Don MacDonald » Uncategorized http://donmacdonald.com A biography of Machiavelli in graphic novel form. Fri, 03 Sep 2010 23:57:23 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 en hourly 1 Hiatus http://donmacdonald.com/2010/09/hiatus/ http://donmacdonald.com/2010/09/hiatus/#comments Fri, 03 Sep 2010 23:57:23 +0000 Don http://donmacdonald.com/?p=130 I’ve posted the first two chapters of Machiavelli, but have stopped there. I’m reevaluating my plans for the book. It’s become more and more clear to me that Machiavelli doesn’t really work as a web comic. I wrote and drew it as a novel. It was never really meant to be read in installments and I feel it’s ill-served to be read in that way. Machiavelli’s publication history (or rather history of non-publication) is a complicated tale that I can’t really get into here.

I feel I owe it to those of you interested in the book not to simply stop posting pages without some explanation. When I have more details on how I’ll be publishing, I’ll post here. If you’d like to be notified when the book is ready, send me an e-mail at don@donmacdonald.com and I’ll give you a heads up when I have a pub date.

Thanks,
Don

]]> http://donmacdonald.com/2010/09/hiatus/feed/ 0 Thoughts on the Launch of Machiavelli http://donmacdonald.com/2010/02/thoughts-on-the-launch-of-machiavelli/ http://donmacdonald.com/2010/02/thoughts-on-the-launch-of-machiavelli/#comments Fri, 19 Feb 2010 21:41:02 +0000 Don http://donmacdonald.com/?p=57 A book launch is a scary thing. Even though I am serializing Machiavelli and publishing on the Web, it is still structurally a book: it has a narrative arc, chapters, pages, and other elements associated with books. And yet I’m adding hypertext commentary beneath the pages, footnotes and links that wouldn’t be included in a paper edition—or would only as endnotes that don’t interact with the artwork in the same way that this post does with the artwork that you see just above it. As I move from the prologue—which is intended to set a mood—into Chapter One, in which Machiavelli takes his place at center stage, I’ll be using footnotes in the form of blog posts to shed light on historical details which may be relevant but not central to the story I’m trying to tell. I may also link to sites which I feel will be interesting to my readers, or have some relevance to Renaissance studies. I will avoid linking to or posting about topics that have no connection to Machiavelli or the project. I hope not to do too many “meta” posts like this one. The web site is the book. And it will continue into the second book (not Machiavelli, but…I’m getting ahead of myself.)

But I digress. A book launch is a scary thing. What has struck me the most in the past week is how much support I’ve gotten from unexpected places and it’s caused me to reevaluate, seriously, the way I look at people. People who you think are critical to your success may not be, and it’s the people who stand by you when no-one is watching who count.
So thanks to you guys who have Twittered about Machiavelli, submitted it to BoingBoing, joined my Facebook “fan” page (we few, we happy few), or set up LiveJournal feeds. You’ve placed a trust in me and I will do my best to earn that.

]]> http://donmacdonald.com/2010/02/thoughts-on-the-launch-of-machiavelli/feed/ 0