Monthly Archives: December 2013

The Underlying Problem of Giving Them the Pickle

Business, Education, Healthcare, , , , , , , , ,

Pickle

Just recently, I was working for a health care organization that seemed to be having some difficulty in customer service. As a result, the higher-ups thought it would be really beneficial if the education department (of which I was a part) took up the task of teaching customer service to the front line employees, specifically the people who engage patients when they come to the hospital system. So, after a few meetings that consisted of management explaining how customer service needs to improve (in which I was reminded of the infamous pro dominant adage of “We will beat our slaves until moral improves” but I digress), we were then shown a motivational film that’s been making the circuit called “Give Them the Pickle.” In case you’re not familiar with this film, it features the creator of the ice cream parlor Farrell’s as he explains how a customer got really upset in one of his establishments because he asked for an extra pickle and was then told that pickles are extra, or something like that. This started a whole series of adventures where this owner decided to change the customer service model of his franchise forever. There may have been an “and they lived happily ever after” at the end of it as well. I’ll admit, it was motivational and it was a good presentation. But it seemed to miss a few things, specifically when dealing with the company where I just worked.

First, the problem inherent in our company has a lot more to do with service than just customer service. To begin with, customer service tends to be lacking WITHIN the organization, so that quite often it can be a bit difficult to deal with other parts of the company because of the silos that have been created and maintained. When you have that sort of atmosphere going on, telling those same employees that they now need to focus on customer service when they’re having enough trouble providing company service to each other, well, there’s a dysfunction already harming the larger issue.

One day last year, I was on the bus near the main hospital when I overheard a conversation between a bunch of the passengers. One said something about our hospital, as in he’s never been there and people always told him to avoid it. And then people chimed in about how the people that worked there were rude, the services were all overpriced, and not a single one of them failed to mention our competition as the better facility to go in case you ever need health care needs fulfilled. I brought this conversation back to my organization when I first heard it, and the immediate response I received from management was a reinterpretation of the message, that they were complaining because they couldn’t afford the good health care that was provided by our establishment, not that it was overpriced; when it came to the customer service part, they just continued talking about how because they were already miffed at the prices, they would interpret anything else as negative. Basically, they had solid information from people who were complaining, and the response was that obviously they were confused about what they were complaining about, so nothing needs to be changed.

This is the organization that now needs to “improve” customer service by teaching employees how to give free pickles as ice cream parlors. Keep in mind that we don’t give out free health care, free testing supplies (or tests), cut rates on surgery, an actual better product than any other health care facility (even though the argument keeps being made that they do, based on a sample size of none, as statistics don’t really make a lot of sense when you’re comparing to yourself (one divided by one still does manage to equal one).

So, how do you improve customer service when you actually don’t pay any attention to the public to whom you are now supposed to be providing better customer service? The simple answer is you don’t. The solution isn’t really a riddle, but an acknowledgement that perhaps we need to go out into the population and talk to them, find out what they would like from a large hospital system that claims to know what they need without actually asking them, and perhaps worrying less about pickles and more about why people might be there in the first place. I was in the hospital last year with a kidney problem, and I was scared during the time I was in there. One of the worst doctors I’ve ever experienced was one who was actually from the place where I worked. She didn’t care one iota about how her patients felt, and she was kind of a moron as well (which as a communications person, I attributed to the fact that she had zero listening skills, which made her diagnosis work absurdly bad).

Which brings me back to the whole communication aspect of this whole situation, which you probably should have guessed it would come in at some point or another. If you want to figure out what’s wrong with your customer service, talk to your customers and try to find out. It’s a good thing to look at comment cards and all that, but quite often a comment card is one of those things logged AFTER a bad experience, which means you don’t really have the opportunity to fix what was wrong, and like the place where I worked, they probably never will.

Some of these things should go without being said, but unfortunately I think that’s the problem. They haven’t been said, and thus, people are now convinced they have the answers after having watched some old entrepreneur talk about giving pickles to customers when they ask for them.

