That Big Announcement Time

Thanks to Dreamtime I've signed a deal and will be writing a weekly music column for "Gather," a social networking site, that's sometimes been described as "the MySpace for the NPR set." You can see the site here...

http://www.gather.com/

... and you can track my writing at Gather here.

The column's name is currently "Under the Radar," although that will be changing to avoid confusion with a music mag of the same name.

Whatever I end up naming the column, it will have the same general theme as Dreamtime; stuff you wouldn't hear on the radio; trivia, stories about music and musicians. Sometimes the content will be the same thing as I'm posting over at the Dreamtime blog - edited to make sense for non-Theme Time listeners - sometimes it will diverge. I have a couple of things in mind that wouldn't fit in Dreamtime that I've been hankering to write.

Gather has been around for about a year. It's Boston-based, partially funded by NPR, the Hearst Corporation, several others. It don't think it's been as successful as anyone would like.

When I joined last year Gather reminded me of an out-of-control writing workshop, with everyone clamoring for attention for their own writing and no one willing to read anything else. Most people who I sent to Gather found the interface very confusing, too, as I did. I cross-posted a few articles from fhb and Dreamtime at Gather with little reaction over the past year, and eventually decided it was too much of a hassle for the 'lil Gather dollars that the articles earned.

But I think they're making a good move, I'm one of what will eventually be 70-80 "Gather Correspondents," for various groups such as politics; music; writing; movies; cooking; and so on - and whose agenda - outside of writing - will be to put some order and consistency around the chaos.

Gather has changed their user interface too. It now seems to be simpler and easier to find things you're interested in reading. But we'll see how it works out. The gig doesn't pay much - few freelance writing gigs do - but it does pay real moola now as opposed to their "Gather dollars", and the exposure may be good, especially since I can cross-advertise Dreamtime, fhb, and my Amazon Dreamtime store. And heck, I even get free CDs.

And that's the Big Announcement. I was touched that several family members and friends contacted me in the hopes that XM, or NPR, or Mr. D., or somebody was tossing bags of gold my way. But Dreamtime is the best sort of writing. No pressure, no censors, no editors. Of course no money and a small audience too. :-) But I still find it fun, and at this point, having fun writing is a very important thing to me. I'm hoping the Gather gig will be fun too, but whatever happens, you'll hear about it. Promise.

We now return you to the regular blog, already in progress.