I talked about this with my daughter yesterday. She's currently working on her Masters in Marketing, and if I'm not quite ready to admit that she knows more about this stuff than I do, I *can* at least admit that her perspective is a lot more digital and up-to-date than mine is. She agreed with me that PodMatch will probably wind up being a waste of money, but she also pointed out that my bio wasn't working. Or, as she put it, "That's too long. No one's going to read all of that."
Fair point. I therefore updated it yesterday. It's no shorter, but I did try to at least get the Bottom Line Up Front.
About Danno Cabeza
I am an engineer, adventurer, swimmer, memoirist, and novelist.
As Editor and Managing Partner of As For Football LLC, I cover Army West Point Sports and American Conference Football at AsForFootball.Com. We had a breakout year last year that got us invited to Radio Row for the Army-Navy Game.
Besides that, I wrote a 5-star memoir about my collegiate swimming career and about growing up in a military household. My new book is called The Return of Dr. Necropolis. It's a crime fiction story with classic superhero elements that I'm hoping to release late this year.
Beyond that, I graduated from West Point with the Class of 1995. Swam at the Academy all four years, specializing in the 100 and 200 Butterfly. Won two individual Patriot League championships; my team won the League all four years. I still swim four times/week and lift weights twice/week. Even at 53, I remain better than you'd probably think in the water.
After graduation, I commissioned into the Army as an Armor Officer, served my five years, and then left the Army in September 2000. Since then, I've worked as an electrical engineer in New York City for more than 25 years.
I've always liked to write. I write about sports because I know and love sports. But the sports I watch aren't necessarily the sports play. Still, writing about college football, college lacrosse, and (occasionally) college baseball helps keep me connected to my alma mater and especially to its athletes. I've been blessed to find that other people like my work, and now it's become a whole thing.
When I'm not working, swimming, or doing AFF, I am an enthusiastic snowboarder, mostly in Vermont.
AFF also invited a sports betting expert onto Roundtable yesterday, and I finally sent my first real inquiry to someone else's podcast as well. It's a writer's podcast, so I sent the following pitch:
Lana,
I listened to several of your shows yesterday, and I particularly enjoyed your conversation with Darrell Berry about his military mystery set in the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" 1990s. I also served during that time, and though I'm not homosexual, I had a friend who got thrown out of West Point because she was. It was really sad. She stood at the top of her class.
I would like to come on your show to talk about my journey and how writing has become central to my life. I am a working electrical engineer, former competitive swimmer, enthusiastic weightlifter, and an avid snowboarder, and yet, I somehow write between 1000 and 2000 words pretty much every day. I sometimes ask myself, "Why do I do this?" But I really enjoy writing, obviously, and indeed, figuring out plot points and scene structure has become my favorite puzzle.
I am the Editor and Managing Partner for As For Football LLC, where I write and edit the work of my partners as we cover Army West Point Sports and American Conference football. During football season, we'll put out five or six articles every week! I've also written several books, including a graphic novel, a memoir about my family and my collegiate swimming career, and my newest (forthcoming) book, The Return of Dr. Necropolis. That's a crime fiction story with classic superhero elements set ten years after the government nationalizes all superheroes. The book's protagonist is a villain who spends most of his time regretting his mistakes even as he falls back into the same dysfunctional patterns that landed him in prison in the first place.
Lately, I've been working with AFF's other writers to try to use elements of scene structure in our sports previews. We try to cover sports from the fan's perspective and often take a statistical approach to talk about WHY things happen. To keep that from becoming dry, we have to invest it with both emotion and with what's at stake for the team. Thus scene structure -- here's what the team wants; here are the challenges; here is the disaster if they cannot overcome those challenges.
Honestly, sometimes this works too well. I've personally sent the Army fanbase into a frenzied panic several times, and that's actually bad.
Anyway. I think this would be an interesting show and potentially different from your usual line. AFF makes money primarily from sponsors and via Patreon, so we can talk about that as well if you'd like.
Thank you very much for your time.
Sincerely,
Dan
(I write under the pen name Danno E. Cabeza)
Honestly, friends, I still don't know that this whole PodMatch thing is going to work. However, we're trying it, and I'm trying to give it an honest go.
Here's hoping.
No comments:
Post a Comment