The Problem of Genre

A Season of Kings, Books, Memoirs, Self-Publishing, Tales of Reagul, The Teddy Bear Conspiracy, Writing, , , , , , , , , ,

One of my biggest problems as a writer is that quite often it is very difficult to nail down the genres in which I write. It was easy in the beginning of my career when I wrote Innocent Until Proven Guilty, which was mystery/suspense. But then I started branching out on other types of books and things got, well, kind of confusing. Let me give you a bit of a run-down, and you’ll see what I mean:

Innocent Until Proven Guilty: A murder takes place in corporate America and then an executive frames another for the murder. Works well as mystery/suspense.

Leader of the Losers: A dystopian future where poverty and class distinction has been solved by eliminating the “losers”. Definitely science fiction.

72 Hours in August: During the 1991 August Coup in the Soviet Union, a plan is hatched to start a nuclear war before the coup is over. Suspense, but also historical, and kind of a mystery as well.

Destiny: The Tales of Reagul story that starts the whole series, except it takes place 3000 years after the beginning of the epic. Story begins with a space battle, turns into a fantasy trek across a mysterious land and then ends with another large space battle. Science fiction? Fantasy? Both?

Deadly Deceptions: In South Korea, a counterintelligence agent uncovers a blackmarketing operation that might actually be masking a major espionage cover-up. Guess that’s a suspense novel, or a thriller, or also a mystery.

The Ameriad: A humorous Greek epic that spoofs the Iliad and the Odyssey by turning the icons of American society into the “new” gods. No idea where this one belongs.

Absent Without Leave: A military criminal investigator uncovers a 20 year old crime that started with the framing of his father and leads to the political future of Texas politics. Mystery, maybe? Thriller? Suspense?

The Teddy Bear Conspiracy: A CIA agent, running an operation to defeat the Colombian drug lords, finds himself targeted by his own people, forcing him to finish the mission alone while someone within his organization is trying to kill him and take over the project. Suspense?

Thompson’s Bounty: A time-traveling Coast Guard cutter encounters 16th century pirates and is sucked into a battle between two naval commanders. Science fiction? Naval warfare?

A Season of Kings (my next novel): The first official book of the Tales of Reagul, which tells the story of a planet where science and magic are intertwined. Most of the story is fantasy, but the whole premise comes from an alien experiment, which basically makes it science fiction.

Those are just the tip of the iceberg, and I’m finding it really hard to market my books because none of them really fit into any solid genre. Or few of them do. I won’t even try to figure out where Plato’s Perspective fits in, as it’s a novel with the protagonist named Plato who may or may not be the actual Plato, and the novel’s point in time may be a bit confusing as well. It could end up being philosophy, science fiction, fantasy, mainstream, history, etc. I’m sure you get the idea.

Now that I’m on my own

A Season of Kings, Books, Memoirs, Self-Publishing, Social Networking, Tales of Reagul, Writing, , , , , , , ,
This was once me, at West Point. Boy, have I sure come a long way since then
This was once me, at West Point. Boy, have I sure come a long way since then

The last day of work for me was on Tuesday, and it was one of those days that really didn’t have a lot going on. I came in expecting to be given grunt work to do most of the day, but the senior boss decided that I would have my exit interview at 11:30 AM, and then I was finished with the job as of noon. Still got paid for the entire day (or so they say), and then I was kind of on my own from there. I forgot to pick up some medication at the pharmacy at work because I was in such a hurry to leave, so I’ll probably have to wander back there this weekend and do the pick up of that stuff.

So, I’m now in the process of putting together my writing projects and pushing forward on those. I completed and published my novella, The Beast of Begmire, and I’m trying to see about getting it listed for free on most e-book sites. I also put it up on Wattpad this evening, so it should be available for anyone to read free there.

My next project will be to complete A Season of Kings, and during that project I’m still working on completing the first book of the series I’m writing with Marie. Hopefully, we can get that one moving forward, as I seem to have a lot more hope for that series than any of the fantasy ones I’m writing.

