Books and Stories – Page 3

Free book giveaway!

As of today, October 13, and until October 31, anyone in the US can enter to win a free paperback copy of my new book, “How To P!ss Off The Customers!”

It’s a comedic look at customer service’s seamy underbelly, and a guide to being the world’s worst employee. If you aren’t a member of Goodreads, it’s free to join and there’s no obligation.

If you win this giveaway, I’ll sign the book for you and even pay shipping! Sorry, international readers, I’ll try to do a better one later but it’s a little expensive to ship worldwide.

Just click on the cover to be taken to the giveaway.

(Please feel free to reblog – spread the word!)

Art Exploration “Kitsune”

Books and Stories, Tips for Artists, Tips for Self Publishing

Cover final painting small

This is the second version of a cover painting I did for a novel I wrote. I usually try to paint things that tell some kind of a story, but this was meant to be representational of some of the book content and hopefully somewhat intriguing to the casual viewer.

The novel was “The Dice of Fate,” a story about a young woman who was suddenly transported directly from her day job to a place that was like something from one of her roleplaying campaigns. Early in the story, a little white Kitsune with three tails comes and helps her, and the theme of dice features prominently in the story. Therefore, I chose to depict the kitsune, the ten sided die, and a hint of the long road she had to walk on foot to get to civilization.

I started (as usual) with the sky gradient. The better the sky gradient, the better the foundation of the work. Since this was acrylic, I could dispense any worry about the transparency of my layers. With the trees I worked from dark to light, always keeping in mind that most trees have gray bark, not brown. For highlighting, I used chalks and pencils in the final steps.

I was fairly pleased with the work. If anyone wants to see it on the cover, feel free to click through to the link – and if anyone wants to buy it, it’s free for Kindle subscribers. Just search the title “The Dice of Fate.”

Finally, my coloring book is back!

Books and Stories, Tips for Artists, Tips for Self Publishing

I had this all done, then we noticed there was something that needed to be improved on the back cover. We got partially through improving it, then the graphics computer’s CPU died. Now the new CPU has been bought and installed and the back cover has been fixed. So everything is good to go!

This coloring book is all about dragons, 30 original illustrations, all full page. It’s great for anyone who likes to color. I donated the last copies of the ones with the improvement-needed back cover to flood relief in Texas, in hopes that some kids might at least have fun with them.

If anyone wants to get a better look, or buy one, click on the link here!

Experimental College

Books and Stories, Jokes and Humor, Tips for Self Publishing

What do red panties, Wrigley’s gum wrappers, typewriters, and a fish pond all have in common? Find out in this novel.

Experimental College is a cheerful, odd, and often surprising story about David Price, a Blind engineering student going to the University of Washington in the late 70s during one very special summer.. While he navigates his classes and degree program, he also meets several quirky companions, and discovers a lot about his own passions, both academic and romantic.

This story is a mix of gender role and sexual exploration combined with ruminations about life support systems, closed ecosystems, and physics. It is both cerebral and emotional and touches on some important points of psychology and sociology. It’s also a fascinating journey as young Dave Price learns more about who he really is. The story covers issues about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people in a sensitive, intriguing way, as it is also a snapshot of the world of the 1970s.

This is an excerpt from the rear jacket:

“Experimental College: My summer in Serendip” is a lighthearted comedy with tragic overtones, which asks some ominous questions. Aiming at your heart, it may unexpectedly grab at your crotch but hopes to offer something to your head.

I couldn’t have said it better myself. I enjoyed editing this story, and I think you’ll like reading it. The book is available at multiple outlets, $15.99 for print and $2.99 for EPUB, Mobipocket, or PDF.

https://www.fastpencil.com/products/PJNF3VZIGHWF

Cover Painting – Avatar

Books and Stories, Tips for Artists, Tips for Self Publishing

I just completed this cover painting for the eBook I mentioned before. I did this mostly with watercolors but also some supplemental colored pencil. If anyone wants to know about the book, they can just go to the main Subversive Art site and there’s a dedicated page, or here’s a link to the blog entry.

