An interesting request for my readers…

Hello, Friends and Readers:

As you may know, my third novel, “Twisted Key”, is ready for the publisher.

This is the back cover text for the novel:

Terry Rankin has a new client; Fatima al Natsche, a Muslim woman living under a sentence of death for her work on behalf of women suffering under Islamic law. Terry’s a businessman – he’ll protect just about anyone who can pay the freight. In fact, he admires Ms. Al Natsche and the sacrifices she’s made to get her message out.

But then her daughter flies over from Norway and gets snatched off the street in front of her mother’s home, and all of the masks come off and all of the dirty little secrets come out to play in the Florida sun.

And this is the cover art for the novel:

It has been ready for about two months. In fact, “Twisted Key” has been available in kindle format for the last eight weeks and has been selling. But paperback copies require hands-on prepress work and cover design, and that costs money up front.

Unfortunately, my finances hare not up to the task of covering those costs. I self-publish, which means that I pay to have the novel formatted and for the cover art to be prepared according to my direction.

I have had a rough few years due to health issues, including surgery to repair a torn retina in my left eye and the onset of Type 2 diabetes. I have lived a very interesting life, and now I’m paying for it. And those expenses just had to come before I spent a single penny of publishing costs.

All of which brings us to the point of this little missive.

I am asking you to contribute to the publishing of “Twisted Key”. Think of this as pre-ordering a signed copy. In return for your cooperation, I offer the following:

For $20.00 to $30.00, you will receive a signed and numbered copy of “Twisted Key”, with a short note offering you my heartfelt thanks for your help.

For $30.00 and up in addition to the above your name will appear on the Acknowledgements Page of the novel.

You may, of course, provide any help up to $20.00, but due to the cost of the copies and the shipping and mailing charges I cannot afford to mail out any copies of the novel. But you will still have my eternal gratitude for your contribution.

This fund raising is being run through a “CrowdFunding” web site, Kickstarter.com. CrowdFunding is a new and legitimate fund raising method for small projects such as mine, and has grown rapidly due to the cost of raising money through banks and IPO’s. The Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) rules and regulations have no control over crowdfunding since no ‘Investing’ is being done and no shares are involved. In return for funds raised through crowdfunding the participants receive value from the fund raiser.

I have set a minimum of $1800.00 on this project, and a time limit of 30 days. Your funds will go into an escrow account controlled by Amazon.com. If that limit is not reached during that time, your money will be returned to you.

Any funds raised over and above that $1800.00 will go toward the publication of my fourth novel, Lonesome Cove”. LC is about ¾ written and should be going to my editors in October of this year, with a publication date of July of next year.

You can learn more about crowdfunding and this project by clicking on the link below:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/344026567/publication-of-my-third-novel-twisted-key

The page should look something like this:

Click on the Play Video for a short presentation by yours truly.

The Pledge buttons on the right side are pretty self-explanatory.

I thank you for your time, and wish you well:

Gary Showalter

On Writing

One of the several discussion boards of which I am a member had an interesting post this morning – “Why do you write?”

The respondents were supposed to reply in three words or less. It took me four: “I need the money”.  I’ve never been much of a rule follower. I think that’s one of my most attractive features.

Not only that, it’s true. I’ve been a writer most of my life, and it has been (and still is) a very interesting life, in the Chinese sense of the word. Not my fault, really. I’ve lived and worked in several interesting parts of the world, served in a couple of armies, worked in government and private security and spent several profitable years in the software development industry.

I’ve also built cattle pens, worked in botanic gardens and professional golf courses, painted houses, flipped burgers, built furniture and made pizzas. And other stuff.

And I’ve learned a  lot. Most of that knowledge and experience is very nearly useless, in this century at least, but it is interesting, and it’s mine.

But in 2008 I found myself facing what I knew was going to become a very long term of unemployment, and the job I had at the time was just filled with quiet bits. So I opened up a word processor and began to write what would wind up titled “The Big Bend”.  Several months later most of the first draught was complete and I was out of a job.  I found another one, but with the downturn in the economy it didn’t last six months and no amount of job hunting has turned up another.

After the first two years I gave up looking. Besides, I’ve sort of made up my own job. I’m a novelist; a full-time, professional liar. I’ve even though of putting that on my business cards the next time I have a bunch printed.

So I write because I have to and because my books sell and my readers assure me they will buy my next novel when it comes out. I love my readers. They are without a doubt the best employers a fella could ever hope for.

