Robert Kroese

What do you think of the color salmon for a man's oxford style shirt?

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 21:46:25 -0800

I think that calling that shade of pink “salmon” is like calling red “human.”

Come see me in London on June 9!

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 14:31:51 -0800

I get asked a lot how the hell I managed to make a shitty novel like Mercury Falls into a Kindle bestseller. (OK, that’s not the exact question people ask, but that’s what I hear.) After trying to answer that question a few dozen times, I finally decided to write up everything I know about self-publishing and marketing and release it as an E-Book. The result was Self-Publish Your Novel: Lessons from an Indie Publishing Success Story. I never planned to make any money on Self-Publish Your Novel, and man, has that plan come to fruition. My payment has come in the form of having a ready answer to aspiring authors seeking publishing advice: “Have you read my book on self-publishing?”

Then I got a very nice email from Rebecca Swift, the director of an organization in London called The Literary Consultancy, asking if I’d be willing to come out to the UK to speak about my self-publishing experience. Would I be willing! Look, I know I should pretend to be blasé about such things, as if I’m invited to speak to six conferences a month, but I’m sorry, I’m SUPER-EXCITED. I’ve never even been to the UK before. I’m thrilled to have this opportunity and very thankful to Rebecca and TLC for taking a chance on me.

Modesty aside, I did learn a lot with Mercury Falls about what it takes to make a self-published book successful, and I think I’ve got some good pointers to share with aspiring (or traditionally published) authors. As Ms. Swift admits, the UK has been a little behind the U.S. in the self-publishing movement, and I’m happy to be part of helping them bridge that gap. The UK has a wealth of phenomenal writers, and the self-publishing revolution will not be limited by geography!

If you’re in the area, here’s the schedule of the conference. I’ll be speaking on June 9th. Hope to see you there!

Mercury Rests (and so do I)

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 22:15:10 -0800

Mercury Rests, the final book in the Mercury trilogy, is finished! This time, Lucifer has his sights on the destruction of Heaven itself. With Mercury MIA, only mild-mannered forensic analyst Jacob Slater and jaded but plucky religion reporter Christine Temetri can stop the Prince of Darkness from carrying out his diabolical scheme. They soon realize, though, that they are way out of their league. Will Mercury return to save the day once more, or will he be stranded forever in a strange land, a reluctant spectator of the Ultimate Ping-Pong Match at the End of Time? Find out in the most thrilling Mercury adventure yet!

Mercury Rests will be available by Fall of 2012.

Hi Robert, I'm currently reading (and thoroughly enjoying) your "Force is Middling.." book while I await the next Mercury book release and I'm wondering if you still sell the What happens in Jupiter, stays in Jupiter t-shirts? Karen

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 17:04:00 -0800

You can actually still get them: http://www.printfection.com/mattresspolice

Hello Robert! I just finished reading Mercury Rises and I think I might be feeling something very close to withdrawal symptoms. A bit sad, a bit anxious, a bit fidgety, and generally kind of pissed off. I really want to know what happens next! I also wanted to ask you, is there any way to get both Mercury books signed by you? I would love the pair (and trio when the time comes) Thank you so much for your time!

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 21:47:16 -0800

Well, you’ll be happy (or at least less pissed off) to know that I’m planning on sending the final draft of Mercury Rests to the publisher next week.

As far as signing the books, that depends on where you are. Maybe I can swing by your house sometime.

Ron Paul is too crazy to be President

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 11:43:01 -0800

As a libertarian-leaning conservative, I’ve been exulting over the recent successes of Ron Paul’s presidential campaign. It seems like every time I post something on Facebook or Twitter about Ron Paul, however, someone mentions that Ron Paul is “crazy.” I decided to look into the matter, issue by issue, and I was shocked to find just how crazy Ron Paul really is. Observe:

Position: Ron Paul wants to go back to the gold standard.

