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| A crate of Quetzalcoatl
Lite |
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by Holger Reichard, August 2004
translated by Sven Steinert |
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The first year www.tcboyle.de is
over. Taken the lead time it’s actually two years. In other
words: More than 1,500 hours creating webpages, writing mails,
making telephone calls, searching the net, reading books and
magazines and to typewrite them, translating - troublesomely
- English speaking texts, making plans and elaborate them, canvass
them, lead discussions, making interviews, travelling with trains
through Germany, visiting the book fair in Frankfurt and visiting
a reading Toms in Hannover. And all concerning www.tcboyle.de.
The question people asked me throughout the last year most often
is: Why are you doing all that, getting no money for all the
work at all.
I am giving always the same answer(s): First, because it is
a lot of fun to busy oneself with Boyles work, especially in
this intensive fashion. Second, because you are meeting so many
interesting people you would have never met otherwise; or would
have talked to you for that matter. And third, because such
a website and to work with it, gives you a lot of opportunity
to implement yourself and your ideas.
Now, after one, respectively two years www.tcboyle.de I want
to add a fourth reason: Because to work with such a website
is associated with a lot of wonderful moments. Many of you may
remind now our meeting with T.C. Boyle in Hannover and would say:
»Hey, that´s one of this moments.« True, that was beyond doubt
an outstanding experience. But there are a lot more moments
which, with hindsight, are much more valuable to me.
For example, as I arouse two hours earlier as normally in spring
2003, to read all of Boyles short stories. (On that time I still
had a backlog demand.) It was not until then when I really became
to know and to love Toms stories and I will never forget how
I´ve read King Bee or The Fog Man which now my
favourites, half past five in the morning, a big pot of coffee
and a snoring daughter beside me. For a chronically night-shift
worker like me a real reading adventure! Since then it became
an unsteady but essential ritual for me to wake up two hours
early and start into the day reading a good book.
Another example: on one of my daily wanderings through the Message
Board from www.tcboyle.com I came along a CD recommendation
from messagista Rob: Wicked Grin from John Hammond. »The
hole album is a killer«, as Rob put it. And as it goes: I ordered
the CD on the same day. Since then the CD - as myself is quite
music inspirational - had done a lot to put me in excellent
moods in my daily work. It is a miracle that she is still working,
thinking how many times she got scanned.
And, between a lot of other things, there is still this ominous
1st of August 2003, as Sven and Kathrin came along and stylized
an ordinary crate of beer to Quetzalcoatl Lite and started to
resume the future of www.tcboyle.de. Magnificent! Would someone
have told us that, one year later, we could count over 1000
page views a day as well as a contemplative community with app.
50 Message Board members and 85 newsletter recipients, I think
we would have been satisfied.
I tried to make a prediction at that time, that after a year,
we know in which direction the journey is going. Now that year
is over and in fact a lot turned out much more plain. Some categories
of our website like Drop City East or the TCB InfoMail (our newsletter) have become more outlined. Ideas like our short
story contest Being Boyle look like to develop quite
interesting. Our to-do-list is therefore still growing instead
the other way around.
We couldn’t even realize a large quantum our ideas because it
is so much to do and so little time. But it can’t surely be
wrong if our website and all aligned projects have time to thrive
and prosper - the probably most essential cognition after one
year www.tcboyle.de.
Where we are about to go, we still cannot say. Another example:
In an interview with the Braunschweiger Zeitung, a daily
newspaper, in October 2003 I uttered the hope that our pages
someday will be used as source of information and basis of communication
for journalists in Germany concerning T.C. Boyle. Partial it seems
to have worked. For there is not one day passing by where a
newspaper, a magazine or a broadcasting corporation is our guest.
Mind you, for a look on the website.
There is no feedback worth mentioning from this side but we
except some when the German language edition from The Inner
Circle is being published and Tom is back in the focus of
the German media once again. The time Drop City was being
published, our website widely was not known. That should have
changed, which we could see by a presentation from World's
End on the internet pages from the ZDF - a well known German
television channel. There they call www.tcboyle.de the first
contact point regarding T.C. Boyle in the German-speaking area.
Unimpressive and well hidden, but it is there:
www.zdf.de/ZDFde/inhalt/22/0,1872,2132886,00.html
It is hard to say whether or not we are getting more links of
this category and therefore more attention, so our motto from
the start is still up to date: In one year, we will be smarter.
So we could say - everything works out as excepted. Still, there
are few things which developed not (yet) as hoped for. For example:
the support. I assumed that, with a growing name reputition
our website, it will become more easy to get hold of informations
and review copies. It would be ideal if media, publisher, institutions
and artists would automatically think of www.tcboyle.de if there
are new stuff regarding T.C. Boyle. Sadly that's not the case.
Often I ask for facts four or five times and getting not a single
answer.
It is okay for me if information is copyrighted or cannot be
released for any other reason, no problems there. I accept a
»Sorry, no way!« without objections. But apparently this kind
of short message is already to much to ask for. As a matter
of course I am not talking about every editorial staff and press
agency for there are enough positive examples. But the cooperation
on this level is to improve.
What I am missing in the first place is the long sight. In our
epilogue stands: »Our website is as good as our visitors.« The
meaning is, the quality and affectivity of our site depends
a lot whether or not everybody who feels addressed (or should)
works together with us. Maybe for one or the other the whole
stage is not big enough, or to specific. In that case I will
reply to this that are mostly the small things which start the
big things. And there is still the saying from the constant
drop which can form stones.
What would be a nice summary for this little interim result
but it sounds a bit compunctious, like I am unhappy with the
development our site up to this point. But that is truly not
the case.
The motivation to work with www.tcboyle.de, to evolve, to realise
projects which go much further than the work on the site itself,
is still on high level. Just one thing changed. In the beginning,
one year ago, the acceptance from T.C. Boyle, Werner Richter and
Hanser Verlag has been the motivation to do what we have done.
Now it is the interest of the Boyle reader for our site.
- » I like to read your mails, because they are well written
and because you seem to associate your contacts to the TCB-World«,
reads a letter to us from Stuttgart.
- »Awe-inspiring made website in honour of the in every apartment-sharing
community most liked freak author«, with this statement links
www.literaturwelt.de to our website.
- Armin Abmeier, publisher of some great illustrated Boyle books
wrote: »A big praise for the website and it's amounts of links.«
- »great site«, »superb site which eases the regular searching
for Boyle informations«, »interesting site for Boyle aficionados«,
»clearly arranged and extreme informative«, »cool stuff« - compliments,
written in our guestbook.
- And George Gleg from Greece wrote recently in our Message
Board: www.tcboyle.de is a good reason to learn the German language.
Words like those of course go down like Oil, as we say, and
are enough motivation for me to keep on working on www.tcboyle.de
and to satisfy all the plaudit.
I hope I can count furthermore on my willing helpers, on Mauzi,
Doc, KoWananga, Kathrin, all the members of our community and
all the people who supported www.tcboyle.de the way they did.
Without them, our website would be nothing. Many thanks to all
and lets hope for another successfully Boyle-year. |
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| © 2004 www.tcboyle.de |
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