Now I just need to find more of them.

How I spent my Memorial Day Weekend

By now, we should all know that Memorial Day isn’t about barbeques, or hot dogs, or long weekends at the beach. It’s about the men and women who have given their lives so that you and I can disagree about things like Right-To-Life, Integration, and about whether or not the U.S. Department of Education should be dismantled. And so that we can have those long three-day weekends.

I’ve spent much of my working life overseas. No matter who is the President, no matter what the state of our economy (or who's fault it is), this is still the best country in the world. Because those men and women gave their lives to preserve the way of life we enjoy each and every day.

That said, I had a more or less great weekend. Saturday was spent on Amelia Island at a bookstore (that shall remain nameless for reasons that will become apparent). We’d arranged the signing two months before, and I’d driven to the store to meet the owner and deliver some promotional materials and advance copies for them to read and display. I was there with a load of my novels, a nice shirt and polished shoes and my smile for over three hours, between noon and 3:30. Lots and lots of people walk up and down Centre Street in Fernandina Beach on Memorial Day weekend. Lots of tourists and Islanders both. Lots of them walked into the bookstore. None of them bought any of my books. After I packed up to leave I asked the bookstore owner if she wanted any copies for the store and she said, “No”.

The store did no advertising, did not put the advance copies of my books in the window and did not put up even a small advertisement of my appearance in any of their windows. They did, however, promote a local author who was scheduled to appear later that same day, and lots of people came in to verify that he would be there.

I won’t be back any time soon. I’ve already burned up the gas to drive there and back, twice.

Sunday and Monday I was at the memorial Day Riverfest in Green Cove Springs. There is a very nice little park in Green Cove Springs between Highway 17 and the St. John’s River, including a spring fed swimming pool, a pier and boat dock and a nice bandstand. They had some great live music and a great crowd on both days. Of course, I had way more books than I could ever hope to sell (since the never-to-be-named bookstore on Amelia Island burned me as badly as they did) at an open-air event. But I did okay, and even met some folks who had already purchased one of my books.

Their encouraging comments, more than anything, have convinced me to forge ahead with “Lonesome Cove”. I will admit succumbing to despair over ever finishing #4, or even wanting to. But now I will, in spite of bookstore owners, rising costs and dreams becoming ever more distant.

But that’s selling, boys and girls. You have to put yourself out there, knowing up front that there will be disappointments right along with successes. Don’t give in to despair, and don’t allow disappointment to drag you down. One of those previous buyers purchased both of my novels at a winter event on Fleming Island in December, and sent me an email Saturday night to tell me she had just finished “The Big Bend” and loved it, and was now starting “Hog Valley”. Then she showed up at my booth at the Green Cove Springs event to tell me in person who much she enjoyed “Big Bend”.

So of course I’m going to finish “Lonesome Cove”. How could I not? So what if sales are slow. The whole economy sucks like a vacuum cleaner. That’s not my fault. But if my readers can’t look forward to reading another of my novels, that will be my fault. And that’s just not gonna happen.

eBook Sales Statistics, Kindle and Upcoming Events

 

If you follow these things you are probably aware that electronic publishing is here to stay. Even a few years ago, eBooks were more of a fad than a fact of life.

The International Digital Publishing Forum (http://idpf.org/about-us/industry-statistics), working with the Association of American Publishers (http://www.publishers.org), collects quarterly statistics on quarterly US trade retail eBook sales.

The first quarter of 2002 saw sales of eBooks in the United States hit $1,556,499. In the third quarter of 2010, sales reached $119,700,000. At the end of October, 2010 (the first month of the fourth quarter) sales were $40,700,000.

If you’re a writer and don’t publish in digital format, you are missing the boat.

Let’s take a brief look at the Kindle eBook reader sales. In January of this year, Ben Patterson, a technology blogger for Yahoo! News, wrote: “Barely six months after crowing that its Kindle e-books were outselling its selection of hardcover books, Amazon has announced that sales of Kindle titles are now outpacing paperbacks, as well.”

It’s not that people are fed up with carrying around paperbacks or hardbacks; Some few probably are. It’s a matter of cost. Print and publishing costs are rising and there is no end in sight. But readers love to read and if they can no longer afford to buy a hard copy of a book they can surely afford a Kindle, or Nook or whatever and then pay a lot less for their favorite genre.