Money is going to be tight, mainly because of the way Spectrum Health completes the quitting process. I can’t ask for my payout money from my retirement until the last paycheck comes through from SH, and unfortunately the way they work it out, it will probably be about a month before the last “paycheck” comes through, and THEN I’m allowed to put in the paperwork for that money. Which means February might be a bit crappy when it comes to paying my bills, and unfortunately I’m not really sure what the solution to that is going to be. If it’s not one thing, it’s another….

Another project I’ve been outlining lately is one that I had on a back burner for many years now, and that’s my Return to Camelot series. Every time I write a specific novel, I find myself getting tons and tons of ideas, dialogue, and even scenes from the next novel I’ll be writing after the ones I’m currently working on. For some reason, Return to Camelot has been the one that’s been building momentum lately. All I can do is write down the ideas and hope that I can get to the actual writing soon. My working titles for that series are:

1. The Once and Future King

2. Return to Camelot

3. Le Morte D’Arthur

They’re not massively original, but they’re working titles for now, and they seem to push the ideas of what exists within each volume. I’m kind of looking forward to writing that series, as I wrote the first couple of chapters years ago and still refer to those chapters from time to time because they were so very good. Yes, a writer can admire his own work from time to time. You wouldn’t believe how critical I am of practically everything else that comes through my word processor.

For some reason, every night I seem to be dreaming about work (the old job). I keep dreaming how someone is telling me I have to do something and it must be done on a deadline that has already passed. And then an inner voice tells me, hey, you don’t work here any more, and I kind of toss and turn through that. I guess the subconscious does that to you when you’ve been living and breathing a job for so long, especially one that was becoming really good at developing arbitrary deadlines and then sitting on the results for weeks while new deadlines are thrown at you for new work that will then be sat on as soon as it met its completion. Anyway.

So, that’s kind of where things are right now. And as so few people tend to read my blog, aside from the spider sites in China that seem to access my page hundreds of times a day, it would be nice to hear from people who are actually reading it. Otherwise, I might just have to discontinue it, as it’s turning very much into a diary where I’m the only one who is really reading it.

The Final Days Are the Most Difficult

Business, Memoirs, , , , , , ,

I have three whole days left of work at my current job. Well, three counting today, which means after this weekend, I only have to go to work two more times and this nightmare is over.

So, today, I got one of those “Where’s the XYZ Project?” to which, I’ll be honest that in the last few weeks with all of the different projects thrown at me to complete before I’m “allowed” to quit, it just slipped my mind. It’s not like I haven’t been swamped with everything else (which, sardonically, is the reason I’m quitting in the first place). So, after being shamed into realizing that I haven’t done it, I got one of those passive-aggressive conversations with the boss, where I just looked at her and thought, I really don’t care, so stop bothering me.

That’s kind of how I am right now. I’m trying to produce the things they need before I go, but let’s be honest, I have no incentive to do anything here other than the personal satisfaction of just getting something done. Before I quit, I was ready to leave the next day, which I didn’t do, and instead, I put in a month’s notice, and like I said, there are two full days left before I finally get to leave.

The sad thing is that I liked this place beore all of this happened. I just can’t work with the person who took over. I tried, and let’s just say that some personalities don’t mesh, and I kind of knew that was going to happen when she stepped up from being a colleague and became the supervisor. I would not be very surprised to see the majority of the staff jump ship right after me. I know one is about to leave as well, although I don’t think anyone suspects she’s on the way out either. It will probably be one of those last minute things, something I was trying to avoid on my way out myself.

But it’s so frustrating because I just want to walk out and leave. I know two or three days isn’t that much time, but when you have a discussion about your last day, where I basically said that’s when I clean up everything of mine and sort things out for leaving, being told “You’re still being paid to work, so what are you going to be doing” kind of gives you the thought of “Screw you, I’ll take a sick day then and you can throw my junk into the street.”

