Channeling My Inner Dominatrix

I was recently a guest on Dana Pharant's Inner Dominatrix podcast.

Episode 77 is entitled "Transition Time Can Be Fun" and in it we talk about the recent changes in my life and how I am taking the time to enjoy the moment rather than panic about what is about to come next.

It's funny, this is the first time that I haven't had steady work (via an actual job where I'm required to be somewhere almost every day) since 1992. And, instead of being nervous or anxious about it, I'm relaxed and soaking in the moment as much as I can.

Dana was helpful by asking me questions that assisted me with finding that place to be as well as recognizing some of the elements I was barely aware of as I was living in that moment.

So Long And Thanks For All The Books

A few weeks ago I did something I didn't think I would ever do.

I said goodbye to a job that I not only loved, but that I felt was the absolute perfect role for me.

It wasn't easy.

Starting in October of 2011 I had the role of Director of Self-Publishing and Author Relations for Rakuten Kobo, Inc. It truly did feel like a role that was custom built for me. And not just for the fact that, before I even applied for the job, I met with Kobo's current CEO, Michael Tamblyn to discuss the idea he had of forging a new element of Kobo's business, a platform or tool that made it easier for self-published authors and smaller publishers to publish direct to Kobo's catalog.

I still remember, with a brisk and fresh fondness, how it sounded as if the job Michael was describing was custom made for me.

In some ways I still think it was, because the experience, the ride, of being a part of Kobo and being at the forefront of building Kobo Writing Life, which wasn't just a free publishing platform at www.kobo.com/writinglife, but it was an entire movement and spirit, as encapsulated at www.kobowritinglife.com that gave writers and publishers a place where the craft and business of writing were explored, celebrated and shared openly and freely.

In the six years that I was at Kobo and in the five full years of KWL's operation (it was launched in July of 2012), Kobo Writing Life went on to represent 1 in every 5 books sold at Kobo globally, and 1 in every 4 books sold in the major English language territories.

KWL was a huge success and I had hired the absolute best people to work with me on making it that success. What more could a guy ask for? But I suppose what made saying goodbye really hard was saying it to my amazing colleagues and to the thousands of authors that I was privileged to work with over the year.

Just prior to the public announcement on the KWL Blog ("Thank you, Mark" - Nov 2, 2017), I quickly composed a letter that went to as many of the authors whose emails were easily accessible by a quick-fill in my Outlook email.

The letter was entitled "So Long and Thanks for all the Books" - because, ultimately, KWL was successful because

Below is an excerpt from that email message I sent out:

It was, of course, not an easy decision to come to, because I’m sure most of you already know how much I adore Kobo and the fantastic people on the KWL Team that I have been very fortunate to work with. But, after having the privilege of building Kobo Writing Life, which launched in 2012, to working with the teams at Kobo and with authors around the globe to establish its place as a wonderful success story, and, of course, a world-class platform for publishing to Kobo, it is time for the next phase for both Kobo Writing Life as well as for me, personally. As many of you know, I have always loved my job at Kobo and have always loved interacting and engaging with authors – and I WILL miss that the most. Of course, I won’t be going far, as one of the things I plan on pursing is to double-down on my own writing, which has taken a back seat for the past 6 years. (Yes, I find all of you so inspiring, and the one thing that was perhaps lacking for me was the satisfaction of actually writing more)

And, of course, I couldn’t be leaving “my baby” Kobo Writing Life in better hands. And that is one of the things that gives me great comfort.

Christine Munroe, Senior Manager, Author Performance, will be overseeing the KWL team and I couldn’t be entrusting KWL into more capable hands. She is an experienced and forward thinking publishing professional that I am not only proud to get to work with but am excited to watch help take KWL to the next level of greatness. Many of you likely already know her, and I’m sure if you don’t yet, you’ll soon have that pleasure. 

Below is a quick snapshot of the current KWL team – (yes, I left myself in the picture just for the pleasure of getting to hang around with them for that much longer) -- so when you are emailing them you can get to love them the way that I do. They are an amazing group of people whose hard work, passion and commitment to excellence I have been the “front person” for. I am tremendously proud of this fine group of people who, like many of you, have felt like family.

And, if you don’t have their direct emails, that’s just fine. Please never hesitate to reach out to the KWL team at writinglife@kobo.com – They are an absolutely amazing team who are very responsive to your tickets. Chances are you’ll hear from Laura or Joni or, if your issue is related to Publishing Operations, from Tara and Stephanie. If the message needs to get to someone else on the team, the team works closely together to ensure the right person gets the right question. The average response time, during business hours is usually within 4 hours. They’re top notch, they are experts and they all truly care about authors having a good experience with Kobo.
 