Actually, Paul isn’t particularly enamored of gold, but he does believe that money should be backed by some sort of hard asset, as the U.S. dollar was before 1973.

Why this is crazy:

Money is not supposed to be based on anything. A dollar is worth a dollar because people believe it is worth a dollar, and that belief shouldn’t be rooted in anything other than trust that the Fed won’t print vast amounts of money, drastically devaluing the dollar.

Also, if the dollar was based on something, it would prevent the Fed from printing vast amounts of money to bailout banks, as it has done over the past three years.

Ron Paul wants to “end the Fed.”

Ron Paul wants to get rid of the Federal Reserve, the organization that oversees U.S. monetary policy. This position goes along with #1. If money was based on hard assets, the Fed would have nothing to do. An intern named Dave would simply print as much money as the U.S. has in gold reserves and then go home.

Why this is crazy:

It’s important to have a central agency comprised of wealthy, unelected bankers overseeing the banking industry and the economy as a whole. Without such an agency, banks would act in wildly irresponsible ways, potentially crashing the economy and causing widespread financial losses and unemployment.

Position: Ron Paul won’t attack Iran.

Ron Paul doesn’t want to engage in preemptive wars against countries that may pose some future security risk to the U.S., like Iran.

Why this is crazy:

This sort of policy would have prevented our cost-effective, humane and wildly successful adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those countries would not be the paragons of stability and democracy that they are today, and the U.S. might have turned into a police state where basic civil liberties are routinely violated in the name of combatting terrorism.

Position: Ron Paul wants to cut $1 trillion from the federal budget.

Ron Paul wants to make massive spending cuts, eliminating the Education, Energy, Commerce, Interior and Housing and Urban Development departments.

Why this is crazy:

Without a central federal bureaucracy telling teachers how to do their jobs, America could easily fall behind many other industrialized countries in the quality of its public education – countries like South Korea, Finland, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, Australia, the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Estonia, Switzerland, Poland and Iceland. And most of these countries are no larger than a good-size U.S. state like New York or Minnesota. Can you imagine New York or Minnesota overseeing their own education system without the help of Washington. Two words: Cray zee.

Without the Department of Energy, we might become dangerously dependent on foreign oil while failing to invest in more sensible renewable energy sources, and states like California might experience routine blackouts as their strained electrical grids buckled under demand.

Without the Department of Commerce, we could see a big dropoff in whatever it is that the Department of Commerce is supposed to be doing. Without a Department of the Interior, we might need a whole other agency to protect the environment (maybe call it the “Environmental Protection Agency”). And without a Department of Housing and Urban Development, we could see massive over-building of overpriced homes while hundreds of thousands are homeless.

Clearly we cannot afford that sort of insanity.

The most terrifying book I've ever read

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 18:53:13 -0800

I just finished reading James Rickards’ book Currency Wars, and I’m torn between telling everybody I know to read it or going to CostCo to stock up on canned food and bottled water. I wish I were joking.

Rickards starts with a historical tour, highlighting the near-catastrophic results of two previous currency wars — the first of which led to the Great Depression and World War II, and the second of which led the malaise and stagflation of the 1970s. In each case, governments desperate to bolster domestic employment vastly increased the supply of their currency (by printing money or through other means) in order to prop up exports. In some cases this tactic worked to some degree over the short term, but over the long term it resulted in competitive currency devaluations with disastrous social and economic consequences.

Delving into the current world financial situation, he explains how the Fed, the U.S. Treasury and the IMF are responding to recession and unemployment with the same tactics that decisively failed in the past, and shows how the current situation is in several key ways far worse than other past crises. With Obama’s stimulus having failed to accomplish anything but vastly increase federal debt, consumers in debt up to their eyeballs, and a third round of “quantitative easing” on the horizon, the powers-that-be are rapidly running out of sleight-of-hand maneuvers to rebuild confidence and get people spending. Rickards sees a wholesale collapse of the dollar — and, by extension, the global financial system — looming ahead. He roots his arguments in recent developments in complexity theory, which seem to indicate that current policymakers vastly underestimate the risk of a systemic collapse.