But I won’t go there. Instead, I’ll try to get through these last few days and then I’ll start my journey of writing full time.

And starving. Yikes.

The Realm of Reagul

A Season of Kings, Self-Publishing, Tales of Reagul, The Emperor of Reagul, The War of the Wizards, Writing, , , , , , , , ,
Reagul2
The original concept map for Reagul

The Realm of Reagul

 One of the longest projects I’ve ever worked on has been a world-building one called Reagul. I originally conceived of the land of Reagul in a computer game I designed back in the early days of computer games. It was called Prisoner of Z’anth, which involved an American soldier during the Vietnam War who comes across a mysterious artifact in the jungle that points to a sinister organization working behind the scenes of the war. As he battles his way through enemies, he comes to a portal they are protecting that takes him to the land of Z’anth, a realm completely in Earth’s middle ages but filled with dragons and strange creatures, as well as humans who know nothing of Earth. The story in Z’anth opens up to a revelation that this land was once linked with Earth many years ago, and that an alien race may have been responsible for why all of these people are on this planet. The game itself concludes with a final battle against an evil sorcerer who wishes to control everything around him and is now intrigued to discover there’s a world (Earth) he has yet to conquer.

 A few years later, I created another game called Lessons in Death, which took place in the year 3000, when Earth has been taken over by an emperor who seeks to subjugate the known universe. The peace-loving Eden System comes under attack, and a young female ensign from Eden named Laura begins a quest to destroy the emperor and the empire. It starts out as a space battle and then becomes a medieval sword and sorcery tale on a planet that comes to be known as Reagul. As you might suspect, Reagul is none other than the original Z’anth.

 This game eventually became my novel Destiny, which is basically the introduction to the Tales of Reagul, whish strangely begins 3000 years after the saga actually begins in the first series of the Tales of Reagul. Let me explain.

 During the early days of the Roman Empire, an alien race of beings called the Minions takes a large group of Roman citizens from different locations across the empire and moves them to the planet Reagul. As you start to discover, this is not the first time they have done this to human civilizations, having done this with the Egyptians before and the Greeks soon after. They have also transplanted creatures from other planets, running experiments to see how different species interact with each other.

 At some point, the Minions are called home to fight a war that has been taking place in their home solar system. Realizing they must leave soon, they train a young man in their ways, basically giving him the knowledge of a civilization that is thousands of years ahead of anything ever seen before. His new knowledge makes him so powerful, he becomes the first wizard/sorcerer of Reagul, and his name is Sarbonn.  After the Minions leave, Sarbonn attempts to continue their work of protecting the planet, but he also starts to discover that he’s not the first one they’ve trained, as he begins to discover hints of something referred to as the Dark One, a former trainee who has become so powerful that he has gone insane and seeks to destroy all life through a process of chaos and destruction.

 But Sarbonn, oblivious to this future danger, trains two young sorcerers who become his “children”. Over the years, all is fine, and the kingdoms of Reagul begin to grow with the usual sorts of skirmishes that happen when humans try to create civilizations in different places but are close enough to influence one another. Then the process begins to fall apart.

 One of Sarbonn’s “children” decides that because he is so powerful he should be ruling mankind instead of serving it, so he begins a war of aggression that eventually leads to him becoming the emperor of Reagul. Finally, Sarbonn and his other son must confront this upstart, which leads to a cataclysm like none ever seen before.

 Meanwhile, the shadow of the Dark One continues to spread its tentacles, planning and waiting for the right moment to strike.

1 small

The first novel will be released later next month, and it’s called A Season of Kings. Later this month, the first teaser will be published, which is called The Beast of Begmire, which tells the story of a mysterious sorceress who comes in battle with the Dark One some time after the events of the first three books.