I know that, I, for one, am looking forward to continuing to publish to Kobo via Kobo Writing Life and I have promised the team that I’ll not only be their biggest advocate, but that I will, of course, be an informal author QA person, always eager to offer suggestions about things that make an author’s life easier. That is, of course, the way that we originally built and have continued to maintain Kobo Writing Life. And it’s only going to be getting better thanks to this amazing team and feedback of authors like you.

Lastly, I want to thank you all for writing amazing books, for connecting with me over the years and for providing content for Kobo’s customers in 190 countries. In the same way that I’ll be watching Kobo’s and the KWL Team’s ongoing growth and success, I’ll be watching and cheering you on as well.

Thanks for all that you do. I’m sure I will see you around many of the old familiar places.

Yours in writing,

Mark Lefebvre
Director, Self-Publishing & Author Relations
Rakuten Kobo, Inc.
 

So it wasn't an easy email to write. And leaving Kobo was not an easy thing to do.

But I look back on a truly unique and amazing previous six years and I am appreciative for all that it brought to me and all that it continues to bring to me. Because the connections and friendships and benefit I have personally received from being a part of this amazing company and the incredibly extraordinary movement in the publishing world, have fulfilled me and made me rich in ways that I am still barely able to count.

I am appreciative, and honored and thankful.

So I suppose it might be appropriate, with my US friends in mind, to be thinking in that way during American Thanksgiving.

Okay, now back to some writing. After all, I have a NaNoWriMo novel to finish in less than 7 days (the sequel to A CANADIAN WEREWOLF IN NEW YORK entitled FEAR AND LONGING IN LOS ANGELES), and I also have a contract to co-author my next book for Dundurn (MACABRE MONTREAL). (Of course, there'll be more on both of those things shortly here on this blog which I have been ignoring too much in the past few years)

Love and hugs to you and yours!

[EDIT - If you've worked with me and are interested in sharing a brief "testimonial" on my character, how I've helped or supported you, feel free to make it official:  Show Mark Some Love!]

Ode On A Traveler Mug

So yesterday, in my rush to get my son to school and get onto my Hamilton to Toronto commute, I left my traveler coffee mug on the kitchen counter. I didn't notice it until I was already on the road, and completely forgot about it until the end of a long day where it greeted me when I arrived.

Not once did it question why I had created it and left it there alone.
Not once was it angry at my human-ness.

My coffee mug, like a devoted canine companion, was there waiting for me with imagined puppy-dog eyes to look up at me as I finally returned from a day started without it.

And for that reason, I write this poem.

ODE ON A TRAVELER MUG

You noble, elegant and quiet vessel
Of infinite wakefulness
In those silent morning hours

You beautiful purveyor of AM bliss
Of inspiration, of energy
And of ritualized addiction

You friend of humanity
In your comforting, warming ways
You carry forth the essential 'lifeblood'
And allow it to travel, to move through space and time
Ever warm, ever present, ever within reach

Earlier that morning I brewed a special blend of black crushed beans
And poured it inside you with all the greatest intent
Of bringing you, and the treasure you carried inside you
With me on that day's quest into servitude

But, rushing, oblivious
Perhaps because of the fact I hadn't yet savoured
Even a single ounce of the fruit that you bore

I departed on my journey alone
I departed on my journey without you
And had all but forgot the grand designs
I held in my heart and mind for you

Finally, twelve hours hence
I returned home
Only to be greeted by your presence

Standing, patiently, lovingly, like a stoic sentinel
Like a beloved, cherished and faithful canine companion
Greeting me from where I left you alone and quietly waiting for me
On my morning breakfast counter

Powerful Poem

I was doing some work tonight, subtly bemoaning the fact that I had to work yet another late night to try to stay on track with all the busy things going on at my bookstore. The task required waiting several minutes while files uploaded to the server, which is the perfect kind of task for me to play catch up on my RSS feeds.

Then, scanning a blog post from Seth Godin, which pointed to this video, blew my mind.

This video features the lovely and amazing performance poet Gabrielle Bouliane performing for the audience at the Austin Poetry Slam.

This would be her last public performance.

Gabrielle was diagnosed with Stage Four Cancer shortly before this video was filmed. She fought hard, but her fight ended January 29, 2010. She was surrounded by family and friends, and her passing was in a very quiet, peaceful room full of love and affection.



I love her powerful, frank and moving words.

And I'm appreciate that I have a job I love so much that I find myself working past midnight just to catch up. How damn lucky I am to be blessed with such a fun and challenging job that I get to go to each day, and to also have such a wonderful and supportive family to return home to each night.

