did I realize that Torley Linden -- the master of all SL tutorials -- would find it worthy of inclusion on the official SL blog. You can go check it out here.
Torley says, "The cultural relevancy – including mixed-reality bits showing how Zak's avatar relates to his enthusiastic first-life self – communicates with power and humor. Also addressed are broader issues of marketing yourself, which every musician (I can relate) deals with. This video is bound to inspire other musicians and listeners who aren't sure how to get involved bringing their passions to SL. It's a touch over 9 min. but I highly recommend watching all because it fills a unique-yet-practical gap, and hey… it's FUN! Thanks Zak!"
No, thank YOU, Torley. I am pretty thrilled by all that's going on, though as I mentioned before, it's a little unfamiliar and slightly overwhelming and... yeah. Crazy. But I could get used to that.
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