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mystery-star · 4 years

Text

The Biggest Compliment – Spock

Pairing: Spock (AOS) x gender-neutral reader

Warnings: none

Words: 3944

Please do not repost my work on other sites or platforms!

Of course everyone in the 23rd century knew about Starfleet. But while you were certain that you would never join them, you had not believed that you would need to work together with their Academy one day. You hadn’t known what they wanted of you, when you had been told that your designer talent was needed. First you thought they might want to have new uniforms but probably a tailor would be better for this. Then you speculated over the possibility that they wanted a new logo. Or maybe it just was something like an advertisement for new recruits or so.

The thing they needed your help with, however, turned out be a test. Well, a simulation, to be exact. They wanted to animate the whole thing new. And not just animate, as you heard also the coding hat been redone, for whatever reason. After they had shown you what the old simulation looked like, you were introduced to your co-worker; the one who had written the new coding. It was a Vulcan and you didn’t know what to think of that. Not because he was not human but because you had never seen a Vulcan ‘close-up’ but hat heard a lot of, not so good, things about their race. As it seemed, also the instructor who was showing you around didn’t seem to be a big fan of him and leant closer to you before he left you in your new office.

“Don’t mind him, he can get pretty prissy sometimes” he whispered to you before he wished you good work and then left, leaving you alone with the man you’d spend the next weeks with. You looked at him for a while and didn’t know what to say.

“May I see what you have?” he asked. It was the first time you heard his voice and you had to admit, it sounded quite good.

“What do you mean, what I have?”

“I am certain you have already prepared something” he said it with such a certainty that made you feel bad that you had, in fact, nothing.

“No?” he raised an eyebrow “Look, I literally heard what they want from me half an hour ago. Before, they only told me that they needed my as a designer and I had no idea what it was” he remained silent and you didn’t like that “All I have are a few notes. I’m sure you couldn’t have made drafts beforehand if they just called you to their office for making a new code without telling you what it was about first”

“That is not quite correct. I have asked to reprogram the test myself and therefore have arrived to the meeting sufficiently prepared” you rolled your eyes

“Well as I said, I only took a few notes during the simulation I watched”

“May I see those?” he held out his hand to you

“It’s just the basics, like what notes what it is about. Because I was told that you would tell me exactly what you need” he still didn’t move his hand, so you sighed “Fine, here you go” you pulled out your PADD and placed it on the table. Because you didn’t want to give it into his hand if he behaved like that. He had a look then pointed at the title.

“The simulation is called Kobayashi Maru, not Cobrayoshi Moru”

“Well excuse me for understanding it wrong” he didn’t reply and continued

“What do you mean by ‘good ship’?”

“The ship, this Kobayashi Maru that is in distress”

“Then please describe it accordingly

“As I said” you hissed “this are only first notes”

“Besides, I already have defined the amount of the Klingon warbirds to five, so your note that reads ‘ca. 4-5 enemy ships’ is inaccurate”

“I counted them on the screen of the simulation I watched. And apparently that wasn’t good or else you wouldn’t have reprogrammed it, right?”

“I have solely noticed inconsistencies in the coding. The animation itself was not much flawed”

“Okay” you took a deep breath “How about we sit together and you tell me exactly what you want, so that I can get working on it?”

“For now, I solely need one of the animated warbirds”

“But that’ll take hours to make. I could make a sketch in 5 minutes or so”

“I need a three-dimensional model of it”

“Well, I don’t have one right now. The only ship that I can offer you as a model of a cruise ship. Or no, maybe we also have one of a science fiction starship somewhere”

“I do not need a cruise ship or a random starship” he explained that he needed the actual ship that would be used in the simulation so that he could finetune the programmed movements with the animation.

“Good then give two hours and you’ll have a draft-model. I can still change it later on when you have calibrated it”

“Very well” he gave a nod and you sat down at the desk that had been prepared and started unpacking your stuff before you got working on some sketches. Suddenly, you noticed that someone was standing behind you and you turned around.

“Please don’t do that”

“What are you referring to?”

“Looking over my shoulder. It’s distracting. I can’t work like that” he raised an eyebrow but left you alone.

About half an hour later you were ready to present him your three drafts of the ships.

“I only requested one”

“Yes, but I made three versions. Drafts”

“I have not asked for drafts, especially multiple ones”

“Do you have any idea how design works? Obviously not or you’d have done the damn animation yourself” you muttered the last part “I always make drafts for a client after they told me what they need, which you didn’t even do, so sorry if I don’t get it quite right on the first try.”

“I have informed you that I need to have a model of a Klingon warbird”

“And here you have three drafts” you pointed at three models “Which one do you like best?”

“I do not like them” you had to bite back a sigh and a part of you just wanted to smack him right in the face.

“Good” you said, taking a deep breath and picking up your stylus “Then what would you like instead?”

“I would have preferred if you had invested all your time into one model instead of three”

“Look, I will put more work into one of them, just tell me which one is the best”

“They are all flawed” at least you now totally understood what this other man had meant with that he could get prissy.

“Well it are only drafts” you explained “Don’t Vulcans do drafts?”

“We do not prepare several different versions if only one is needed since it would be a waste of time”

“Good speaking of wasting time; just tell me which model you want me to edit and make it perfect”

“No matter how much work you will put in it, it will always stay an animated model and therefore will never be perfect”

“Which. Ship?!” you hissed gesturing at your PADD.

“This one” he pointed at the second draft “However….” You had to fight not to roll your eyes. Of course you knew there was a ‘but’ coming. You did your best to not become upset when he told you what mistakes you had made on your draft, while you made notes on the most important points. A part of you wondered how long you could take it before you just broke his nose, cut off his ears, ripped off his bangs or rammed your stylus in his eye. Or all together.

While you started to get working on the chosen model, Commander Spock took the draft to link it with his coding, while you tried to make the starship as authentic as possible which was not so easy without an accurate source or idea how it looked like except for the description you had gotten. When you left for the day, your client seemed to be a bit disappointed that you could not finish the model already. For that reason you decided to come an hour earlier the following day but to your dismay, the Vulcan was already there

“Did we not agree that you may start at 0830 hours?” you had been in the office for three seconds and already were pissed off by him again although you had tried not to be anymore.

“Yes but since I didn’t come as far as I wanted yesterday, I decided to come earlier today. The sooner I get the animation done the better” because it meant, among other, that you would be rid of him. Luckily, you didn’t need to talk to him that much today. But then he requested you to get a second model for the second ship. “Give me a second”

“I doubt you can create an accurate model in a second”

“Just watch and see” you tapped on the model you were already working on and duplicated it “there. Took me a little under two seconds”

“You cannot just duplicate the model”

“Oh but I can. I can also centuple it” you glared at him, tapped the model again, called up the settings and set the number of duplicates to 100 and when you returned, the whole screen was filled with ships “There. That should occupy you for a while”

“As I already said, there are only five ships that I need for the simulation. Besides, I cannot use these duplicates. If you wish to copy your models, you need to use a template”

“Well okay” you said “But that’ll take me a couple of minutes” he gave a nod “Why thank you, (Y/N)” you muttered to yourself “Thank you for your co-operation and withstanding my coldness”

Because he wanted all ships to be visually different, you decided to change minor details on them before you gave him the new model. Once you had prepared all ships, even the Kobayashi Maru, you needed to take care of the surroundings for which you designed the space, of course in the dimensions that Spock had told you. Then you set your models into it and adjusted their positions so that they more or less corresponded with the coordinates that Spock had programmed for them. When he had a look at the model he raised an eyebrow

“What now?” you asked, knowing that something did not please him at all.

“The positions of the Klingon warbirds one, three, four and five need to be adjusted slightly” At least he was now calling the ships by numbers and not the stupid model names he had given them in his code. It had taken you almost two days to get him do that and you had just written his model name onto the according ship in ugly red letters so that you knew which one he was talking about. “Move ship one 2.3 millimeters to the left and 1.8 millimeters down, ship two….”

“Woah wait… I never heard anyone saying decimals of millimeters. This model doesn’t even accept them. I can give you half millimeters but not point three or point eight. Besides, no one can actually know if the ship is perfectly aligned when they do the simulation. And if we align the weapons right they will still hit the ship if they enter the coordinates of the ship”

“I know but I wish that it is as accurate as possible. Speaking of accuracy” he explained that the surroundings were not accurate either because the constellations were wrong and did not look like this ad the place the simulation took place

“In other words you want me to fucking re-align every single star correctly?”

“It does not need to be completely accurate, yet I do ask you to adjust their positions so that it does have more similarities with the coordinates where the simulation occurs”

Well, in contrast to you I don’t have a fucking stellar map saved in my brain” he walked away and then handed you a PADD, explaining that it would turn into a 360° stellar map if you opened the correct program and entered the coordinates you wanted.

So you just spent the following three days on redoing the whole surroundings, this times even with micrometers as unit so that you could adjust the ships perfectly as he wanted. At times you found it easier to agree to what he wanted and have more work instead of discussing with him, which would result in you doing as he wanted anyway. You hadn’t even been able to make it clear to him that sometimes you need to be polite and say please and thank you, to which he replied that such formalities were illogical since they did not change anything about the request and that he would never say please in an order to subordinates.

Since it was a bigger project, it took up several weeks of collaboration with Spock and somehow the thing that bugged you most about working with him was the fact that you had to admit to yourself that, despite everything he did or said, your stupid, illogical heart had managed to develop romantic feelings for the Vulcan. You didn’t know if that just was because of his appearance or if it also was his almost dominating behavior that made you feel that way. One thing was for certain; the more you worked with Spock the stronger these feelings got. So, you were a little relieved when the semester started again and he wasn’t around all day but spent a great part of his time teaching classes. But at times that also brought problems because you had learnt that sometimes it was better to just ask him if he was okay with something sooner rather than later because if he wanted you to change many things about it you’d have more work later on. So you would just leave your office and go looking for him instead to show him what you had done. He had forwarded you his timetable so that you knew where to find him at which time. If you found the correct classroom, of course.

“Spock, I think I finally could make the final….”

“Can you give me three minutes?”

“Fine but then don’t complain that we’re three minutes behind in schedule” you muttered

“There is no such detailed schedule. I even do not have a fixed date on which we need to be finished but rather a time interval”

“So that means we don’t just have one more month but two in total?”

“Yes” you gave a nod

“Good then I’ll let you finish your stuff”

One thing you always loved about your work was to see it in action. In that case that was, when everything was finished so far that some test people could make the simulation to see how everything was working. It was mainly to test the simulation itself, to see if the coding worked but you had been asked to be there as well so that you could have an eye on the animation and make sure everything happened in life time and correctly. You were quite proud when you noticed that almost everything was working perfectly fine and that there only were a few details you had to change. As well as some details on the ships themselves because Spock still was not perfectly happy with them.

“And?” you asked after four goes at the simulation

“What do you wish to know?” Spock asked

“Well what you think of it”

“I have noticed that there are a few instances that you will need to go over” you crossed your arms

“What?” you couldn’t believe that this was his answer and to your dismay he started listing up some flaws. “Stop” you growled, making him raise an eyebrow “I know that there are some imperfections but I’m sorry that I’m not as perfect as you”

“I never claimed that I was perfect. I am a being and all beings are flawed”

“Wow that I got you to admit that”

“To claim that I am perfect would be a lie and highly illogical”

“You and your stupid thinking in code”

“The assumption that I think in ‘code’ is not correct”

“But logical. You think logically, as a Vulcan. Coding is pure logic”

“I see, yet the conclusion is still incorrect” you sighed

“Wow, you’re never ever gonna compliment me or my work, huh?”

“It would be illogical to point out points that do not need modification anymore. Therefore I only tell what you will need to work on again”

“Well but I’m human and we sometimes need reassurance that what we did is good!”

“As you can derive from my statement, your work can be considered as good, when there is nothing that I ask you to change about it”

“You don’t get my point, do you?”

“I do but I do not think it is necessary to point…”

“Just one compliment about my work. I stood your behavior for weeks now”

“Four weeks, five days and 3.6 hours to be exact”

“See, even worse. You have to be so precise and perfectionistic every fucking time”

“However, if you had a problem with something you would have addressed it”

“No. Because humans don’t always do that. But I am complaining now”

“Very well. What do you wish me to change?”

“Well you could make just one simple compliment or something that you like about the way I work on this project” he raised an eyebrow and was silent “Or are you just as fed up with me as I’m with your behavior?”

“You work highly focused” you let out a huff

“Well at least something”

“Besides” he added a bit more quietly and after a pause “I find your hands and fingers to be pleasingly shaped and they move gracefully”

“Okay that was hella unexpected” and even a little creepy “Did you pay that much attention to my hands?”

“When you were showing me something, yes I was at certain times” you frowned. How could he still have noticed so many flaws in your work then if he had just stared onto your hands?

