Wow, guess I took a break from writing

Haven't checked Smashwords for awhile. The download counts are truly amazing. Thanks much for those who read my stories. There's absolutely nothing in the pipeline. I just bought all of the early books in the Archer Mayor Joe Gunther series about Joe the Vermont cop. I've read many of the later books, now I'm reading all of the early books, I'm on the 2nd book now. Regarding writing, I'm sure I'll write something else. The beginning of my last story sort of tells the tale on my writing frustration right now. Anyway, thanks again for reading my stories.

Back from cruise

Was gone on a cruise on NCL's EPIC. We went to western Caribbean. Best show on the ship was 'Howl at the Moon', a dueling piano comedy act that played 60's and 70's music.

The shoe in the bed

Perpetual Casino is getting a lot of downloads. I think the cover with the shoe in the bed is enticing some of the downloads. In a departure from my other eBook covers, the shoe in the bed actually pertains to the story. After I gave my wife a verbal synapsis of the story, she suggested that the shoe in the bed would be the perfect cover for Perpetual Casino. My wife even let me borrow one of her shoes for the photo. Now THAT's a supportive spouse, eh?

More about Perpetual Casino

Perpetual Twilight had a 2nd part, but I thought the 2nd part was sort of weak, so I just published the strong first part. Dooley was a character from material that was cut from Perpetual Twilight. The renditioners were also cut from Perpetual Twilight. I put Mike & Jake together in Perpetual Casino, so I could work in the rendition thread. Jade was also a character from material that was cut from Perpetual Twilight, but Jade never had a gun in the unpublished material. Several more downloads of Perpetual Casino today, thanks much for that.

Perpetual Casino

The new free short story is named Perpetual Casino. It's now published on Smashwords.com. Today was the first day the eShort was available for download. There were many Perpetual Casino downloads today, thanks much for that. Somebody also bought Perpetual Twilight today, a BIG thanks for that, whoever you are!

Work and new eShort

Pretty entertaining Friday at work today. Talked to several people, did some joking around. Another group in the building has balloons. I asked a girl in that group for a balloon. She brought one in the afternoon. We laughed about that. The new eShort is pretty much ready to publish, just adding a few ironic tidbits at the end. Still needs a final edit. I'm shooting for publishing on Sunday 8/22 or there abouts. This one is pretty good, I like it a lot.

River City Adventure

There is an ending for the River City Adventure. Some good stuff here. 6000 words. Todd, Flo, Lucy, Jade, and Randy return in a fun short story. Still needs a final edit, but it's looking good.

More shakeups at work

At work, there's a big reorg afoot. It's the aftermath of the layoffs. We've been told some programmers may change managers. There's a meeting Friday, to discuss the reorg I presume. No matter what happens, I see the reorg as a positive thing, we will finally know the 'go forward' plan. Over 4500 words on the River City adventure. It's not feeling near done yet.

River City Adventure

Over 3500 words on the River City eBook. I think it's going to be a long one, I don't see an end in sight yet.

River City Adventure

Worked a bit on the new eBook. Watched some tv. I'm off to bed.

More about Perpetual Ray

It's now been a week after my latest eBook submission on the smashwords.com web site. Some people have downloaded the free eBook. Thanks much to them. Smashwords is the electronic version of self-publishing. In the old days, self-publishing meant paying somebody to print your book and that seemed like a con job. But, now we've progressed to the point where the only cost of publishing is your copyright fees. I wonder if I should write something less absurd, start a new series. I added a page to the River City eBook, don't know where that's going, yet. Some memorable new characters are introduced.

Limbo

Haven't written much since Perpetual Ray was released. The writing on the new eBook stalled. I guess it's time to change the scene and move it along. Work was quiet, today was the Monday after the Thursday layoffs. When we're out of our cube, those of us that remain merely wave at each other in the hall, there is little talk. There is no talk about our group moving to the new headquarters building, nobody cares about that anymore.