 

 

 

 

Beast of Begmire - High Resolution

Still no such thing as a free lunch

Economics, News, Politics, , , , , , , , , ,

Some moron running for senate in Georgia thinks he has a great idea to, well, I don’t really know what it would solve, but like usual, a House Representative in Georgia, who wants to rise in power, thinks it’s a really good idea to put school children to work to earn their “free lunches.” Basically, U.S.Representative Jack Kingston thinks it would be really nifty for the poor to put them to work sweeping up cafeterias for their lunch money, because somehow this would instill in them the idea that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. If you think about it, he’s advocating a legal fix to an old adage that doesn’t actually have a lot of connection to anyone’s reality.

The obvious counter to this whole situation is this belief that somehow this is going to make poor kids feel like they’ve “earned” their lunch. No kid pays for his or her own lunch at that age, or at least very few do, because no kids have their own money at that age. Their parents give them money, so they aren’t learning money management skills. They’re learning that their parents have money, or they’re learning that their parents have no money. That’s really the lesson that gets taught here no matter how some Republican Neanderthal wants to spin it.

I’ll let you in on a little secret. Well, it’s not really a secret, but I grew up dirt poor. My mom was uneducated and my dad split when I was too young to ever know him. So my mom worked crap jobs and was basically too uneducated (and proud) to take government handouts. She probably should have. It didn’t help that she was sick and then went blind in one eye. She tried and that’s really all that’s important.

So, at one point I was put on discount lunches. Somehow, even though our apartment was overrun with cockroaches on a daily basis and our neighbors were crack addicts and prostitutes, we were too well off to get full free lunches. So, my mom had to pay a certain amount of money and then got discounted lunches for me when I went to school.

Let me tell you about those discounts. They gave you a special paper card that you had to present each and every time you presented for lunch, and the system was so obviously designed to point out that you were using this card, which meant that every other kid looked at you when you were presenting it, and I can’t tell you how bad kids are at making someone feel like shit in some weird process of making themselves feel better about themselves. It was humiliating every time I had to present that card and then pay my token of the discount I was allowed to pay. There were many times when I skipped lunch because it was easier to not eat than to have to go through that process each and every time at lunch.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict that Representative Kingston never had to go through that experience when he was growing up. And I’ll bet that not once has one of his children ever had to go through such a thing just to get a stupid lunch meal. That sort of thing scars you for a long time, and even in my middle age these days, I have never forgot how it felt to have to present that stupid card when I was at that age.

And that’s the problem with a lot of our representatives who think they actually represent people they serve. Edmund Burke argued a long time ago that he could “represent” miners in his district even though he’s never been a miner because he knows what’s best for them. He was wrong then, and Kingston is wrong today. I’m sure there’s a special place in Goddess Hell where Kingston has to ask for a school lunch each and every day and is told that no, he must starve because there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

It’s not really charity if you want credit for your giving

Business, Economics, Healthcare, Memoirs, , , , , , , , ,

Years ago, I used to work for a hotel that loved good publicity. It would volunteer for neighborhood “giving” things, and then recruits its employees to provide the ground work for what needed to happen. And then it would release a big press release about how much that hotel was doing for the community.

One of the employee “perks” of working for that large hotel chain was that on every Thanksgiving the hotel would give a turkey to each employee before that holiday. It was a nice thing, and if you had a family, or could cook a turkey, it was probably a great benefit. I worked for that company for seven years, and five years in I realized that each year they gave away a turkey, I never took one because I basically had no family and no way to actually cook it. So, it would have been a waste of food. But on that fifth year, I had a new idea. I was going to give my turkey to a food shelter so other people could benefit from the free item I was given.

As I told other people about this, I started to discover how many people didn’t have families of their own, and how many of them turned down the turkey each year on Thanksgiving because they had nothing to do with it. So, they started asking me if they could give their turkeys to me and then have me donate them to the food shelter I was going to give mine to. In a few short days, I had the promise of 25 turkeys from random people at work who told other people who then contacted me. When the givaway occurred, I realized I had a bit of a problem because I really had no ability to carry 25 turkeys home with me, or any place to store them for several days before I would be able to deliver them. So, I contacted one of the main kitchen executives, and he gave me access to a freezer for the time being so I could store this bounty.