“That is a little weird, don’t you think?”

“No”

“No?”

“Hands hold a different value on Vulcan” he explained that their hands were extremely sensitive and often were something like a symbol of love in their culture.

“So if you told that another Vulcan… what would happen?”

“Usually, Vulcans will only compliment their bondmate’s physiology”

“Hm okay. Are bondmates something like a spouse?”

“Or what you call fiancés”

“But back to my question, what would happen?”

“I cannot say because some might react emotionally in such a situation”

“So you’re saying that you’re not acting emotionally? Like never?”

“We are sentient being so we all will act emotionally at times, whether we want it or not”

“Okay. But what do you want to do, now that you told me how much you like my hands?”

“I have never stated that I like them” you frowned

“That sounds like something is bothering you”

“It is of no consequence”

Come on, tell me. You already told me you like, no wait you… whatever, find my hands pleasing or how you’d want to formulate it. And now something is bothering you”

“I was wondering… whether you would let me touch you”

“And you ask that?” you just took his hand in yours and ran your fingers of the other hand over the back of it. His hands were softer than you had imagined but also colder. When you looked up at him, you saw a slight green blush on his cheeks and smiled “Suddenly so flustered, huh?”

“Touching hands is something rather intimate in Vulcan culture”

“Oh” you let go of him “I-I’m sorry. I didn’t know that” but maybe you could have thought about it, considering what he had told you about the meaning of hands on Vulcan.

“I did not tell you, therefore you could not know” he said “You do not need to reproach yourself” you gave a nod and were surprised when he continued “In fact, I have found it rather pleasing” you smiled. For some reason you just held out your hand to him again and he actually took it. Well not really, he more or less just traced his fore- and middle finger over your skin, making you shudder a little

“You’re right that feels nice” he raised an eyebrow and placed his other hand at your back and pulled you closer, then lifting your head and leant down until your lips were inches apart

“Do you mind?”

“Not at all” you breathed and then his lips were on yours. For some reason you could not really say what you were feeling and you wondered if it was right to do this, you were working with him after all, at least for now. Contrary to what you had imagined, he was a pretty good kisser and his fingers still were stroking yours and while you liked the feeling, you wondered if it felt even more sensual to him. When you felt him pull you closer, you thought that this probably was the case and felt yourself smiling into the kiss. You placed your free hand at the base of his neck and pressed your whole body against his. He didn’t seem to mind but some seconds later you parted, looking at each other

“Perhaps we should not have kissed”

“We should” you corrected and leant up to do it again and he responded immediately. This time, the kiss came to a more abrupt end when suddenly the door opened. You let go of each other and quickly stepped apart. While Spock turned to the visitor, one of the people that had tried out the simulation, you touched your lips which were still tingling from the kiss, making you smile

“I’m sorry, if I interrupted something or came at an inconvenient time I can just go and well… leave. We can discuss it later”

“I will be with you momentarily” Spock said and told him to go to a briefing room. You awkwardly played with the hem of your shirt, not sure what to say.

“Well, I should get working on my faulty animation then”

“It is not faulty, (Y/N)” was there a difference in how he said your name now? You had had a long time until you got him to call you (Y/N) instead of his formal for of addressing you with your surname and he had allowed you to just call him Spock in return.

“Was that just another compliment?”

“If you wish to take it as one” he replied and you gave a nod, wanting to return to your workstation, but he took hold of your wrist

“Huh?” you asked

“I do not know what humans will do after such occurrences but on Vulcan, the logical conclusion is that the two individuals will start a relationship”

“You’re asking me for a relationship?”

“If you approve of it”

“I…” you looked down but then found yourself nodding “Yes. I think so”

“Very well” you didn’t know if there was something like a tiny curl in his lip that may have been a little smile. This made you smile as well “I suppose that the discussion will take up the rest of my time at work. Would you be amendable to accompany me to dinner later?”

#spock #spock x reader #aos spock #spock imagine #spock x you

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heisenbergchronicles · 6 years

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APPRECIATION & INTERVIEW

Better Call Saul episode posters by Matt Talbot After 4 nearly years, I thought it was time to catch up with Matt Talbot about his Better Call Saul poster project. The last time we talked during Season 1, Matt was deep in the hustle of making his name as an illustrator: juggling a full-time job, freelance projects, as well as band. Finding time for personal projects like this one can be a significant challenge. (Not to mention surviving the death of your tools: During Season 1 his Mac laptop died, and this season, his Wacom tablet bit the bullet). But despite these challenges, the 43-year-old New Hampshire native has persevered to create a clever and thoughtful series of episode posters that has garnered considerable attention, and brought with it new high-profile clients and art exhibitions.

First, congratulations on all of your success and recognition with this series of posters. It’s well-deserved. What’s been the most gratifying feedback you’ve received? Thank you! Every interaction I’ve had with anyone from the show has delighted me. I've been surprised by all of the cast and crew members who have said nice things – every note I’ve gotten has meant a lot to me. That being said, Michael McKean randomly tweeting at me that he has my poster for Chicanery hanging in his home blew my mind. I was eating dinner when my phone showed the notification and I literally jumped up from the table. I’ve been a fan of Michael’s since I saw Spinal Tap in the ‘80s and never in a million years would I have guessed I’d make something he valued enough to hang in his home.

Tell me about your contributions to Gallery1988 exhibitions. How does that process work? It's a pretty simple process. They invite me to be part of a show, and I make something to send them. I’m very excited for the opportunity to show there, and I feel like it’s a milestone in my art-making career.

Across the 4 seasons, which BCS posters are your favorites? Which one are you most proud of? I’m particularly fond of Rebecca, Rico, Marco, Switch, Sunk Costs and Something Beautiful. Oh man, it's hard for me to evaluate my own stuff. I tend to like the posters where I find a way to get a different take on something they did in the episode. I would say that “Sunk Costs” is also one of my favorites because I did something differently than how they shot it, and because Mike is so recognizable even from the back. I was also pleased with “Off Brand” because it was when I finally figured out how to draw Bob Odenkirk.

How has your process for creating these posters evolved over 4 seasons? When I started this project I had a vague idea that I would focus on scenes rather than portraits or likenesses, but that didn’t even last half a season! The characters were too good not to include. In that way, the posters have evolved in my willingness to draw characters, and also, hopefully, my ability to draw them.

My process is now something like: Watch the show on Monday; think about it on Tuesday, figure out what stood out to me and do a thumbnail sketch or two; draw it on Wednesday night; post it Thursday afternoon. I’m a bit faster at drawing these now compared to when I started. And I’m a bit more decisive on choosing which subject matter to depict.

There have been quite a few changes on the visual side of Better Call Saul over the last 2 seasons. New directors (Minkie Spiro, Daniel Sackheim, and Andrew Stanton), a new cinematographer Marshall Adams, even new cameras. What are your thoughts on how the show’s visual grammar has evolved? Has any of this impacted your posters from Seasons 3 & 4? I try not to just redraw literal scenes from the show, and I don’t need to tell you that they shoot the show in an incredibly beautiful way. I mean, they always, always, pick the best angle, the best shot to capture something. For that reason, it’s sometimes hard to to come up with another take on a moment from the show.

That being said, the visual style hasn’t really impacted my posters as much as the evolving subject matter has. The show, I think, is substantially darker than it was in the early going. It was easier to depict Jimmy’s hi-jinx in the first couple seasons. But with Chuck’s deteriorating mental state, the cartel stuff, Mike going deeper into Fring’s world and of course, Jimmy’s loosening sense of morals, the funny moments are harder to spot. That’s lead me to some more somber layouts and color choices.

We didn’t discuss this in our first interview. Which typeface are you using in your posters, or is this custom typography? The main logo and episode titles are set in Sign Painter, from the excellent House Industries.

The Heisenverse is known for it’s color theory and use of color. How has that impacted your color choices in these posters? I’ve kind of adhered to their blue=good/red=bad symbolism, but I also try to balance out colors between episodes and not repeat myself in sequential posters.

Many of your posters (especially ones this season) use a monochromatic, or simple palette of 1-2 colors. Tell me more about why you chose that approach. Is this a signature of your style? I’ve seen this approach in a lot of your work. You know, in the early seasons, I was trying to use simpler color palettes, but I wasn’t very disciplined and I got away from that. I’m trying to stick to a more consistent style in season 4. It is a conscious decision. I also feel like with the week-to-week nature of this project, it helps quickly set apart each poster. And, I really do love limited color palettes. Giving myself color constraints helps me figure out different ways to solve layout problems.

I’ve heard other illustrators say that Bob Odenkirk’s facial features are tricky to capture. Do you share that sentiment? Which characters are more challenging to illustrate? I do agree with that. I had a really hard time with him at first. I kind of think I have a better handle on it now, but I’m always trying to get better. I feel like if you can get his mouth right, it goes a long way.

I found Hector hard to capture both times I drew him. Mike, on the other hand, is just pure fun to draw. Jonathan Banks is so distinctive and iconic.

What’s been the most difficult poster thus far? Why was it challenging? Maybe it’s because a lot of time has gone by, but I can't think of one that stands out as having been really difficult.

Francesco Francavilla did alternate posters for some of his Breaking Bad posters. Inevitably, when artists look back at their work, they consider revising or redoing it because of a variety of reasons – their point of view has changed, their skill/style has evolved, or maybe they were never truly content with the final product. Looking back at 4 seasons worth of posters, are there any that make you want to scratch the revision itch? Yeah, more than I would care to admit. I would really like another crack at Amarillo. I know I could do a better job and that drawing is just super flat. In season two, I decided to to experiment with style and I kind of wish I hadn't. I like Cobbler, but I wish I had drawn it in my normal style. I would redraw Nailed for sure. Oh man, if I start going down this road it's not going to end well, so I'll just stop.

You mentioned earlier this season you were excited to draw Track Suit Jimmy. Who or what haven’t you drawn, that you are eager to illustrate? Howard! It bums me out to no end that I haven't drawn him, but it just hasn't worked out. And I need to include Kim more. It's kind of criminal that her face only appeared for the first time in a poster this season.

What’s your opinion of Season 4? Tell me about your favorites – episode, scene, character. I think season 4 is brilliant so far. The Kim/Jimmy relationship has deepened so much this season, and feels so real, but full of inevitable heartache. Oh, the flash-forward to Breaking Bad’s timeline was amazing. Mike doing his audit in the Madrigal warehouse. Really, anything Michael Mando does on screen. It's hard to pick. I so enjoy the deliberate pace of this show.

Where’s your favorite place to discuss the show? I honestly don’t talk about it too much online, though I lurk in a few places and read a lot. I actually discuss it mostly with my wife!

I know you get this question a lot, so let’s cover it here so folks understand: Do you have plans to sell any of this work online? I really appreciate that people like it enough to want to buy it or hang it, but I don't plan to sell the Better Call Saul posters online. I’m doing this for fun, not to make a buck off the show, and I don’t own the rights to sell it anyway.

What’s next for Matt? Do you have any other poster or illustration projects in the works? Is you band performing soon? I have several more pieces for Gallery1988 shows coming up. I’m pulling together an art show at a local brewery for whom I design all of their labels and stuff. I’m patiently waiting for a t-shirt I designed for one of my all-time favorite movies to be announced. And for the past several Octobers, I spent the month drawing a horror poster per day. I’m not sure if logistically I can do that again this year, but I’ll probably fit at least a few in. We’ll see how it goes. Sadly, with all of my illustration work, I haven’t had any time for music making, but someday I hope to get back to that!

Follow Matt: Web site / Tumblr / Twitter / Dribbble / Instagram / PosterSpy

– Interview by Shayne Bowman, Heisenberg Chronicles

#better call saul #artist interview #matt talbot #mine #heisenberg chronicles #illustration #fan art #posters #favorites #mattrobot #bcs season 4 #gallery1988 #g1988 #house industries #sign painter

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imjustthemechanic · 6 years

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Natalie Jones and the Golden Ship

Part 1/? - A Meeting at the Palace Part 2/? - Curry Talk Part 3/? - Princess Sitamun Part 4/? - Not At Rest Part 5/? - Dead Men Tell no Tales Part 6/? - Sitamun Rises Again Part 7/? - The Curse of Madame Desrosiers Part 8/? - Sabotage at Guedelon Part 9/? - A Miracle Part 10/? - Desrosiers’ Elixir Part 11/? - Athens in October Part 12/? - The Man in Black Part 13/? - Mr. Neustadt Part 14/? - The Other Side of the Story Part 15/? - A Favour Part 16/? - A Knock on the Window Part 17/? - Sir Stephen and Buckeye Part 18/? - Books of Alchemy Part 19/? - The Answers Part 20/? - A Gift Left Behind Part 21/? - Santorini Part 22/? - What the Doves Found Part 23/? - A Thief in the Night Part 24/? - Healing Part 25/? - Newton’s Code Part 26/? - Montenegro

Look who’s back!

