At my age you can hurt yourself sleeping. You can also hurt yourself slipping in the yard and landing on a rock or maybe a tree root, which is what I did last Sunday. I was walking up a bank and slipped on the leaves and landed on my shoulder. And my hand. And my knee. But mostly my shoulder. It didn't hurt too much at first, but after a few hours I started wondering if I'd torn something inside it. Not having health insurance, I could only pray for it. It mostly hurt when I lifted my arm. After a couple of days it felt better, and I could start using it again. At this point my shoulder has a yellow bruise. It doesn't hurt much, just every once in a while or if I try to do too much with it.
The other good news was the moldy window. Remember that window in my "studio" that had the mold problem that I worked on last fall and seemed to be okay? It wasn't. The temperature got above 70F(21.11C) combined with rain. The moldy smell was back but very reduced from last year. I had to work on it again as best I could with my shoulder, which was feeling better by that point but not fun better. The temperatures dropped but are supposed to be back up next week. I can't wait.
The only thing I got done on AoM was research that took the form of reading some mystery type novels to get a refresher on the genre and a feel for the modern market. Sadly, typing requires lifting my arm.
The news media has had a fit screaming that President Trump issued a "Muslim ban". Really? Did he really ban Muslims? It turns out the so-called Muslim ban doesn't even have the word Muslim in it! It doesn't have the word religion either or a lot of words the media are reporting and hyping in hysteria. He halted travel from a short list of terrorist countries that are causing havoc in Europe. Can you guess where that list came from? The Obama administration! The top five most populous Muslim countries in the world aren't affected. Ninety percent of the world's Muslims aren't affected. There is no Muslim ban. It bans everybody from a limited list of terrorist countries. The judge that overturned it didn't overturn it based on its constitutionality. He overturned it, because he was personally offended by it. He violated his oath of office and shouldn't be a judge any more. Trump said in a press conference this week that the press are lying. He's absolutely right. Judges are too apparently. I've never seen the scale of distortion of facts and outright lies by the media like I'm seeing now. They lie all the time. That's not news. It's the scale of it. The fuhrer would be so proud.
Friday, February 17, 2017
Friday, February 10, 2017
Lost by a Footie
I did something I never do. I watched the Super Bowl. I'm from the Atlanta metro area. The Atlanta Falcons were in it, which I only discovered a few days before the game. The last time I heard anything about the Falcons, they were a cellar team. Culture shock. The Falcons in the Super Bowl? How did that happen? Plus the name was fun. Super Bowl Li. It had to be sponsored by China, right? heh heh heh
I never watch the NFL, but I do follow my favorite college team. The college rules have changed over the years. Some of the changes are good(forward progress). Some are just dumb(magical touchdowns). Professional football has undergone changes, too. The last time I watched an NFL game, in order to score a touchdown the ball had to be in the end zone. Even in the college game, the ball has to pass through the end zone, even if the player is out of bounds(magic). If it sounds dumb, that's because it is. The NFL rule is dumber. A guy's foot made it into the end zone, and he was credited with a touchdown. It might not even have been his whole foot. He was tackled and went down around the 2 yard line. I was breathing a sigh of relief, but because his foot crossed into the end zone, it was a touchdown. Culture shock. No. Just no. It's about the ball, not extremities. How could they make a rule like that? Magic!
In the college game, once a player's knee hits the grass, the ball is dead. In the NFL I saw a touchdown in which both knees were down but the guy's head and shoulders continued on into the end zone. No. That's not a touchdown. In any other NFL play the ball is dead when the knee is down. How can the rule be suspended for that one circumstance? That's not a touchdown.
So, the Falcons kicked the crap out of New England and still lost, because of those two rule changes. Even though I don't watch the NFL, it just made me mad.
