A Far Out Fantastic Site

It's the first Wednesday of the month and so it’s time for another Insecure Writer’s Support Group (IWSG)  post! In an IWSG post, we writers bring our writing challenges and problems out into the open to share with each other and try to offer solutions. My post for this month’s IWSG mostly consists of the question for the month and my answer to it. The question: In your writing, what stresses you the most? What delights you? My answer to the first part of the question is that what stresses me most in my writing isn't so much the writing itself. It’s more so the promoting and marketing of it. There are many times when I feel like no matter what I do to promote or market my writing, book or blog, no one sees or responds to it. Yet it’s no one person’s fault. It’s the fault of the social media and search engine systems for playing favourites with paying customers who buy their advertisements.  Now I can't say for sure because I'm not a technology expert (only a technology ...

It's the first Wednesday of the month and so it’s time for another Insecure Writer’s Support Group (IWSG)  post! In an IWSG post, we writers bring our writing challenges and problems out into the open to share with each other and try to offer solutions.  It had a very busy week last week trying to get out the newsletter for the month before Halloween weekend. I didn’t get it out until that Saturday afternoon! That was way too late for me to release an issue of the newsletter. Not only was it too late because I normally release the newsletter around the beginning of the month, but also because it was a special Halloween issue in which I was offering a free Halloween themed book and I normally like to get those things out at least a week before the actual holiday. But I’m still offering the free book in the October newsletter in which the offer is good until the 12th of this month. So, if you haven’t already done so and want a free book, subscribe now . Like the book, the subscr...

Credit: Pixabay.com Well, October is already here and before we know it Halloween will be here! That’s why I’ve decided to forget the formatting to the paperback version of my YA Halloween horror book, “The Boo Brothers” , and pass on that part of the project to someone else. I’m hiring a book designer. I create stories. I do not design books. I have designed books before but that is not my primary skill or passion. I’m a teller of stories not a designer of their media. I’m a writer and an artist. My job is to write stories and illustrate them. So, besides writing the books, I’ll make the covers for them, and I’ll promote and market them since doing so involves storytelling of a sort. When you market and promote a book you need to describe the book whether in writing or in speech. For the past two weeks, and I indicated this in the IWSG post on Wednesday, I have been struggling and getting really frustrated working with the book manuscript format for the paperback versio...

Credit: Pixabay.com I hope everybody’s been enjoying this Holiday Season! I had a groovy Christmas Eve and Day. I was in Fresno during that time visiting the family there. My brother took me and his son to see Star Wars the Last Jedi which was just awesome! And only last night, did I see The Force Awakens on DVD. That is, I saw it for the second time only yesterday since seeing it in the theatre two Christmases ago, also with my brother and his son. (Hey, I think a new Holiday tradition is forming in my family!) Now you’re probably wondering why I’m watching the two movies out of order? Well, I hadn’t actually planned on watching the latest movie until I returned here to Sacramento, because I wanted to refresh myself on Force Awakens first. But since I only see my brother and his family a few times throughout the year, I couldn’t resist an invitation to see a movie like Star Wars with them. But now that I’m back, I’ m watch ing the two movies in order and so will se...

Credit: The Blogger I would have been happy if people stopped to simply flip through my books at my vendor table at Sac Comic-Con last Sunday. Since that was my first vendor table at a convention, I really didn’t expect to sell anything. I sold five copies of my books! The first sale was actually early on in the convention—within the first 10 minutes of opening! A father with his three kids stopped to look. I started giving my pitch for each book and, before I could finish, he said he would take one copy of each: The Fool’s Illusion and “CircaSixty Years Dead” . Later in the day, two more people made purchases at different times each. I also traded copies with the fellow author whose table was right next to mine, Jay Norry , for two books from his Zombie Zero series . We suggested doing reviews for each other’s books once we read them. I’ll leave reviews at Amazon for sure but may have fuller ones here. However, I may not be to do anything until the beginning of t...

It’s been a long but far out fantastic day today. I attended two sci fi-related events: a Doctor Who celebration at the Sacramento Central Library and then, after that, a steampunk tiki party at The Jungle Bird in midtown. I’m much more atom punk than I am steampunk but both are retro punk and tikis became a very heavy pop cultural icon during the atomic era (mostly the early half of the 1960s). And I just dig tikis! I got a collection of them—figurines, cups, etc.—in my house. So, as I said, it was a long day and so I really didn’t get much of a chance to work on my writing with the exception of this blog post and some marketing of my books, The Fool’s Illusion (which turns 4 years old this month!) and “Circa Sixty Years Dead” .  Part of marketing one’s work involves branding that work. I’m not a business man and so, frankly, I hate the word “branding” which is a big buzz term in today’s age of the startup and freelance revolutions. However, branding is probably more impor...

Photo Credit: Amazon Saturday I was at The Avid Reader in Davis considering buying Neil Gaiman’s newly released paperback version of The Ocean at the End of the Lane . I had told myself, since the day of Gaiman’s novel’s original hardcover release a year ago , that I would purchase Ocean as soon as it released in paperback keeping in mind the $8 “pocket” size mass market version. When I saw that the paperback was a $16 trade version, I had second thoughts.  I thought that if I’m going to pay $16 for a trade version of Ocean , then I’ll just try to get it used on Amazon. I could probably purchase a hardcover version of it on there for less than the paperback version offered at brick-and–mortar stores. However, while considering my budget, I try to purchase my books at my local independently owned bookstore, in which Avid Reader is, as much as possible. So I ended up buying another author’s book I had been considering, Beth Revis’ YA space opera, Acrossthe Universe . Even tho...