The town of Kotor in Montenegro didn’t have many claims to fame. It had been reasonably important under the Venetian empire, but those days were long gone, and it was only just starting to find new life as a tourist attraction. In many ways it was the exact opposite of Santorini, which had been whitewashed villages clinging precariously to the edges of cliffs, with no trees. Kotor was dark stone and brick clustered at the bottom of a deep, fjord-like valley full of foliage. It was much more sheltered and cool than Santorini, and Natasha decided she would rather have spent a weekend here than on that barren volcanic island.

When they arrived, there was a cruise ship anchored in the bay.

“Wouldn’t it be funny if that were the same boat we saw at Santorini?” asked Clint.

Nat shielded her eyes from the low morning sun and squinted to see the image on the ship’s superstructure. “I think it is,” she said.

“Really?”

“Yeah.” As the sun went behind a cloud for a moment, the light changed and Nat was able to make out the circular logo. “There it is – Zodiac Cruise Lines, the Scorpio II. Same as in Santorini.”

“That’s… actually not funny at all,” Clint decided. “Think how much more fun we’d be having on our little tour of the Balkans if we were on a cruise ship!

“You’d have a way better selection of wines,” said Nat.

“Air conditioning,” Sam agreed.

“Lobsters to race,” said Jim.

“We’d have a way more expensive selection of wines,” Clint corrected. “Santorini was expensive enough. Speaking of which…” He checked his phone. “Laura says if I’m in Kotor I need to find her some smoked ham. Apparently that’s a thing.”

“All right,” said Nat. “We’ll save the world. You can shop for souvenirs.”

“I’m glad you guys trust me with the important stuff,” said Clint.

Before they did anything out, they found a room at the Hotel Vadar, just a moment’s walk from the gate in the old Venetian city walls. The hotel only had one available, due to a last-minute cancellation, and it only had one bed, but they would make do. It would definitely be better than camping out in a construction site on Santorini, or rock-hard mattresses on the creaking cargo boat.

If Neustadt had told them to go to Kotor as part of a trap, then it probably wouldn’t have mattered if they’d all stopped to take a nap first – a mousetrap wouldn’t spring until something touched the cheese. After their encounter with the thief on Santorini, however, they were worried that the alchemist might have decided to take matters into their own hands. On that assumption, they ate a quick lunch and set out for the monastery at once.

The Church and Monastery of the Holy Dove were outside the northwest corner of the town, a short but arduous hike up a very steep path on the mountainside. There were Catholic churches in Montenegro, but this one was Eastern Orthodox, identified by its domed roof and a steeple with three bells, one each for Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Square of the Holy Dove outside was thronged with tourists and with vendors selling trinkets to them. On the left side of the church steps was a man selling books of local history in several languages, and on the right were a pair of sisters busking, one with a guitar and the other singing English pop songs. Stray cats and dark-coloured pigeons ran around underfoot.

Trailing behind a tour group from the cruise ship, they climbed the steps to the church and went inside. The interior was unusually bare by Orthodox standards, which had inherited the Byzantine preference for colourful murals with lots of gold. The Holy Dove had once been decorated that way, but the plaster had fallen off the walls in an earthquake in the 1960’s, and since there was little hope of recreating the paintings in their former splendor, the walls had simply been left as bare red limestone. Only a few fragments of the paintings remained, and a corkboard displaying carefully colourized old photographs to suggest what it had once looked like. The austerity had the effect of making the wall of icons at the far end stand out all the more, their gilded surfaces glittering in the shafts of light from the high windows.

A monk was busy re-lighting candles in front of these holy pictures, murmuring a prayer as he did each one. Tourists were taking flash pictures of this, despite posted signs warning that the light might damage the remaining murals. The group respectfully waited until he was finished before approaching him.

“Excuse me,” said Nat. “Do you speak English?”

“Some,” the monk replied. “Do you have questions about the church?” He must be used to being approached by strangers.

“No,” said Natasha. “We’re here to see Brother Luka.”

The young monk went a little pale. “What do you want with Brother Luka?” he asked.

This was not going to go well, Nat could already tell. “He has something a man named Neustadt needs,” she said. “He was supposed to send it to him?”

“Wait here,” said the young monk.

He vanished through the back door of the church, leaving them to wait there a while and contemplate the crumbling paintings that remained on the insides of some of the supporting arches. These were mainly the faces of saints, with their names in Greek lettering next to them. By one was a man on a ladder, using some sort of glue to stabilize a bit that was about to fall apart.

The young monk returned, accompanied by the Abbot. This man was also younger than Nat would have pictured a monk, which she tended to think of as a bunch of old men clinging to a dying institution. He was no older than fifty, and clean-shaved, with a jowly face and a strong Eastern European nose. His expression was worried.

“Good morning,” he said to them. “I am Father Slavko of the Brothers of the Holy Dove.”

“Good morning,” Nat replied, and for the sake of looking legitimate, she pulled out her badge. “I’m Dr. Natalie Jones, of the Committee for the Appraisal of Archaeological Peril. We were told to come here and see Brother Luka. The man we spoke to didn’t give us much information.”

“You are the second group of people in as many days who have come for Brother Luka,” said the Abbot, and Nat’s heart sank – Neustadt must have already been here. “A man in a hat came yesterday morning and the two argued. The visitor left angry, and Brother Luka took ill shortly afterwards. He’s now in the hospital in Meljine. The doctors said it was a stroke.”

Something Neustadt had done on purpose, Nat wondered, or just an old man who’d gotten too angry for his own good? “What did they talk about?” she asked.

“I did not hear,” said the Abbot. “It was not my business.”

“Excuse me,” the younger monk said, “I did hear. They spoke about Aleksio the Heretic.”

Aleksio. That was the name from Newton’s notebooks, the one who said The Principle was in the monastery. “Who is Aleksio the Heretic?” she asked.

The Abbot looked over his shoulder at the crowded church and the tourists with their cameras, then moved closer to the group. “Come with me,” he said.

He led them out of the church by the back door, an ornately carved wooden one with big iron hinges that must have been centuries old, and into the area where the monks lived. Outside of the parts open to the public, the monastery was sparingly decorated and without electric lights. The Abbot stopped by a small table and took a flashlight out of a drawer, then produced an immense iron key and unlocked another door, which looked like it might lead to a medieval torture chamber – although the taller members of the CAAP had to duck to go through it, it was made of planks six inches thick, reinforced with heavy iron bands and nails like railroad spikes. When the Abbot opened the door, Nat could see that the nails were so long they went all the way through and protruded a few inches from the back, where they’d been hammered to the side to lie flat.

A very narrow flight of stone steps spiraled down into the darkness.

“Be careful,” said the Abbot. “They are often wet.”

Down they went, in single file. Sir Stephen and Sam, who were both very tall men, had to stoop. Jim bent at the knees, walking like the Missing Link, and Allen hugged his own shoulders, trying to keep from filling the entire space. Only Nat, the shortest, was able to stand up straight. Anybody wishing to go back up would probably have had to go backwards, and anybody behind him or her would have had to turn back, also.

At the bottom was an equally narrow corridor. It went a short way to another door, which the Abbot opened with a different key. The rusted hinges squealed as they moved, thunderously loud in the tiny, quiet space. Beyond was an underground chamber. A little bit of light and a slight draft came in through a set of tiny grates in the floor of the church overhead. Shadows passed by as the tourists wandered around. At the far end of the room was a table, with a little sandbox in which several candles had been set upright to burn, and an ornamental reliquary. In front of the table another monk was kneeling. He’d looked up at the sound of the hinges moving, but saw it was the Abbot, and returned to his silent praying.

“Have you heard of the Cathars?” asked the Abbot.

“They were a heretical group during the Middle Ages,” Natasha replied. “They believed that God and the Devil were equal in power, and the Earth was their battleground. Was Aleksio the Heretic a Cathar?”

“No,” said the Abbot. “His was a much more poisonous idea. He believed that the Devil could not truly be evil, because all the evil he does is in the service of God’s plan. He reasoned that evil would not exist unless God allowed it, and therefore evil can serve good purposes – he thought that Judas would go to Heaven for making Christ’s sacrifice possible, and that the Anti-Christ would be as divine as Christ himself.”

Nat had been hoping for something a little more alchemical. As far as she could tell, this was just theological semantics, and seemed irrelevant. “Neustadt said he had something called the Principle.”

The Abbot nodded. “That is in here. It’s our most holy relic.”

“So why is it hidden away, and not in a place where souls may benefit by it?” asked Sir Stephen.

“For a long time it was because of the Crusaders,” the Abbot said. “It was the sort of treasure they would stop at nothing to possess, and so we pretended it was only a myth. After centuries of that it was almost forgotten. Then we had to hide it away from the heathen Turks, who would have destroyed it if they’d found it – and then there was Aleksio, who said that the Antichrist would come for it on the day of judgment.” He looked up at the ceiling as another tourist’s shadow passed over it. “And don’t think I haven’t wondered if the man in the hat were he.”

“He’s not the Antichrist, he’s an alchemist,” said Natasha. Although she supposed it was possible that Aleksio had thought Newton was the Antichrist… in which case, in a mind that believed everything served God’s plan, Newton might actually be the good guy. “Is it gold?”

“No,” said the Abbot. “It is something infinitely more valuable than that.”

He touched the praying monk’s shoulder, and the man got up and stood aside. The Abbot took a chain from around his own neck and removed a small, tarnished key from it, and unlocked the reliquary on the table.

#fanfic #natasha romanov #steve rogers #sharon carter #clint barton #sam wilson #bucky barnes

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nickgrace · 3 years

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tweetadvise · 7 years

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Local Knowledge Panel Not Showing? Read On!

The Google Understanding Chart was launched in Could 2012. It's basically a system developed by Google to understand how truths about individuals, places, as well as "points" are all attached to one another.

Depending on the search query, the Expertise Chart displays information in various different means. For branded search questions within regional search, Google typically returns beneficial info about a business in the SERPs, with the Neighborhood Expertise Panel controling a large amount of space above the fold.

When you browse "Hallam Net" on Google, our business's neighborhood understanding panel does certainly trigger:

However, it took a wonderful thing of effort on our component making this so. In this blog post I will certainly run with the actions we required to ultimately ensure that our regional knowledge panel was set off by a well-known search query.

Just to be clear, there was no "procedure" involved. Substantial trial as well as mistake was essential, however we currently have a far better understanding of just what is needed to attain the exact same outcomes for our clients.

How We Obtained Our Local Knowledge Panel to Show

Citations

Having relocated business properties 3 times within the room of 5-6 years, our primary step was to update every one of the business directory sites on which we were noted, making sure that our company name, address, and also telephone number corresponded throughout all citations throughout the web.

We prioritised the major directory site websites, prior to running a citation campaign utilizing Bright Local's Citation Tracker. By doing this, we extracted a thorough checklist of all the websites on which our company was discussed. We then commenced arranging the info readily available, more prioritising the sites that needed updating.

Google My Business

Carrying out a citation upgrading project isn't really a fast work, so whilst this took location we concentrated our interest on different other key towns. Our very first port of phone call was to review Hallam Net's Google My Business profile to make sure that it was totally optimised.

Without going right into all the gory information of best technique optimization for this system, we essentially made sure that the account was 100% full. We checked that our web page was confirmed, that the correct business name was listed, and that our address, map place pin, and also phone number details were all approximately day. We examined that our Google My Business Web page was linked to our website.

Whilst endeavor this exercise I located one prospective problem: the phone number field had our 0800 number as the primary number, adhered to by our mobile number, and also lastly our major neighborhood land line number. I stripped this right down, eliminating the first two numbers and leaving our local land line number as the main number.

The majority of regional business citations include this number as the primary contact number, as well as the expertise chart works with the basis of connected entities. I for that reason intended to make it clear to Google that our local number is our primary number, to make sure consistency across our broader online presence.

Structured Data

Our following action was to inspect our website was making proper usage of organized data. We wished to ensure that we were giving the search engines clear info regarding our business - that we are, and where we are located.

We noticed a number of mistakes in our mark-up, so we decided to remove as well as change it with some revitalized JSON connected information, likewise highlighting and also specifying our social profiles to the search engines.

Meanwhile…

We provided the modifications we made time to work out in whilst continuing with our citation campaign. Nonetheless, the local knowledge panel was still no place to be seen.

The only practical thing to do was just what I constantly do when I have an issue at the workplace: I resorted to Google Look for help.

This is where I came across a terrific post by Mike Blumenthal, which served as a little a list. The only issue was that we had currently ticked the majority of the boxes. In Mike's article he references numerous emphasis locations:

1. Take on a citation campaign, this was the top of our agenda and currently well underway.

2. Ensure you have a freebase entry, this is something we established out to accomplish some time ago.

3. Come to be active on Google+ and obtain over 100 followers, we like social media, so not a problem!

4. Receive evaluations of your company, we have a respectable quantity of evaluations. Not lots, however a respectable amount.

