New Non-fiction Kindle project completed

Way back in 2001, while I was living and working in Israel, I published several essays and articles in local newspapers and a few PoliSci web sites. These pieces ran from a thousand to ten thousand words and covered such diverse subjects as the structure of the Israeli government,  the political machinations of Shimon Peres, Clauswitz on war, asymmetrical warfare, the history and structure of terror groups and tactical and strategic targets of terror attacks in the U.S..

I just gave them a review last week and was astonished to find how much relevance they still held for today. So I have published them in a collection and added an introduction and an afterward to each piece, and then bookended the whole thing with a proper Introduction and Postscript to wrap things up.

All in all the work is less than 60 pages, and will only be available for the Kindle.  You can take a look at it by clicking on this link:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004ZGOKVA

I am working on a book-length review of the history and structure of Muslim terror groups, but it will not be available until some time next year. I still have to complete “Lonesome Cove” and see to the publishing of “Twisted Key”.

Have a good weekend.

“Hog Valley” has been nominated for the Dan Poynter Global eBook Award

 

 

This is a very big deal, friends and neighbors. Dan Poynter is a mover and shaker in the world of ePublishing, and he has set up this contest for eBooks to ensure national and international recognition for the best of the best in electronic books. “Hog Valley” has been nominated for this award.

If you have read the novel in either paperback or in Kindle format, please click on the link below and give the novel a rating (preferably the highest), and leave a brief comment on your opinion of the story:

http://awardsforebooks.com/book-writing-contest/fiction-mystery-suspense-thriller/hog-valley/

Just below the book title “Hog Valley”, on the top left of the page, you will see 5 ‘E’s. Click on the right hand ‘E’ to give the novel the highest possible rating. Further down the page is a Comment box. Please leave a brief comment about your response to the story.

I cannot promise to name my first-born child after you. He’s 25, much larger and meaner than I am, and he would probably object to having his name changed. But I would still be very grateful to you.

Awards mean a great deal to the commercial success of any novel. Not only does the author get a pretty sticker to put on his book covers, but major publishing houses, literary agents, book reviewers and readers all pay attention to these awards and the author whose work grabbed that particular brass ring.

“The Big Bend” and “Hog Valley” are both available in paperback and  the Kindle eBook format, and my third novel, “Twisted Key” has recently been released in Kindle format. It should also be available in paperback some time in July or early August.

Right now, the Kindle versions of my books are on a par with the paperback sales. As awareness of Terry Rankin stories grows I fully expect Kindle sales to outpace paperback sales. That is the way the publishing industry is moving. eBooks have all sorts of advantages over paperbacks – price is only the most obvious of those differences.

I’ll get my regular post out in another few days.

Have a good week.

“Twisted Key” in Kindle format

I have been placed in the unenviable position of having to make an executive decision for which I find myself criminally ill-equipped. The MS for “Twisted Key” has been ready to go to the publisher for some time, and I have had the photography of the cover art (painted by my good friend Mickey Summers) for the last few weeks. But a few unfortunate delays have pushed out the publishing date for the paperback version until July.

However, the Kindle beckoned.

My hope was that I would produce the Kindle version at the same time the paperback version became available. I could not rationalize waiting that long before making the Kindle version available for those who own Kindles.

So that’s what I did with my day (so far – it’s only ten am and there’s no telling what kind of trouble I’ll get into later on). I sized the cover art to 6” X 9” and added a title and author name, as you can see below:

 

 

Then I cleaned up the *.doc file and uploaded the two files to the Kindle Publisher. It should be available for sale at www.amazon.com some time in the next few days. I’ll provide a direct link in my next blog post. In a few days, say Saturday or Sunday,  do a search for my name in the books section of the Amazon site. That should bring up all of my published works, including the Kindle version of “Twisted Key”.  Just so you know, it’s priced as $9.95.

I’ve mentioned this before, but the three readers who had access to the completed manuscript all said it is a very interesting and edge-of-the-seat story.  One reader, Kathy O’Donnell, the owner of the “Well Loved Books” bookstore here in Orange Park, read it in six hours. When I asked how she did that, she said one of the reasons was that Spike is back in the story line. That’s right, the six-toed marina cat is back, and just as feisty as ever.

Have a good week.

Busy is as busy does

 

I spent much of the last two weeks building stuff and moving furniture. It’s a nice break from sitting in front of the computer and pretending to work for a living, but that does not excuse my failure to post to my blog. Please accept my apologies.

My brother-in-law lost his father a few months ago and has spent much of his time clearing up the estate and selling off housewares and getting ready to sell the house. I built three tables for the garage sale and helped to move stuff around and sort out what would stay and what would go. He’s got a storage locker, so much of what he and my sister wanted to keep had to be moved into the locker. We did that last weekend, and brought some of the stuff into our apartment. That included what must be the world’s heaviest refrigerator and the world’s heaviest 6000K generator. Not to mention that the tires on the generator were flat and we didn’t have a compressor with us. But we did okay for two old farts.