He proposes some common sense reforms to forestall that collapse: breaking up “too big to fail” banks, outlawing most derivatives (which increase complexity while masking risk), and limiting the involvement of banks in risky trading and underwriting — and one more controversial move: going back to a gold-based currency. This last may seem extreme, but in Rickards’ view we are likely headed back to a gold standard (or something worse) whether we like it or not, and it would be better to adopt this standard in an orderly, reasoned manner than to wait until the dollar simply collapses, leaving gold as the de facto standard.

This book is a well-written, shrewdly argued, balanced and concise account of the predicament we find ourselves in at the beginning of 2012 — and what we can do about it. You must read this book.

(I’m heading to CostCo.)

I recently ordered a signed copy of your book and have not seen it yet.

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 09:05:29 -0800

On Monday, I sent out all the copies that had been ordered via Priority Mail. You should have it before Christmas. If not, email me at rob (at) robertkroese dotcom.

Do you have an exclusive contract with Amazon? I sure wish you could also publish through Smashwords so I could read you on my Nook.

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 14:19:57 -0800

Almost all author-publisher contracts are exclusive. You can’t sell a book to Random House and then, after Random House has done the heavy lifting (market research, editing, cover design, marketing, etc.), turn around and sell the book to Simon & Schuster. That means as much as I’d like to, I can’t make the Mercury books available on the Nook.

As I’ve pointed out before, however, the Nook uses the Android O/S, which means that it there is no technological barrier to reading Mercury Falls on your Nook. B&N has deliberately crippled the device to prevent it from being able to run certain apps (including the Kindle app). This may seem like a Machiavellian move on B&N’s part, but remember that B&N isn’t selling a device so much as they are selling a way of buying things. Amazon is doing the same thing: they actually take a loss on every Kindle device they sell because they know that once you have the device, you’ll be hooked on the Amazon model. My personal opinion is that B&N doesn’t have a chance to win this war, which means that the purchase of a Nook is probably analogous to buying a Betamax VCR in 1980.

There is a third option, however: Buy a third party device that can display books in any format. For example, I often read on my Android phone, using the free Kindle app. The downside of this option is that you’re going to pay more for a comparable device, because a third party company can’t afford to take a loss on the sale.

The upshot is this: when you buy a Nook, you are buying into B&N’s content distribution model, and that model has no place for books that are published by Amazon. That’s something people should keep in mind when deciding what e-reader to buy.

Hi! I recently read Mercury Falls at the recommendation of my roommate, and I have a question regarding the Amazon Prime Lending Library. I really loved the book, and I wanted to know if you still get payment/royalties for my checking out Mercury Falls for free.

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 18:47:23 -0800

Excellent question, Anonymous. And thank your roommate for me. While I can’t go into the details of my contract with Amazon, suffice it to say that I’m perfectly happy with you borrowing the book from the Amazon Lending Library. And telling all of your friends to do the same.

So what's up with Christine and Mercury romantically??

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 11:45:29 -0800

That question (and many more!) will be answered in Mercury Rests, which should be available next fall.

Why I Fear Congress More Than I Fear Thieves

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 14:58:00 -0800

I would like you to do something for me. Go to Google and type in “Mercury Falls book free download”. Hit Enter and you should get a few pages of sites purporting to offer free digital copies of my novel, Mercury Falls. I haven’t checked the integrity of the files they are delivering, but it seems pretty clear that if you want to steal a copy of my book, you can do so fairly easily.