5. See to it you have an excellent amount of top quality links and states of your business, this wasn't a problem as well as our branded web links are ever before increasing. They are a natural bi-product of our company's advertising efforts. A search utilizing ahrefs connect traveler validated this.

We ticked just about one of the boxes, which was to gain an entrance on Wikipedia, which is much easier stated than done. We didn't look for to obtain a listing on Wikipedia, and also this had not been the golden ticket that solved our problem.

So What Tipped the Balance?

Because we tried such a vast variety of things throughout the job, it is hard to determine just what it was that really tipped the equilibrium, eventually enabling our local expertise panel to prove to for brand name searches.

Throughout the entire job I frequently returned to our Google My Company profile, thinking that the adversary had to remain in the details. Exactly what had not been I seeing?

One day I chose to dig a little bit deeper into Google's guidelines for detailing regional businesses on their system, and I stumbled throughout two key pieces of information.

The first was that you need to add an account image for your business that is NOT a logo design. Logos could be added, and after that specified as a logo design. Appears sensible, but in our situation this was merely overlooked.

The 2nd key piece of information I located was connected to company groups. Prior to reviewing this it was my understanding that adding your business to a couple of added associated classifications was a great idea. I was wrong.

According to Google, when detailing a business, "you should utilize as couple of categories as possible to describe your overall core company". Google especially suggests against utilizing classifications "only as key phrases".

Based on these two items of suggestions, I re-jigged our business images, and also stripped back the variety of categories we were provided into simply one very pertinent category.

What took place next stunned me. I returned to Google as well as punched in the words "Hallam Web", only to see this:

This had to be a one off? I Googled it once more, in 3 various internet browsers, logged out of my Google account, searched in Incognito mode, as well as repeated the exact same process using several of my associates' computers.

I truly couldn't believe it. It seemed that nevertheless our initiatives, a number of straightforward tweaks to our Google My Business account set off the regional knowledge panel for Hallam Internet.

It could have been any type of among the aspects highlighted in this post that repaired the problems, it could have been the modifications to the Google My Business profile, or it could have been a height of all those initiatives combined. All the same, our initiatives ultimately paid off.

Conclusions

Having undergone this procedure, I have found out that it'ses a good idea to be complete and accurate from the beginning, which it pays to adhere to best technique standards. Even if you believe that you have actually been clued up from the start, it's worth dual checking your first initiatives. Who knows exactly what errors you might have made?

If you have actually had problems getting your regional expertise panel to display in the search results, or if you're still having troubles, after that obtain in touch. I 'd be happy to discuss.

#business #business plan #marketing #marketing agency #marketing companies #marketing consultant #social media #social media management #social media strategy

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trustafarian-theserialfiction · 4 years

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“trustafarian” part 13: life is skittles and life is beer March 21, 2016 5:57 pm

The third month, light out later and later: this was the point in every year when Dan began to feel time slipping away. It was always sun-up when he woke up now, and what he’d failed to accomplish in the winter because there was a whole year ahead, echoed. Not that he’d had much to fail to do, for years. This time was different, though. He was supposed to be freelancing or, he was an in-house DJ or something. He’d spent the past two weeks waking up, telling himself to open his laptop, which was still in his one piece of luggage, the old suitcase sitting in the corner. Instead of getting the laptop out he’d try to psyche himself up, wondering why he felt like he needed psyching up, by going on the house wifi on his still-planless cell and surfing music journalism videos and streaming playlists of music that seemed like it would work for Bruce’s show, which he also listened to for hours at a time. Bruce’s show often made him fall asleep though, and then eventually also woke him up with some loud sudden burst of noisier content. He still found the popular appeal of Bruce’s show somewhat elusive, although it was charming. That was it, he supposed. Other people were just more charmed by it.

Today was the day, however. Another daylight spent avoiding, and now it was getting sunsetty. Dan noticed his heartrate spike as soon as he tried to focus on getting up to open the suitcase, and took a slow breath in, holding it and letting it out slowly. Repeating this a few times until it felt kind of pacifying, he found his pulse normalizing. It was weird how hard the task was turning out to be. He didn’t want to see the laptop, that was unmissable, but the why of it didn’t appear. Closing his eyes and inhaling again, he muddled onto his knees and pushed himself toward the shape on the floor he’d been hiding from.

April, just around the corner, would feel deep into the year, mostly too late to avert the feeling of helpless entropy before May, which was the beginning of summer, summer being a blur in which nothing really got done, in Dan’s experience. The remaining four months of fall and winter, starting in September, were generally a grim exercise in self-motivation and frenetic micro-scheduling, with any renewed productivity dropping off as the winter holiday season’s smothering influence took hold. If Dan didn’t produce something he found inspiring by the end of the month, he worried the year would take on a flavour of desperation, one long chain of lost hours and empty-headedness. Like so many of the previous years—the whole first half of the decade. Knowing that it was no longer even mid-March, he felt a steadily growing pressure to act; and now he was in action. The suitcase was unzipping, and he was watching his hand pull the zipper along. The tangle of laptop charger in the interior mesh pocket confronted him first, along with an ipod cable, optical mouse, and a couple usb drives of unfinished music and archives of beats and sounds he’d clipped. His laptop, desolate in its padded laptop bag, rested along at the bottom of the main compartment. Dan had no idea why this moment had been pushing him away for so many weeks now, seeing the inside of the suitcase felt fine. Good, even. He had expected to be hit with a wave of double-dense avoidance as soon as he’d gotten past the first hurdle, but no wave had hit.

His laptop in his lap and charging from the nearest outlet, Dan considered whether this was really the best work environment briefly before deciding he was inventing distractions for himself by worrying about where he’d be more productive before he even got unproductive. The laptop booted up with a soft whirring, like a tiny shopvac turned quickly on and off, following which there was a beep. The screen flickered on and the background was, still, black with the stylized interlocking head-phoned happyfaces that had been the professional logo of him and his ex. Two faces in eggshell white with a lightbloom effect to make them look glowy. One had long hair, bangs swept over the forehead, face blank except for a greater-than symbol and a zero, a winking face. The other was entirely blank except for its headphones and rotated D mouth, the grin. Their name, Winks And Grins, arched to compliment the figure eight of the image. Dan felt numb taking in the sight, which was a pleasurable relief; he’d been bracing to feel the same mildly sickening mix of hostility, misery, and several other more vague things that he’d felt the several times he’d used his computer to check facebook back at the hostel. But it was gone, evaporated in the elapsed time, he guessed. Enough had happened between then and now that that made some sense. This idea cheered him up a bit; it was probably the case that he’d get over all his lingering agrieved feelings about the breakup and eventually stop having negativity-filled headspace about it. About her, his ex, Wishelle. Wishelle-like-Michelle-but-never-call-her-either-one, because she hated how they sounded; everyone she liked called her Wink. Dan wished he’d never met her, but he had no idea what he’d have used the time for otherwise. At least he’d walked out of it knowing how to put together something with a beat that people could dance to.

He’d been waiting to stop caring before changing the startup screen, so that he wouldn’t be changing it because he cared. Staring at the logo in neon violent now, on the desktop screen, Dan wondered what to do now exactly—checking his email would feel like doing “something,” but it wasn’t something he wanted to do. It was probably notifications of old cell phone bills, and a string of falsely upbeat update emails from his parents, who historically had both liked to email from work and talk about what they’d been up to and offer support while transparently refusing to pry. They always cc’d one another with these emails, and he wondered about the meaning of the whole process for them. Did they still face-to-face tell one another how their day was, how the remodelling was going, what was happening with friends and in the neighbourhood, and if not, did they just sit around doing crosswords and sudoku together, take the dog to the park in silence? Maybe they filled the silence talking about Dan, and Wishelle—the gaping holes in their emails—but what did they say? In Dan’s mind, whenever he came up they just looked at one another in sad bewilderment because they had nothing to say and didn’t know what to think.

Thinking about the ccing hauntingly reminded him of how he'd texted his sisters from the hospital asking them to keep it quiet from their parents, and gotten replies from neither of them (they'd texted one another first, no "oh poor you" even) before getting a reply fifteen minutes later by email, from their mother. It'd been a surprisingly long and emotional email almost like it had been partly prewritten, and it hadn't mentioned his dad at all. He remembered the notification sound--not the one for texts, which he'd been listening for from the phone on the sterile-esque bedside traytable--back there in the long-ago feeling previous year. The email that said that he should spend the holidays at home. The way he hadn’t for a couple years. He thought about that “holiday,” about the barely-repressed-seeming rage roiling around his dad until Dan'd made plans to leave right after new year. His dad thought he'd wasted his life. At least I graduated highschool after moving out, right?

His sisters had apologized when they'd all-three been at their parent's house on Christmas; they'd been “too busy working” to go to emergency for him or have him couchsurf at all, "and besides," he’d been scolded when he’d tried to get an apology, their mother would have been heartbroken when she found out later that she had found-out-later. So then it had been his fault they'd ignored him and done the total opposite of what he'd asked for. It had been him being selfish. Of course! From the hospital! They could've just said no, he griped freshly to himself as he relived his last weeks in Vic. Maybe he'd have called his ex, if his sisters had just said no. Maybe he'd be back at her apartment, right now; maybe it was still their apartment over there in maybeland. What a gross thought. He shook it away. Siblings were supposed to care, or something. Fathers and sons were supposed to have some kind of bond, or maybe that was only in movies; his dad didn't get along with his dad, either. His dad's dad thought his dad was a soft, lazy, impractical know-nothing, too, comparing against himself. A brat, was how his dad’s dad saw his dad, and his dad saw him the same way. Dan guessed his dad kind of believed it about himself, and somehow enjoyed believing it more about Dan. That was how he came across, it wasn’t like they talked about it at all. Maybe it's because you never played catch with me after I was done mowing the lawn for you, he thought. Maybe that's why I'm a fuck-up who doesn't have a bank job you two can tell people about when they ask.

Dan had an unusual feeling of epiphany as he unseeingly beheld the interlocking faces on the screen, and opened the browser to look for digital vestiges of the band Jean-Paul had managed. The band was called Dead Cow Couch, and he found a write-up on an english Montreal scene blog that described them as “an oldschool sounding metal ensemble who’ve finally tailored their vibe into a bass-centric semi-stripped-down stoner-doom/deathpunk fusion that licks mainstream rock sensibilities just close enough, while promoting militant veganism.” Dan thought the slight country influence was too much too-little; he had always aimed at the full positronic thunder of a Geffenesque-wall-of-sound-but-club. Closer to Walter Murphy’s Beethoven nightcored than Bobby McGraw, unlike these vegan band-boys. There was an old interview up on another site. Looking around like this felt creepy somehow, and he told himself to stop investigating after he read it.

The interview was the train-wreck he’d expected; horribly enough, there’d been an embedded video of the band playing somewhere dim and cathedralesque-in-a-dungenous-way, in the depths of a place called Saint Henri. A recollection of Jean-Paul back at chimneyfish informed him something about how the band and he had operated at this time, back in 2012, although Jean-Paul’s description of himself--adrift at the end of a set--was inflated; in the video, just visible as an unnaturally-blond smudge, he moved up from the revelmass as the band began their surly amble off-set, going to collect something for them from the gear, Dan took it as. The camera swung to follow the band, all five in different colours of ultra-fitted pants by some growing-in-popularity ethical brand one of his ex’s friends liked to talk about. Their uniformly unwashed-looking hair hung long and lank around their arched, hostile shoulders—all of them. Their black muscle tees had those characteristic metal bandlogos in monochrome—all of them, except one, who was wearing something made out of hefty-bag by the looks of it. It came off as pretty contrived, from Dan’s point of view. He got that there was an ethos behind it, and that it was a look bands had sometimes, even. It kind of reminded him of early White Stripes iconography, in a way. Less wholesome, but reminiscent. The sound too, in that twangy, sonically-vacuous way he didn’t like about either band. The lyrics he’d been able to make out were muffled bickering with the world about intent and purity of deed and the use of Gibson Guitar products or something. Dan felt like he was missing something, several somethings. Such as, who gave one hot mother’s fuck about this gaggle of pompous bonebags, and why was this band breaking up some sort of traumatic career-ender for someone as in-place in life as Jean-Paul had always seemed. What was important about any of this to Jean-Paul—why leave an interesting line of work just as it’s heating up, why have such a stake in one band, that band especially, or why even have a pet project at all let alone the first band he managed for. How did one arrive at such a choice, or circumstance, anyway, and what about these pricks was at all fascinating other than apparently sharing with Jean-Paul a love for good, hard mope-rock. And not eating anything. The questions kept re-framing themselves in Dan’s mind, and he watched the video over, noting details this time like the singer/bass player midset absently touching his overly long bangs, as he shouted lyrics or whatever, seemingly at the drummer who seemed to be covering some neglected bassfill, but who could tell, Dan had no idea how they were supposed to sound and it wasn’t like the soundscape had noticeably weakened. Other details that his eye caught were a spectacularly dreamlike, evocative mural on the soaring-tall black expanse he assumed was a wall, and, the overt randomness of the spikes on the shoulders of the one wearing a green plastic bomber jacket barechested instead of a message t-shirt. Another bassist. A possibly useless one. It looked, for all the world, like maybe the band had been an incestuous carnival of bullshit both personally and philosophically. Dan snapped his laptop shut promptly at the conclusion of this replay, annoyed, and moved it to the side. He fell back to the mattress and felt his heart beating, harder than usual, a disconcerting rhythm. He felt his old concerns about the thing fire up and tried to smother it before it compounded the issue. He trusted it to be fine, since it hadn’t given out while he was convalescing. Stupid little fucks, he thought out at the bonebags, wherever they were just then.