It wasn't all bad. The way I watch football is to tape it and start it about 60 to 90 minutes after the official kickoff. That lets me fast forward through commercials, timeouts, official reviews, players huddling and then walking to the line of scrimmage etc. The professional game is a lot faster than the college game I'm used to. I didn't have to fast forward much during the delays during the game. It was much more enjoyable to watch. I skipped the halftime show. :)
Another nice thing about the NFL compared to the college game was the lack of violence. The college game is a lot more violent with late hits and multiple injuries on both teams. The level of violence is complete unnecessary. The referees don't call most of it. One example I see a lot is when a player is running along the sideline. All it takes is a shove to knock him out of bounds. His shoulder and arm is already out of bounds. It's the feet that count. It just takes a shove. Instead, I see a lot of extremely hard hits in that and other situations where it's unsportsmanlike and absolutely unnecessary. I see a lot of hits after the whistle that never get called, a lot of hits when a player is already falling and so on. I was expecting the NFL to be thug ball, but it was fairly clean. It was a really nice surprise.
NFL players are surprisingly fast. It makes college players look like they're waddling. Some college players are also track runners, so there are fast guys, but it was a different level of athleticism in the Super Bowl. It was a more enjoyable viewing experience as far as pace goes.
I might watch a few Falcons game next year, if I can. I'm really turned off by the rule changes, especially the magical touchdowns, which I hate in the college game, too.
Book Stuff
I'm still working on getting AoM prepared for the writing phase. Because part of it takes place in virtual reality, I need to maintain tension in those scenes, when it would be easy to lose it, since it's not "real" any more. I'm wrestling with things like that and story elements. There's a certain logic that has to be maintained beginning to end for the story to work and have impact for the reader. And I'm trying to up my game based on all I've learned from past books and the feedback from the freelance editor. I'm hoping for good things.
Have a great weekend.
I never watch the NFL, but I do follow my favorite college team. The college rules have changed over the years. Some of the changes are good(forward progress). Some are just dumb(magical touchdowns). Professional football has undergone changes, too. The last time I watched an NFL game, in order to score a touchdown the ball had to be in the end zone. Even in the college game, the ball has to pass through the end zone, even if the player is out of bounds(magic). If it sounds dumb, that's because it is. The NFL rule is dumber. A guy's foot made it into the end zone, and he was credited with a touchdown. It might not even have been his whole foot. He was tackled and went down around the 2 yard line. I was breathing a sigh of relief, but because his foot crossed into the end zone, it was a touchdown. Culture shock. No. Just no. It's about the ball, not extremities. How could they make a rule like that? Magic!
In the college game, once a player's knee hits the grass, the ball is dead. In the NFL I saw a touchdown in which both knees were down but the guy's head and shoulders continued on into the end zone. No. That's not a touchdown. In any other NFL play the ball is dead when the knee is down. How can the rule be suspended for that one circumstance? That's not a touchdown.
So, the Falcons kicked the crap out of New England and still lost, because of those two rule changes. Even though I don't watch the NFL, it just made me mad.
It wasn't all bad. The way I watch football is to tape it and start it about 60 to 90 minutes after the official kickoff. That lets me fast forward through commercials, timeouts, official reviews, players huddling and then walking to the line of scrimmage etc. The professional game is a lot faster than the college game I'm used to. I didn't have to fast forward much during the delays during the game. It was much more enjoyable to watch. I skipped the halftime show. :)
Another nice thing about the NFL compared to the college game was the lack of violence. The college game is a lot more violent with late hits and multiple injuries on both teams. The level of violence is complete unnecessary. The referees don't call most of it. One example I see a lot is when a player is running along the sideline. All it takes is a shove to knock him out of bounds. His shoulder and arm is already out of bounds. It's the feet that count. It just takes a shove. Instead, I see a lot of extremely hard hits in that and other situations where it's unsportsmanlike and absolutely unnecessary. I see a lot of hits after the whistle that never get called, a lot of hits when a player is already falling and so on. I was expecting the NFL to be thug ball, but it was fairly clean. It was a really nice surprise.
NFL players are surprisingly fast. It makes college players look like they're waddling. Some college players are also track runners, so there are fast guys, but it was a different level of athleticism in the Super Bowl. It was a more enjoyable viewing experience as far as pace goes.
I might watch a few Falcons game next year, if I can. I'm really turned off by the rule changes, especially the magical touchdowns, which I hate in the college game, too.
