Twain“The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated,” wrote Mark Twain when his obituary prematurely ran in the New York Journal. I can certainly relate to that because it turns out I’m not going anywhere.

Regular readers will remember my pledge last year to retire from this rag and get the hell out of Dodge before all my hair falls out or I starve to death, whichever came first. Well something happened while we were all enjoying those 8000-word blog posts that constituted my serialization of Accidental Empires: I signed a contract with a major publisher to write a pretty significant book that I’m not yet allowed to tell you anything about.

While you might think that a book contract would be freeing, au contraire. It turns out one of my greatest assets in the view of any book publisher is you, my loyal readers. So my new bosses, who don’t give a damn about CPM rates and ad revenue, very much want me to continue blogging, maintaining what in their eyes is a bully pulpit for marketing the new book when it hits the market sometime in 2014.

So I’m back. Did you miss me?

Here’s what happens now. I’ll continue to write here, possibly more than ever. I’ll do the other things I already told you about (The Startup Channel and Cringely Media) and I’ll kill myself writing this very interesting book. We’ll have ads here, but just for Cringely Media and The Startup Channel — house ads that are static, use no Flash, and won’t slow your browser.

As for Accidental Empires, well in 4-6 weeks we’ll release it as an improved, expanded eBook on every such platform, hoping that you enjoyed it enough to give a copy to your brother-in-law. And since I own the words but not the cover art, we’ll start that publishing process with a cover design contest I’ll explain in my next post.

Please stick around. It’s good to be back.