In the now dusty orange-tinted dark of the room, the laptop seemed to take up a lot of space. Or have a lot of presence, to an extent appliances tended not to, in Dan’s mind. Ignoring the sleek magnetism of the thing like a reverse space:2001 intro, he focused on staying still and slipping into a paralyzed half-sleep, a state in which he drifted for some time before feeling itchy, like he hadn’t really done anything—like he’d done less than nothing, like he was now at a negative sum of daily achievement. Suddenly agonized, he snapped forward at the waist like a dracula that had got staked by surprise. Yanking the laptop back into place and crossing his unlimber legs, he got to work doing what he’d been outlined on.

He had to throw on a lot of fades to hide the audacity.exe comfortably to his ear, but he knew he didn’t need to worry about it, Bruce’s show was so upfront, assertively d.i.y. it really didn’t matter what the sound quality was, or even what he actually made. But it seemed kind of, pointed or something, to just ignore all the wishlist hints handed to him. Besides, it was a good starting point, which he supposed was the point. All it was meant to be, he figured, but still. He wasn’t particularly task-motivated but he was highly task-oriented anyway. The thing he’d been asked to play off was nice, actually—some old pbs show called The Victory Garden, it sounded like chamber music or something that needed a room full of ferns for the right acoustics. He chopped it up and waved it out, then went in for the nature show sample screws. After a while he noticed that he had five whole minutes, and only four hours had seeped past unnoticed. He was famished, as well. Time to exist, upstairs at least.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Having been hightailed to a copse of fruit-and-veg stands and half-left menu item-spawing various eateries somewhere on Bloor, westward from the Maison, detouring for a box of hangers Andre had craigslisted that was on a road Dan hadn’t been on with some name like a poodle would have that he immediately forgot, he and Bruce and the bikes they’d road down on were now walking back up to Dundas. Dan discovered that they were next to the no frills he went to when Bruce said “dude that mural, next to the milkstore with my name, that mural, should be a sound. Like, a whole super-complexicated sound that lasts a while.”

“You,” his breathing was irregular, he’d been out-of-shape-exercising for almost an hour, it seemed like. “Mean, like it needs a score. What the hell is a milkstore,” he heard himself rhyme and felt like it was something of Bruce’s that was catching.

Crossing the empty intersection Bruce bobbled his silly head, laughing, and his shag of bedhead flounced around the led blinker on a thick elastic band that he was wearing like a bandana now that it was off. “Sorry, convenience. Cornerstore. Bodega. I dunno, what do they say in beeeeezy, buuuuuuddy?”

“I have no idea.” He really didn’t. He and his ex called placed by their name, like Wong Bros, or the macs. Bruce was on a tip about using some kind of soundwave-from-image interpretation script that sounded like something Dan’s laptop wouldn’t have a shot at.

The two biked back on the flat, clear strip back to Maison Rokkoku, passing only the night bus and a few people clustered smoking outside restaurants. There was a relieved atmosphere in the neighborhood, like a held breath had collectively been let out by the people or the buildings or just the place in general. There was a newness to the sidewalks even. Maybe there’d been a street sweep by one of the funny little city golfcart dealies he’d seen out the window, hosing up detritus with a mammoth trunk of accordion-pvc that siphoned along sidecar style. All the shopfronts seemed to be full of easter themed pastel reminders of the season. Rabbits here, eggs and baskets there. Seemed like not very many days ago it had all been shamrocks when he’d been out to scamshop.

Dan offered to help carry the unbinned produce upstairs, but Bruce said “nahh, we’ll lock the cart and ‘Dre’s bike to the garden rack with Nannerama-ghost-dong, and when she comes over she can load up with what she wants and we’ll take the rest up ‘steada carrying the whole shebang now. Grab anything you wanna eat right now, I’ve got the other right-nows.”

“That’s…that sounds, uh. Don’t think anyone’ll take what we leave out?”

“From the backyard? Here?” He made it sound unheard-of. “If they do, they probably need it as much or way more than we do,” said Bruce, unlocking the door next to the pottery place’s door. There was someone inside the pottery place, working clay into a soup-mug shape on a spinner, wearing a look of grim concentration. Pretty, pale light spilled across the street and made all the urban grime look extra urban and grimy. Dan wished the trees had leaves, and that it wasn’t still so cold every day. It seemed colder now than January had, but that was probably attributable to how the tempurature seemed have dropped back to freezing now that it was officially spring, even though they’d had some spooky-hot days earlier in the month. Dan didn’t remember a twenty degree day in March in Victoria. He’d gone out and wished he had money for a patio beer at the wing place, it was so nice out. Instead he’d gone to the no frills and pocketed a cream cheese to make the bagels in “the big bag of tim’s latenight bin bonanza baked stales” that had dominated the kitchen that week, more appealing.

“Yeah, guess so.” There was a pause as they climbed stairs, but at the second floor he asked “is that seriously your bike’s name, or do you make that stuff up on the fly?” There was a peel of laughter from Bruce, ahead of him but obscured by a big duffleshaped backpack with too many flappy dangling straps for Dan’s enjoyment.

“On the Marty McFly? Dude,” he laughed some more, delirious as usual, “that shit is one hundo-ever totally lock-downedly In Stone.” He hand-framed the words in-stone, and started upstairs. “I only ever make names up when I’m naming things.”

Obviously. They’d hit the messhall and Bruce was in weedbound missile-mode, just as obviously. “But did you maybe just name that bike?” He was teasing, mostly.

“Maybe I’m always naming that bike, maaaaaaaaaaan,” this was delivered with a comedic mystical tone, which is to say it was a slight exaggeration of how he said nearly everything. He was already in place triumphantly spooning preground weed from a container printed like a geode into the chamber on his volcano. Dan laughed. “Hey J.P.’s making us midnight dinner tonight, you should stick around.” Bruce was taking off his coat, the cellophany bag of weed vape ballooning next to him promisingly on the halfpipe ledge. Dan had already flung his own coat onto its second floor hook, and he noticed Bruce didn’t fish through his coat pockets for the half joint he’d saved when they’d started north again. Probably his clothes were full of free-floating extra on-the-roads.

“Yeah, I’ll stick. I’m in.” That was in half an hour. “What’s for dinner?” Asking seemed sort of moot but he wanted to know what to anticipate, if Bruce had the inside scoop on that part. Dan’s “right-nows” were two apples he needed to wash and a couple trays of shrinkwrapped sliced melon that still looked doable. Bruce inhaling a partially eaten burrito at a corner on Bloor unfortunately hadn’t thrilled his vague, queasy, underfed feeling. Fresh dinner, care of a clean kitchen, sounded ...necessary.

“Jean-Paul-Pasta,” came the answer as Bruce sort of cha-cha’d along, full balloon-bag in hand, skating on sockfeet into the kitchen, where he began to put dishes away in between hauls of cloud. At the end of the hall, light could be seen filtering into the gap, around the barrier. Dan decided it was Mouse, since it was almost never Pete home without music on. “Chef boy-are-weee-lucky,” an added mumble, mostly talking to himself, it seemed. Either way, he sounded sincere and pleased. Dan didn’t feel like follow-up was necessary and sort of wished there was time to disappear into his room and nap for several hours before waking up and listening foggily for the sounds of people being sociable upstairs. That was ideal. He decided to approximate it by sandwiching himself into the red couch formation and dozing off. About fifteen or twenty minutes later Jean-Paul and Andre showed up together, coming from the café and sounding a little standoffish with one another maybe, Dan wasn’t sure.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Andre and Bruce were a real pair, once the two of them got going, it turned out. They were very talkatively talking at Jean-Paul and with one another as Dan climbed the ladder with his laptop because he didn’t want to bother with a thumbdrive for the upstairs laptop and Bruce had insisted he play them the track he’d made earlier; it’d seemed more embarrassing to keep saying no. He swung himself onto the floor and stood up. The non-couple looked over at him, in harmony. It was sickening, he wished they’d get a room if they were going to be synchronizing like that, like some sort of coupley foreplay. It gave him heebie-jeebies and cheesed him off, and, just for texture apparently, it kind of warmed his heart. That was jealousy, he supposed. He thought faintly about Andreah and trying to make her laugh or something with an i.m. sometime, but knew that would be ignoring the part where she’d been very clear about not pursuing that exact, specific thing with her. They were sitting around the kitchen island, watching Jean-Paul make pasta on a very long, pressed-bamboo board. Jean-Paul was moving around the workspace with precision, and the conversation lulled as Dan watched him.

“No lie,” Andre was yattering cheerfully, looking better-rested than usual, despite the time and her work schedule. “You guys are never moving out of here, I got a card reading about it even. Like I said I would,” she private-messaged Bruce out loud, hipchecking him on his barstool from hers, even though they were snug enough together that it barely wobbled him, was absorbed. How playful, Dan sniped at them silently, ignored. He caught himself sounding like his ex had about other couples and told himself to stop. They weren’t even a couple, he also reminded himself. That wasn’t “how it was.” Because she wanted that to be how it was with Andreah and Andreah was...hard to get. Dan was pretty sure sidepiecing Bruce wasn’t helping Andre’s bid at all. In fact it had almost certainly helped his, at least, it was why they were on friendly terms at all, really. He assumed they still were, she seemed pretty relaxed about things like that but who knew. People fluctuated. Some times more so than others. Some people more so than others. But, it was a thing and he knew that. Andre was all over the god-damn place, as far as he could tell. Mouse was another intermittently-tempestuous teapot. His ex, to a less outwardly indicated extent, unless you synched to the pokerface in that way where it was like a magic-eye picture with a real expression happening underneath. It took a while.

"She says she would never sell, she loves running the pottery studio." Finally Jean-Paul cut in on the chitting and chatting and said “If the owner of a small business that doesn’t do very much business at all, in the GTA, streetlevel on Dundas West, Bruce, says they love their job, its because its a front and they’re using it to launder money from their criminal enterprise. Or enterprises.” He paused, pouring himself a tall glass of wine from the box on the counter.

“You can’t know for sure without, by just assuming.” Andre sounded annoyed, and Dan understood it to be about Jean-Paul’s sort of lofty affectation, which personally amused Dan as it always had. If someone was annoyed by such a transparent characterization designed to entertain, it really just made the bit funnier to him. As he assumed it did to Jean-Paul, who was rolling his eyes at Andre from behind the wineglass, albeit as gentle a roll as seemed possible for him.

"It’s kind of like Roscoe’s sidehustle that’s his main hustle, with the weed.” He rejoindered, sidestepping her point in a way that seemed to co-authorize his original comment anyway. “You guys don’t move enough volume to have the benefits you do as baristas, but who’s clocking that? Cash into the till, tips, hey, it’s streaming in from somewhere and it becomes taxable so the whole aspect of where all the somes its streaming from, are? Not so relevant. Ditto with boutique owners I’ve known, home salons are good for that, oh, income artists of course, but moreso. I’ve thought of that, batted it around; what you do is...ok, say you’re a painter and you date ...people, who want to pay for things or buy you stuff and you say, wait until I have a gallery show and buy my most expensive painting from me. You see how that’s legal and taxable income but what were they really paying for? Now say you never really were friends with these people and you never told them about the gallery show and they paid you hundreds of dollars for sex per session and you’ve wadded up a few thousand over the course of a couple months, and you want to launder that money so you can put it in the bank and pay rent and bills like a regular jobbie, and not get audited someday. And say you don't feel like even having a gallery show and fake-selling your work for the clout or respectability or whathaveyou. Say you don't even paint. You could still say all that was true, for tax purposes. But for tax purposes its better to have the right paper trail and the more you lie the less paperwork there is to trail. So you’d have to actually be selling something you could call art, somewhere, for your patrons' "donations" to be simple taxable income. But now, what if you own... studio space, and were the only oversight? Say you rent out studio space for hundreds of dollars, you have tiny classes sometimes, you make sure the kiln doesn’t explode or, I don’t know, people aren’t using lead-based glazes. So who's watching to see if the books' intake matches the volume of clientele? Only your neighbors. And now lets say your neighbors don't care what you do so long as you look away when they need you to, too? I’m not sure what the word for the exact mirrormeaning of gentrification is. Degentrification maybe? That's not active enough. Antigentrification? Whatever." Jean-Paul sighed, seeming tired of talking.