Let me be clear: Mercury Falls is not free. I worked for three years on that book and I own that content. I have contracted with Amazon Publishing to be the sole provider of that content, and because of Amazon’s customer-friendly pricing structure, the Mercury Falls is available in paperback and electronic form for a very reasonable price. If you are willing to screw me out of my royalties so that you can save $4.75 (the current price of Mercury Falls in the Kindle store), then you are a thieving asshole. And don’t give me that crap about not wanting to support Amazon or wanting to read the book in a format other than Kindle. If you’re boycotting Amazon out of some sense of principle, then be prepared to deal with the consequences of that boycott: namely, not having access to content provided by Amazon. Don’t steal from me and tell me you are doing it to stick it to the man.

HOWEVER, I do not need the U.S. Congress sweeping down to save me from pirates. The fact is that my sales are doing just fine, thank you. I have no hard data on how many sales I’m losing to piracy, but I suspect the number is negligible. Why? Because normal, generally honest people don’t have the time, technical know-how or inclination to steal books through pirate sites. People who use those sites are going to be devoted thieves and people with who rationalize piracy through a misguided and self-serving notion that all content should be “free.” These people are not going to be stopped by something like the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). As with most anti-piracy measures, the people who are going to be punished are ordinary people.

There is plenty of anecdotal evidence, in fact, that making content cheap and easy to download actually increases profits. Take, for example, the case of Monty Python increasing sales by 23,000% by releasing free videos on YouTube, or the case of comedian Louis C.K. releasing a DRM-free recording of his performance for $5.

In my own case, I sold roughly 4,000 copies of Mercury Falls for $.99 through Amazon’s Kindle platform. I originally priced the book at $4.99, but then dropped the price to $2.99. The result? Sales more than doubled, so that I was actually making more money (and reaching far more readers) at the lower price. I then dropped the price to $.99 (the lowest price Amazon will allow) and sales once again more than doubled. At $.99 per copy I was making more money and reaching five times as many readers as I was at $4.99. If I could have given away Mercury Falls for free, I would have (and in many cases, I did). Frankly I would have been thrilled to find my book being offered as a free download on a torrent site, because I believed in my book and I knew that the more people who read it, the more people would buy it.

Now that Mercury Falls has been picked up by a publisher (AmazonEncore), do I feel differently? Sure I do. I’m no longer just an unknown author throwing content into the void, hoping to be noticed. AmazonEncore has to pay for marketing, publicity and overhead, so it’s unreasonable to expect them to give away their content. Now it’s a liability to have Mercury Falls popping up as a free download on pirate sites. But how much money am I losing because of those sites?

The simplest way to calculate lost profits would (theoretically) be to multiply the number of pirate copies downloaded by the profits I stand to make per legal purchase. By this measure, if a thousand people download pirated copies of Mercury Falls and I am making $2 per book*, then I have lost $2,000. But this is a vastly misleading number. Here’s why:

Scenario 1: Joe Freeloader is browsing through a pirate website when he comes across an interesting book he has never heard of before, entitled Mercury Falls. Rather than looking for a legal way to buy the book, Joe illegally downloads the book free from the pirate site.

Scenario 2: Jane Nomoney doesn’t have a dime to her name. One day she is browsing through Amazon when she runs across an interesting book called Mercury Falls. She wishes she could buy it, but because she has no money, she ends up going to a pirate site and downloading the book illegally.

Scenario 3: Jim Jerkwad has plenty of money, but he’s a jerk who doesn’t mind screwing authors out of royalties. He finds Mercury Falls on Amazon, decides he wants it, and then downloads it from a pirate site.

Note that only in Scenario 3 am I actually losing any money. Joe never would have heard of Mercury Falls if it weren’t for the pirate site, so you can’t include his lack of purchase in my total potential sales. Jane was never going to be able to buy the book, so I’m not losing any money there either. Only Jim, who deliberately uses Amazon to find books and then goes out of his way to get them illegally, is actually hurting me in any real way. And it’s my belief that people like this (1) are relatively rare and (2) will find a way around any piracy restrictions. This doesn’t justify the thievery in the first two cases, of course; my point is only that I’m not actually losing any sales in those cases.

