The Field on Kindle Scout

Amazon is now providing to readers and authors Kindle Scout. Here’s the blurb from the Kindle Scout website: “Kindle Scout is “a reader-powered publishing for new, never before published books. It’s a place where readers help decide if a book gets published.”

Here’s the URL: http://kindlescout.com

What’s in it for readers? They nominate books that they would like to read, and if selected for publication by Amazon, readers get the ebook for free. What’s in it for writers? A 5-year renewable publishing deal with Amazon.

I decided to give it a try with The Field. You can take a look here:
https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/3UN5JSDISYODW

The first 5000 words are available, along with a short synopsis and author bio/Q and A.

If you think it’s a book that interests you and would like to read, please nominate it. If it is published by Amazon, you will receive a free copy and my enduring thanks.

Kindle Scout looks like a win-win for readers and authors. Readers get to chose books that interest them and find new authors they like, authors learn what people really like to read and see if their writing is on the right track.

Text to Speech Readthrough

There are fourteen days left until The Field is released and I’m going through the final read throughs. I’ve found the best way to catch errors and to tweak a manuscript is hearing it read out loud.

I use Scrivener for my books and one great feature is the speech synthesizer. You can read your manuscript out loud yourself, but after awhile your throat starts to hurt and you still miss a lot. At least I do. Having a separate voice read it helps immeasurably. I’m making three read-through passes through the book to catch all the typos and polish the manuscript. It’s drudge work at times, but necessary. If you’re considering releasing a book, listen to it at least once before hitting the upload button.

The System – A Detroit Story – Free Download

The System – A Detroit Story – is now part of Kindle Prime and will be a free download on Amazon.com from Friday September 26th through Tuesday September 30th.  It’s available here: http://www.amazon.com/System-Detroit-Story—ebook/dp/B005HZKIBE/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1313788718&sr=1-1

Tough Weather!

It’s been really nasty here in Michigan the last few days. We’ve been hit with tons of snow followed by a dangerous cold snap that’s been characterized as an “Arctic vortex“. If there’s an upside, it looks kind of cool. Here’s s shot taken this morning out a window:

Here’s a couple taken in the back yard.

If you’re engulfed by the Arctic vortex, stay warm!

 

 

 

Wallpaper, Editors and Updates

A few people asked me where I got the wallpaper for my iPhone. Here it is:

It’s the cover of a new book that will come out early in 2014. It’s called …evil…

Here’s the short teaser:

A friendly game

A deadly player

It’s name is …evil…

If anyone wants to use it as wallpaper, please go ahead. Just copy it from here.

On another subject, David Gatewood has agreed to edit The Field, which is very exciting. The only downer is that he won’t be able to start until April 22nd, 2014. I’ll be done with the third rewrite by then so it will be interesting to see what his edits are.

I planned on releasing The Field around the end of March 2014 so this will set the release back, but that’s a trade off I’m more than willing to make. The Field is going to be longer than I thought. First estimated at 60,000 words, it looks like it may wind up in the 90,000 range.

In the meantime I’ve started work on …evil… and plan on having it finished and released possibly before The Field.

This is probably the last post for 2013, so everyone please have a happy and safe holiday season!

 

Black and Blue Friday

We’re witnessing another significant decline in culture, and it involves Thanksgiving. What is Thanksgiving? Gathering with family and friends, looking back at the good things that happened during the year, eating turkey and maybe watching some football. That’s more like what was Thanksgiving. Now it seems to be all about Black Friday’s bottom line. Black Friday (and its associated violence) is becoming the holiday, not Thanksgiving.

Cases in point:

A fight over a parking spot at a Wal-Mart in Claypool Hill, VA resulted in one man knifing another in the arm “so viciously that he hit bone.”

A man was pepper sprayed and arrested at a Wal-Mart in Garfield, NJ after arguing with another man over a TV. He then lunged at a cop trying to intervene, resulting in charges of aggravated assault against the officer.

A police officer’s wrist was broken while attempting to stop a fight between swarming Rialto, CA Wal-Mart shoppers. The doors were opened early and 3000 people bolted inside.

There were reports that a woman used a stun gun on another during a Franklin Mills Mall brawl in Northeast Philadelphia. 