Admittedly, it took both of us a few days to recover. But it’s done, now.

“Twisted Key” is ready for the publisher. I’ve even got the cover art, but it will be some time next month before I can pack it all off. “Lonesome Cove”, the fourth novel, should be ready for the editors about the same time. There are a few plot-related issues I have to resolve and then I can finish the first draught.

Windows 7 has a few issues, as well. It tends to drop the ‘Always On’ internet connection at odd moments. This is a known issue, but the microsofties have yet to provide a fix for it. I keep the Control Panel open to the Networks section and check the connection each time I open a browser window. It’s the only ‘Fix’ I’ve been able to come up with.

If you’ve got a solution for this, please let me know.

Have a good week.

New computer hassles, software issues

 

Moving from my old (7-10 years old) Dell 2350 with 1 GB of (really slow ) DDR2 RAM running Win XP SP3 to a new Compaq Presario (who makes up these stupid names?) with 2 GB (much faster) DDR3 RAM running the 64-bit Win 7 Home Premium amounted to culture shock on a world shaking scale.

I’ve never met anyone who wished he had a slower, older computer. If I ever do, I’ll sell him mine. My only complaint with the Presario is that it only has 4 USB-2 ports on the back plane, and both the keyboard and mouse connect to the computer via USB. Which means that my wireless adapter, mini-cam, UPS and printer all competed for the other two ports. Until I got fed up and paid $15.00 for a 4-port unpowered USB hub, which hangs ignominiously from its USB connector trailing three or four USB cables where nobody can see it.

Later this month I’ll purchase another 2 GB of DDR-3 RAM for about $43.50. All of my 32-bit software installed and ran without a problem and seems to run just fine, thank you very much.

I think Microsoft has finally figured out how to write OS code that actually works the way the user expects it to work. Not that I’ve got Win 7 figured out. I don’t. Yet. But it appears to be very well organized and other than dropping the wireless connection at odd moments, it works just fine.

We brought the new machine home Sunday night from Best Buy. I had a short job to do Monday morning, but around 2:00 that afternoon I started to set it up. I had backups of my backups from the old machine, and printed out all of my passwords and product keys, and then I backed up everything all over again, just to be sure.

The biggest hassle – 2 hours’ worth – involved configuring the wireless adapter in Win 7. I still don’t know how I managed to get it done, but the OS finally recognized the home network and when I entered the passkey it all clicked just like it was supposed to do.

After that it took another day to install all of my software apps and system tools and get them configured. I use QuickBooks SimpleStart accounting software to track my expenses and sales (yes, I have both, technically, kinda-sorta. I am a writer, after all, and selling books is the whole idea). It’s a small business since I don’t have to do more than track the internet sales and record whatever sales deals I close with retail buyers or consignments to indie booksellers.

I’d like to purchase a copy of QuickBooks Pro because it includes sophisticated stuff like inventory tracking. SimpleStart by definition does not. So inventory just goes into a spreadsheet I have to update for changes. It works. It’s admittedly a kludge, but what’s a boy to do?

Unfortunately, Intuit no longer offers a downloadable desktop version of SimpleStart on their web site. They’ve figured out that they can charge people $13.00 or so a month to access SimpleStart on the web. Well, that is a good marketing decision for them I suppose, but I want my data on my computer, not on their servers where I have to pay to play with my own business data. But that’s just me.

Anyway, I got in touch with one of their reps via the chat tool on the Intuit site and she was kind enough to send me the URL for a download page where I could access the desktop version again.  Thank you very much for that, Intuit! Truly, thank you.

Intuit makes good, serviceable products and they have a great reputation for standing by their customers. And SimpleStart is a good, easy-to-understand and logically well laid out program. Not only that, but Intuit has a very large community of users whole will jump in and answer any questions you may have about using their products.

You just can’t go wrong with this company.

Win 7 has lots of nice features, and a lot of the features carried over from XP are much more robust. I thought I use the magnifier in Win 7 so I turned that on, but it quickly became an infuriating nuisance, so I got rid of it. If you’re legally blind and really need it I am sure it will prove a valuable tool, but I’m not, so there.

All in all, after a week of moving software and configuring this and swapping out that I finally have a reliable machine to carry on my writing. It’s not a whizz-bang machine with super-cooled over-clocked quad processor running 16 Gb of RAM and quad RAID backup drives, but that’s okay. I’ve got an uninterruptable power supply and a few more USB ports than I need right now. And I’m gonna get another two GB of RAM in a few weeks.

Have a good week

Sales are up, I am happy to say.

Technorati Tags: book sales,writing,Life in general

 

Internet sales of “The Big Bend” and “Hog Valley” were both up for the month of March. The best month in this new year to date. That’s for both paperback and Kindle, by the way. I very much hope that “Twisted Key” will be out soon, and that should go a long ways toward improving relations with my bank manager.

