(Vic in Great Pharoah’s grave inside the Great Pyramid of Cheops at Giza, 1990. From the revamped website. Photo Socotra).

Gentle Readers,

This is a banner day at Socotra House LLC. I have exciting news- well, check that. I have news that is mildly interesting and slightly expensive and will probably, as all things seem these days, to amount to not much.

Still, I am pretty jazzed this morning. I was just over at my web site (www.vicsocotra.com) to check out the work in progress. It was time for a make-over.

(From the Dawn of the Socotra Era. The web page circa 2004. Photo Socotra).

The Daily Socotra has been a presence on the web for a long time. Renee, our relentless Webmistress, joined the team more than a decade ago, and has been dutifully posting the stories daily since then.

The site got a major facelift and new format back in 2011, but never matured to the status that I wanted, which was to make it a destination that was useful in checking in, and a portal to other places to explore. Also a hesitant gesture in the direction of monetizing the process.

This has been a labor of love for a long time, and there ought to be a way to commercialize content, right?

I am not exactly sure how that works- advertising? Heavens. There is a lot to think about on that score. But it seemed like a propitious time.

(Web designer and master mixologist Brett at his evening job. Photo Socotra).

I have been drinking for a few years courtesy of movie-star handsome bartender Brett, who has a day job as a web designer. Over the last few months we came around to a deal by which he would take the site in hand and transition it to a new fresh look, which I stipulated should have a PayPal button, so concerned readers could buy Vic lunch once in a while.

We went live with it last night. It is a work in progress, and I encourage you to take a visit if you have a chance.

I discovered, to my surprise, that I am using WordPress now, and if I take some time and learn how to operate it, the site will be interactive and much more fun than it has been.

I also am intending to package the four books I think I have basically completed and offer them as e-books- both on the site and through Amazon.

That is another matter that requires some thought. I don’t mind giving away The Daily for free- it is part of who I am. But maybe if they are packed in a professional and lineal manner as the larger stories they represent, I can at least recoup the costs incurred in layout.

The first projects include the “Spooks and Spirits” book about our pal Mac, the Adventures of Raven and Big Mama, the bittersweet saga about the decline and fall of my parents, the Clandestine Service Cook Book, of course, and the almost complete “Stones of the District” saga. And the recent Car People project that was such fun that I barely thought about the various public outrages that seem to plague us these days.

I have another couple projects I can add- Civil War Battlefields from Gettysburg to Culpeper is another fun set, “Cruisebook” is a narrative about a cruise in the Med as the Wall came down. And of course, there is the original “Tattered Casebook of Nick Danger,” which an alert reader informed me is now available on Amazon for a low, low $499.

None of which goes to me, of course.

So this is an exciting day at Socotra House. I welcome your feedback- it is long past time I got serious on this crap, you know? And there is plenty of crap to get serious about, too. Let me know what you think- and let’s have some fun with it along the way.

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303