Check out this link and watch the videos: http://nypost.com/2013/11/29/cop-shoots-shoplifter-near-chicago-amid-black-friday-chaos-others-hurt-around-country/

From Reuters: “A suspected shoplifter was shot by police in a Chicago suburb and a woman spat on another woman’s child in an argument over baby clothes.”

Check out this link and videos: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/29/us-usa-retail-blackfriday-crime-idUSBRE9AS0ON20131129

Check out this video at a North Carolina Wal-Mart:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101235261

 According to the website medicaldaily.com, Wal-Mart “took in over 22 million shoppers this past Thursday.” Check out the videos here: http://www.medicaldaily.com/black-friday-violence-2013-top-7-worst-displays-mayhem-caught-video-263983

 According to the New York Post, the hash tag #WalmartFights started to trend early. One of the best tweets compared the Black Friday masses to Spain’s Running of the Bulls, “but replaced with badly dressed people.”

 It’s not just Wal-Mart. Even the more upscale Macy’s broke a 155 year tradition by being open on Thanksgiving. 15,000 people lined up the Herald Square Macy’s for the doors to open at 8:00pm.

 So where does Black (and blue) Friday lead us? Nowhere good. Where is the traditional Thanksgiving trending? Severely downward. So what can we do about it? Simple. Stay home and enjoy our friends and family. 

Audiobook Production: Help Your Narrator

Here’s something I learned fast working on audiobooks for audible dot com. Help your narrator.

The audible dot com process works like this. You upload a section of your book, and unless you’re a professional voice talent and plan to narrate the book yourself, narrators audition for you. You provide a small segment of your book and the voice talent narrates it. If you are the rights owner (either the author or publisher) you choose the narrator. Once you’ve selected a narrator, you or your publisher negotiate a royalty agreement.

There is no guarantee that anyone will audition for you. Narrators gamble their time and talent on your book and its anticipated sales. If you find a narrator that you click with, latch onto them, for now and in the future.  A big thing to consider is brand consistency, especially if your books are a series. Having the same person narrate your books presents a consistency to your work, literary voice, and brand.

What’s the first thing you can do to help your narrator, which helps your final product? Provide them with a detailed character summary. When listening to the auditions you might be surprised that the characters DO NOT sound the way you envisioned, in tone, attitude and rhythm. Put yourself in the narrator’s place. All they have to go on is the short segment of text you or your publisher provided. They make their best guess and interpretation. If it’s wrong, it’s not their fault. It’s yours.

This is where the character summary comes into play. Having a cheat-sheet of sorts prepped for your narrator helps immensely. They know who the protagonists and antagonists are and they know who persists throughout the story and who doesn’t. They know  who must be liked and who needs to be loathed. This helps them invest their time and talent in the characters that require it.

You, the author, will learn a lot about your book listening to the auditions. I learned an old trick from another author a long time ago. You’ve probably heard of it. To accurately proofread your book, say it out loud. That way it’s almost impossible to let a grammatical errors slip by and is a means for correcting awkward passages. You’re listening to your own voice. When you hear a professional narrator recite your book. It’s cool and puts a new, unique light on your work. To get to where you want your book to be, do all that you can to help your narrator get it right. A solid character summary will go a long way.

The Sharknado Buzz

I got caught up in the Sharknado buzz and watched the reprise on Thursday night. Sharknado is a true stinker, not only in the implausibility of the plot, but by the bad acting and poorly executed action sequences.

In case you’re not familiar with Sharknado. the plot revolves around a hurricane building off the coast of southern California (Santa Monica Pier, exactly) producing a set of waterspouts sucking up densely populated sharks and spewing them all over Beverly Hills and Los Angeles, consuming people in their trajectories.

Was this the sanitized version? I suspect so since it was placed in the 7-9PM time slot. Here’s a typical action sequence: we see a stock wide angle shot of a surfer gliding across a wave, the surfer tiny and the scene panoramic, then cut to a head and shoulder shot of the actor in front of a green screen, barely wet, pretending to surf. This is pretty much the motif of most of the action sequences, including sharks eating people. We rarely see  any real, raw action. It’s all implied and highly unsatisfying.