Additionally, there is the possibility that the downloader will like the book enough that someday they will buy a legal copy, or recommend the book to their friends. Scoff at this if you want, but it’s word of mouth that sells most books.

These facts are overlooked in blog posts such as this one by author Karen Ranney, which also hilariously states:

Oh, by the way, they’re going to take your credit card number and steal YOU blind. And you’d better run your virus protection right away, because you’ve probably been infected with malware or another virus.

Which is it, Karen? Are these short-sighted opportunists who are using your books as bait to get credit card numbers and spread viruses or are they a serious threat to your business? I mean, if selling books illegally at cut-rate prices is such a great business model, wouldn’t these sites want to keep their customers coming back and encourage them to refer their friends? Stealing credit card numbers and spreading viruses is a sign of desperation, not the hallmark of a business that’s going to give serious competition to Barnes and Noble or Amazon. If piracy sites really were as overrun with scammers as she indicates, then no one would use them. At least not more than once.

The real threat (to the extent that one exists) is not sites that are using content as bait in some virus/credit card scheme; it’s sites that deliver exactly what they promise: free (or vastly discounted) illegal content. But again, given the three scenarios above, how much money does any given author stand to lose from piracy? Very little, I suspect — and piracy might actually result in a net gain for the author.**

And the price for protection against this marginal group of content pirates? What Google’s Sergey Brin calls “measures that would put us on a par with the most oppressive nations in the world.” Is it worth the price? Absolutely not, and people like Karen Ranney should know it.

*Not actual numbers.

**Of course, the higher a book’s price, the greater the temptation there is for people to pirate the content. Publishers who insist on selling e-books at $10+ each are frankly asking to become piracy targets. Fortunately, AmazonEncore prices my books very reasonably.

Somehow I found my way here on a late Saturday night. I live in Guanajuato, Mexico, and I don't have a Nook, Kindle, or even a cell phone -- just the nook and cranny where I reside with two charming dogs, books, candy, candles, and this dinosaur laptop, which can't even open the first few pages of your books on amazon. So I am going to look for your Books in the one and only English language bookstore in town. May the Force be with me.

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 19:14:17 -0800

Good luck. Your best bet is probably to order from Amazon.

99% Bull$@!#

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 13:10:14 -0800

Police forces across the nation have done a fine job of generating sympathy for the #Occupy movement. Although the protesters are right to be outraged at the treatment they’ve received by municipal authorities, one could argue that the heavy-handed attempts at repression by the police are the best thing that could have happened to the movement as a whole. When peacefully demonstrating civilians are attacked by police with pepper spray and billy clubs, it’s not hard to determine what the right side is.

There’s a difference, however, between supporting a person’s right to protest and supporting that person’s agenda. Like many people, I’ve been content to support the protesters in principle without committing to their (ill defined) political agenda. Now that the dust is starting to settle (and the #Occupy people have had enough time to be expected to put forth some coherent demands), I think it’s time to take a look at what the protesters actually want. One attempt to express an agenda has appeared in the form of a document put together by the Occupy Washington, D.C. group. Click the link if you want to read the whole thing; I’m just going to cover the major points and give my reactions to each.

1. Elimination of Corporate State.

This sounds like a good idea; I don’t think any reasonable individual would argue against the notion that big business and government have gotten a little too cozy of late. Apparently, though, the solution is to MAKE ALL PRIVATE CONTRIBUTIONS TO POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS ILLEGAL. You heard me right. OWDC wants an “immediate ban on all direct and indirect private contributions of any thing of value, to all politicians serving in or running for federal office in the United States. This ban shall extend to all individuals, corporations, “political action committees,” “super political action committees,” lobbyists, unions and all other private sources of money or things of value.” This rule would not only outlaw contributions by corporations, unions and political action committees; it would outlaw ALL POLITICAL CONTRIBUTIONS BY INDIVIDUALS AS WELL. In other words, if you write a $50 check to help an your nephew the aspiring congressman so he can print some fliers, you will go to jail. This is what people are demonstrating for?

