Show & Tell

Kindle 3 is here!!!

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 20:35:10 -0700

As I was looking over the CNN’s mobile site, as I frequently do throughout the day, I found an article about Amazon’s newest Kindle. For authors like my self the success of the e-reader is a really good thing.

E-readers have become more and more popular over the last couple of years and there is now no question of digital books having a stable market. Every major book distributer are now creating their own version of an e-reader, Amazon’s Kindle, B&N’s Nook, Sony’s Reader, Border’s Kobo, Mac’s Ipad, and a number of others.

According to the author of CNN’s article, Julianne Pepitone, “Data from Simba Information show only 9% of American adults bought at least one e-book last year, a small increase from 8% in 2008.”

Obviously the 9% is a small number when compared to the other 91% of America, but out of a 2009 population of 307+ million citizens, roughly 27,630,000 potential readers is a decent number. The fact that any writer can access that potential market by self publishing through Kindle or other e-platforms has done a great deal with removing the hassle and worries of traditional publishing. After all... a manuscript sitting on some agent’s or publisher’s slush pile is not getting read and is not making any money!

I believe the issue now for authors is marketing. Getting noticed in such a large market is a little like trying to be seen in the open ocean by waiving a life jacket at the Coast Guard plane flying over at 200 mph... it can be done but a few tricks and tools will make your odds better.

For me, I write because I enjoy telling the story and sharing my imagination, the money comes second if I’m lucky. I’ll continue to self publish and if a traditional contract comes my way then I’ll gladly accept, but I don’t plan on leaving my work in the slush piles of America!

Children’s Lit:

I just published a fun little book for young readers who enjoy sports. It’s available on Lulu.com .
I Play Sports! ISBN: 978-0-557-58067-5

This was one of those projects that got into my head and just had to be completed to move on.

one step closer

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 16:17:27 -0700

children’s lit

Well folks we’re one step closer to the hiccup mummy being published. Meegenius has agreed to send me their publishing contract and the illustrator, jessika von innerebner, has taken a look at it and given the green light from her end.

once she signs and returns the contract I’ll be sending it along with my signature to meegenius... then the rest is up to them! its very exciting to say the least.

I’ve also checked in with the illustrator for ‘beaver finds home’ and have been informed that she only has 3 pages left to sketch. she’ll then send them my way for approval before they go under the brush.

the four book series “owen the pirate’ is still underway and coming together nicely.

time permitting I’ll tackle the ‘traffic jam’ project again soon.

other writing news

I’ve published a new paper on kindle, “for the people, by the people: an american company’, which talks about wal-mart and some of the controversy around the mega company.

I also finished a really nice interview with the author of the destroyermen series, taylor anderson. you can now read the entire article on my author-2-author page or by visiting american chronicle’s page. the interview should be available on kindle soon as well.

more to come, more to come...

happy reading, chris

Close calls...

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 00:40:04 -0700

For anyone that does not live in the skyvalley area (monroe, snohomish, sultan, goldbar, etc), the hwy 2 and hwy 9 routes are no doubt some of the most dangerous lanes of traffic in washington state. hwy 2 between snohomish and stevens pass has claimed 54 lives since 1999!

that said, my wife and i had a close call today and didn’t even know it.

we were traveling east on hwy 2 from everett and had just passed snohomish. I remember passing a white semi-truck with a gravel trailer heading west and thinking to myself, “i’d hate to pass that while pulling my camping trailer”. a moment later we passed the highway safety sign that has a digital reader showing the number of days since the last major accident (33 at the time). Then we came to the first stop light of monroe and an ambulance passed us heading west.

it wasn’t until later in the evening that i learned of the accident and put it all together. I estimate that we missed the accident by under 5 minutes......... to put that into reality for you, that basically means two stop lights in everett or a few mph slower over a period of time.

as scary as this is, it makes me wonder. how often to we all survive close calls with fate/death and never know it? are we all just one bus stop from our soulmate? three minutes shy of being the next serial killer’s victim? or one fish away from the shark being full and passing us by vs taking a bite?

you could go insane worrying about the what “if’s”. so i guess you should prepare for the worst and hope for the best, living life to the fullest in between close calls.

be safe out there.

Snohomish herald article

Mentioned in news letter!

Mon, 5 Jul 2010 13:06:05 -0700

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Children’s lit

First off I’ll start by saying thank you to the folks at imagination-cafe.com. They were nice enough to include a mention of my article in their first news letter.
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The Hiccup Mummy

and for seconds i’ll give you an update on the hiccup mummy project. Meegenius has offered me a chance to look at their publishing agreement. with any luck you’ll be able to purchase a copy for your ipads and ipods to share with the kids.

Also, the ad for hiccup mummy has been placed in the Taps paramagazine and will appear in three issues of their magazine, including their halloween special. no word as of yet from the taps team about a book donation through them, but I’ve got my fingers crossed. There is also a chance that an ad will be placed in the halloween celebrations magazine which has roughly 450,000 readers as well as store distribution.
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Adult lit

i’ve managed to work on the full length novel for the owen ruger series again and i am slowly rewriting the story and fixing any loose ends that I’ve found.

I’m also working on a short horror story that I’m naming “dropped calls”.

the basic concept of the story: a man named Henry Lockmann finds himself living with a lot of stress. he hates his boss, his neighbor has the hots for his wife, bills are mounting, the landlord is threatening to evict if he doesn’t get rid of the family dog, and just when it couldn’t possibly get worse she hands him the phone.

it started as a simple game to relieve stress, you call the person bugging you and they get dropped... the only catch is that someone else is also randomly chosen and dropped from your numbers. by the time henry realizes what he has done it’s too late... death is calling and the next victim is about to be dropped.

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tid bits

Summer quarter is a short one so i’m limited on my writing time. the one nice thing about it is that both of the classes i’m taking are similar and even use some of the same text books.

Camping plans have been made and there are some home repair projects in the works as well. throw in a health dose of family time and summer is sure to be busy... just the way i like it.

ttfn: chris

1 2 3 Summer!!!

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 00:20:43 -0700

It’s getting late so I’ll make this a quick entry... I can do that since this is my blog! so HA!

The hiccup mummy has officially been submitted to meegenius and we’re waiting to hear back from them. I’m also in communication with a magazine for possible advertising for the book.

I’ve finally found some time to paint a little on the traffic jam book and made a good dent on page three’s illustration.

a few more picture book manuscripts have been polished off and are ready for illustrations, and I’m working on another short horror story... on top of the novel rewrite!

I’ll update further when i have a little more time.

happy reading

Chris