It will be 3 years ago tomorrow that my mother in law finally lost a long and painful fight against cancer and the side-effect the treatment (which allowed her to beat her cancer) had on her heart, which eventually weakened beyond repair. Like so many other people in my life, she was taken away from us at too young an age.

Dianne, like Gabrielle, was brave and embraced life with passion.

So, while I'm plucking away at this work, I'm also thinking about all those wonderful people who have made my life better just by being in it -- and again, think about how lucky a bastard I am.

Thanks, Gabrielle, for helping me keep it all in perspective.

Staying Within The Lines

For the longest time, I always thought a notepad of blank sheets was always something that allowed more creative expression and freedom than a colouring book. (Or "coloring book" for readers from the US)

At first glance, the blank sheet of paper, a "tabula rasa" environment where you could virtually go anywhere seems a much better opportunity than a colouring book which simply offers you the ability to chose whatever colours you want so long as you stay within the lines. A colouring book seems, relatively speaking, a boring task where you have a black and white line sketch of a picture and your task is to add colour to it.

Given the choice, I usually preferred the blank sheet where I could make up whatever drawing I wanted rather than work within the framework of a sketch in a colouring book.

But situations in life aren't always like that. You often don't get to choose between the completely wide open option and the "restrictive" one.

Lately, spending time with my son, who enjoys when Mom and Dad join in on colouring with him (particularly the massive two feet by two feet colouring workbooks he has which offer lots of room for three people to be simultaneously working on the same page), I'm learning a whole new appreciation for the creative expression allowed within the "rules" of the colouring book.

Assuming you still "stay within the lines" there's still almost endless variations on the way you can fill in the colouring book.

The first obvious one is that you don't have to pick colours from reality. The grass doesn't need to be green, the sky doesn't need to be blue. You can pick whatever colours you want. You most often see this during seasonal "colouring" contests that different retailers hold where, posted near the checkout area, you see the results of 50 or more different versions of the same picture done by 50 different children. That, to me, is a wake-up call illustrating just how creative one can be while working within this "confined" workspace.

Second, you don't need to fill in every single "blank" spot -- you can choose which ones to leave the background colour of the paper. And along those lines, you don't need to actually shade in every single area in the same manner. Some can be filled in solid, some might only be outlined, some might be filled in using a pattern of sorts.

Third, you always have the option of adding to the drawing itself or breaking any area to colour in into smaller areas. There's no rule that says one area has to be all the same colour. You can fill it in however you choose, add whatever other elements you wish to the picture.

Four -- you have many options for what to use to colour the picture with. You can make it a black and white picture using a plain pencil and different styles of shading. You can use crayons, pencil crayons, markers, pens, or whatever device that transfers onto paper that you choose for your picture, or whatever combination you decide to use.

The list goes on -- and it comes from whatever comes to your mind when working on the task.

Try it yourself. Get out a colouring book and start just playing around. See what sort of ideas come to mind while you work on it. You might just surprise yourself.

Then, whenever you're faced with a task that, at first, doesn't seem to allow any sort of creative spirit or flexibility, remind yourself of this colouring exercise I'm suggesting and see what creative ways you can complete the task. IE, get to the result of filling it in while staying within the lines, but in a way that allow you to be creative and try something new.

In many ways, for me, I end up being more creative when trying to flex creative freedom within the "confines" of a space like that. Or, at least, I derive satisfaction from having completed the task which at first seems low on the creative expression spectrum, but in fact contains plenty of opportunities for me to do it my way.

Da Count - Playing Games Is Fun

Okay, perhaps I've counted this before, but it's so important to me that it bears repeating.

I love my job. I love working. I think work is fun and I'm delighted to be fortunate enough to have the job and the career that I do.

This week that's what I'm counting.

I mean, I spend MOST of my time, most of my life working, I should take the time to regularly count the fact that I'm so lucky to enjoy it so much.

And I'm always delighted to learn that I'm not the only one.

And so rather than use my own words, this time I'll use the words of Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, authors of the new book TRUST AGENTS - Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust.

I first discovered Chris and Julien in Mitch Joel's Media Hacks or Six Pixels of Separation podcast -- always insightful, always entertaining. Then I heard them speaking about their forthcoming book on the Book Expo America podcast. That made me want to read this book as soon as it came out. I started it this week.

"Playing Games Is Fun. Okay, business is business and work is work. But truly, if you don't accept this detail, that games are meant to be fun, you're probably reading the wrong book. Try Jim Collins's Good to Great instead. Excellent book. The rest of us, let's agree that if we can figure out a way that work can be fun, it just goes better for everyone involved. In learning how to be trust agents, we spend most of our time looking for ways to do business and make it fun. Why? Well, why would you want to do the opposite? That doesn't mean we don't like hard work. We love hard work. But finding a way to make it fun? That's the gold."
- From page 46 of TRUST AGENTS by Chris Brogan & Julien Smith

I couldn't have said it better myself. Okay, I like to believe that I could say it better, particularly since this is something I regularly say.