Replacing private political contributions, by the way, will be a system of ”fair, equal and TOTAL public financing of all federal political campaigns.” In other words, candidates will be financed by the people who are in office now. Gee, I can’t see any conflict there.

Besides politicians who are in office now, the other people this rule would benefit are the mega-rich, like Donald Trump, who can finance a campaign without appealing to outside groups and individuals. In other words, this is a policy that any one percenter could wholeheartedly get behind.

2. Abrogation of the “Citizens United” Case.

Basically, they want a Constitutional amendment overturning the Supreme Court decision that corporate donations to political campaigns are protected speech. Given the fact that the vast majority of political donations go toward advertising (which is a form of speech), it seems to me that the Supreme Court made the right decision here. But I can see how a reasonable person would disagree, so I’m going to let this one slide.

3. Elimination of All Private Benefits and “Perks” to Public Servants.

Basically, they don’t think politicians should profit from corporations that they regulate. This is a good idea.

4. Term Limits.

“Members of the United States House of Representatives shall be limited to serving no more than four two-year terms in their lifetime. Members of the United States Senate shall be limited to serving no more than two six-year terms in their lifetime.”

This was a bad idea when it was touted by Newt Gingrich as part of the Contract with America in 1994, and it’s still a bad idea. Term limits would do exacty the opposite of what they are meant to do. They would limit the voters’ ability to vote for their preferred candidate, reduce accountability (by increasing the number of lame duck representatives), and make it that much harder for ordinary Americans to run for office. Running for office is already a high-risk endeavor that most Americans can’t afford; the prospect of likely unemployment after eight years would make a run for Congress out of the question for anyone but the one percenters.

5. A Fair Tax Code.

Basically this is about making corporations pay more taxes. The only problem is that the U.S. already has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the industrialized world. This would be a good way to chase corporations (also known as “employers”) out of the country.

6. Healthcare for All.

“Medicare for all or adoption of a universal single-payer healthcare system. The broken Medicaid program will be eliminated as redundant. Affordable healthcare shall be a human right.”

Health care is not, and cannot be a “human right.” It may or may not be a good policy, but an individual cannot have a “right” that requires massive sacrifice from his or her fellow citizens. I’m not saying that universal health care is a bad idea; what I’m saying is that I have a fundamental philosophical disagreement with the idea of health care being a right.

7. Protection of the Planet.

“Human greed, exponentially magnified by corporations, is destroying the only habitable planet known to humanity.”

Ridiculous hyperbole.

8. Debt Reduction.

This one isn’t even coherent. The authors don’t seem to understand the difference between the deficit (the difference between money going out and money coming in) and the debt (the total amount owed). And there’s a lot of nonsense in here about cutting spending for “inefficient healthcare, pharmaceutical exploitation,” etc. (Although who isn’t in favor of cutting funding for the National Pharmaceutical Exploitation Bureau?) The fact is, you can’t balance the budget without cutting social spending and/or entitlements.

9. Jobs for All Americans.

More ridiculous hyperbole.

10. Student Loan Forgiveness.

I could go along with some of this, but keep in mind that one way to discourage institutions from making future student loans is to forgive current loans.

11. Immigration Reform and Improved Border Security.

Interesting combination. I’m in favor of both, but where are you going to get the money for the latter?

12. Ending of Perpetual War for Profit.

So we’re going to only engage in unprofitable wars from now on?

13. Emergency Reform of Public Education.

Oh, good. We’re going to handle Public Education the way we handled Hurricane Katrina.

14. End outsourcing.

Again, a good way to chase corporations out of the country.

15. End Currency Manipulation.

As far as I can tell, they are trying to start a trade war with China. We will lose.

16. Banking and Securities Reform.

This mostly makes sense.

17. Foreclosure Moratorium.

See #10.