Readers, people who cannot imagine not having book with them, are shocked and astonished at the incredible number of people who simply do not read. There are a lot of them in the Baby Boomer generation. Many young people in their twenties and thirties get their entertainment from from TV or magazines or the Web, and the upcoming generation are far more involved in PlayStations, X-Boxes and texting.With the current generation Physical books are quickly becoming a niche market.

Book sales just ain’t what they used to be. And as I mentioned earlier, they never will be. Paperbacks and hardbacks are costly to print, costly to store and ship and costly to stock on precious bookstore shelves. In an environment where discretionary spending is limited to the pocket change on your dresser, books take a back seat to orange juice and Kleenex.

Memorial Day weekend,  28, 29, & 30 May, is going to be a very busy one for me this year. On Saturday the 28th, I will be signing books at The Book Loft, 214 Centre Street, Fernandina Beach, Florida, between 1:00 and 4:00.

On Sunday and Monday I will be at the 23rd Annual Memorial Day Riverfest in Green Cove Springs, Florida. I don’t yet have the lot number for my booth, or even directions to where in the festival I will be located. But this is a great event with lots of entertainment and it’s a nice place to walk around. But do stop by and say hello.

Have a great week.

A very belated post indeed

Please accept my apologies. I had very good intentions of writing this post over the weekend. Really, I did, but I found myself travelling on a very smooth road just paved with all of those good intentions, and couldn’t find an exit.

I recently released a collection of essays and articles I’d had published in Israel back in 2001 in Kindle format, and never had any intention of printing a single copy. I didn’t see any demand for the material; but one never knows, does one? I figured two or three Kindle sales a month, maybe, if that. Which brings us back to those good intentions I mentioned earlier. someone mentioned that college students might find a use for such material , and two of the bookstores that carry my novels expressed an interest in carrying the material. so I had to reformat everything, add a bit of commentary to the introduction of each piece and I added an Afterward to each to bring the material up to date and a Postscript to wrap the whole thing up in a nice and tidy package.

So now, what started as a 57 page booklet of little or no interest to most people is now one hundred pages, spiral bound, printed on one face with plenty of room for notes and a nice *.jpg cover on glossy photo paper with a  clear plastic cover. Unfortunately, printing costs being what they are, it’s not gonna be anywhere near as inexpensive as the Kindle version. They will have to retail at $15.00 for anyone to make a penny on the sale.

Oddly enough, the material does have more than a little relevance. The articles deal with Israeli politics and Muslim terror groups, and I don’t pull any punches with either subject.

And then there’s Windows 7.

I like it. Sort of. But my big bugaboo with Win 7 is that it drops my ‘Always On’ internet connect whenever it wants to, and that really ticks me off. And it’s a resource hog of the first order.

Enough said. If you have any solution to the internet connection issue in Win 7, please post a  comment. And yes, I’ve already thought of dropping back to Win XP SP3.

I am somewhat confused about a few things

 

And I am a day late in posting this, too. Sorry about that. Part of that confusion I mentioned above, I suppose. Lately people have been telling me to focus more. My web site is way too diverse, and so are my blog posts.

Frankly, I know the web site needs a redo, and I have been putting it off since I am not a web site designer and absolutely refuse to pay someone who is to take the job on. I’m a writer with more than a passing acquaintance with computers and internet technology. Enough experience, in fact to have a pretty good idea of what I don’t know when it comes to designing web sites. And I don’t really want to take the time to learn all that stuff.

So I will be redesigning my web site some day real soon now. I promise.

This blog started out with the goal of writing about writing, and to me that includes writing about the software I use and the problems I face in using it and the solutions (if any) to those problems. And I’ve heard from several people over the last few weeks that I have to focus like a laser on writing – maybe included excerpts from the novel I’m writing and invite comments and suggestions. That sort of thing.

But I should stick to writing about writing and avoid computer stuff and furniture and restoration and stuff.

Well, maybe, but then again, maybe not. I am a writer with a very broad background, and all of that experience – in computers, and furniture making and restoration and silver and gold smithing and grounds maintenance and half a dozen other lines of work are all a part of yours truly, and that experience influences my novels no end.

I’m not going to start a blog just about furniture making for the same reasons I’m not going to start a blog about gold smithing or stone setting. Simply put, I don’t make a penny from these posts, but I do make a living (well, sort of) from my novels. So I spend much of my valuable (to me) time writing those novels and put in about an hour a week on this blog and checking out FaceBook and LinkedIn and the other social media sites where I have a presence.