Then I got onto the phone and started calling food banks, before realizing that unless you’re a “donor” they know, they’re sometimes not all that interested in someone giving them free food. Finally, I found a San Francisco food kitchen that was in desperate need of this sort of thing, and I arranged to deliver it to them.

The day I pulled up my station wagon to the loading dock to load all of these turkeys, I was met in the loading dock by a minion from the human resources department., She wanted to know what I was doing with all of these turkeys. After I explained it to her, she indicated that these turkeys were for employees, and that I had no permission from the hotel to be doing what I was doing. I explained that these turkeys were given to me by employees who wanted them to go to some place where they would be of use. She was adamant that this had to be approved by higher ups. The guys in the loading dock ignored her and loaded up my car with the turkeys and then allowed me to leave. When I returned to work on Monday morning, I was subsequently written up by someone in human resources for subordination, which ended up being dissolved after a union rep was brought in to dispute the charge.

The next year, no less than 40 people approached me about donating turkeys, even though I didn’t even say I was going to do it that year. As I started coordinating the activity, another person from human resources had me called into her office where she explained to me that if it wasn’t a hotel function, designed by hotel HR, then it was not my option to do. I explained that these turkeys were given to employees, which meant they could do anything they waned with them. She explained that if the hotel wasn’t getting credit for its charity, then I was to cease this activity immediately. I said no, as this wasn’t really her choice to make. We never came to an agreement.

I stopped working there the next year and went back to school, but let’s just say that it taught me an important lesson when it comes to HR and corporations. I’ll let you figure out what that lesson was.

Fast forward to now, and I now work for a hospital system that loves its publicity (sound familiar). It constantly reveals how loved it is in the community to which it serves, and it often calls on its employees to make it appear even better. An example I find eye-opening is its yearly United Way campaign. Every year, expensively produced materials are given to every employee to assist them in making the maximum contribution they can. What I find interesting is that one of the very attractive women I work with who NEVER speaks to me on a daily basis, actually starts speaking to me right before she approaches me to “give” to the United Way campaign because she is the department’s spokesperson and her success in getting signatures is part of how she is perceived to management.

Now, I have personal problems with the United Way that are irrelevant to the discussion, but let’s just say that due to my experiences with them, I do not contribute to them. I do contribute to other places. Just not them. But the place where I work feels it is important for maximum contributions and consistently overplays how important it is that each employee contribute. One such appeal came the other day from a corporate VP who felt that employees weren’t giving enough, so he was opening up the time to give for longer than originally planned. All I kept thinking was “you know, this guy makes so much money that he could probably make up the need that he wants all by himself, but I bet he’s not interested because he’s only giving a certain amount that will be represented by a certain percentage of what he can claim on his taxes this year.” Or something like that.

When this whole campaign is over, the place where I work will claim victory and won’t actually say “Our employees were so great because they gave this much money to the United Way.” Instead, the expensively printed materials will indicate that the place where I work reached its goals and provided a certain amount of money to the United Way. Again, it may just be semantics, but those semantics are why I tend to avoid corporate giving in most instances. It’s almost always about the corporation, not about the people who work for that organization. Sure, they’ll have a nice little memo that goes out to the employees, but when it comes to the real recognition, they’ll take full credit and bask in the glory.

That’s why I say it’s not really charity if you want credit for your giving. When I gave away those turkeys, the recipient who off loaded them wanted to know who she should give credit, even trying to figure out who to make out  receipt, and I just stared at her dumbfounded, revealing that I did it because people were hungry and I had extra food. What more needed to be said than that?

Sometimes, it seems like the whole world just wants to fight with itself

Memoirs, News, Politics, , , , , , ,

star-wars-darth-vader-sense

I found out today that Michigan decided to tell women to go screw themselves when it comes to rape. Basically, women used to be able to get abortions if they were raped. Now, they can’t, unless they thought ahead and bought rape insurance. Yep, I said that correctly. They have to buy rape insurance. I have all sorts of snide comments to make on that, but I’m just going to leave that one for you to digest. Rape insurance. Okay, moving on.