Book Stuff
I'm still working on getting AoM prepared for the writing phase. Because part of it takes place in virtual reality, I need to maintain tension in those scenes, when it would be easy to lose it, since it's not "real" any more. I'm wrestling with things like that and story elements. There's a certain logic that has to be maintained beginning to end for the story to work and have impact for the reader. And I'm trying to up my game based on all I've learned from past books and the feedback from the freelance editor. I'm hoping for good things.
Have a great weekend.
Friday, February 3, 2017
Book Preparation for AoM
Now that the latest B'vellah book is out, I've been working on getting the book after AoE, the next book, ready to write. I didn't do anything on AoE this week like I thought I might. I mentioned I might put it up as a pre-order, but I want to go through the first chapter in light of the editor's advice and fluff it up a bit with more description. I may do one more pass through the entire book checking for skimpy prose. Plus, I needed a little break and had too much to do.
Messengers isn't very commercial. It's a bit of a niche concept. AoE and AoM, the book after AoE, should be more commercially appealing. Messengers is very Christian/Messianic with a lot of paraphrased verses and Biblical themes. AoE and AoM will have Christian characters with Christian morals and values but not be allegories the way Messengers is. My hope is that Christians will like them for the positive message and a general audience will like them for the story without being too put off when something spiritual shows up.
AoE and AoM are set in the near future after the collapse of the dollar but when society is recovering. The setting will be somewhat influenced by Biblical prophecy but won't be an attempt to portray what the future would be like during the Tribulation or anything like that. One example is that people buy and sell with RFID tattoos, but it's not the mark of the beast yet. I use the concept without the real context. An intelligence assessment I saw a while back predicted the U.S. would divide into 5 or 6 countries after a crash of the dollar. Based on that and current reality, Texas is part of Mexico. Idaho potatoes are an import product, the west coast is its own nation, etc.
In the books people can experience virtual reality with helmets and haptic equipment like they do today or get cranial implants. AoE is about a girl trapped in a virtual reality spy game, when her implants are blocked from logging her out of VR. AoM is about her dad, who plays a detective online but then has to solve a real crime using his game-learned skills. I'm still developing the story for that. It finally occurred to me how the main character can discover a clue the police missed. That was very important. They can only go over what's in their reports. If something is overlooked and didn't get into the reports, they don't know it's not there. One clue will be like that and open up a new line of investigation.
This week I spent three nights transcribing a story structure workbook into a file I could print and fill out. The book is 139 pages but has a lot of empty space and colorful yet unnecessary prose whose only purpose is to help fill out the page count. I was able to edit it down to 39 pages that include all the checklist questions and extra exercises while keeping all the necessary and useful prose. I still have a lot of empty space to answer the questions, some of which will have no answer because they're multiple choice questions that have only one answer for a given story. It was a lot of work that I hope will help me flesh out future books and brainstorm plot twists and turns.
So, that's the state of the books. Something I need to think about is whether to try to get an agent for AoE. I really could use a professional editor to do that, but I can't afford one right now. It's not an absolute requirement. It would just help a lot and could make the difference in selling the book or not. Something else to think about is whether to start fresh with a pen name. I have reasons to do it and reasons not to.
Have a great weekend.
Messengers isn't very commercial. It's a bit of a niche concept. AoE and AoM, the book after AoE, should be more commercially appealing. Messengers is very Christian/Messianic with a lot of paraphrased verses and Biblical themes. AoE and AoM will have Christian characters with Christian morals and values but not be allegories the way Messengers is. My hope is that Christians will like them for the positive message and a general audience will like them for the story without being too put off when something spiritual shows up.
AoE and AoM are set in the near future after the collapse of the dollar but when society is recovering. The setting will be somewhat influenced by Biblical prophecy but won't be an attempt to portray what the future would be like during the Tribulation or anything like that. One example is that people buy and sell with RFID tattoos, but it's not the mark of the beast yet. I use the concept without the real context. An intelligence assessment I saw a while back predicted the U.S. would divide into 5 or 6 countries after a crash of the dollar. Based on that and current reality, Texas is part of Mexico. Idaho potatoes are an import product, the west coast is its own nation, etc.