How to publish a book without paying a cent

Books and Stories, Tips for Self Publishing, Tips for Writers

You can do it with all the equipment you are currently using at this very moment.

That’s right, just a computer, an internet connection, your brain, and your fingers. Let’s say you have a manuscript. It could be a novel, non fiction, book of poems, biography, cookbook, or whatever. If it’s polished and ready to see the light of day, you already have everything you need!

How can you do this without fancy software or paying publishing fees? Read on.

If you have your text ready, the first thing you will want to do is format it and make sure it includes all the bits you need. Author’s note, copyright, acknowledgements, etc etc. That’s not bad. Then you need to be able to convert it to PDF. One free software program can do all that and it’s called LibreOffice. It’s available for free, and works on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Just gGoogleit!

Many self publishing places want you to put your book in 6 by 9 inch format. That’s easy to do with Libre Office, you can set up the page size so it will automatically be in that size. And when you have your file exactly the way you want it, you can convert it to PDF through the “export to PDF” in the file menu. PDF format is good because it makes sure the book prints out exactly the way you have it set up.

But what about the cover? If you have some artistic or creative talent, you can do it in GIMP, another free program that works for Windows, Linux, or Mac. When you are done setting up the titling and everything, it will also export to PDF format.

Don’t want to draw your own cover? No problem, both of my favorite print on demand sites have a cover wizard that help you make a nice looking cover with very little work.

My favorite print on demand sites are CreateSpace and Lulu. Both support print on demand and ebook options. CreateSpace takes a bigger cut of the profits than Lulu does, but at the same time it gives you much wider distribution options. Both places will assign you an ISBN and let you keep all your own rights in case you should make it big. And neither charges anything for basic set up, they only make money if you sell a book. How much you need to charge to make a profit will depend on how many pages your book is.

My own novel, that I published last year, is 250 pages that are 6 by 9 inches in size. If I charge $14.99 for my book I make just over $5 in profit. That may not sound like much, but it’s a lot better than most authors get with traditional publishing. The Kindle edition makes me more, as I get about $4 per book if I charge $5.99. I like that anyway, because ebooks are great! If anyone would like to see my book, they can search “The Dice of Fate” in the CreateSpace or Kindle eStore.

So there you have it. I published my book and I didn’t pay a cent, and you can do it too.

Amazon recommended my own book to me!

Books and Stories

This has actually happened twice. I bought a few fantasy novels and was delighted to see Amazon send me an email saying that because I had just bought these books, I might like to buy this other book in the same genre. And it was the novel I just published. It’s really, truly awesome to see The Dice of Fate up next to some of my favorite authors like Joel Rosenberg and William Gibson. Now if only I could write as well as they can!

Click on the picture to be taken to the book… it’s free if you have a Kindle subscription!

CreateSpace

Kindle

Why Tarzan has no beard

Books and Stories

In all the movies, TV series, and cartoon shows, comic books, lunch boxes, coloring books and art of all kinds, Tarzan is never shown with a beard. Even though he lives in the jungle and is definitely an adult male!

There’s a reason for that. Are you ready?

He shaves!

Here’s why and how. In the original book by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan’s parents were marooned on the African coast and died when he was a baby. They had a cabin they had built with some of their things in it. When the baby was rescued by the female ape named Kala, she took him away from that place and raised him.

Later, young Tarzan rediscovered his parents’ old home. He saw pictures of humans and realized that these were his people, not the apes. Not only did he learn to read from the picture books he found, he also learned other things about humans and so he shaved with his knife when he got old enough to grow a beard. I always liked Tarzan because he fought with his wits. He relied mostly on a rope till he got his knife, and though he was strong he knew he was far weaker than the other creatures he lived among. He never killed without need and he had a fine sense of justice.

As an additional point of interest, Tarzan did not live with chimps or gorillas, he lived with a large, intelligent and as yet undiscovered type of anthropoid ape.