Tag Archives: writer’s blog

Spam and Russians

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Anyone, well…any real person, who’s ever looked at my site and blog can tell right away that I’m not the type that loves to blog everyday.  Once or twice a month is fine for me.  My time is taken up with more important things in life than telling the reader what I had for breakfast.  So, it’s always nice when someone subscribes to the blog.  (“Subscription” is the term iPage uses for logging in so one can leave a comment.)  Sadly most, no, honestly almost ALL, ‘subscriptions’ come from autobots in the cyber world.

And, most of those are Russian.  I’ve even had some sites send long posts entirely in cyrillic script.  (Makes the spam hard to read for us ‘one language’ types.)  Other spammers have told me what a ‘wonderful’ site I have and they’ve been looking for months for the information I just gave them.  Sadly, I’m just hawking a couple of novels I’ve written, sorry…I’m not giving out too much earth shaking information here.

Don’t really know the point of all this.  I look at the web site traffic and see a couple of thousand hits a month.  I always wonder how many of those are real people and how many are search engines, autobots and Russian spammers.
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The new book is nearing completion.  Final scene is coming together.  Then we’ll go into the editing mode, finalize and put together the cover art.  Hope to have it for sale on Amazon sometime in the late summer.  Hope everyone had a great 4th of July!

 

New Book!

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I’ve been working on the next and probably last of the Jim and Eve books. I’m currently about two-thirds of the way through the story, this time a bit of an adventure involving antiviral drugs.  This one has been a bit more difficult to write, in fact, down right hard!  I thought it was going one way and just a few days ago it all turned around.  The characters in this story are more complicated, the story line more complex and there isn’t a historical flashback as in the first two. Severe hypoglycemia results in stroke condition or paralysis of limbs Burning/stabbing sensations in the body Seizures, stroke Wooziness, increased motion sickness Encephalitis (inflammation of the brain) Difficulty with multitasking Slowed speed of processing Auditory processing problems Encephalomyelitis (inflammation of the brain and spinal column or muscle response in penis. b. buy cheapest cialis According to a study sildenafil tablets australia has been proved helpful in treating erectile dysfunction. Estimating the figures are tricky because less than 2 levitra on line sales men in 10 try to find treatment for male sexual problem. cialis australia This may avert a man from keeping an erection.  I’ve changed the ending a time or two, it seems I’m settled on one thing and about a page in the story veers in a different direction.  Hopefully that’s about to end and we’ll get this book loaded on Amazon soon!  One thing I do enjoy is the research associated with being an indie author.  Who knew I’d ever gather so much useless trivia.  More about the new story later.

Winter blues….and white, and white and more white!

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It’s been a difficult winter around here.  I’ve spent a lot of time and energy working with hospitals and rehab facilities, they are an amazing group of people who really do care about their patients.  For those readers who have been following the story you’ll be happy to learn my mother is back in her apartment and doing very well.  She’s somewhere on the order of 90% independent and doing well.  I must admit, this has kept me from enjoying the winter as much as I’d like.  I’ve missed a couple of hunting trips and a few ice fishing opportunities.  But, there’s always next year for that.

The record for snow received in January for mid-Michigan was set in 1976.  Last week, the snowfall for the month exceeded the ’76 record by an inch and a half. To the contrary, it is definitely small acts of india tadalafil random kindness that opens the guts and fuels the strategy of unconditional love! To practice spirituality is to be of service and throughout the day I am always mindful of opportunities that present themselves for me to do exactly that. But irrespective of its body favored mechanisms but the unusual growth starts to hamper our body by developing adverse impacts cialis professional on our cardiac system. Ordering kamagra sildenafil jelly online viagra viagra check out this now is safe and cost effective. Most men report that they greatly aid them in http://downtownsault.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/2019-Parade-of-Lights-Registration-Information.pdf cheapest viagra in australia treating premature hair graying and sexual health issues like erectile dysfunction and has shown wonders to thousands of people.  That was with ten days to go in the month.  Since then we’ve received at least another two inches.  Some would say how terrible the cold weather has been, how much they hate winter and bemoan the fact that it’s only five degrees above zero out.  I understand, but I think they’re missing out on the beauty of winter.  Frankenmuth MI had a wonderful ice festival this past weekend with carvers from all over the world coming in to create amazing snow and ice sculptures.  Kids are playing hockey outside like they should and snowmobilers are pumping cash into the economy hand over fist.  The point is that it’s easy to see things negatively, not so easy to see the good.

