mj Hangge
Blog that contains social media suggestions, literature discussion, and fascinating world ideas.
19 January 2014
Shreds of Humanity - Sample Chapter
Prologue
I was sane once.
Sane?
Sane seems like such a clean and tidy word, wrapping my whole mind and body in a thick blanket of normalcy which no longer seems possible.
But I was normal once, just as I was once sane. That sanity was gone now, though. As gone as my wife and child. As gone as everything normal.
That word kept ringing in the emptiness of my skull. Sane. Was I sane? It was a fair question, but it stirred an even deeper question. If I wasn’t sane, what was I?
Crazy?
That word was even tidier than the other choice, but just as incorrect. If I was crazy, would I know that I’d driven my mental bus past the right exit? If I was crazy, would I feel the loss of my sanity just as I felt the loss of my family?
No, I wasn’t crazy any more than I was sane. My brain bus was just stuck in neutral, unable to shift into drive or reverse—forever stuck on the psychological highway without the ability to simply unbuckle and step away from the bony cage that surrounded it.
These wandering thoughts and images were all that was left to my mind now. They were the wisps of imaginary smoke trailing from the ethereal crack pipe of reality and, no matter how hard I swatted for those hazy tendrils, they simply evaded my mind and left me grasping at the nothingness before me.
Nothingness. That was a better word for what I was left with—the emptiness of my soul as it lay trapped between sanity and insanity. Everything that I once knew and loved was gone now—my child, wife, job, apartment, life, mind—all gone like a screwdriver in the junk drawer.
But that left only me in this great mental wasteland; unable to form complete and rational thoughts, yet just as unable to completely bend to the comforting quilt of insanity.
12 January 2014
Sample Chapter - Penalty of Pride
12.17.11
North of Hwanghae , North Korea
“You are unfit to lead!”
The two men stared at each other across the dim room as it rocked with the motion of the train. Despite the poor quality of the tracks it sped across, the weight of the heavily armored car leveled out many of the bumps and smoothed the worst of the uneven waves.
“According to who, Father?” Kim Jong-nam had never spoken to his father like this before and he knew that his tone wouldn’t be tolerated much longer. His father had already allowed his insolence much longer than most older Korean men would have. “I’m unfit according to you? That’s a joke with no punch line.”
“Your point?” The Supreme Leader of North Korea's face was flushed as red as the expensive cognac stirring gently in the equally expensive lead-crystal decanters.
Jong-nam could feel his temper boiling over. He wanted to scream out his point, but knew it wouldn’t help—he had tried that tactic before and had quickly been reminded of his place. Letting his voice drop, Jong-nam hoped that he could take back some control and convince his father that it wasn’t about who led their country next but how they led it. “You are right, Dear Father. I am not fit to lead our country, but…”
“My country!” Jong-il nearly screamed out the words as he massaged his jaw and stared angrily through his eldest son. Jong-il’s oversized glasses sat slightly askew across his face and his tall hair seemed to tilt even further to one side.
Jong-nam was accustomed to the outburst and barely even took notice of it as he continued on. “But Jong-un must know that peace with our southern cousins is preferred. You must make him know that.”
“Peace?” Jong-il’s voice was low and raspy, barely hiding the anger that the man was obviously feeling. “Peace is not preferred! Peace willnever be preferred. There will never be a peaceful solution because they will not allow peace.”
“But they will!” Jong-nam could taste the bitter flavor of pleading on his tongue as he tried to explain the unexplainable to the man who had no desire to hear it. “The youth in the south want peace and reunification even more than we do.”
“You are a fool, my son.” The Dear Leader arched his back uncomfortably before staring through Jong-nam again. “You are a fool to think that peace and reunification are two independent thoughts which can be combined together using a single word other than ‘or’. There is no such thing as ‘peace and reunification’ nor will there ever be a ‘peaceful reunification’. The terms are mutually separate because there can only be peace or reunification.”
“Why, Father?” Jong-nam searched his father’s eyes for some sense of reason, some hidden desire for the redemption of his soul. But there was none. There had never been any. His father, the Dear Leader of the most dismal nation in the world, had only ever seen reason in his own logic and had never felt that he had done anything that might need redeeming.