But dammit, these guys said it really well, don't you think?

And The Fulfillment Will Follow

About a month ago, I was reading Seth Godin's Tribes, an interesting collection of brief essays centered around the concept of groups of people connected to one another via a leader and an idea. Godin explores the idea of the various manners in which tribes have come to exist over time as well as the way that technology has removed physical and geographic barriers towards the creation of new types of tribes and new types of leaders.

It's a good book, but the thing that sticks out most in my mind, even now, is a brief, somewhat tangent scene in which Godin describes being on vacation in some tropical paradise and waking up in the early morning hours unable to sleep. So he heads down to the hotel lobby to catch up on some email. A couple just getting back from the bars, stroll through the lobby and one of them shakes their head at him in a "tsk tsk" manner and comments it's too bad that some poor slobs can't escape work for a mere 2 weeks.

Godin didn't respond to the barb but rather shook his head and felt sorry for those people who likely spend 50 weeks a year focusing all their energy and thought on those 2 weeks when they can escape from work.

I know how he feels. And sometimes I question myself for doing odd things like putting in well over 40 hours per week, checking work-related email when on vacation or taking calls from work or from colleagues when I'm supposed to be "away" and on vacation.

But I don't do it because my boss pressures me to work overtime.

I don't do it because my job is so demanding that I have to be there all the time.

I don't do it for any other reason than I actually honestly LIKE what I'm doing and it doesn't really feel like work.

And if I didn't like what I was doing, I wouldn't spend those 50 odd weeks a year, or over between 80 to 90% of my waking hours, doing it.

I actually fail to understand how ANYBODY puts themself through that type of hell where 50 weeks of the year are so unbearable and stress-ladden that all your energy, time and thought is channeled into those 2 or 4 or 6 if you're really lucky, weeks AWAY from your "day job." As if that time away from what you spend most of your life doing could every possible claim back all that other wasted time.

I'm sure I could be making much better money doing a slew of other things or having pursued another career -- but at the end of the day, the money wouldn't make me happy if I weren't doing something I could be truly passionate about and believe in.

I've long been a believer in doing what you love. Most people might be tempted to add "and the money will follow" to that, but to me it's not about money. Sure, you need enough money to provide food, shelter and clothing -- but beyond having enough to support those needs, is it actually money that makes people happy? I sincerely doubt it. Sure, there are people in million dollar homes living within 5 minutes of my modest home -- folks who don't have to worry about buying an expensive lunch rather than the brown-bagging that I'm doing, or who drive an expensive sports car around while I get around in my hand-me-down 12 year old pick-up truck, or who fly somewhere far away to spend a week or two in some tropical paradise while I take day trips to a local beach or to visit family. But are they actually happier and more fulfilled than me?

I sincerely doubt it.

They might have money streaming from their pores, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are any happier. I measure wealth in a different way -- being surrounded by people who bring meaning and fulfillment to your life, being surrounded by tasks and challenges that also bring meaning and fulfillment to your life. That's wealth to me. All around wealth.

And I'm wealthy beyond my wildest dreams.

I'm very lucky to have the people in my life that I have -- the friends, the family, the relationships I have cultivated over the years. I'm also very lucky that I have pursued a career that is satifying. While I've never been rich in terms of income, I've long been extremely wealthy in terms of satisfaction and the people whom I interact with on a daily basis in both my personal and my work life.

So when I'm on vacation and still thinking about work-related items and doing little things here and there related to the "day job" that helps me pay the bills, I'm not a slave to them -- I'm merely chosing to spend my time that way because it's pleasurable to me.

To me, a vacation is NOT about abandoning work and getting away from it all -- to me, a vacation is about spending more time with my family and friends and doing things with them that are fun and pleasurable and perhaps a little less scripted than the things that occur in the "9 to 5" hours of the day. The fact that what I do in my day job is fun and pleasurable means I don't have this burning need to get away from work in order to have fun. I have fun every single day. A vacation, to me, then, is just a different kind of fun, typically in a different setting or environment than where I normally spend my time.

And dammit, I'm one lucky SOB to be able to be having fun all 52 weeks of the year, regardless of whether I'm at work or on vacation.

I often feel like I've won the lottery.

Perhaps I have.

Only this isn't the type of lottery where you buy a ticket and hope to be the single winner. It's a lottery where anyone who wants to put a little effort into it can be a winner. It's a lottery where EVERYONE can win, every single day of the year.