There's a little bit of original writing, but mostly just fanboy crap. I'd seen a bunch of Star Wars fansites and thought: I could do that.

A month later with the talented help of three other composer/musicians on campus, I produce and try to sell an original tape of music (consumer CD-burners have just come out, and are very expensive) for a fundraiser. No bites online, but the tape sells out on campus. I think: guess audio just isn't meant to be sold online. Ah well.


August 1996

I buy my first computer (not counting the used Commodore 64 I saved and saved for in sixth grade, which never quite worked properly, and never, ever, saved what I was working on).

February 1997

I begin writing "Fly Casual" a dark humor column for Ashland University's student paper, The Collegian. Each column goes up online and it becomes the dominant part of Wonderland.



April 1998

A second attempt at online audio comes when I record some songs and put them online in RealAudio format. Biggest mistake was not saving the sourcefiles, thinking RealAudio and other proprietary formats were all I needed for my archives.

November 1998

The Writing Journal begins as I send out my first fiction, nonfiction, and poetry to paying publications. (Seven years later, I'm still at it.) I begin my email newsletter the following month.

April 1999

As my Ashland University free user page gets ready to expire, I realize I need a domain name. I've been publishing a series of stories that takes place in a fictional world with a long name, and primarily in a country with a shortish name: Kartania.

At the time, domain names seem to need to be short. I'm publishing as "Alexander Wilson" which, as one word, is just too long for a domain name, right? So Kartania.com it is, which causes more confusion than anything else, but what can you do? The site name changes now, and then moves to the new domain in July.

October 1999

I design my first site that isn't about me: River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative (no longer online, but you can still get the journal here).

April 2000

I begin my first full-time job since college graduation after various goes at freelance work. The work on my own website (along with my willingness to take relatively low pay) gets me the job. Writing productivity drops to 17-month low. A family death the following month removes me from my online presence almost completely for a while. This event, along with the job, kill the momentum of my writing career, first launched November of 1998. Submissions grind to a halt.

June 2000

Okay, okay. So Kartania.com was a bad idea and Alexanderwilson.com isn't too long for a domain name. Never too late to admit you were wrong.

August 2002

Launch my first real software project. No real luck getting anyone to read my press releases. However: when I add "Studios" to the end of my name. Thus: awstudios.net. After this, my software gets used all over the world and gets featured on MacWorld and MacAddict CD-ROMs.

August 2003

I begin a weekly webcomic/learning project: Undersweet, and I keep it going for just over a year.

I launch the short-lived (18 months, maybe?) Procreatives.net, a banner network for creative professionals. The catch-22 is that no one wants to join until there are enough existing members to make it worthwhile. Important lesson for future online projects.

February 2004

I launch Telltale Weekly, which turns out to be my most successful project to date, with growing listenership and tons of great press from The New York Times, Public Radio, Locus, and elsewhere.

June 2004

Somewhere in 2003 I start feeling pretentious about using "Alexander" as my print and stage name, when everyone knows me as "Alex." So I start trying to get my hands on the domain name alexwilson.com, making what I think are fairly generous offers to the current owners to purchase the domain name from them. They haven't done anything with it, and they never respond. But in June 2004, they let the name expire, so I snatch it up. And with Telltale's success it suddenly become possible (and even necessary!) to move to a dedicated server.

Thus begins the current chapter, at least until I change my name to A.Diddy. Is that domain name taken?

June 2005

I launch The Spoken Alexandria project, as the free "wing" of Telltale Weekly (or, if you'd rather, Telltale's the fundraising wing of Spoken Alexandria).

February 2006

I launch Guidevines, a writing resource that anyone can edit, based on the same software that powers Wikipedia.

And Beyond

I can't believe how much time I've blown on this thing. But every time I think I should chuck the site (including nowadays), I think that I'm on the cusp of breaking in as a writer, and how much it'll pay off that I put all this work in already, growing my audience and networking. So I'll keep at it, so long as I'm sure it doesn't become an excuse not to write.



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