The train continued its rattling course south as the two men sat silently, both lost in their own thoughts. The interior of the heavily reinforced train was a tribute to another generation—a generation that was long dead to the rest of the world. Just like everything else surrounding them, Jong-nam had to remind himself. This train was the perfect symbol of their dying country, with its thick armored walls that kept the new world out and strangled the old world within. Outside the train, Jong-nam knew their country was dying, but inside there was no evidence that North Korea wasn’t among the richest in the world. The single room filled most of the railroad car, with only two small compartments separated for sleeping and bathroom necessities. With its bright, but simple, carpet and antiquated walnut paneling, the two Kim’s could have been stuck in some upbeat 1950’s Jack Lemmon film retouched in Technicolor to ignore the poverty and starvation just outside.
“The world has moved on. Do you know that?” Jong-nam finally split the dark silence. “It has moved on without you. Nobody wants to play war with you any longer. Not because they have no reason to, but because the world has lost the taste for it. The world would gratefully welcome a united Choson back into it and may even be willing to leave you in command of it. The world would do it just so that your people might have a future. Our southern cousins would destroy their own economy to bolster ours. The Americans would pull their troops and leave us to our own business. The entire world, with their economies already in shambles, would grant you a new status as the ‘hero who opened closed doors’ and collect their spare change to feed our hungry and clothe our cold. They would do all of that if you would only demolish this nepocracy and allow your people to join the world.”
There was no answer as the two men stared into the silence of their own private worlds.
Jong-nam continued. “The world does not look at you in fear any longer. They laugh right before you and acknowledge you only with bored contempt and jaded hatred. Do you know that?”
Still no answer.
“Your name is laughable in any country other than your own. The world has seen inside the dark cell you’ve trapped your people in. They see what you’ve done and they despise you for it.” Jong-nam pushed on, knowing that each of his contemptuous words might be his last, but the time for mincing words had passed long before and he was tired of living a life not entirely his own. Looking at his father, he saw the pain so evident in the old man’s round face. “You’ve destroyed your own country and condemned your countrymen to a fate worse than death.”
When there was no response to his overtly traitorous words, Jong-nam looked closer. Even in the semi-darkness of the pulled drapes, Jong-nam could finally see that his father wasn’t in the emotional pain he’d first believed. The man’s face was barely recognizable any longer. Flushed and taut, Kim Jong-il’s round face was a brilliant mixture of cherries and grays. One hand was clutching at his thin left arm while the other was desperately clinging to the polished wooden arm of his chair.
“Father?” Jong-nam reached out in horror. But, even in the midst of such great pain, there was a hatred burning deeply in his father’s eyes. It was a damning look of both shame and anger that Jong-nam had become so accustomed to. “No. You do not deserve my pity.”
Labels:
characters,
Kim Jung-un,
kindle,
Korea,
military,
North Korea,
novel,
thriller,
war
North Korea living in a fictional land?
The latest behaviors of North Korea’s leader, Kim Jung-un,
sound like tales of fiction. It seems so
far-fetched the stories are hard to believe.
Who in their right mind would feed their relatives to a pack of starving
dogs? We may think about it on occasion,
but actually stripping them naked and throwing your uncle gladiator-style
unarmed isn’t something you’d actually follow through with. Even more, the chubby young despot added to
his dog and pony show by bringing in the cross-dressing Dennis Rodman to play
basketball and serenade him for his birthday.
I think Rodman might want to stick with basketball, since his singing
voice left a lot to be desired. It
ranked up there with Rosanne Barr singing the national anthem. So what’s next? Rumor has it that Jong-un’s aunt has gone
missing and there was ‘talk’ that his uncle had slept with his wife. This is better written than any soap opera—As
the North Turns!
05 January 2014
Testing the Social Media Marketing Waters
So
last week I went on an allegorical dissertation of how to become a Social Media
Marketing Master (say that three times fast!), but this week I’ll add some meaty
chum to the water. I won’t recap the discussion,
as I’d rather you suffer through my words one post at a time, so I’ll just
assume you’ve read it and swim on…
Step
one is simply to get in the water of the internet. That’s a simple task for most anybody under
the age of 16, but those of us who can remember getting out of the chair to
turn the TV channel (of which there were only *gasp* 13) might find it a little
more painful and frightening. I won’t
waste anybody’s time on the basics of the internet, but I think its use for
marketing is worth discussing at length.
