Tick Tock and TikTok

One is time sensitive, the other is not

Yesterday’s vote wasn’t close. There was a lot of love for Iron Maiden, but overwhelmingly people voted for “I love gay people and carbs” as the shirt I will wear today for the book signing at Owl’s Nest in Calgary.

That’s the time sensitive tick tock portion of this post. Today, Saturday, I’m signing books at Owl’s Nest Books, which is located at 815 — 49 Ave SW. Again, in Calgary. I’ll be there from noon until 2.

As a reminder, Volume II of On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down hasn’t been in print since last April, and won’t be again for some time. I’m bringing in most of my leftover personal stock, a little over 20 copies, of the 7X10 casebound hardcover to sell. So if you missed out or desperately need a copy of V2, you gotta come to the store early.

You can also have signed copies of V1 shipped anywhere from Owl’s Nest. They’re the only place to buy signed copies of my book. Here is the link.

As for TikTok, I’m giving that a try again.

I have to admit I don’t really like mugging for the camera. It’s not my style. But still, I did it again by reading some fan mail from 11-year-old Sophie. It’s kinda funny. Here is that link.

But what I plan to do more of are videos like this one about how Douglas MacArthur was a shit general that I posted yesterday. It was my first one of this format, so it’s not that good because I’m a technological troglodyte and I need to spend more time on the platform and see what others are doing.

It’s too wordy, and I think the transitions are too tight in some places. My daughter said to make sure not to leave people waiting once they’re finished reading because “Nothing makes me bail on a TikTok faster than if I’ve finished reading and the slide is making me wait.” But I took that a little too much to heart. It’s hard to nail it with that much text.

And so for newer ones there will be less text on each slide. I might also try voiceovers instead of music. But you won’t be seeing my face much.

Anyway, the main page for my TikTok is “Sweary Historian” if you wanna follow. There is going to be stuff there that is unique to that platform, because, well, it’s video and video is different.

I appreciate you being here on Substack though. Speaking of, I got an email from Substack this morning that begins: “I have some exciting news to share: your Substack has been handpicked to feature in this week’s Substack Reads.”

So I got that going for me. It was my recent story “The Truth is Never Pure” that was featured. They even gave me this nice little badge.

So maybe you wanna become a paid subscriber now?

Or just buy my fucking book. That would be cool too.