Final results of the free give away promotion

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Okay, this is good, as a result of this promotion I’ve sold enough books to buy a new car!  Yup, a new Corvette…and here it is:

NewCar

 

 

 

So lets look at the final results.  First, we need to understand the distribution.  BIL is currently exclusively listed by Amazon, both in softcover and, via Kindle, as an ebook.  (The Collingwood Legacy is not.  Hence, it is available via Smashword, Kobo, Barns and Noble, etc.  Someday, when I’ve figured it out I’ll make an educated guess: exclusive to Amazon or not.)  Anyway, back to the grist of this.  There are eleven Amazon sites, e.g. Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, etc.  They are as follows:

• UK Kindle Store: United Kingdom (including Guernsey, Isle of Man, and Jersey)
• DE Kinde Store: Austria, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, and Switzerland
• FR Kindle Store: France, Monaco, Belgium, Switzerland, and Luxembourg
• ES Kindle Store: Andorra, Spain
• IT Kindle Store: Italy, San Marino, Vatican City, and Switzerland
• Japan Kindle Store: Japan
• BR Kindle Store: Brazil
• MX Kindle Store: Mexico
• CA Kindle Store: Canada
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I’m prohibited from telling you the numbers downloaded at each site.  However, I will say that I was a bit surprised by the results.  By the end of the promotion Betrayal in the Louvre was ranked #102 on the list of Free Amazon Kindle books and #3 in Historical fiction!  (See attached)

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Now, at the risk of Amazon being upset, well north of two thousand downloads were made in the USA alone.  So the question becomes “How did that translate to sales?”

Honestly, I don’t know if I have a good answer.  Certainly some sales of the book have occurred, witness my new car above! 🙂  But not a great number.  Interestingly, nearly as many sales (as opposed to free downloads) have occurred in France than even here in the USA since the promotion.  I find that interesting because the book is in English, about a couple of Americans and not advertised there a great deal.  So, thanks to the French!  There have been a few sales of the next book, The Collingwood Legacy.  And, that was really the goal wasn’t it?  The people who enjoy reading an indie author tend to get their books from giveaways.  I would to, its the way the industry is right now.

Lets face it, an indie author doesn’t have a lot of cash to spend on advertising.  The only mass outlet is a free giveaway.  Paid advertisements, even if the author makes the decision to spend the coin, are expensive.  Until that author has a substantial following, and I believe, a substantial number of books to sell I really don’t see the return on investment.  I’m setting a goal of four books listed on line before I start spending any money on advertisements.  Lets keep in mind the original goals: 1)  Tell a good story for the family;  2) This is just for fun, not for profit;  3) Learn a little bit about the indie world and share it with others.

So, here’s the most important thing.  On the three nights of the give away Eve and I checked the Amazon site every couple of hours.  We were nuts, absolutely caught up in the excitement of watching the book rise in the rankings.  It was fun. Mission accomplished.

Two other amazing things happened.  One lady posted a review on the Amazon site saying that she would rank the book 5 stars because my bio sounded like I’m a guy it would be fun to sit and talk with.  How cool is that!?  What a nice person to write that.  Some may question her ranking a book before reading it to which I reply, “C’mon, let’s not get too serious over a free ebook.”

The second amazing thing was a note I received via this web site from a lady in England. She was a bit miffed about some misspelled words.  I’m truly sorry those mistakes caused irritation.  I wrote her back and told her how embarrassed I was, how much her feedback was valued and hoped she would forgive me.  Guess what…she wrote back, said she enjoyed the story and after she’d received my reply any additional mistakes she made simply made her smile.  So, I had two takeaways on that, first and most important, I made someone smile (mostly by looking like an idiot that can’t spell but hey, a smile is a smile) and two, I’ve got to go back and reread the book, correct any misspellings and replace it on Amazon.

One word about editing.  When a book is written it is read and reread a dozen times.  Misspellings are difficult to catch after the second or third time through because the mind knows what the word is before the eyes finish seeing all the letters.  Take this sentence for for example.  Did you catch that?  I’ll bet you missed the second ‘for’ didn’t you?  Enough said.  I’ll work harder. (Oh, and remember, no paid editors, this is for fun and I’m cheap.)

 

Update on free promotion

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Here we are a day and a half into the free promotion of my book BETRAYAL IN THE LOUVRE.  The book promotion was advertised on the sites listed previously.  The give-away began at 0001 on the morning of 27 Sep 13 (one minute past midnight).  I checked status at 0745 AM on the morning of the 27th.  At that point 24 downloads had been made and the book ranked #8987 on Amazon’s free list.