Are
you ready? Did you inflate your swim
vest, don your arm bands, and pull down your goggles? I sure hope so, because the water is cold and
dark at first.
Swimming
the Social Media Marketplace (let’s call it the ‘SMM’ so I don’t get cramps and
drown myself) is more than just listening to that old internet dial-up tone and
surfing for naked pictures of mjHangge (please don’t because even I don’t want
to see myself naked). To become an SMM
Jedi, you’ll need to learn where to advertise yourself, how to advertise you,
and how to avoid those embarrassing SMM faux pas. In her great book, 30-Minute Social Media Marketing, Susan Gunelius speaks of her
‘four Cs’ of social media participation.
Content creation, Content sharing, Connections, and Community
building. While you’re still teasing the
SMM waters with scared toes, I would suggest that you start with building
Connections and Community. Creating
content and sharing that content is your ultimate goal, but if you think
twitter is the tremulous call of a bird then I would suggest you begin by
merely observing content rather than creating it.
Let’s
start by talking about the WHEREs. There
are thousands, probably even millions, of online places to build community
connections. From social networking
sites like Facebook and Twitter to forums on anything from the dietary rituals
of earthworms to the sexiest Porsches, you can launch your SMM swim training by
simply lurking around and seeing how people interact with each other.
My
suggestion is to begin by simply signing up for a personal Facebook page. You are likely to invite only your friends
into that personal FB page, which will allow you to swim in warm waters without
fear of sharks. Your friends will give
you the leniency to make a few gaffes without letting you drown and may become
your most strident swim coaches as you break out from the safety lines
surrounding your swimming hole. The
beauty of beginning with FB is that you aren’t expected to bring any snacks to
the picnic, your friends will interact with or without you. My only caution is that you must be wary of
what lessons you learn from your friends there—some things said in the
‘privacy’ of FB would be damaging or deadly in less ‘intimate’ areas of the
internet.
This
is also a good time to point out that ANYTHING YOU PUT ON THE INTERNET WILL BE THERE UNTIL LONG AFTER YOU ARE
DEAD. I hate to yell like that, but it’s
something that people don’t seem to realize and is something you must learn
early and often. Don’t say anything
online that you wouldn’t want your grandkids to read and, for God’s sake, don’t
post pictures you wouldn’t want your mom to see…
Okay,
rant complete, back to the swimming lessons.
I would suggest that you begin with Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn,
and Forums in your specific field. I
wouldn’t suggest doing much more than signing up for accounts and wading around
a bit until you’ve spent some time learning the etiquette of each site. Also, don’t sign up for too many at once,
you’re simply trying to acclimate to the SMM not trying to master the butterfly
stroke yet. Simply spend the time
watching others who are trying to sell themselves just as you are. Write down what makes you want to read a
certain author or follow a politician.
Don’t worry about how to sell yourself yet, your time will soon come. Just watch and learn. In the first few days of owning a Twitter
account, you’ll see some great SMM role models to emulate like Kim Garst
(@kimgarst), Jonathan Gunson (@JonathanGunson), or the amazing Guy Kawasaki
(@GuyKawasaki) who has nearly 1.4 million followers. Listen to them, watch what they do, learn how
to sell like they do. At the same time,
watch for the mistakes. There is a
fellow author who I’ve read and enjoyed, but have chosen to unfollow because of
his Twitter behavior. His first (and
most glaring) mistake is that he tweets a dozen times an hour about how great
his books are—he quotes from them, posts reviews, lauds excessively upon his
own work. Don’t get me wrong, he is a talented writer and he does deserve praise for his
accomplishments, but let others say how great they think he is or, at the
minimum, don’t post about it constantly.
You want to build connections with people, not hear their ad nauseam
thoughts on themselves. I would love to
hear more about his dogs and cars with a sprinkled sales pitch to get the
uninitiated to take a quick nibble of his works. From my limited online exposure to this
writer, I can honestly say that I’d have never bought his books if I’d met him
on Twitter instead of at the bookstore.