18. Ending the Fed.

Interesting. A classic Libertarian position. Gotta wonder who sneaked this one in. Not sure where I stand on this one.

19. Abolish the Electoral College and Enact Uniform Election Reforms

Probably a good idea in principle, although there’s a bunch more blather in here about public financing of campaigns. Anyway, it’s not going to make much of a practical difference.

20. Ending the War in Afghanistand and Care of Veterans.

This one isn’t actually as heartless as it sounds. Turns out they are actually IN FAVOR of veterans’ care. I guess that’s OK.

21. Repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (“DOMA”)

Not sure what this has to do with any of the other stuff, but whatever.

22. No Censorship of the Internet.

Good idea, but again, what’s the relevance? Also, it seems ironic to me that a group that wants to outlaw individual giving to political campaigns wants unrestricted free speech on the Internet. What happens if I buy a Facebook ad to support my political candidate of choice? Is that free speech or do I go to jail?

So here’s how I come down:

Points I wholeheartedly support: #3, #11, #16

Points I support in principle, but have some problems with details: #10, #17, #19, #20, #12

Points I support in principle, but that seem outside the scope of the 99%er cause: #21, #22

Points I have serious philosophical/practical problems with: #1, #2, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #13, #14, #15, #18

Leaving out the items I consider irrelevant (#21 and #22), I’m somewhat or wholeheartedly in support of eight points and dead-set against twelve of them. I guess I’m not a ninety-nine percenter. Maybe I should look into this whole Tea Party thing.

Do you have a book agent?

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 09:34:48 -0800

Nope. Couldn’t interest an agent in Mercury Falls. I think it didn’t have enough vampires.

I know you've stated that that 'Mercury Rests' will be the last in the series of novels, but are there going to be any other short stories like 'Mercury Swings'? Perhaps from other points of view and whatnot?

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 09:14:26 -0800

I’d say there’s a good chance of at least one more story.

If a tree falls in the woods, and there is no one around to hear it, does it still make a sound?

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 09:10:21 -0800

This is a hilarious change of pace from the questions about the woodchuck. Thanks.

Disenchanted

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 13:55:44 -0800

Now that Mercury Rests is basically done, I’ve been trying to figure out what to work on next. I’ve decided to finish a novel I started about a year ago called Disenchanted. Disenchanted is a tongue-in-cheek high fantasy epic that I’ve previously described as “The Lord of the Rings from the perspective of one of the Nazgûl.” A sample:

Whether death improved Boric overall is a matter of some debate, but there’s little question that it enhanced him professionally. In addition to his already impressive catalog of badassery, death granted him invulnerability, the importance of which can’t be overstated in Boric’s chosen profession. There were some negatives, of course, but even these could often be turned to his advantage: those who were not convinced to surrender by rumors of his combat prowess and invulnerability were often compelled to give in when they caught a whiff of his rotting-cabbage-mixed-with-rancid-bacon odor. Still, he couldn’t deny his relief when the flesh still doggedly clinging to his bones had finished their desiccation, leaving him smelling more like the attic of an old farmhouse and less like a pot of beef stew that has quietly gone bad in a forgotten corner of the farmhouse’s pantry.

I have about 7,000 words (about 45 pages) written, and I have a pretty good idea where the story is going, so hopefully I can send it to the publisher in the spring or so.

Are you going to publish your books for the Nook from Barnes & Noble? Please!?

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 10:06:23 -0800

That’s a question for Amazon Publishing. Amazon is understandably reluctant to make their books available on competing platforms, and I am understandably reluctant to leave Amazon Publishing, because they sell a lot of books for me.

By the way, the Nook uses the Android operating system, so there’s no reason in theory why it couldn’t run the Kindle Reader app. Maybe you should ask B&N why they cripple the O/S.

What is your view of the infallibility of Scripture?

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 21:43:48 -0800

I’m not sure I can answer that without making a mistake.