Sweet smell of success

Can you smell it? It's in the air. The smell of success.

A couple years ago, through the magic of a bunch of hard work coupled with a little bit of luck, I knocked one out of the park with the Nintendo Computer. That little machine got me published in magazines, interviewed on the radio and TV, and got me a free trip to San Francisco to meet some of the heavy hitters of the tech world, including Leo Laporte and Kevin Rose.

Anyway, so after all that madness, the page that I ran that hosted my project, junkmachine, became more of a pain that it was fun. I had to moderate forums, ban members, and face constant criticism about things I needed to be doing with the site. I couldn't log into my AIM anymore because I'd be attacked by a bunch of the users of the forums, or even just random "fans" would want to say hello. It was nice for a while I guess, but I'd made some mistakes with the site and the users that I couldn't reverse and didn't have the energy to deal with anymore. I decided to sell the site and pay off some credit card debt.

After selling the site, I still got a ton of email from people convinced I did the wrong thing. Most of them said I'd never have another successful project, and junkmachine was a strange fluke that would only happen once. I told them that a little luck was involved, but mostly it was hard work and I was convinced I'd do it again someday. And do it better than I'd done before.

There's been failures along the way, sure. But I think it's pretty undeniable that Wolfie and I have hit another one right outta the park with Horror Junk. We're still definitely in the "slow start" phase, where there's a lot of work and very little payoff. But the tide is turning, things are clicking into place, and it's just a matter of time until we get the big payoff.

Or, I guess you could say we've already gotten the big payoff. We've already gotten to meet celebrities and talk to them on camera, and hung out with a movie director and actor all night drinking beers. We got to make an appearance in a low budget horror flick about vampires in a sorority. We've been sent a bunch of free movies and gotten a small amount of fan mail. And last night, we did our first interview for a magazine.

Did I mention that junkmachine's wild success started after my site appeared in a tiny little blurb in a video game magazine? Is history repeating itself? I hope so....