I didn’t get to do much on “Lonesome Cove” this week. Some editing was done at the beginning of the week – I’m up to page 204 in the  manuscript, which means it’s time to go back and massage all the bits into place before I write the final one hundred pages of the story.  But some time on Tuesday I began to feel a bit ill – passing kidney stones at first, then a cyst on my back began to get a bit fractious and then an abscess began to form behind one of my molars.

Aha! Said I, as a pattern began to make itself apparent.

That’s when I realized I needed to see a doctor. So the cyst has been drained – twice, and I’m on three types of antibiotics. No more kidney stones flowing painfully through places they have no right to be, and the abscess behind my molar is beginning to shrink. Getting old is not as much fun as the adds on television say it is.  But at least I’m still here to write about it.

I was supposed to drive down to Silver Springs this weekend to photograph the artwork for the cover of “Twisted Key”,  but what with being nibbled into an early grave by that infection I had to put it off. I hope to do that Tuesday morning. Mickey Summers, the artist who does all of my cover art, says it’s a lovely picture and photographs very well. I’ll try to get a photo posted when I get back.

One of my favorite authors – Simon Winchester – has a new book out. It’s titled “Atlantic”. Simon writes about real stuff. “Krakatoa”, “A Crack in the Edge of the World”, “The Map that Changed the World”. Fascinating stuff, and he writes in absolutely gorgeous English. Not only that, but you can actually understand what he’s saying. His writing is clear and engaging and the subject matter is truly fascinating. If you have any interest in how this planet of ours works, about how we as humans cope with this earth and its changes, pick up one of his books. You won’t be disappointed.

I’ll be back to work on “Lonesome Cove” on Wednesday and try to get the editing done by the weekend. Then I start on the final third of the story.

Have a good week. Stay safe.

Prelude to my on-air interview, cover art for “Twisted Key” and writing

Technorati Tags: radio interview,cover art,writing

 

I gave an on-air interview Tuesday morning on WOCA radio (1370 AM & 96.7 FM) (www.thesource1370.com) in Ocala, Florida.  I got to the station an hour early and parked in a space about thirty feet away from the studio, shut off the engine and let the radio run while I read a book. About 9:45, I was rudely disturbed by another car. It slammed into the driver’s side rear of my car, actually.

The damage to my 2002 Kia was only cosmetic, thankfully. The offending vehicle was an antique Pontiac station wagon, a real tank of a car. The passenger side front fender had driven up onto the rear bumper of my Kia and broke the plastic cover over my tail light. When the driver reversed, the bottom edge of his fender ripped a half-dollar sized hole in the top of the bumper. He’d only owned the beast for a month and wasn’t all that good at judging distance with that football field of a hood in front of him. He’d turned into the empty parking space beside me, but he turned just a bit too late.

There was absolutely no damage to the old Pontiac. Didn’t even scratch the paint. We exchanged addresses and insurance companies and I headed off to do the radio interview.

The radio interview went very well. Larry Whittler and Robin Mac Blaine do a great job with their Drive-Time talk radio show. And Joe Martone, the station manager, is a great guy with a lot of good stories he’s collected over his years in radio. 

During the interview, we talked about “Hog Valley”  and my upcoming book signing at “A Novel idea” bookstore in the Ocala Shopping Center on Silver Springs Boulevard, and spent a few minutes  on my third novel, “Twisted Key”, that I hope to have available in July of this year. There’s a Podcast of the interview that should be available in the next day or so – it hasn’t been posted yet. But when you go to the web site www.thesource1370.com, click on the Programs link at the top of the page and then click on the photo of Larry and Robin. On the next page, click on the large Podcast image below their photo. Then look for the ‘Interview with Gary Showalter’. I’ll have it posted on my web site as soon as Robin sends me the link.

There is a LiveStream video of the interview, if you prefer: http://www.livestream.com/woca/video?clipId=pla_8a0b24bc-04f0-4040-8916-2c974a8d7c0c

So when I drove back to Ocala on Saturday, I was in a brand new Chevy Impala (a rental), courtesy of his insurance company. The book signing ran from noon to 2:00 PM, and went very well, indeed. To the gang of ladies who work the store - thank you all very much!

Afterward, I stopped by Mickey Summer’s home to check on the cover art for “Twisted Key”. He’s got the background done and the focal point for the painting is there for all to see. He’ll have it complete by the next weekend and I hope to drive back to Ocala for the photography. Once I have that I'll be all set to send it off to the publisher.

“Lonesome Cove” is moving apace. I’ve got 202 pages written as of this afternoon. I’m going to do a lot of editing in the manuscript over the next week to tighten things up, so that number might actually drop to something closer to 190 pages before I get back to writing new material. Or maybe not. As I’ve said, my characters tell me what to write. We argue a lot, and I don’t always get my way. I’m just the author – my characters breath life into my stories, so I have to let them have their way. Otherwise, they’ll give up on me and find someone else to write for them.

Have a good week, and stay safe.