In the books people can experience virtual reality with helmets and haptic equipment like they do today or get cranial implants. AoE is about a girl trapped in a virtual reality spy game, when her implants are blocked from logging her out of VR. AoM is about her dad, who plays a detective online but then has to solve a real crime using his game-learned skills. I'm still developing the story for that. It finally occurred to me how the main character can discover a clue the police missed. That was very important. They can only go over what's in their reports. If something is overlooked and didn't get into the reports, they don't know it's not there. One clue will be like that and open up a new line of investigation.
This week I spent three nights transcribing a story structure workbook into a file I could print and fill out. The book is 139 pages but has a lot of empty space and colorful yet unnecessary prose whose only purpose is to help fill out the page count. I was able to edit it down to 39 pages that include all the checklist questions and extra exercises while keeping all the necessary and useful prose. I still have a lot of empty space to answer the questions, some of which will have no answer because they're multiple choice questions that have only one answer for a given story. It was a lot of work that I hope will help me flesh out future books and brainstorm plot twists and turns.
So, that's the state of the books. Something I need to think about is whether to try to get an agent for AoE. I really could use a professional editor to do that, but I can't afford one right now. It's not an absolute requirement. It would just help a lot and could make the difference in selling the book or not. Something else to think about is whether to start fresh with a pen name. I have reasons to do it and reasons not to.
Have a great weekend.
Friday, January 27, 2017
The Pre-Order is Up
The Calling of Aethan Lightbringer is available for pre-order. I thought it would be ready by Monday or Tuesday, but it didn't make it until Thursday. It took longer to go through and make corrections than I thought, but I was still on track. Most of the delay was CreateSpace. They used to approve changes in a few hours. It's taking them a day now. Forgetting to change the cover color didn't help and added a day. I'll have to plan for that next time. By next time I mean for AoE, the young adult book that's pretty much done but was on the back burner while I worked on this one. AoE still needs a little work to fluff up some skimpy prose in light of the good editorial advice I mentioned in a previous blog. I may put it up for pre-order this week some time. It depends on how life goes.
The plan was for a 99-cent, pre-order period of a week. Because of the delays, the new plan is to extend the 99-cent period until after launch and switch it to regular price about a week after the pre-order started. There's also a delay on the final cover, but I'm not going to delay the book just for that. January means January. Release is the 30th. Did you think it would be the 31st? I wouldn't do that to you.
I saw some media deception this week I wanted to highlight. The liberal press was shocked at Hilary's defeat. They've been brutal and vicious in attacking Trump like the racists did to Obama after his election. There was a story this week that tried to smear Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway and White House press secretary Sean Spicer that shows the liberal media's true colors.
Spicer said that the inauguration had "the largest audience ever". The media had pictures of the crowd in Washington and had a fit, because it wasn't the largest crowd ever. They hit Conway, who said Spicer had used "alternative facts". In a press briefing, Spicer clarified. He was counting the physical crowd plus the television crowd plus the online streaming crowd on sites like Facebook, etc. His alternative facts weren't Orwellian the way the liberal media is portraying this story. It turns out Spicer was right. It actually was the largest audience ever, including the Reagan inauguration's. The press ignored that. When Spicer said audience, he meant the whole viewing audience. When the liberal media said audience they were very narrowly defining it as the physical crowd in Washington and twisted this whole thing into something it wasn't. They've been doings stories like this ever since Trump was elected, and I'm tired of it. This is not a political blog, but I'm calling them on it this time. I'm exposing what they're doing so you can be on the lookout for this kind of dishonest, hateful "journalism" that itself is nothing more than Orwellian doublespeak and propaganda. They keep getting caught doing the same things they're accusing other people of doing. That's something else to be aware of.
Have a great weekend.
The plan was for a 99-cent, pre-order period of a week. Because of the delays, the new plan is to extend the 99-cent period until after launch and switch it to regular price about a week after the pre-order started. There's also a delay on the final cover, but I'm not going to delay the book just for that. January means January. Release is the 30th. Did you think it would be the 31st? I wouldn't do that to you.
I saw some media deception this week I wanted to highlight. The liberal press was shocked at Hilary's defeat. They've been brutal and vicious in attacking Trump like the racists did to Obama after his election. There was a story this week that tried to smear Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway and White House press secretary Sean Spicer that shows the liberal media's true colors.