The voice over CNN reporter really was the cherry on top of this badness cake. The nervous lady who articulates “attention K Mart shoppers” at our local outlet sounds more professional and polished.

I just read about The Asylum studio that produced Sharknado and countless other low budget science fiction and horror flicks in the latest GQ that came this morning. Apparently their budget per film is $500,000, produce “mockbusters” such as Atlantic Rim from Pacific Rim, American Battleship from Battleship, etc. , and haven’t lost money yet. They have a fanatical following and Sharknado is right up their alley.

Yes, there is a big buzz about Sharknado’s campiness, and a Sharknado 2 is in the works. By all means, go ahead and watch it, but be prepared to be disappointed. I expected to be mildly entertained, but Sharknado missed the mark. I’m sure The Asylum fans love it. If you want to see a good, low budget shark movie, watch The Reef.

Grade: D

Links to trailers:

Sharknado  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwsqFR5bh6Q

The Reef http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UD2gbjB3vw

The Asylum http://www.theasylum.cc/

Bankrupt Detroit

The City of Detroit declared bankruptcy yesterday, the largest municipality in United States history to do so.

Here is a tiny subset of issues that precipitated the filing:

• Detroit has 100,000 creditors
• Detroit has at least 18 billion dollars in accrued obligations
• Detroit experienced a 63% decline from a peak of 1.8 million residents to the current 706,585. To put this in perspective, Detroit has a smaller population than Columbus, Ohio or Austin, Texas.
• Detroit hosts 78,000 abandoned structures.
• More than half of Detroit’s 305,000 properties did not pay their tax bills (2011 statistic)

On the city services level, which directly affects people, Detroiters experience:

• an average police response time of 58 minutes compared to a national average of 11 minutes.
• 8.7% of crimes are solved in Detroit compared to 35.5% statewide. Commit a crime in Detroit and there’s a 91.3% chance you won’t get caught. CRIME PAYS IN DETROIT.
• 40% of Detroit’s street lights don’t work.
• 33% of city ambulances are functional. That’s one out of three.

On the brighter side, the small core of downtown Detroit, emanating from the Renaissance Center is beginning to thrive. Buildings are being purchased, restored and populated with automotive, medical and financial white collar workers. This has little to do with the average citizen of Detroit, with 36% of the population at or below the poverty line and with a 47% literacy rate.

The citizens of Detroit need and deserve the most basic of civil services, those being adequate and reliable:

• police protection and response time
• fire protection and response time
• street lighting
• garbage collection

With the bankruptcy filing these much needed resources can be prioritized and improved. Detroit can move forward from there. As for me, I want to visit the DIA (Detroit Institute of Arts) before the 60,000 paintings, sculptures and other works of art potentially sold off (the Emergency Financial Manager ordered them appraised). More on this later.

Consider Rescuing a Dog (or Cat)

What is the major cause of death for perfectly healthy dogs and cats? Being hit by cars? Accidentally ingesting something poisonous? Being attacked by another animal? Nope.

Euthanasia.

Five to seven million dogs and cats enter shelters yearly and three to four million are euthanized. That’s nine to ten thousand dogs and cats per day.

We lost our yellow Lab two years ago to cancer. We were dogless since then but something was missing from out lives, so we decided to get a new pooch. We wanted a friendly, gentle little mutt, not barky and low maintenance. Did we go to a breeder? No. We visited three shelters and here’s who we found:

We named him Hank and he adapted to us immediately. He’s sitting on my lap as I am writing this. Hank is two years old, housebroken, happy, sturdy, loves to go for walks, likes people and is very low key for such a little dog. He rarely barks. In fact we thought he might have had his vocal cords removed until we heard him bark the second day he was home.

We went to two shelters, just missing out on two dogs we would have gladly adopted  and almost didn’t go to the third shelter where Hank was kept. I’m so glad we did. He’s not much to look at, but that’s fine with me. I would not trade Hank for any other dog on the planet.

Out of the 78 million dogs and 86 million cats owned in the United States, only 20 to 30 percent are adopted from animal shelters and rescue facilities. If you’re considering getting a dog or cat, please check out your local shelters first. You will find an animal that will enrich your life.