From Blog to Book

Some pretty exciting news to report today:

My previous blog, "An American Teacher in Taiwan" is now a book, exclusive to Amazon Kindle.  If you happen to visit that blog and notice that it's a mere shell of its former self...well...that's because  the rights of that blog are now exclusive to Amazon, and they don't really want me to compete with myself.  Can't blame them.

The blog is still up, but from this point it will be mostly to publish any letters I might get from readers, videos, and (of course) promotion for the book.

I have to give Christy most of the credit for this happening.  She was watching a news program on Sunday morning that ran a story on "Self Publishing" and she suggested that I try it.  I began writing that story as a book anyway, but changed it to a blog since I didn't think I had enough material (turned out I had more than enough...since I'm still working on the second part.)

I also want to give a plug to the guy who created the cover.  I tried for hours and hours to create my own cover, but it looked like total, unprofessional shit.  So I found this guy on a website called "Fiverr" who designs Kindle covers for $5.00 (everything is five dollars on Fiverr, thus the name).  His screen name is "idrewdesign" and he did an awesome job for me.  Hopefully I can make that $5.00 back in sales of the book.  :)

So here it is...my first book....for the low, low price of $2.99.  You can click the link to go straight to the Amazon page here.

Driving Off the Fiscal Cliff!

All I hear on the news lately is "THE FISCAL CLIFF" and how we're about to go off it.  On Good Morning America, they have a countdown......
"Just 30 more days till we go over the Fiscal Cliff!"
"25 more days until EVERYONE'S TAXES GO UP!"

If their goal is to scare people, it's probably working.  Hell, the thought of a two thousand dollar tax bill next month scares even me, and I don't get scared easily.  It won't destroy us, but it will do enough damage to our pocketbook that we'd have to make some cuts on non-essential things (going out to dinner, going out to the movies, buying crap etc.), which would...in turn...hurt the economy.  I have a colleague here at work who barely makes enough to make her mortgage payment every month.  She's always looking around for a second job.  A $2000 tax bill could easily cause her to lose her house.  So...yeah...it's kinda scary.  For some people, it could really be a matter of life and death.

A lot of blame will be passed around if this happens.  Some of it will go to Obama, but I think more of it will fall on the feet of the GOP.  The GOP is refusing to let tax rates go up on people who make more than 250k.  They're still grasping onto it with all their strength, not willing to let go.  They don't seem to understand that Obama won re-election based on the platform that taxes would go up on the wealthy.

None of this makes much sense to me.  Just what are the Republicans trying to accomplish by going against the will of the people?  If we do go over the "Fiscal Cliff" because of their stubbornness, they will see massive defeats in the 2014 elections.  It seems more logical to give Obama what he wants, and let the chips fall where they may.  If it's a failure, then it's Obama's failure, and the Republicans will have an excellent chance to take back the White House in 2016.  But continuing to obstruct everything the President does is just political suicide.