Spicer said that the inauguration had "the largest audience ever". The media had pictures of the crowd in Washington and had a fit, because it wasn't the largest crowd ever. They hit Conway, who said Spicer had used "alternative facts". In a press briefing, Spicer clarified. He was counting the physical crowd plus the television crowd plus the online streaming crowd on sites like Facebook, etc. His alternative facts weren't Orwellian the way the liberal media is portraying this story. It turns out Spicer was right. It actually was the largest audience ever, including the Reagan inauguration's. The press ignored that. When Spicer said audience, he meant the whole viewing audience. When the liberal media said audience they were very narrowly defining it as the physical crowd in Washington and twisted this whole thing into something it wasn't. They've been doings stories like this ever since Trump was elected, and I'm tired of it. This is not a political blog, but I'm calling them on it this time. I'm exposing what they're doing so you can be on the lookout for this kind of dishonest, hateful "journalism" that itself is nothing more than Orwellian doublespeak and propaganda. They keep getting caught doing the same things they're accusing other people of doing. That's something else to be aware of.
Have a great weekend.
Friday, January 20, 2017
The Calling of Aethan Lightbringer
The other day I mentioned my New World Order ID. During the week, I saw a news story related to that. Kentucky is having compliance issues, and visitors to Fort Knox with Kentucky IDs will no longer be allowed entry without a defense department escort. The same applies to visitors from other non-compliant states. The article is short and is followed by a list of alternative IDs.
I posted a while back about some anti-aging treatments that were close to human trials that would delay aging and let us live to 120. There's a new treatment that could actually reverse aging. It would be groundbreaking, but it's not available yet and shouldn't be for some time. It works in mice, though. That's awesome. Maybe we'll be able to get one that slows aging to get us by until the age-reversing one becomes available. I can't wait.
Remember the blog a while back in which I talked about getting a 3G mobile hotspot, because my internet goes out sometimes and prevents me from posting a blog or checking email, etc.? I almost had to use it. Last night my connection went out, forcing me to call my ISP. They assured me it would be fixed within 24 hours. They were right. It got fixed some time today. While I waited last night, I got the hotspot out. I charged it when I first received it in June and put it back in the box. After all those months, it still had nearly a full charge. It took fewer than five minutes to hit full. Color me impressed. Ironically, I've been thinking lately that the internet hasn't gone out since I bought it, and I needed to charge it and activate it to learn exactly how it works in case it ever did.
Church was cancelled Wednesday night, so I made a Bible study video I intended to post to YouTube. It was a little over twenty minutes. I made a video last year that was more than double that length, but it wouldn't render at 1080p for some reason I couldn't figure out. Uploading it was no problem. This new one rendered just fine at 1080p. However, the final file size was 1.95GB. At my slow connection speed, that's impossible to upload. Even 720p is out of the question. I rendered it at 480p, which was 356MB. That still takes hours to upload. Suddenly, I see why so many videos are only 480p or are very short. Hmm. Either I need to make short videos, or stick with low resolutions.
The green screen effect didn't work in the video. I had lines and some distortion over myself. I'm going to have to re-record it for that and to make it shorter. I'm not sure why the effect didn't work. Perhaps I was too close to to the screen and had too much reflected light. Or maybe the posts of the metal shelf in that room were reflecting green lines onto me. Or both. I'm going to stand farther away next time and possibly cover that shelf. However, the proof copy for the next book is here. The video will have to wait.
I'm going through the paperback of The Calling of Aethan Lightbringer. I suppose that's a decent title. No more of that Book2 nonsense. Book3 will be something similar, I'm sure. Checking a paperback is different than going over it on a computer screen. Formatting problems that don't show onscreen show up in a hard copy. Double spaces at the end of a line, for instance. A word I used twice not just in the same page or the same paragraph but in two consecutive sentences. I did that in the first two lines of the book and never caught it until I saw it in print! Ugh. I'm seeing little things so far. Nothing major. Everything is still on track. The goal is to get the pre-order up early next week. The proof copy has a quick and dirty cover that's not the final. It was just easy to order and ship it that way. It may or may not show up in the pre-order graphic at first. Do not be alarmed if you see an orange cover. It shall not stand.
Have a great weekend.