Meanwhile, there was another shooting in Colorado, which has verified to me that if you want to die, and happen to be young enough to still be in school, go to Colorado. Come to think of it. Go anywhere in America, and you’re probably going to find somebody willing to kill you. We’re just that helpful.

I was happy to see that our Congress was able to come together long enough to decide on a budget, which will pay for military projects and anything needed by very wealthy people who already have enough money that they couldn’t possibly think of anything else to spend it on. Those on unemployment, well, go screw yourself because this country just thinks you’re some lazy ass who is sitting at home trying to get free bon bons while the rest of us work hard at…um, well, not sure what we’re working hard on, as I don’t think too many people in this country actually have really difficult jobs these days, although they like to think they do. But I’m sure they’re all upset at the freeloading people who are starving to death in the snow, while trying to push their broken shopping carts that some legislator seems to think needs to be smashed with a sledgehammer (guess that somehow gets those freeloaders back to work?). Anyway, basically our country works well if you’re already filthy rich. If you’re not, you’re just lazy and should go out and get a job, even if you have three of them that don’t pay enough combined to get you off of food stamps (which, by the way, we need to cut because government decided that money needed to go to rich billionaire oil barons).

And we just bombed a bunch of strangers in Syria with drones that we stated we wouldn’t use just to bomb anyone, although we may have just accidentally taken out an entourage of people returning from a wedding, which someone in our government than had the audacity to state: “They were all enemies of state”, which I’m sure includes the toddlers and the bride. But what do I know?

And China decided to play top gun with its ships by basically threatening to ram a US missile cruiser in international waters. And what did we do? We stepped aside and let them pass. In other words, the most powerful Navy in the freaking world just backed down to yet another tin hat power broker.

Oh well, I guess I’m just bitter because my stuffed animals have more of a social life than I do.

I can’t thank readers enough

Books, Self-Publishing, The Teddy Bear Conspiracy, , , ,

I don’t mean for buying my books, while I’m very thankful for that. But a reader of my latest book noticed a discrepancy that I missed during the rewrite (where I kept one location that had been changed unchanged in another spot in the book). So, I was able to fix that and feel much better about the new novel.

Hopefully, this time the book is exactly what it was meant to be.

On to new projects

A Season of Kings, Books, Memoirs, Self-Publishing, Tales of Reagul, The Teddy Bear Conspiracy, , , , , , ,

Last night, I finished the last touches of The Teddy Bear Conspiracy, and it’s now on sale on Kindle and will be on sale in paperback in the next few days (had one more run through the edit check and had to fix a couple of things before I could let it go one more time). Either way, the book is done, and it is now available for the masses to read, so hopefully you all enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Which brings me to my next projects. Over the next few days, I have some outlining to do for my Haven project, and then I’ll be working on The Tales of Reagul, specifically book one, A Season of Kings.  With an aggressive schedule, I’m hoping to have these books released within the next month.

I’m starting to explore new ways of generating reviews, and Library Thing has become my new plaything. I put up ten digital copies of The Ameriad there last week, and then a few days ago, I put 100 copies of Leader of the Losers. Part of what drives a writer’s career these days is reviews, and I can’t even begin to explain how difficult those have been to come by. Which is shocking  because the books themselves have sold enough copies that you’d think they’d have lots of positive reviews, but they don’t. It’s like they’re completely overlooked by everyone, mainly because those who write me and say they loved the book never bother to leave a review on Amazon, which would make things so much more beneficial for someone like me. You know, someone who is still trying to get ANYONE to realize he’s actually publishing books.

Well, only two weeks (and one day) of work left in this job before I’m a full-time writer, and I’m really hoping this works out for the best. Right now, I’m not feeling so great about this decision, but it had to be done, which means it was meant to be, whatever that might actually mean in the greater scheme of things.

Let’s hope for the best.