“Reclamation!” Bruce hooted, hammering the polished concrete with both fists.

Dan felt like having a glass of wine himself but held off, feeling a premonition of having a bad time if he did. He settled for rolling his eyes to himself about the idea of somehow stopping the Ford Nation revivalism from scrubbing the city out of the city sooner or later. "So this area hasn't been... gentrified, yet," he decided to contribute. Time to stop sourpussing, any day now, he re-reminded. "Depends on what you mean by this area. This block hasn't. The neighbourhood has." "You mean The junction." "Yes of course. What am I going to call it?" "...its called Little Malta on the map."

“That’s tourist flair,” Andre sniffed, sounding like maybe she was talking out of her ass. Dan didn’t bring it up, and Jean-Paul checked his simmering sauce, also saying nothing.

“I think the bike shop guy is like, actually Maltese? I think he told me that,” Bruce sounded dreamy, talking from his cradled fingers, tented over the counter. Jean-Paul rewashed his hands and got back to work rolling out sheets of pasta.

It was obvious that there was a dance going on in Jean-Paul’s head, a series of moves to flow through to make pasta happen—Dan recognized it from working fast food, actually. The summer after highschool ended Dan had had a sort of American Beauty workcrisis moment, and gotten the job at KFC, which he said was because of the high starting pay even though he’d moved in with his rich girlfriend and lived in her paid-for apartment. It was about independence, in retrospect, but after a few months he'd gotten sick of it and quit, mostly because of his ex hounding him to. She’d been a snob about every part of it, mortified that their (her) friends might see him—but no one she cared about went into KFC while he worked there. He assumed they’d be worried someone would see them. The best part of the job had been hotboxing the walk-in freezer after close and eating two-bite brownies and leftover extra-crispy and gravy with his motley co-workers, but the best work-doing part of the job had been packing—watching orders appear in green text on the little black screen and ploughing into the dance of boxing and bucketing each new order with maximum efficiency so no one got testy. Dan spent that summer rejecting any position of responsibility higher than none, so by union rules he’d had to work whatever position was left after in-charges and supervisors took their pick, leaving him on till mostly; people hated working till. But, Dan had found that there was amusement to be had even there, in optimizing the order shorthand, dancing along the map of buttons. He’d quit after one too many staff members went on worker’s comp to taunt their manager (whose yuppie-aspiring obsession with promotion to district-overseeing manager had them all cleaning an hour longer each night than their last manager, often shortpaid for it until they complained to have it added on to the next cheque) with the fact that he couldn’t fire them. The guy used it as an excuse to cut payroll hours and overload the remaining skeleton staff, reducing operating costs—he hardly paid himself at all, according to him, and for sure had slept there overnight a lot to avoid his family. These were all personal details that came out in the weird group therapy sessions he hosted afterhours in the walk-in with weed he’d buy everyone. Saying no hadn’t been much of an option given the vibe of transparent neediness the guy seemed to trade on with his staff, and Dan hadn’t really cared one way or the other, because he was just going home to the condo for a shower and to pass out for the night either way. The main pain of working there had been how the guy’s big plan was to seem so capable that he’d be allowed to bite that level-up carrot the current district-overseeing manager was dangling. When the current guy called to say he’d be coming come by, their manager would run around outside trimming shrubs, and order a cook to bag the branches as he went. That kind of stunty shit. There’d been a girl working there named Khrystal, who had had the same birthday as Dan; she’d take breaks to fuck dudes she met working counter, who assumed she was older than she was because of the frumpy uniforms and the fact that she was there during school hours (which their manager didn't fuss about because she said she did some kind of flexschool thing at one of the schools you went to when you were on probation). She’d been sixteen, with cute snaggle-teeth. Dan had always liked her little not-too-snaggly snaggle-teeth. He pictured her smug snaggle-tooth grin, and the way she’d worn her visor upside down and to the side. She’d talk each shift about some coke-dealing 30-something guy she was dating to get into clubs, stories like how his friend had hit on her and she’d savvily shown respect to him while also deflecting so her date didn’t get mad. Dan couldn’t tell if it was bullshit or not, she’d done a good job of sounding knowing, but then, Dan wouldn't know. He’d kind of been under the general impression that a lot of kids who’d had things a little rougher were good at further roughening their image up in a legit-sounding way. It was something he placed as a trait of Andre’s as well. He wondered if she’d ever worked fast food, and remembered how she and Andreah had had their own little behind the counter ballet duet that time when he’d been trying to figure out if Andreah could see at all.

“I don’t suppose that ‘trustafarian scammer’ is taxable,” said Jean-Paul. He hadn’t looked at anything other than what he was doing since starting again, flicking back over to check the stove. He talked with his eyes on the still-acidic-smelling sauce he had going.

Dan groaned loudly, to be conversational. “Trustafarian scammer,” he quoted. “I’m not—I don’t have ginger dreads, I don’t have a trust fund, and, I mean the scam her writer friend accused me of I wasn’t even pulling, and I’m not really a scammer aside from that—I mean it’s not much of a scam, shoplifting. I don’t even rack stuff into a bag.”

“That’s journalism for you. Get into freeganism before, at all?” his light tone of voice seemed overtly casual to Dan’s ear like Jean-Paul was changing the topic too on-purpose, but he ignored it because he wanted the topic changed.

“Mm…not uh, systematically.” Bruce and Andre both seemed to register suddenly, like they were watching him answer. They knew he hadn’t been running around dumpster diving before living here, what was the interrogation-light for?

Dan felt peeved and more than slightly trapped, not just because Jean-Paul had referenced that thing on Slackjaw about his ex, talking about their breakup and how she was doing a solo single release party a few months, on some asshole’s private studio label. Not just that, or how he didn’t really want the others to know anything about it that they didn’t, when they presumably knew nothing about it. But because although he’d heard ‘freegan’ used before he suddenly wasn’t sure he’d intuited the actual definitional meaning; was it a more extensive dogma than eating whatever was free? It sort of seemed to be, around here, if this whole thing was freeganism. He looked askance at Bruce, who had begun eating from a very dented can of peaches, unable to wait, and Andre, who was alternately playing with Bruce’s hair and watching Jean-Paul cook. Bruce looked back at him, his mouth wide around a peach half that he’d barely lifted out of the syrup. He somehow inhaled the whole half like a snake eating an egg, and Dan was sort of impressed even though it was silly and had looked silly. “Most ethical diet,” Bruce opined. “’Cept mayyyyyybeeeeeeee like, those fruitarians or whatever, the ones who only eat stuff plants shed on their own. That’s prob’ly the most ethical, I dunno.”

“Not that you believe there’s a… hierarchy of ethicality,” said Andre, and although the comment sounded teasing and wasn’t directed at Dan, he was struck by a strong sense of dislike, because what was conveyed by the inflection was that Andre, the overinflated worldsaver, did think there was some ‘hierarchy’ in place—an ethics Olympics even—and probably had bullshit ideas about who fell where on the podium, including present company and absent company alike. He noticed that, if Mouse had been or was home, he wasn’t appearing.

“But you’re alright with not keeping meat or dairy or whatever up here?” Jean-Paul asked, finally looking over at Dan, who felt like he’d been somehow reported as agreeing to that when he hadn’t. He wondered who the policy was in service of—Andre he thought, although she ate dairy. “It does bug me to go to cook somewhere without knowing what everything’s touched, so thank you” added Jean-Paul. “And…well, I doubt he’d care, but Peter observes a vegan diet outside tablescoring and dives, and it might…be better for him, too, this way.” Dan felt unsettled—sort of judged and sheepish together. He slicked his hair with a clammy palm and stood up. Bathroom escape pod countdown.

“Yeah, no problem,” he sounded sincere, at least. He leaned backward and, balancing, poured himself a glass of filtered water from the chilled carafe he found in the fridge. He settled back in at the counter, hunkering down to not say much and not get drunk on autopilot. After a few minutes lead-time, he went to the bathroom. The sight of his hair, post-clammy palm attack, would’ve knocked some sober into him if he’d had a glass, but taken the last bit of it out of him if he’d already had three.

Dinner was stupendous, once presented and consumed; perfectly smooth and a pleasant density, the bowties he’d turned out like an assembly station worker, were ideal boats for the sauce, which carried more than its own weight in the dish, both bright and rich in final flavor. Dan’s family’s overreliance on Ragu with extra garlic powder had done him wrong. Apparently it was all about dumpstering the right kind of canned tomatoes, growing your own fresh herbs, rooftop heirloom garlic fresh peeled, and really fancy past-sell-by oils from the curb--a dark organic olive oil and sundried tomato infused sunflower. All the other stuff like sautéing a bunch of pearl onions along with the regular diced kind, adding capers, etc., that was all just whatever. Dan was impressed by it all the same.

He’d seen the rooftop garden a tiny bit from the backyard when he and Bruce had locked the bikes up to the cement-anchored bent rebar bike rack. He’d never been in the backyard before, and it didn’t look like much at the moment. Some empty planter boxes made of palletwood, trellises with old dead scragglies twisting in the breeze, piles of old yardwaste heaped up around some-still leafless shrubs and small trees that looked like they might grow fruit at some point. It all looked kind of bleak, and Bruce said he was waiting to make sure there wasn’t a last freeze before he started seeds germinating to plant once it was really warm out—he said “the two-four weekend” was the final planting deadline but he had no idea when that was. The appearance of the fire escape up to the roof didn’t thrill him, in retrospect, and he wondered if he’d ever see the greenhouse or grow shed or whatever was up there where Alice lived and grew garlic and peyote and whatever else. Fresh herbs.

“Where’s Alice?” It seemed like a pretty reasonable question, although he’d never met her. They lived together, apparently. In fact the red couch thing Bruce had pulled out was probably hers, in the sense that it had been in the shack thing on the backside of the halfpipe nearest the bedrooms, which he’d learned from Bruce was her subzero-night stopgap. He figured he’d been told in case he ran into someone he didn’t know upstairs one day, but no such sighting had occurred.

Andre smiled super-wide at him like he’d done something right, and for a second whatever moody cobwebs he’d had cleared and he felt a bit lit up. Then she slid her hand onto her cheek and leaned against the counter toward Bruce and said “remember Alice?” to him in a kind of private jokey way, all warm and meaningful and buzzy with sentiment.

“It’s a song about Alice,” was the reply, in the same tone. Dan focused on not heaving and tried to be objective; it was nice when nice friends had nice memes together and what a nice time. Good, he was sitting there, not heaving. Jean-Paul started clearing plates, although Bruce held onto his and asked about more before relinquishing the plate because the pasta was finito.

“Folkies,” Jean-Paul sniffed at them with disdain. He dropped the curled sneer he was teasing them with and smiled affectionately. “You should put that on, maybe Dan can remix it for you. I like that part about avoiding the draft.”

“I LIKE THE PART ABOUT COULDN’T BE BEAT!” Bruce exploded like Roger Rabbit doing the two-bits callback going through a boozecan wall. “THANK YOU FOR DINNER!” He continued to holler unnecessarily and with exuberance. Dan laughed, and saw the others were too.

“Yeah,” he postscripted. “Dinner was really good.”

Jean-Paul made a flattered face and raised his hand to his chest in a small bow of service. Then he ordered Bruce to do the dishes, and poured himself more wine. Then Jean-Paul and Andre made plans to wash the massive quantity of leftovers from the bikecart and take them to a ravine the next morning in case any encamped park-dwellers who were around (and anyone else who asked what the “free food” flag was about—it was about getting people to come over and talk and try the freegan-vegan food) were into some warm fruit crumble care of food not bombs. Dan wondered what the point of doing PR for a movement or organization or whatever it was, was, if you were going out of your way to only start dialogue with nomadic backpackers and other homeless folks who probably didn’t care about some hippiedippy recycling-culture compulsion club given that it was maybe competing with them for the accessible free food the city had to offer. It struck him as kind of a backwards errand, and he couldn’t figure out why Jean-Paul would agree. But he had. He even seemed to think it would be a good thing to do, like he was looking forward to it.