Think about that as you start to move into step two—if you don’t learn
the basics of the SMM then you will be lost in it and you will miss one of the
greatest sales opportunities ever.
See,
step one was simple. If you’re still
floating above water (and I haven’t put you to sleep yet), then you’ve already
learned the basics of social media marketing.
Take the time to struggle through each step as you reach them and soon
you’ll be on the OSMMST (Olympic Social Media Marketplace Swim Team).
Next
week I’ll begin talking about how to use each of the most influential sites to
your best advantage. Until then, have
fun surfing and watch out for the sharks.
MjH
Any other social media studs/studettes you can
recommend? Send me their names and I’ll
add them to the list! MjH
HOMEWORK
- Open a personal Facebook account
- Open a Twitter account
- Read and pay attention to others' tweets and posts
- Follow some SMM role-models such as @kimgarst, @JonathanGunson, @GuyKawasaki, and @Susangunelius
- Follow me @mjhangge_author and post how great you think I am. (Okay, so maybe that's a stretch, but I'd sure love to hear from you.)
RESOURCES
- Learning to Swim in the Social Media Marketing Waters by mjHangge - next week's blog post on mjHangge.net
- 30-Minute Social Media Marketing by Susan Gunelius
- Social Marketology by Ric Dragon
DEFINITIONS
- Facebook defines itself as 'a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them'.
- Google+ 'aims to make sharing on the web more like sharing in real life. Check out Circles, Events and Hangouts, just a few of the things we've [Google+] been working on.
- LinkedIn helps '(m)anage your professional identity. Build and engage with your professional network. Access knowledge insights and opportunities'.
- SMM - Social Media Marketplace - Simply my acronym to keep you awake today
- Twitter is a '(s)ocial networking and micro blogging service utilizing instant messaging, SMS or a web interface'.
02 January 2014
mj Hangge: Swimming the Dreaded Social Media Channel
mj Hangge: Swimming the Dreaded Social Media Channel: Swimming the Dreaded Social Media Channel I’m not sure if it’s because I’m too old (read ‘outdated’) to be a social media butterfly o...
31 December 2013
Swimming the Dreaded Social Media Channel
Swimming the Dreaded Social Media Channel
I’m
not sure if it’s because I’m too old (read ‘outdated’) to be a social media
butterfly or if it’s my anti-social personality disorders, but the thought of a
Social Media Blitz terrifies me. So when my marketing consultant advised me to
‘develop a social media footprint’, my first thought was that she was trying to
be funny. She wasn’t.
My
next hope was that she’d do it for me.
She wouldn’t.
I
argued that I want to be an author not a socialite. She said that I would make a very fine
author, albeit a poor and unread one.
Then she sent me her bill.
I
tried to ignore her advice—more out of obstinacy than disagreement. She was right. I knew she was, but that didn’t mean I wanted
to follow her advice. It took me a full
week to pick up my feet and dial her up again.
She didn’t bother apologizing for me being wrong and I never rubbed it
in that she was right. She just told me
that the social media marketplace is my penance for getting to use a high-tech
laptop instead of my old Underwood typewriter and an hour later my legs were already
quivering as I was sweating like Shaun T at the 24th minute.
At
first, I’d thought it was the socializing aspect that scared me. It wasn’t, though. The thing about social media marketing that
truly terrified me was how vast and mysterious it seemed. I felt like Matthew Webb sitting on the
Admiralty Pier, looking out across the English Channel and wondering if he
would soon be eating Encornets farcis
in Paris or if the cuttlefish would be nibbling at his drowning body halfway
across. It’s the pure enormity of the
task that is so daunting, but if ol’ Cap’n Webb could brave the swim then I
could face a few Tweeterers because, as Webb’s inscription reads, “Nothing
Great is Easy”.
So
how do you face that dreaded social media market if you’re scared of social
media? Same way you swim the English Channel
if you don’t know how to float.
Step
1. Get in the water—They say the hardest
stroke is the first. Before you can swim
39 miles across rough water, you’ve got to be in the water. Before you can sell 50,000 books online, you have
to commit yourself to learning how to use social media. You’ve got to set your fears aside and jump
in. There are so many terms and sites
that it seems easier to risk the English Channel at first. Flamers and trolls lurk everywhere. Unwritten and often baffling social
etiquettes change with the weather of the day.