I posted a while back about some anti-aging treatments that were close to human trials that would delay aging and let us live to 120. There's a new treatment that could actually reverse aging. It would be groundbreaking, but it's not available yet and shouldn't be for some time. It works in mice, though. That's awesome. Maybe we'll be able to get one that slows aging to get us by until the age-reversing one becomes available. I can't wait.
Remember the blog a while back in which I talked about getting a 3G mobile hotspot, because my internet goes out sometimes and prevents me from posting a blog or checking email, etc.? I almost had to use it. Last night my connection went out, forcing me to call my ISP. They assured me it would be fixed within 24 hours. They were right. It got fixed some time today. While I waited last night, I got the hotspot out. I charged it when I first received it in June and put it back in the box. After all those months, it still had nearly a full charge. It took fewer than five minutes to hit full. Color me impressed. Ironically, I've been thinking lately that the internet hasn't gone out since I bought it, and I needed to charge it and activate it to learn exactly how it works in case it ever did.
Church was cancelled Wednesday night, so I made a Bible study video I intended to post to YouTube. It was a little over twenty minutes. I made a video last year that was more than double that length, but it wouldn't render at 1080p for some reason I couldn't figure out. Uploading it was no problem. This new one rendered just fine at 1080p. However, the final file size was 1.95GB. At my slow connection speed, that's impossible to upload. Even 720p is out of the question. I rendered it at 480p, which was 356MB. That still takes hours to upload. Suddenly, I see why so many videos are only 480p or are very short. Hmm. Either I need to make short videos, or stick with low resolutions.
The green screen effect didn't work in the video. I had lines and some distortion over myself. I'm going to have to re-record it for that and to make it shorter. I'm not sure why the effect didn't work. Perhaps I was too close to to the screen and had too much reflected light. Or maybe the posts of the metal shelf in that room were reflecting green lines onto me. Or both. I'm going to stand farther away next time and possibly cover that shelf. However, the proof copy for the next book is here. The video will have to wait.
I'm going through the paperback of The Calling of Aethan Lightbringer. I suppose that's a decent title. No more of that Book2 nonsense. Book3 will be something similar, I'm sure. Checking a paperback is different than going over it on a computer screen. Formatting problems that don't show onscreen show up in a hard copy. Double spaces at the end of a line, for instance. A word I used twice not just in the same page or the same paragraph but in two consecutive sentences. I did that in the first two lines of the book and never caught it until I saw it in print! Ugh. I'm seeing little things so far. Nothing major. Everything is still on track. The goal is to get the pre-order up early next week. The proof copy has a quick and dirty cover that's not the final. It was just easy to order and ship it that way. It may or may not show up in the pre-order graphic at first. Do not be alarmed if you see an orange cover. It shall not stand.
Have a great weekend.
Friday, January 13, 2017
The Bummer of Licensing for Television
The other day I was thinking what I'd like to do is come home to a house built about the time the one I grew up in was and have TV shows that were on when I was a kid already streaming to the TV. I could turn it on and have a little vacation for a while in a simpler time, when the world made more sense and America was still number one at things. That got me to thinking how cool it would be if there were resorts that were themed to certain time periods. All the buildings would be period correct. The TVs and radios would be period broadcasts. For instance, a 1940s resort, a 1960s one, a 1980s one etc. It would be a vacation while at the same time give modern folks a feeling of what it was like to live in some past era. I think it would provoke people to think about how we live now and all the things that are wrong in society. Imagine stepping back into a time when there were no drugs or gangs or drive-by shootings or continual stream of violence and profanity and obscenity. When people got back home, they would feel bombarded by our modern, negative culture. I bet wealthy, older people would want to live there year round.