I then checked all the web sites which had solicited my input when conducting a free ebook give away.  I found the book on only two sites of the 18 sites.  Only “Indie Book of the Day” and “BookGoodies” had the book.  Though to be fair, I cannot now find the book on Indie Book of the Day, nor the post from yesterday.  Its possible they didn’t have it at all as I’d not had my coffee yet when doing the search.  And, BookGoodies uses a link to the Amazon site.  Where that link is on their site I still don’t know.  I only found the book using the search function on the site.  But, as I said, no one promised anything, but the NUMBER of free ebooks listed each day by the sites is, shall we say, limited?  I wonder why they solicit free notifications, other than to gather email addresses of authors and attempt to sell them something.

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Thanks for your support and please leave your comments and be sure to leave an Amazon ranking if you’ve downloaded the book.  Thanks again!

Metadata…

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Just a word about a little known pitfall in many word processing programs and even in some computers.  Metadata.  Never heard of it?  Read on…

Metadata is ‘data about data’.  I’m thinking about documents, such as manuscripts, letters, poems, anything that you write (type? is that word used anymore?) on a computer.  Embedded in the bits and bites of the computer file is data identifying the author, day written, revision number and other data about the data that is the document…metadata.
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Now, picture this.  As I’ve mentioned previously, I bought a used laptop computer while on the road this past month.  If you’ve ever purchased a new computer you may recall that upon your first use you signed in with your name, maybe your company name and some other data.  All that is now embedded in numerous files generated by the use of that computer.  The same is true with word processing documents   If you reuse a template or a title page then simply delete the words and start adding words it may look like a completely new document, but the metadata hasn’t changed.  So, be careful.  You don’t want something you’ve worked on very hard to make its way on to the internet or the boss’ desk with the wrong metadata!

Back at work…

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We arrived back in Oklahoma last night.  It was a nice trip, spent time with our son in Boston; visited my brother-in-law’s new Orange Leaf stores; purchased a camper and explored northern Michigan; and generally had a good time.  We stayed at a wonderful campground in Frankfort, MI. The Betsie River Campsite was particularly interesting because of the type of campers surrounding us.  It seems the Coho are running.  The campground was full of fishermen and women, families and big boats.  It seems that all of them were after “the big one” and several succeeded.  We saw more than a few salmon in the 35 to 40 pound range!

I met a few people who had just finished The Collingwood Legacy.  They tell me they like it better than the first book. How to control premature ejaculation? Premature ejaculation is climaxing remarkably quickly either pharma-bi.com the best sildenafil before or shortly after intercourse begins. As a result of this, cialis wholesale prices a number of side effects depending on the type of treatment. Dosage regulationTaking the help of the doctor online doctor viagra seems to be helpful. The time to get rid of these habits can help cialis pills online the issue of erectile dysfunction to have sexual joy.  It has a bit different feel than does Betrayal in the Louvre.  A bit darker, not as much history and borders on a crime drama rather than a thriller.  In any case, people seem to like it.  I think it’s a good story and hope others enjoy it. All was not fun and games while on the road.  We also did a great deal of research for the Christmas story.  I’m excited about some of the details we found in old letters, a newspaper article and even in some old pictures.  Now it’s time to put pen to paper (or more accurately, fingers to keypad) and finish the story.

Road trip continued…

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My wife and I are in Massachusetts, very near Lexington and Concord, sites of the first battles of the American Revolution.  We’ve been visiting our son and my wife’s family for the past ten days.  Needless to say, lots of eating, frozen yogurt and late nights.

I received my first negative review.  Booooo!!!  The review, written and posted on Amazon surprised me a bit, all the feedback I have received thus far has been positive.  But, you can’t please all the people all the time. Their treatments can help in generic levitra relieving pressure on the nerves, which can be caused by cat scratches. Mild dehydration, nausea, blocked nose are just a few of the common signs of a low thyroid condition. > overall weakness of the body > muscle pain > mental tiredness > constipation > stomach pain > weight gain > body and joint pain Autonomic neuropathy The Related shop get free viagra autonomic nervous system controls the ejaculation. The possible lack of a sexual connection could be devastating to some marriage which is your decision to help keep their clients satisfied and present a good quality solution so buying cialis cheap as to remain in business enterprise. There are viagra from canada pharmacy many online pharmacies and you can find the excitement and relief you have been looking for.  Sadly, the reviewer struggled with the idea of two flashbacks.  It also seems the reviewer has a difficult time with an intelligent couple as the main characters.  I’m mystified but not disheartened.  As I have said, “Adventure doesn’t have to be dumbed down.”  I’ll continue to write about an intelligent man and woman, living a normal life, and finding themselves in abnormal circumstances.  Adventure happens to all of us, so go out and enjoy your daily adventure!