And I will probably continue to write about computers and software and the problems they give me because I know good and well those same problems are ticking other folks off just as much as the do me. And some of those folks are writers and a lot of them are readers, too.

About the only things I will promise you I will never, ever cover in these blog posts are religion and politics. There are a few other subjects, but they’re not worth mentioning. In any case I’ll never discuss them, so who cares.

About a week ago I released “Collected Essays & Articles Written in Israel During 2001”, in Kindle format on Amazon.  I moved to Israel in 1981 and left to return to the States at the end of 2003, so I had some familiarity with Israel, Israelis and Israeli politics in the year 2001. In fact I knew a few of the Movers and Shakers in those days.  I admired many of them and couldn’t stand to be in the same room with the rest.

Everything in the collection has been published.

Here’s the link to the collection:

http://www.amazon.com/Collected-Essays-Articles-Written-ebook/dp/B004ZGOKVA/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1305063089&sr=1-4

The articles in this collection cover cover Israeli politics and Muslim terror, and I don’t pull any punches with either subject. Some of the material is valuable for its historical value but most of it is still relevant to the world we find ourselves in today.

These articles are not the “I’ve got the answers to the world’s problems!” sort of things. They are a very direct, no-holds-barred, concise explanation of the who, what, when where, why and how of many of the problems Israel faces today and what American should expe4ct to face tomorrow and next year and the year after that.

Let me know what you think.

I am somewhat confused about a few things

 

And I am a day late in posting this, too. Sorry about that. Part of that confusion I mentioned above, I suppose. Lately people have been telling me to focus more. My web site is way too diverse, and so are my blog posts.

Frankly, I know the web site needs a redo, and I have been putting it off since I am not a web site designer and absolutely refuse to pay someone who is to take the job on. I’m a writer with more than a passing acquaintance with computers and internet technology. Enough experience, in fact to have a pretty good idea of what I don’t know when it comes to designing web sites. And I don’t really want to take the time to learn all that stuff.

So I will be redesigning my web site some day real soon now. I promise.

This blog started out with the goal of writing about writing, and to me that includes writing about the software I use and the problems I face in using it and the solutions (if any) to those problems. And I’ve heard from several people over the last few weeks that I have to focus like a laser on writing – maybe included excerpts from the novel I’m writing and invite comments and suggestions. That sort of thing.

But I should stick to writing about writing and avoid computer stuff and furniture and restoration and stuff.

Well, maybe, but then again, maybe not. I am a writer with a very broad background, and all of that experience – in computers, and furniture making and restoration and silver and gold smithing and grounds maintenance and half a dozen other lines of work are all a part of yours truly, and that experience influences my novels no end.

I’m not going to start a blog just about furniture making for the same reasons I’m not going to start a blog about gold smithing or stone setting. Simply put, I don’t make a penny from these posts, but I do make a living (well, sort of) from my novels. So I spend much of my valuable (to me) time writing those novels and put in about an hour a week on this blog and checking out FaceBook and LinkedIn and the other social media sites where I have a presence.

And I will probably continue to write about computers and software and the problems they give me because I know good and well those same problems are ticking other folks off just as much as the do me. And some of those folks are writers and a lot of them are readers, too.

About the only things I will promise you I will never, ever cover in these blog posts are religion and politics. There are a few other subjects, but they’re not worth mentioning. In any case I’ll never discuss them, so who cares.

About a week ago I released “Collected Essays & Articles Written in Israel During 2001”, in Kindle format on Amazon.  I moved to Israel in 1981 and left to return to the States at the end of 2003, so I had some familiarity with Israel, Israelis and Israeli politics in the year 2001. In fact I knew a few of the Movers and Shakers in those days.  I admired many of them and couldn’t stand to be in the same room with the rest.

Everything in the collection has been published.

Here’s the link to the collection:

http://www.amazon.com/Collected-Essays-Articles-Written-ebook/dp/B004ZGOKVA/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1305063089&sr=1-4

The articles in this collection cover cover Israeli politics and Muslim terror, and I don’t pull any punches with either subject. Some of the material is valuable for its historical value but most of it is still relevant to the world we find ourselves in today.

These articles are not the “I’ve got the answers to the world’s problems!” sort of things. They are a very direct, no-holds-barred, concise explanation of the who, what, when where, why and how of many of the problems Israel faces today and what American should expe4ct to face tomorrow and next year and the year after that.

Let me know what you think.