I'm still buzzing about interviewing Marshall McLuhan scholar, singer/songwriter and award-winning sci-fi writer Paul Levinson for Read Write Web. Did you read it? Here's the link: Twitterdipity and Paul Levinson: Social Media's Ecology

In it I talk about how Twitter's very unique ecosystem creates "twitterdipity" which led me to connect with this media ecology hero of mine. At the end of the post Paul answers five questions about things like Wieden + Kennedy's Old Spice "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like" campaign, the role of community managers, and the "empowerment of everyone" in the Digital Age. (By the way…choosing just five questions to ask? An agonizing process that took me days. Days. Of. Agony.)

Luckily, the agony was not in vain. Judging by the increasing traffic to my web sites, the number of custom links clicked, the number of re-tweets, and my many new Twitter followers and LinkedIn connections, I'd say that my Twitterdipity post was well received. I'm just happy that, in the end, I done sound smart-like. It's important to me that my work with interactive storytelling, entrepreneurial authorship and alternative content publishing be shared with as many media-lovin' experimenters as possible. And it's happening! My career has become worthy of academic consideration!

Last week I found out that the Writing Arts department at Rowan University has an Internet and writing studies class called Composing Spaces. In the course description for this class I'm linked to as an author "choosing to circumvent traditional publishing processes and institutions" along with NIN and the author of The Sandman, Ray Connolly. (Click on the word "burgeoning" cause that's me, yo.)

And, remember my gushing about skyping into Lance Strate's Intro to Communications and Media class at Fordham University last month? It just keeps getting better! That appearance went so well that I've been asked to participate in a symposium sponsored by the Institute of General Semantics (fancy!) and the Media Ecology Association (hurray!). The theme is New Languages, New Relations, New Realities and is next month, in New York, a place I've never been before. I'm looking forward to meeting some of the names on the books I study and the MEA posts I read. I'll reveal more about my role at the symposium as the time for departure draws nearer…but rest assured, it's SO GONNA ROCK!

And before I jet-set to NYC (to no doubt find myself in heated discussions about the future of storytelling) I'll be leading a session at WordCamp Portland, which runs Sept 18-19. My session is on Sunday afternoon and is called Using the Apture Plugin to Tell Interactive Stories. I'll be discussing how to configure multi-panel hyperactive links and media embeds with Apture, like the one you see in The Miracle in July, in WordPress. I'll also cover best practices, hyperlink aesthetics, and the effective use of media as storytelling device.

Now, there is one thing that I have been working on for months, and at an agonizingly slow pace: the Epilogue. This is that last piece of MIJ I've yet to published, that final curtain on the first draft of my storytelling experiment. Everyday I work on it, shaping the narrative and killing my darlings, and everyday I'm closer to being able to let it go. But after a period of trying to rush this final and very important segment through, I've realized that it is best for my creative peace of mind to let the work sort itself over time. Until it feels complete the Epilogue will go unpublished. But trust me…it'll be sooooo worth the wait.

In the meantime, in case you missed it, I made apple pie last weekend. I announced I'd be baking this pie in a status update to Twitter and Facebook:

This statement attracted Facebook comments that inspired me to write a flash documentary of the pie-making as a social status story — a collection of short statements, in this case, six status updates. But, you know me. I need a challenge. So, my story plays on the seduction of the smell, taste and sight of making and baking a pie. Yes, I wrote food p0rn: You can see the text (and a photo of the resulting pie) via the link below:

"I bought apples. You know what that means…"

Yes, it's a gift. You're welcome