So, that got me to thinking about the good TV shows that were on when I was a kid that people can't watch any more. Amazon is looking for content for its Prime video service. What if I could license an old show from the 80s or whenever and put it on Prime for cheap? I did some research. From what I've read it's entirely possible to do that. The catch is the studios that have the rights to old shows don't want to handle anything less than $25,000. That covers their lawyer fees and makes it worth their while. Even if I could afford something really cheap that only ran for one to three seasons, I'd be forced to add shows into a bundle until I hit the $25k mark. Bummer. That's part of why we don't see very many shows from the past, even if they were good. Another reason is that TV stations/channels don't want to license a show unless it had at least 100 episodes. That lets them do something called "stripping", which I infer is running a show five days a week at a set time of day. When I was little, a lot of shows never made it to 100 episodes. Bummer. Another problem is that some of the older shows played music in some episodes. To license a show like that, it would be necessary to negotiate with the music studio or studios, and stations/channels don't find it financially worthwhile to fight that kind of greed on top of the licensing greed. Bummer.
If you buy from Amazon, you've seen their ads for the shows they're producing. The year after Friends went off the air it was licensed to hundreds of TV stations for a total of $950,000,000 for that year alone. I'm guessing Amazon wants to make money running their shows first run and then license them out later for even more profit. They won't make Friends money, but I might keep an eye on that and see what they do. Assuming the Tribulation doesn't start before that, of course.
Book 2 rested for a month. I got back to work on it and finished going through it with "final" corrections. For test reading my process is to upload the manuscript to CreateSpace and order proof copies. It took hours of wrestling with OpenOffice last night, but I finally got the manuscript formatted for CreateSpace and uploaded. Today some time after they've checked it to make sure it fits their standards, they'll approve it for proof copies and email to let me know. They promise within 24 hours, so the clock is ticking. I expected to hear back already. Once I do, I'll get the order sent. Once the copies are here, it's test reader time. I'll go through it again, too. After that, assuming I've missed no major problem, it should be out this month. It's still on track for that. I'd like to allow a week for pre-orders at reduced price for faithful blog readers. So, that's where things stand on that.
Now that I'm not stressing as much over how late this book is, I'm thinking about doing a weekly Bible study and uploading it to YouTube. Maybe every two weeks. It's kind of what I've mentioned before. I'm trying to get more focused and precise with it and figure out how it would work. I don't know every single thing about the Bible. It would be things I've learned and things God has shown me and things denominational Christianity doesn't understand. Sunday isn't the Sabbath. Sprinkling isn't baptism. And so forth. Some of it would probably be humorous. As I've thought about topics, I've seen funny things. Satan wanted Moses's body. It says so in Jude. Phrasing it that way could be funny and interesting to an audience while teaching something real. I'm still working on it all. Every week wouldn't be like that, of course.
Have a great weekend.
So, that got me to thinking about the good TV shows that were on when I was a kid that people can't watch any more. Amazon is looking for content for its Prime video service. What if I could license an old show from the 80s or whenever and put it on Prime for cheap? I did some research. From what I've read it's entirely possible to do that. The catch is the studios that have the rights to old shows don't want to handle anything less than $25,000. That covers their lawyer fees and makes it worth their while. Even if I could afford something really cheap that only ran for one to three seasons, I'd be forced to add shows into a bundle until I hit the $25k mark. Bummer. That's part of why we don't see very many shows from the past, even if they were good. Another reason is that TV stations/channels don't want to license a show unless it had at least 100 episodes. That lets them do something called "stripping", which I infer is running a show five days a week at a set time of day. When I was little, a lot of shows never made it to 100 episodes. Bummer. Another problem is that some of the older shows played music in some episodes. To license a show like that, it would be necessary to negotiate with the music studio or studios, and stations/channels don't find it financially worthwhile to fight that kind of greed on top of the licensing greed. Bummer.
If you buy from Amazon, you've seen their ads for the shows they're producing. The year after Friends went off the air it was licensed to hundreds of TV stations for a total of $950,000,000 for that year alone. I'm guessing Amazon wants to make money running their shows first run and then license them out later for even more profit. They won't make Friends money, but I might keep an eye on that and see what they do. Assuming the Tribulation doesn't start before that, of course.
Book 2 rested for a month. I got back to work on it and finished going through it with "final" corrections. For test reading my process is to upload the manuscript to CreateSpace and order proof copies. It took hours of wrestling with OpenOffice last night, but I finally got the manuscript formatted for CreateSpace and uploaded. Today some time after they've checked it to make sure it fits their standards, they'll approve it for proof copies and email to let me know. They promise within 24 hours, so the clock is ticking. I expected to hear back already. Once I do, I'll get the order sent. Once the copies are here, it's test reader time. I'll go through it again, too. After that, assuming I've missed no major problem, it should be out this month. It's still on track for that. I'd like to allow a week for pre-orders at reduced price for faithful blog readers. So, that's where things stand on that.
