Completely Changing Things with Seemingly No Warning: It's the Jake Watch Way!

I will probably lose several of you over this and I want to say up front that I'm sorry about that.

I started this blog back in May to jump in on the Prince of Persia hysteria. Like many of you, I assumed this movie was going to be a hit and bring with it an influx of interest in Jake the likes of which we haven't seen since Brokeback Mountain. I also thought that my book was going to be out within weeks of the movie's release. I have no shame in telling you that I anticipated riding that promotional wave and starting the groundwork for my own marketing campaign. Amateur that I am (this is my first book and I haven't got so much as an informational leaflet - much less a publicist  - to help me sell it), I had hoped that your enthusiasm would help me.

But the movie wasn't a hit. And my book got pushed back several months. And to keep everyone entertained, to keep myself occupied, and to (try to) keep interest in Jake as high as I could, I worked overtime to build this blog to heights I wasn't prepared to sustain.

And I don't mean "creatively" sustain. I mean "emotionally." So many of you don't know me from before and are no doubt sick to death of me bringing up past glories, but I rehashed Jake Watch hoping you'd be curious about the story behind it. I had hoped you might do a little research, get interested. I had hoped you might become intrigued by my story. In why I quit the first time around. In the disappointments that you don't personally remember but are legend to those who were fans back then.

And that was absolutely ridiculous of me to pin that on you considering the blog I wrote for you. You don't come here for me. You come here for Jake. And I did that. I built a blog that promotes Jake Gyllenhaal. That was a mistake. And it's one that I need to correct. The truth is, I don't want to do it. I've already been down that road and I wrote a whole book about how hard it was the first time. And after four months of trying it this way, very, very few of you are interested in that book anyway...

So starting today, this website is about the book I'm Stalking Jake!, by Becky Heineke. It is a memoir about two years of my life, much of which I spent writing a blog called Jake Watch, all of which I spent learning a lot about the world and my place in it.

I will continue to blog, and I will do Jake posts periodically, but not every day. He's not interesting every day. I'm not interesting every day. (And if you come here solely for Jake news, you've probably been coming to the wrong blog anyway...)

I'm opening a forum. I want people to talk about the book (there are really big issues in there that I would love to discuss with people who are interested in the larger picture of pop culture and its influence on our consumer-driven society). There's even a part of the forum where I'll stay out of it. I want people to be able to talk openly and honestly without having to worry about me jumping in. You can also talk about Jake there. The discussions you've had in the comments will work better in a forum anyway, since they can be organized.

The Vigilante Facebook page will continue (Katie and Vanessa are doing most of that anyway!) and the YouTube page will stay. I will always post on Facebook and Twitter when there's a new blog entry. And as Love & Other Drugs approaches, I'll do more Jake stuff on the blog, I promise. But this isn't really about him. It wasn't about him to begin with, and I shouldn't have let it look like it was.

And I know that I'm going to lose a lot of you with this. Maybe most of you. But the direction we were going wasn't a good one. I sincerely do, and always will, appreciate everyone who takes time out of their day to read what I write. I just need to start writing something a little different, or I will go insane...and also broke.

And Jake Gyllenhaal wasn't worth either of those things to me even the first time I did this. :)

So this is me hitting "reset." And onward we go...