The Sun Rises On Another Year Of Me…

It’s my birthday! Yahoo!

I like birthdays; I think growing older is cool. You get to do new things, learn new knowledge, enjoy the world and time as it passes.  I don’t generally dwell on “milestone” birthdays. An age, is an age, is an age.

Which is why I was rather surprised to find myself feeling introspective as this my 39^th birthday approached. Which means next year I shall be 40. Hmmm

I am not particularly concerned about turning 40 next year, but I am vaguely aware that that’s half my life gone.

It’s been a good life so far. Yes my academic life wasn’t as good as it probably should have been, and my working career isn’t a spectacular example of forward-moving-go-get-em-achievement. But I am happy with where I am and feel I do a good job.

I have a lovely wife and two great kids who seem to be on the right track to becoming awesome adults. I think I would put an over-achieved in that column.

While my writing has also under achieved, I have written two novels. And people are actually buying the first one.

Health wise I am ok. I am not a shining example for the kids of healthy fitness, but I am not a complete slob.

Goal wise I want to do better with my writing, continue to grow the kids into well adjusted adults, and be happy.  Yet I feel I should maybe have more goals? When I write the equivalent post on my fortieth next year what do I want to see looking back?

I think I really want to be able to say that I took that little part of me that is full of self-doubt and self-sabotage and locked it away. That in a year if I can say I worked hard on my writing and finding the balance between work/writing/home and achieved a good balance that will be good.

I defiantly want to do something about my fitness levels. I am not going to be crazy and say I want to run a marathon or anything, just be a healthier version of me.

Writing wise I am not going to set word goals, rather I am going to try and find an hour a day to write. There is only one day in a fortnight where that would be really difficult.

So yeah there we go. That’s enough of that.

Mrs Sunshine and The Gubbins By Kylie Parry Available For Sale on Amazon

Mrs Sunshine and The Gubbins.

Last night we decided to try something different. Kylie otherwise known as the E.I.C. has for many years been beavering away writing short children’s stories. She has managed to sell a number to the Junior Journal but hasn’t really had any luck selling them wider. She decided to make the big leap into self publishing.

I used my small knowledge of GIMP to whip up a cover image, and within half an hour we had submitted Mrs Sunshine and The Gubbins to Amazon for sale. This morning it was live and you can buy it here for only $0.99US. Feel free to buy, and share the link…

This is going to be a bit of an experiment. We are going to try and upload a new short children’s story (Between 700 – 1500 words each) every couple of weeks. We have a small back log on stories for Kylie to edit and me to build a cover for, and I will also be prodding her to write more! It will be interesting to see if we can get sales for these.

Great Excitement

It has been quite exciting today. Book sales have been good, and I have been flotaing between 7,500 and 10,000 on the Amazon sales ranks. I have even been as high as 77 on one of the best seller lists!

This excitement was tempered by a lack of roleplaying. I was going to a game tonight, but it was cancelled. It was in October that we last played, and as such I am starting to get withdrawal symptoms.  Ah well maybe next week!

An Interesting Weekend Of Sales

When my publisher said last week that they wanted to try to give The Spiral Tattoo a boost by giving it away for a day I was a little bit hesitant. I didn’t really see what that would do, but thought lets promote it and see what happens.

Well for the 24 hours it was free it was quite exciting seeing the book march up the Free book rankings, reaching the lofty heights of #343! While I can’t actually see how many were downloaded there must have been a goodly number, and the thought of a lot of people reading my work brings a warm glow to the heart.

I was really interested to see how that flowed over into today when the story went back to being $US0.99, and so far it seems to have had a positive effect. I have had another 5star rating (my third) and there has been quite a large number of sales.Last I looked it was back up to #24,000 in the paid, which is only 13,000 off it’s highest previously achieved spot, and obviously there has been some paid sales

Another Junior Journal Sale For The E.I.C.

The latest Junior Journal (no 42) is coming out with another story, Missing,  from the E.I.C. (A.K.A. Kylie).  On the same day they accept her fifth story for the Junior Journal called Where’s My Gumboot which will be coming out in JJ44.

Yeah for the E.I.C.! Now we just have to sell one of her stories as a picture book!

 

Racing The Bell By Tom

Storytelling seems to run in the family. Here is a great little story from our eldest T.B.T.