Now that I'm not stressing as much over how late this book is, I'm thinking about doing a weekly Bible study and uploading it to YouTube. Maybe every two weeks. It's kind of what I've mentioned before. I'm trying to get more focused and precise with it and figure out how it would work. I don't know every single thing about the Bible. It would be things I've learned and things God has shown me and things denominational Christianity doesn't understand. Sunday isn't the Sabbath. Sprinkling isn't baptism. And so forth. Some of it would probably be humorous. As I've thought about topics, I've seen funny things. Satan wanted Moses's body. It says so in Jude. Phrasing it that way could be funny and interesting to an audience while teaching something real. I'm still working on it all. Every week wouldn't be like that, of course.
Have a great weekend.
Friday, January 6, 2017
Old Farmer Time?
The area where I live is bracing for a winter storm and sustained, sub-freezing temperatures. It snowed and sleeted for a while with some big, half dollar and silver-dollar-sized flakes. It's all melted now. The main precipitation is supposed to move in within the hour and continue during the night. That reminds me of the drought we had during the fall. I kept meaning to blog about it. It wouldn't fit anywhere with all the other things going on like that election. I try not to make long posts very often. It would've been too much.
Anyway, it was a very severe drought, the highest level the weather folks have on their drought scale. It was weird, though. The area where I live got rain after the drought started. I'd go about ten minutes down the road after it rained, and ponds would be drying up. Grass would be dead. There was talk of water rationing. They had no rain. I live less than a mile from this field with thick, green grass that never did go brown. Eventually, the drought got worse. We went for 50 days with no rain. That field stayed green even then, because of the river next to it, I guess, and groundwater. It's a low-lying field..
I live on a dirt road. The dust was unreal. It coated everything next to the road to the point where it was hard to tell when dust was hanging in the air from traffic and when it wasn't. There wasn't enough contrast between the sides of the road and the road itself. When there was traffic, the dust would hang in the air forever, because the air was so still. There wasn't enough wind to blow it away. It would billow up and drift very slowly. In the end we ended up the year with two feet less rain than normal. That's .6096 meters. ;) That's a lot of rain.
Today's kind of a slow, lazy day. This feels like a slow, lazy blog. The Grapes of Wrath. Reading back over it makes me feel like it would fit in during the 1800s or something like I'm an old farmer sitting on the back porch talking about the weather. Maybe it's Mark Twain day. All right. I'll let you go
Assuming the power doesn't go out, this weekend is Book2 time where I start the process of going through it looking for any mistakes and last-minute fixes. We're still on track for a January release.
Anyway, it was a very severe drought, the highest level the weather folks have on their drought scale. It was weird, though. The area where I live got rain after the drought started. I'd go about ten minutes down the road after it rained, and ponds would be drying up. Grass would be dead. There was talk of water rationing. They had no rain. I live less than a mile from this field with thick, green grass that never did go brown. Eventually, the drought got worse. We went for 50 days with no rain. That field stayed green even then, because of the river next to it, I guess, and groundwater. It's a low-lying field..
I live on a dirt road. The dust was unreal. It coated everything next to the road to the point where it was hard to tell when dust was hanging in the air from traffic and when it wasn't. There wasn't enough contrast between the sides of the road and the road itself. When there was traffic, the dust would hang in the air forever, because the air was so still. There wasn't enough wind to blow it away. It would billow up and drift very slowly. In the end we ended up the year with two feet less rain than normal. That's .6096 meters. ;) That's a lot of rain.
Today's kind of a slow, lazy day. This feels like a slow, lazy blog. The Grapes of Wrath. Reading back over it makes me feel like it would fit in during the 1800s or something like I'm an old farmer sitting on the back porch talking about the weather. Maybe it's Mark Twain day. All right. I'll let you go
Assuming the power doesn't go out, this weekend is Book2 time where I start the process of going through it looking for any mistakes and last-minute fixes. We're still on track for a January release.
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