Perpetual Ray stats

So, I'm home now, checking the Perpetual Ray stats. Several downloads, I'm much pleased, thanks everybody who downloaded Perpetual Ray. I read the 2 'Ray' eBooks (by A. S. Warwick) before I did the final edit of Perpetual Ray and I got a sense of the Brian/Ray dialog, which was a lot more complex than I remembered. For one thing, Ray never uses contractions, so I had to go thru all of my Ray dialog and change every "you're" to "you are" and so forth. And, Brian and Ray really aren't buddies, Ray calls Brian "sir" a lot, albeit sometimes in a snarky sarcastic way.

Perpetual Ray

I published a new short story on smashwords.com. It's a sequel to my other stories. The story uses 2 characters from another author. The other author was going to write some of the dialog for his characters, but then he proceeded to work on his own stories for 2 weeks, then finally he said it was ok with him if I wrote everything myself, as long as I said his characters were used by his permission. I then did another edit that added 700 words, mostly enhanced dialog for his characters, bumping the total word count for the story to over 4000. The 2 week delay actually worked out good, as it gave me a fresh look at everything and I'm happy with the results of the final edit.

Layoffs at work

Today started with a quick meeting scheduled for 11:45. Before the meeting, a guy came by and said, "I'm out" and he nodded towards the VP offices. We shook hands. I said I was sorry. At the meeting, our VP said there were others, and he listed the names. I wondered why my job was spared.

The printer saga

The old HP printer made whirring noises for long periods of time and didn’t work on Windows 7. The Epson Workforce 615 was a noisy piece of junk that initially printed fine, but started printing faint 10 days after install. When we tried to return the Epson, a lightning storm knocked out the power in Sam’s Club, so we had to go back the next day. The first Kodak 7250 could only print yellow and black. Red printed as yellow. The cyan & magenta print heads were bad. The second Kodak 7250 worked ok. We have a printer on Windows 7, yeah!

mall walking

It’s Saturday. Went mall walking. Listened to iPod at the mall. There was a Civil War chess set. The ‘queen’ was an army dude with a beard. I think the queen of a civil war chess set should be a woman in a frilly party gown. It was $130, too much.

River City story

2400 words now on the River City story. Lots of good stuff already. As usual, the story is sort of writing itself, I’m just the stenographer.

Camcorder

Been looking at video cameras. I like the Panasonic SDR-H85, with 78x zoom. Wrote some more on the River City eBook. Not sure when this will publish. The bad guy for this one will be an odd character. Todd and odd, a winner, for sure. Look for this maybe in August. Still don't know when the next Yellowtown adventure will publish, that's sort of in limbo.

My Writing

Wrote another page on the River City adventure. Todd makes a brief appearance on page 2.

Chess

I left a chess game running when I went to take a bath. My wife played solitaire. She stopped my chess game, due to an error msg about a lack of video memory. The chess game got an easy win.

Warehouse 13

We’re big Warehouse 13 fans, here. Finally watched all of the episodes we had on TiVo. Awesome. Paranormal, with a dash of humor, right up our alley. We applaud SyFy channel for this hit.

I put up a blog this weekend

When I get to my day job tomorrow, if somebody asks what I did this weekend, I can say I put up a blog. After weeks of contemplating a blog, I finally have a blog. It was surprizingly easy. My 'Missing Manual' book named "Creating a Web Site' told me exactly how to setup the blog and tweak the settings.

Short Story Pipeline

There are now 2 unfinished short stories in my pipeline. The storyline to a new Yellowtown tale has already been written, but the story is currently in a 'dialog enhancement' edit. The next story will move the action to River City. There is only a beginning on the River City story, no firm plot yet. For you Todd fans, your favorite casino manager will definitely return in the River City story.

Initial Post

This is a Blogger blog. You may comment, using your Google id or one of several other types of ids. I am an eBook author, on smashwords.com and other sites.