At first glimpse, the social media marketplace can be just as daunting
to a newcomer as the wide ocean to a non-swimmer. Even to those pre-disposed to the strange
world of social media, its use for marketing can still be scary. But nobody goes from drowning to the Olympic
Swim Team in one day and nobody should expect to become marketing savvy in only
one weekend. Take some time, read books,
browse blogs, see what interests you, take small strokes, and keep your nose
above the waterline.
Step
2. Learn to swim—You’re finally in the
water, but you’re only wading in the shallow end right now. Everybody knows the big money is in the deep
end, but you can’t just pull up your knickers and dive deeper. It takes time. It takes a plan. It takes coaching and lessons and practice
and, most of all, patience. Are there people
who get on the net one day and get rich the next? Sure, but there’s also people who buy one
lottery ticket and hit the big jackpot.
Do you think you’ll be ‘that guy’?
Maybe you will be and, if you are, I commend you on your luck and wish
you the best. But, for the rest of us,
we’ll have to put in the hours and learn how to make our name/money the old-fashioned
way. There is a step-by-step plan to
swimming the English Channel (look it up if you need a new goal or a long nap)
and so it should be with your marketing plan as well. Write out your plan. Get it on paper. Start big—your goals. Tighten it up a bit—how you’re going to get
there. Then focus right at the hands
which will do the work and accomplish your goals—write out a description of you,
your company, and your products. Nobody
knows you better than you. Choose which
social media platforms will work best for you and then begin learning how to
use them first.
Step
3. Implement your plan—Goals are just
dreams unless you work to achieve them. You
already know what your dream is and
you even know how to achieve it. So all you have to do now is just do it. Sound too simple? Well, it is that simple. There are thousands of books about how to
achieve your goals and I can summarize them all right now:
CHOOSE YOUR GOAL
LIST THE STEPS TO ACHIEVE YOUR GOAL
DO THE STEPS
Now
you owe me $14.98 for saving you a trip to the bookstore to buy a book that
says something you already know. What
those steps are and how to get through them is the more difficult part and each
company/product is so different that there is no ONE singular solution. Your goal or your vision of success is
different than anybody else’s, even if they’re selling the same product. The required steps to attain that success is
similarly different. So focus on you and
your goals rather than how somebody else achieved theirs.
Step
4. Monitor your success—No matter how
hard you swim against some currents, you’ll never make the other coast. You’ve got to see what is working and what
isn’t. If it’s working—improve it. If it isn’t—change it until it does
work. Sometimes you’ve got to tack from
starboard to port to get upwind and sometimes you’ve just got to come about. Whether you change your tactics or simply
abandon them, your efforts won’t be wasted as you continue to learn and improve
your social media marketing presence.
With each failure, you will gain more understanding of how to succeed
and, if you stay the course, you will eventually make land.
I’m
far from an expert on social media marketing at this moment, but I soon will
be. I might succeed or I might
fail. I might be eating croissants or I
might drown, but there is no ‘or’ in this statement—I WILL develop a social media footprint. I’m hoping that it’s a Sasquatch print and
not just a size 11W, but I’ll be happy just to be making imprints on the landscape.
Next
week’s blog assignment will be to give this week’s some bite. Please tune in to read last night’s
discussion when I asked my 17 y/o what the difference between a damned # and @ was. Despite my ignorance, I’ve already achieved
nearly ten percent of my SMM goals in a relatively short timeframe.
Just
imagine what I could do if I actually knew what I was doing… MjH
As we progress through the weeks, what do you think
I’m missing? If you’ve got questions or
concerns that I can help clarify, feel free to leave me a comment and I’ll do
my best to help. MjH
HOMEWORK
·
Decide whether
you want to pay for advertisement or do it yourself.
·
Determine what you want to do with your
company/product.
RESOURCES
·
Testing the Social Media Marketing Waters by mjHangge—next week’s blog post on mjHangge.net
·
30-Minute Social Media Marketing by Susan Gunelius
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)