Book Brouhaha

Amazon is like Disneyland.  It just does everything bigger and better.  Other groups try to do parades.  Disneyland does parades better. So the latest change to the book industry is an increase in subscription based book reading.  In other words, books are following the Netflix/Hulu model.  You pay a flat monthly rate to read any of the books available in the site's electronic library. In response to a few of the book subscription places that have been popping up such as Scribd, Amazon has started a new program called Kindle Unlimited.  And, like Disneyland, they just do everything better.  They already have a huge library of books and now they are giving authors a legitimate reason to be exclusive to Amazon. Frankly, I think this is awesome.  In my opinion, this is the future of ebooks.  This will completely eliminate the debate as to wether or not ebooks should cost the same as hard copies.  And it is also HUGE for short story wr...

Let's start with the literal.  According to Merriam-Webster "success" is: the fact of getting or achieving wealth, respect, or fame the correct or desired result of an attempt someone or something that is successful : a person or thing that succeeds I often wonder about success when it comes to my writing.  At what point am I supposed to consider myself a successful writer?  According to definition option number one I still have a ways to go having none of those three listed things. But according to definition option number two I may stand a chance.  "The correct or desired result of an attempt" kind of gives me a lot of leeway, doesn't it?   I suppose I would have to be able to define what it was that I set out to do.  In this way, my teaching the violin is much easier to define.  I wanted to be a successful teacher.  A full studio of students that are able to play said instrument makes my personal validation easy.  But writi...

Summary: Canan Jones turns twenty-five and wants nothing more than to bury his painful past and enjoy his birthday celebrations. But when Canan receives an intimidating phone call from a man who knows his secret demanding he work for an underground government agency in Sydney, Canan fears his skill will be exploited. Canan has the ability to tune into the emotions of other people and his skill increases in strength daily. Initially refusing to accept the job offer, Canan realises it may be the only chance he has to obtain answers to his past. To what lengths will Canan go to to piece together the fragments of his traumatic childhood? Tuning In can be read as a standalone short story or as a precursor to Intuition (Book One of the Elite Series). Review: This story introduced an interesting concept but failed to deliver.  It reads like a prologue to a larger work more than a standalone story.  There's a cast of characters introduced, a problem presented and the...

One thing that amuses me is how incensed artists (writers included) get over their art.  Trust me, I do it too.  I'm no saint.  Art is a highly personal thing.  The term "brain child" very aptly summarizes the situation.  So it's only natural that we become defensive when our creativity is questioned. The thing is, our creativity is never the thing in question.  And that's something that took me a long time to really process.  The sheer fact that I'm even trying  to create something makes me creative.  So when I receive a critique of my work the feedback is not about my viewpoint.  It's about how well I conveyed that viewpoint. To put it another way, say I were a sculptor trying to make an elephant out of clay and it turns out looking like a blob.  I show it to someone and that person says it looks nothing like an elephant.  The issue is not about my mental vision.  It's my job as the sculptor to acquire the necessary ...

A special thanks to Keith Darrell for inviting me to participate in this blog tour! Be sure to check out his blog at: http://www.keithbdarrell.com/ On to the questions! What am I working on? Currently I'm working on wrapping up a young adult science fiction series.  Books 1-4 are out.  Number 5 is in the works! The series is called the Uxel Herum Saga and it's a coming of age story that takes place in a science fiction universe I created called Muzik Chronicles . How does my work differ from others of its genre? I would say the main thing that makes the series stand out is the path to power my main character takes.  I'm a music teacher and a martial arts nerd.  I combined those two things and created "The Tuning System."  People who practice it learn to control their own natural vibrations and use it as a way of affecting their surroundings. Why do I write what I do? Because I love it. Pretty simple.  But it's true.  The sci...

It's not what you think.  I'm not addicted to websites.  I'm addicted to designing them. I go through strange phases where I won't touch a website at all.  Years could go by.  And then I'll find a new website design program or a blog host will offer a new set of templates and then... Pandora's box.  It's simply no longer enough to have one  website looking nice for one  business.  Suddenly life would be drastically improved if they all  were looking nice. There's probably some sort of psychological analysis you could do here about latent control issues.  Especially considering that time and effort may be put into a site that gets zero traffic anyway... yikes. But since I like to put a positive spin on things I will say that this has made me fairly internet savvy.  A good trait to have if one happens to be pursuing a career as an independently published author.  It's not a bad  addiction to have.  I probably shou...

So I'm going to try something new with these "concept" blog posts.  If you find out about the story through this post, mention it in an email and the first five people will receive a complementary copy from an e-store of their choice. Anyway... the adventure continues with Uxel!  Uxel continues to realize her true character in being captured by the Imperium and forced to design a set of special tuned ships.  The task is way beyond her but her but in doing so she learns what she truly values. Originally I planned on this story arc spanning five books and it still will be.  But I've really be liking how Uxel's character is developing.  So I'm thinking of continuing her "saga" by later making another five book story arc that takes place several years after this one.