‘Beep beep.’  Running up the hill to the bus,

 “Wait!!”  I yell, but just as I got to the top ‘vroom’,  it’s off. Oh no!  Rush down the hill dodging  electric fences to the river, jump in the kayak,  push off.  Downstream are rapids, I’m almost tipped out,  ten minutes later I come out near a paddock,  got to get to shore I thought or I’ll  get swept into the Manawatu river.

I jump out and pull the kayak out of the water, see a motorbike,  jump on.  The keys still in the ignition, ‘whew’, rev up the engine, five minutes later gunning up the road to school. The bells about to ring .

‘Beep beep’  the bus toots, I surface out of my daydream and hop onto the bus, on the way to school I see a kayak beside the river and a motorbike at school.  Dreams eh, go figure.

The end

So Much Excitement

How can one contain oneself…

There is a Pre-Order Page at Sky Warrior Books where you can pre-order The Spiral Tattoo for a bargain $US0.99

Shameless Self Promotion

The start of the shameless self-promotion starts with myself plastering all over as much of the web as I can the new cover art for The Spiral Tattoo…

It Ain’t Easy

One of my issues. Can I call them issues? That seems overly self-indulgent… Yeah I shall call them  issues…

So one of my issues when writing, apart from typing so fast I have “form” instead of “from”, and a general level of procrastination is dyslexia. At an early age I was diagnosed with this dread disease, although I cannot recall at what level.

It’s funny thing really, as I can actually see it at work more consciously now, as some words and letters transpose themselves in my mind. I have to concentrate to compensate. This in itself may be a lame excuse, as I have been wondering if I have been using that as a crutch for lazy habits. That and spellchecker.

Maybe I don’t have it, and at that time I was just not developing at an expected rate. Did the diagnoses actually help me or hinder me? I am not sure. I do know that I do have to concentrate a lot more than I want to when writing.  It tends to slow me down. I also realise that I used it to ignore lessens in grammar which is hurting me know as I pursue my writing ambitions.

Going free form here [I didn’t need to edit that one] I am still unsure as to what writing in the passive means and why it is so bad. It seems to be removing the past tense from your writing which is really hard, especially when writing in the first person.  I can see that it is better, but I am still coming to grips with the why…

Tangentially I had a minor flame war on Twitter today where one chap declared that all authors who called paper based books “dead tree books” should be shot.  He came from the point that he viewed the term as being dismissive of the paper artefact. 

Firstly I think threatening violence, even in hyperbole, is an ugly and unnecessary way to get a point across. It is too readily used today in a lot of discourse, and I view it as a malaise with the public discourse which prevents a proper dialogue between opposing views.

Secondly it predisposes the view that you are using it as a term to diminish the paper artefact. I use it as term of endearment.  I will love when my books come out in e-format, and start selling, but in my heart of heart I don’t know if I will truly feel comfortable calling myself a publish author until I feel the murdered pulped vegetation version in my hot little hands.

To Journal Or Not To Journal

I have been writing. Well mostly anyway. I have never been one for diaries or journals, yet here we have a blog, which is often used as one. Being a private sort of chap, I do not like to share either in private or public. I have never been one to complete a journal as an exercise for a course either.  Sitting down to write one I usually get to “I did this” and that’s it.

Yet they say the more writing you do, the better you become, and the editing process has shown me that is true.  I think I am getting better. So maybe I should give it a try, especially since as part of the marketing for The Spiral Tattoo I will be doing guests posts on fellow writer’s blogs.

The thing is I am a little self conscious about my writing. The more a type the more grammatical and spelling errors everyone will see. Also you might become aware of the terribly formal style I have in writing. I was thinking about that the other day, as the E.I.C. pointed out that rather noticeable style in some of my writing. I think it is because I am aware of some of my shortcomings, so I try to overcompensate when writing.

So let’s try this journal writing thing… Umm I got up this morning and went to work? Nay that’s inane… I should be writing The Oaks Grove after all I have deadlines people… That’s moderately interesting….

Maybe tomorrow I will have something to say?

Actually, to be accurate I have lots to say, I just write them in my head as I walk to and from work. And then forget what I wanted to write, or find since I have mentally written the post I don’t want to write it again. 

Sad huh?