Bruce gathered up a bunch of worn plastic bowls and cutlery for them from somewhere deep in a cupboard next to the sink in case they went out before he was awake because he’d moved the serve gear since they’d used it and knew he hadn’t told anyone, and it seemed like he and Andre might depart for his room any second. He excused himself for a pre-passout pit-stop, after which Dan thanked Jean-Paul for the meal a final time and went to bed. No one had brought up whether he’d want to go with them to the park in the morning and eat crumble in the smarch-cool air, standing around in a park. He had no idea if he was glad or annoyed. He didn’t notice until he was down the ladder that he hadn’t brought his laptop back down, or ended up playing the track like he’d been hassled to. He decided Jean-Paul had run some interference for him, maybe. It was another thing he wasn’t sure whether or not was a let-down. He felt kind of let-down, but that could easily be overexposure to the happy non-couple.

Feeling emotional, but not very attuned to what the cause or exact feelings were, he listened until no one was moving around and Jean-Paul had gone downstairs again. Right about four minutes into silence he was out. Four hours later the sun was up.

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topicprinter · 6 years

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Hey - Pat from StarterStory.com here with another interview.Today's interview is with KC Holiday of QALO, a brand that makes silicone rings.I'm super excited about this interview, as it's the biggest one I've done (in terms of revenue and many other metrics). It's also packed with info, tips, and advice for others. Hope you enjoy.Some stats:Product: Silicone rings.Revenue/mo: $2.5MRevenue since inception: $100MEmail list: 1M+700k Facebook followers,193k on instagramStarted: March 2013Location: Santa Ana, CAFounders: 2Employees: 69EDIT: For those asking about verified revenue in the comments, here is their Inc. profileHello! Who are you and what are you working on?Hey there! My name is KC Holiday and I am the co-founder of QALO.We are a family-first company committed to designing and making products that enable families to share adventures and meaningful experiences—best known for being the creators of the functional wedding ring.We’ve created an enormous community of over 2 million people who wear QALO to represent the most important commitment they’ve made in their life. This year we as a company will eclipse over 100M in total revenue since Ted Baker (my co-founder) and I founded the company from a dining room table in 2013.What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?We are often asked the story of how we came up with the concept, and I wish I had some elaborate story about almost losing a finger, but my life isn’t dangerous enough for that.The simple answer is, we got married.Ted and I married our wives in 2012, a few months apart from one another. We were both living in Los Angeles pursuing a career in film and television, which really meant we spent a lot of our time working in a restaurant together.Ted and I had met in an acting class and became friends through the class. He managed to rescue me from my waiter job at PF Chang’s and bring me to the restaurant he managed in Beverly Hills. That restaurant is where the idea for QALO was created.In passing one day, we began discussing whether or not we wore wedding rings. I had been taking mine on and off constantly to play golf, workout, etc. and he said that he had just decided to not wear one because it was such a pain.We wanted to represent the commitment that we had made to our wives, but the metal ring just didn’t make sense with our lifestyle, and so we sought to create a solution for ourselves. We agreed to do it together and QALO was born.Neither of us had any background in manufacturing or building eCommerce websites, but that wasn’t going to stop us.We spent the next six months getting rings produced, creating all brand assets, and building a website. More on that below.None of them were anything close to perfect (they were actually pretty terrible), but we were way more concerned with determining whether or not this category was real than whether or not our logo utilized the most impactful font.Describe the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing the product.Most people see our product and the first thing they think is how simple it is. Five years ago, I would agree with them. Yes, the concept is simple, and the thought of manufacturing silicone rings seems easy enough, but we have transformed the jewelry industry.We’ve done that through an innovative focus on product evolution and sophistication in manufacturing. We approach manufacturers that have never created what we have conceived. That’s powerful.Initial design and prototypingThe initial design phase was relatively unique for ours because we were evolving a billion dollar industry with a proven design. If you are looking to disrupt a category don’t feel the need to revolutionize the space, assess what has been proven and reliable, and make some tweaks to improve it.For us, the design was created and proven through an actual wedding band, we were just looking to make it functional. That was what we were solving for. I had friends who had started a large silicone consumer good business and so I had some familiarity with its functionality. Once Ted and I spoke about choosing silicone as the material of choice, we went and purchased metal wedding bands with silhouettes we were fond of.Early design and prototyping mistakesThe next step should have been to get a CAD creator to create a rendering, and then go to a 3D printer to determine if we like it prior to shipping it overseas to be sampled, but we did know about that process when we started. I would do as much work as you possibly can on your design and functionality prior to sending it to your manufacturer. The lead times just become more expensive and extensive the less time you put in up front, and manufacturers want to mass produce your product, not run a hundred samples for you.We skipped that process and shipped the metal rings to a silicone manufacturer and asked him basically to create molds with those silhouettes and do his best to match the rings that we sent. It took about 3-6 months to get it to one we were proud of, even with our bar being as low as it was.Once we received that prototype, chose colors (again no science to that other than we felt neutral colors were safer and everybody just buys black) we felt good about it and moved to mass manufacturing of the product. What we did not account for was cheap molds make a cheap product. The quality control was terrible. Always pay a little extra for better quality. Losing one customer is worth way more than the extra you will pay to make sure the product is where you would like it to be.Finding our first manufacturerWhen we first started we went to the first manufacturer that would offer to help us, which was a recommendation from a friend. You’d be surprised the impact of just asking people in your own network can have when getting started.The quality control, however, was terrible. We would have to hand trim every single ring that we received with a pair of eyebrow scissors. I didn’t even know eyebrow scissors existed. I’ve probably hand trimmed about 50,000 QALO.If you bought in the early days I definitely hand-trimmed that ring while watching an episode of Lost.Our manufacturing has really scaled with us. We’re currently on our third manufacturer since the start of the company and our focus currently is on the differentiation of supply chain as we go global. We need to make sure we have created the supply chain to support the goals of the organization. Always make sure your goals aren’t bigger than your manufacturer’s capabilities.Our largest initial investment was in the initial inventory purchase. We emptied both our savings accounts to get that first batch of rings here. A tough decision for a couple of newlyweds, but we were just crazy enough to think it may work.Our design process todayOur design process is a combination of customer feedback, trend tracking, and a bunch of really smart creative people in our product department who know the silicone jewelry industry better than anyone in the world.Our proprietary Q2X material is a direct response to customer feedback. Silicone, which every company except our own, uses to make all of their rings is compromised when it comes in contact with certain liquids/solvents. If you’re someone who works with your hands all day, Q2X is the only ring that will work from you.Being the creators of the category gave us an opportunity to hear that feedback from customers early, and create a functional solution that gave them an opportunity to wear a ring 24/7.Describe the process of launching the online store/business.When we first started we had absolutely no idea how to start an eCommerce business.We ran a google search for a user-friendly platform and found Shopify. The most important thing is getting a functioning site that can give you the opportunity to sell the product. Great marketing will just make a bad product fail faster, so don’t worry so much about the bells and whistles, worry about creating a place to drive traffic to and learn about how consumers respond to your product.Initially, all of our investment dollars went to tooling to create the inventory, and the inventory itself. Ted and I emptied our savings to start it and never took on any funding. We shot our own content (first video which you can see here) and had a buddy wear the product and play sports so we could go take some lifestyle photos after I taught myself photography. I reached out to a friend’s dad who was a photographer for product, and he with a small light kit in his living room, took our product photos.The launchWe launched the site on March 1, 2013, and immediately began searching for proof of concept. We had solved a problem for ourselves, but did anyone else share the same frustration. We pursued viral communities that would have a use case for our product and began sending it out for free to influential people in the communities.Shamelessly, we sent emails and product to anyone we thought could prove the concept, as well as having an impact on a larger group. For us, those communities were military, firefighters, CrossFit athletes, and professional athletes.Working out of my dining room in the early daysThe best story through that process was sending the product to Andy Dalton who I had gone to college with. I reached out as he was a newlywed as well and asked if he’d be interested in wearing the product.He was open to it, and we sent it out. Fortunately, the Cincinnati Bengals were on HBO’s Hard Knocks that year and in an outlier type moment, they did a full segment on Andy wearing QALO in the first episode.Andy Dalton talking about our ringsIt was an epic moment.Get your product on people, you never know when moments like that will happen. When we saw the result in a Google search for ‘rubber wedding ring’ after that episode, we knew we had something real.Sweat equityThe biggest move we made in the early days was giving out sweat equity, which is basically a company or person exchanging services for equity instead of capital investment for equity. It played a huge role in us getting to where we’re at today.This was relevant to our business because we had absolutely no money when we started. We have never raised a dime of capital. Because of that we found people who were specialists and believed in our business. We didn’t have the money to pay them and so instead they were willing to help grow our business and no immediate pay, in exchange for a % of the business. Not everyone is set up to be able to do it because not everyone can work for free.Over time though the company made money, and we were able to pay them for their services as well. That was cool, they were owners and now the company they believed in was able to reward them with being able to pay for services.The sweat equity partners had expertise in:Ambassador relationships (ways to get the word out there)Digital marketingContent/Brand marketingLegalManufacturing knowledgeBusiness understanding of businesses relevant to our productSome early lessons in those days:Do your best to remove yourself emotionally from honest feedback. Take it and better your business with it.Your family doesn’t want to hurt your feelings when you pitch your idea or share your product. Pitch it to strangers too.Be very cautious about who you want to give equity too. Don’t just say yes because it’s a lot of money, pay attention to who the person is giving it to you.On the flip side, don’t obsess over equity. 100% ownership in something worth nothing is worthless.You don’t have to give all the sweat equity at once to partners. They can vest over a period of time based off of performance metrics.Smaller size bloggers and influencers are looking for content. Reach out to them and engage, they’ll be happy to write about you.Affiliate Marketing (Giving influencers kickback on a discount code they share to drive awareness) is way more work than worth. Stop doing it.If you are spending all day shipping, find someone else to do it for you so you can focus on create more shipments.Storing inventory in my living room.Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?Ambassador relationships (ways to get the word out there)Our first big ambassador relationship who we paid was Shane Dorian, the professional big wave surfer.A few facts about that which can help when choosing ambassadors:Don’t pay people to wear/use your product.Make sure they align with your brand, they actually like it, then pay them for their time to create content or put a post up for you.If your product is good, they will use it organically, and consumers today value authenticity. Nothing seems more inauthentic than olympians advertising McDonald’s.Tell people about your winsFor every dollar you spend on an ambassador you should spend three times that amount to tell the world they are wearing it. We have the biggest ambassadors in the world wearing QALO, but our biggest challenge is telling the world that they are.Look for niche influencersFacebook and word of mouth are our two biggest forms of awareness growth. Small time influencers with a committed following can be very powerful. It doesn’t always need to be a superstar.Send your product out to people with no expectationsUnderstand the cost associated with doing it, but the more people that have your product the better.Make your packaging uniqueAthletes receive tons of products and packages. Make yours unique. An example of an on-brand influencer package we sent was when we sent a package to LeBron James when he moved to LA.Being based in LA, our team got together and created a recommendation of great family spots only locals would know about in LA, and gave him gift cards, maps, customized rings etc.LeBron doesn’t need gift cards or a map, but we valued his wife and kids as much as we did him. We focus on family. That is our brand.Digital marketingIn terms of digital marketing, we were launched by Facebook. In 2014, we realized Facebook was an incredible opportunity to pursue the communities that we had resonated with.We were a wedding ring, so the marital status was a huge helper to create efficiency in advertising. We work with an online sales agency named Common Thread Collective, and still do to this day. I would highly recommend them. There is no golden ticket in terms of what advertising channels will be best for your business so you may need to try a few.Understand which ads work and do your best to learn why. It may be a lifestyle image on Instagram, or a product photo on a white background on Facebook.There are people that can do some freelance digital advertising for you, and if you can self-learn some SEO, blog content on your site can be a great opportunity to create free SEO content and there are apps on Shopify that help with SEO.Do not get complacent online as you grow. Anyone can copy your product, set up a website and if they have money they can compete. It’s exactly what happened to our business with our competition, and it’s pay to play.Content/Brand marketingFor content marketing, we focus on telling our brand story through video content and photography focusing on product updates and releases, product education and customer testimonials. Define your brand message, tone, demographic, and create content that will resonate. The same rules apply for content and ambassadors. If you’re going to create video content, understand the distribution channel and how much you can spend. That video is worthless if no one watches it. For us, testimonial videos and short product focused brand videos have been valuable in our distribution channels. Different content should be produced with the end usage in mind. Pre-roll before a hulu ad, may be different than a facebook retargeting ad.Get reviews from customers. As many as possible. It is free content, and amazon has revolutionized the way people value them.Email marketing is a great way to boost revenue and deepen brand relationships. Collect as many emails as possible. Separate from a mailchimp fee and your time, it’s free.What are some of the metrics of the business?In 2018 we were, #151 on the INC500 List with 2,792% GrowthWe did $60,000 in our first year of business and 3.2M in our secondIn 2015, we went from 5 employees to 45 by year endOur email database is over 1,000,000 customersOur social media is a little over 700k on Facebook, 193k on instagramWe currently sit right around 70 employeesWe are in over 3,000 retail locations and our business is currently 60%/40% eCommerce to WholesaleWe will be launching in Target at the end of this year, and currently have distribution in Dick’s Sporting Goods, Lowe’s and REIAs the two founders we have the business split: I oversee Product, Marketing and eCommerce and Ted oversees Sales, Finance, Operations. We work together on the strategy part.We are currently expanding globally in EU and AsiaThere are over 1,000,000 searches for the silicone ring category on Amazon every monthThrough starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?I think it would be easier to bullet these out. We’ve seen the good the bad and the ugly.Nothing can replace hard work.People who got “lucky” often worked their ass off to create that luck.Rome wasn’t built in a day.Keep grinding, look at the Starbucks and Apple timelines of success if you think it’s supposed to happen faster.There is a Bill Gates quote that says, “People over overestimate what they can do in a year, and underestimate what they can do in ten.” It is very easy to get discouraged by a company moving slowly but keep at it.You never know when someone may end up on an HBO show talking about your product. Outlier moments happen for everyone. You are so passionate about your company, you want the world to know. It just doesn’t happen overnight. Have a long-term vision, and set short-term goals.If you are hitting those goals, that’s a win. Celebrate the wins. Entrepreneurs are so hard on ourselves, give yourself some grace.Partnerships are a marriage without the sex.Forgive the metaphor. Which means it is a ton of communication, confrontation, and time spent together. They are very hard, but they are not impossible.Understand if you have a partnership, the work that is required to be successful. You will be working on your business as well as your relationship with your business partner. Find someone who compliments what you do, thinks differently and doesn’t want to do what you do.Your business doesn’t need two founders who are doing the same thing.Stay true to why you started the company.For every company that is started, there is a “why” you started, and that will be tested as you grow. Why do you exist? QALO started with the goal of allowing people to represent the commitment they had made to their spouse and family regardless of their occupation, hobbies or passion. We were always about building a community of people who live life a certain way, and at the end of the day prioritize, above all else, who it is they come home to.This has been our north star. We said no to Shark Tank multiple times as a group because we didn’t feel it was the right move for what we were trying to do. We agreed to not do any form of sports or university licensing because we felt it detracted from the meaning behind our product and why people wear it.Your “why” may force you to say no to what seem like great revenue opportunities and it will serve as a great filter, which is why you should never forget it. It will also help you stay true to yourself.Never forget your “why”. Customers will notice when you do.Be generous.Always. Becoming more successful will not make you more generous, that needs to be deeply rooted in you when you have nothing.Keep customer service in-houseWe have always had customer service controlled in-house. We use external services now as we’ve grown, but I think it is vital to feel relatable and give customers the employee to talk to a human who can help them solve that problem.Give your customers the customer service experience you would like to receive if you were the one on the other side of the phone. We call our customer service problem solvers because far too often customer service becomes part of the problem, not the solution.What platform/tools do you use for your business?ShopifyShipstationZaius - CRMMailChimp we used in the earlier days of emailSlackYotpo for reviewsZendesk for Customer ServiceGrowQuickbooks OnlineWhat have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?Books:The Power of HabitScaling Up (Better for once you are a few years in)The Lean StartupSmall GiantsEntreleadershipEgo is the EnemyLet My People Go SurfingPodcasts:Tim FerrissShopify Masters (My Episode)Building a Story Brand with Donald MillerFinding Mastery with Michael GervaisAdvice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?Go for it. Please go for it. Too few people do. Every phase is equally as rewarding as challenging.There are so many resources out there to learn. Use them, because lazy people don’t change the world. Don’t be discouraged when people copy your idea. They’re going to.Know where your cash is going. Cash is King.People lesser than you have accomplished amazing things. You are more than capable.Leadership is lonely. Find people who are going through the journey with you and have a support group.As you start, hire generalists that can help you get things done, and uses outside resources as specialists. As you grow you will hire more specialists, and need less generalists.Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?Creative Director - Full TimeCustomization Coordinator - Full Time and Part Time - Work with our in-house customization team to personalize productsSales Administrator - Full Time - Support executives on the sales teamMarketing Coordinator - Full Time - Support QALO Marketing domestically and internationallyOur officeWhere can we go to learn more?Website - www.qalo.comFacebook - facebook.com/QaloQALO Instagram - @qaloMy Instagram - @mrkcholidayMy email is [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) - please feel free to reach out I love helping entrepreneurs.Liked this text interview? Check out the full interview with photos.Also, if you want to tell your story (aka be interviewed like this), DM me!

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northpolenotes · 6 years

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Create and Go Build And Launch Your Blog: An Honest Review

An honest review of Build and Launch Your Blog Course

This post contains an affiliate link (at no extra cost to you). Having just completed this course from Create and Go, I decided to write my honest review of the product. I was not paid to write this review, but I would receive a small commission if you purchase this course using my affiliate link.

Overview

I recently decided to take the plunge and purchase the course Build and Launch Your Blog from Create and Go. I already had a blog up and running, but I wasn’t happy with the design and structure. Nor was I happy with my efforts as a blogger with the creation of my content. I need help with it all, and thankfully I found this course because I was able to accomplish just that. Alex and Lauren cover the very basics like hosting, domain name, and blog niches to the very specifics, like how to create content great content, where to come up with your ideas, how to make the most out of your productivity, and build your e-mail list. They cover it all in this comprehensive, soup to nuts, blogging course Build And Launch Your Blog.

Create and Go Backstory

Before I go into the specifics of what I was struggling with and how Alex and Lauren were able to help me with my dilemmas, let me first share their story. Like many successful people, their triumphs as bloggers spawned from failure. You can read their whole story here (link), but I’ll give you a brief overview of why they started Create and Go. Alex and Lauren were both young professionals trying to make it in corporate America but found themselves to be unhappy, to say the least. In fact, I don’t think it would be unfair of me to say that they were completely miserable at the time. Alex was a personal trainer and Lauren was a CPA. Fueled by the desire to lives they were actually happy with, they started a blog and failed. The major mistake that they made was writing about what they wanted to write about, instead of catering to an audience like all successful bloggers. This then led to their launch of Avocadu.com, where they write about and teach all about health and fitness. Their hard work had paid off and they realized that they could then teach their successful techniques to others and make a business out of it. And they did just that.

My Story

So what led me to finally purchasing this course from Alex and Lauren? Like I previously mentioned, I had already started my blog, The Enchanted Aunt back in August 2017. I knew that I had found what I was effortlessly good at – being an Aunt. I also knew from hiring a web developer to build my first website NorthPoleNotes.com that I didn’t want to A.) spend that much money again in a short period of time and B.) Not know how to edit my own site should I want to make revisions. My site is beautiful, but it’s also custom-coded, so I can’t touch it without help. Never again!

My niche was a no-brainer for me, but the other parts, building a site, finding topics to blog about, and monetizing it was all foreign territory. In fact, I had written my first 5 blog posts, “promoted them” to friend and family, and quickly found that no one cared what I had to say. That’s a bit of an extreme statement. I did get visits to my site, but there were days, weeks, and maybe even a or two months where I had gotten barely any traffic whatsoever. I had bought a course on Udemy to teach me the basics of building a website, took the cheapest route possible and opted for a free theme, and I wasn’t happy. To be honest, my site looked like crap and I didn’t even want people looking at it. I knew nothing about blogging and endless google searches weren’t giving me much help either. It wasn’t until I started doing some research on how to get traffic to my blog from Pinterest that I stumbled upon Alex and Lauren’s YouTube channel. This was a game changer for me. Alex explained the importance of Pinterest to get traffic to your blog and went into full detail on how to do just that for free. So I put his advice and I actually started seeing results. That led me to begin to trust him. If the advice that he was giving away for free led to real results, then I couldn’t imagine what his paid advice would do for me.

Lots of free advice offers mostly fluff around a subject and hones in on the “why” you need to do something, but the “how” is always the paid portion. But in order for anyone to be able to make a purchase, they first must trust the person who their purchasing from. Alex and Lauren gained my trust because I could see the results before I even purchased anything. I decided to take my blog seriously, open up my wallet, and build my site from scratch using their course Build and Launch Your Blog from Create and Go. I can honestly say, that there was no buyer’s remorse from purchasing this course. In fact, all I can truthfully say is that I wished I had found it sooner.

Pros: I honestly do love this course, but here are some of the highlights.

I can’t say this enough – it’s 100% comprehensive.

They cover ALL portions of blogging for beginners. One of my biggest frustrations as a newbie bloggers was the amount of information that I needed to know and that it was given to me from 30 different sources. I would read one helpful article, which led me to need to find out more information, which led me to another article, and so on and so forth. It was exhausting. Knowing the mindset of a new blogger, Alex and Lauren have put together a completely thorough course that tackles every aspect of starting your blog. They introduced me to favicons (I had no idea what one was before this course), taught me how to make a clean and simple logo for free, and opened my eyes up to the errors I was making as a newbie blogger and so much more. They have covered it all.

It’s been updated since they first launched the course.

One of the things that I didn’t like about the course that I signed up for on Udemy is that some of the information was outdated. With our fast-paced society and forever changing technology, a lot of tech advice and information becomes obsolete in a matter of months. So if a course is prerecorded and they don’t regularly make updates to any outdated information, you’re SOL. If the course you purchased is older than 6 months to a year, without any updates, they’re also most likely not responding to customer inquiries and follow up questions.

Video and Text in nearly every module.

I don’t know about you, but it’s very difficult for me to read on any screen for an extended period of time. My eyes get watery, they begin to shut, and before I know it, I’m napping at 2 PM like my grandma used to. The course is broken down into topics and most have a visual aid/video within them. This made it much easier to implement the steps instead of having to create a visual in my head of what they might be talking about. The fact that it’s broken down into topics also helped me skip around. Like I said, I didn’t need help with hosting, picking my domain name, or finding my niche, so I skipped that part.

Bonus materials.

Alex and Lauren give you a soft introduction to some of their other courses and the end of taking this course. They also teach courses on how to begin monetizing your blog, generating Pinterest traffic, and becoming a six-figure blogger. I already bought the bundle package from them, so I was already going to watch those videos, but I think it’s a great idea to give a preview of what else you can learn from them.

Private FaceBook Group for Paid Members

Each of the Create and Go Products come with a private FaceBook for support on all of their products. You have the opportunity to ask questions and connect with other bloggers should you need some support.

Cons: I’m nitpicking at this point, but nothing is perfect

I wish that they would have gone a little deeper into the Divi theme.

There is an entire Divi University through Elegant Themes, but I was focused on this course and didn’t want to stop and start another course. However, I am happy that they want as far as they did. They also go into helping you out with a few other themes and how to choose the one that’s best for you. So really, I can’t complain too much. They put a lot of work into creating this course.

Not so much as a complaint as it is a heads up – It’s long.

I just want readers to know before purchasing this course that it’s not something that you can get through in a week. It’s long, it’s thorough, and it takes time to get through it. The amount of time is somewhat up to you because it depends on the amount of time that you have to dedicate to taking the course. Most of the modules are between 10 and 20 minutes, some longer, but there are a lot of them. Altogether, I think it took me about a month to complete it because of stopping and starting. If you can carve out more time to complete this course, I don’t see how this couldn’t take you a week to two weeks finish (if you include writing your first blog posts in that time).

No Refunds after 60 Days

This is an instant access course, so I would recommend getting started when you know you have the time to put in. I wouldn’t recommend buying this course and putting it on the shelf for a month. Create and Go do not issue refunds after 60 days. Know that you have the time to put in before purchase. Read more about their refund policy on their site.

No Coupons

I know that there are a lot of people out there who LOVE to coupon and search high and low for one, but as far as I know, there aren’t any for this course.

So is it worth it?

All and all my advice to anyone looking to start a blog or even if you were like me, had a blog (sorta) and aren’t doing anything with it or are unsure of the essentials of successful blogging. Ultimately it is up to each and every blogger to find their discipline to blog and stick with it. Alex and Lauren aren’t magicians, but they are experts in this field. They offer sound advice to motivate you, teach you the how-to’s, and paint a clear picture of what it really means to blog professionally. The actual implementation of that advice is up to you. Without this course and the advice from Alex and Lauren, my blog would be collecting cyber dust and would have a permanent place on the “I’ll get to that later list”. I wholeheartedly recommend buying this course to start your new career as a full time or part time blogger. The $97 price tag is rather fair in comparison to other “Master Courses” out there that are priced around $900-$2000. I’ve looked into them, checked out their free advice, but never felt confident in making a purchase, but with Create and Go it’s the exact opposite.

I hope you found this review helpful. Click here to purchase this great and other great courses from Create & Go.

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