"GO FIGURE" Now on Sale for Amazon Kindle!

"Go Figure" is the first in a series of children's books by author/artist Dennis Young.

Dennis is known as the musician who played in the legendary 80's band "Liquid Liquid."  Recently, he has focused his creative skills on painting & drawing.  Along with his paintings in exhibits on record covers, he now has completed his first in a series of children's books called "Go Figure."

The book revolves around unique characters where kids can use their imagination to create a storyline each time they look thru the pages of the book.  Grown-ups are encouraged to join in the fun.  So, grab your kids and "GO FIGURE"

Here is the link that will take you directly to the book.

Legitimate Work at Home Jobs and Opportunities

Don't worry, my blog hasn't been hacked.  I'm going to be promoting a few websites and products to help some people out, so here's the first one!

This is a website called I'm Here For You.  It's got a lot of great advice on how to make money from home (and who doesn't want to make money from home?)

You can link directly to the website here

My First Fiction Book Now Available

My first short fiction story is now available at Amazon on the Kindle for only 99 cents.  It's called "Interstate 10" and it's a supernatural/suspense/horror thing around 40-50 pages (depending on the size of your Kindle.)

If you happen to pick it up, keep in mind that this is a short story, and that's the reason why events transpire rather quickly.  So please don't complain about it being too short.  It's supposed to be.

The same guy (idrewdesign) designed the cover for this.  It wasn't the image I was expecting, but I still like it.  It's still better than anything I could have done on my own.

I haven't gotten my nerve up to write a novel yet, nor am I even sure I can do it.  The time and dedication it takes to write a novel are daunting.  With continual interruptions from the wife and kids, it's difficult to even write a short story these days.  I'd have to be able to lock myself into a room for 8 hours a day to put the kind of effort into a novel that I'd like to.

My regular readers of this blog (assuming they are still around) are probably saying "Is that what this blog has become now?  Just a promotional tool for your freakin' books on Amazon?!"

The answer is YES AND NO.

I have no more books pending on the horizon.  My blog/books are finished, and that was the only short story I had been working on.  That's it for now.  So...eventually I'll return to the blog you once remembered, but of course I'll still my promote my stuff.  Who wouldn't?  :)

You can buy the short story here.

And Finally...The Third Book!

So...I have another book out, called "The Reluctant Austinite."  I've decided, with this book, I'm not going to go all out and try to promote it (other than this blog, of course).  This is just a simple, under the radar release for me.

When I was editing the 2nd book, "From Taiwan to Texas," I had realized that I left out a lot of the Texas and Austin stories, and I wanted to make a special book with just those stories (and several of my other stories as well.)  It's not like the other books at all.  It doesn't really touch any of the deep and dark sections of the other books.  This is more of a light-hearted thing, which means I'll be lucky to sell one or two copies (okay, maybe three.)

Speaking of sales, I was a bit surprised to see that my previous two books are actually selling.  I'm averaging about maybe one per day.  Okay, these aren't life changing numbers, but something is better than nothing, right?  Reading the "Author Forums" on Amazon, I've seen many writers complaining about not selling a single copy of their book, after months and months.  So I guess selling a dozen or so is something to celebrate.  I also had a few promotional days where I gave the book away for free, and several hundred people downloaded them.  The promotional days are supposed to encourage people to buy your other work.  Sometimes it works, sometimes not.

Anyway, this is my final book (I promise!) that will be based around my blogs.  There won't be any more.  The next book I plan to publish on Amazon will be a fiction story that I'm working on right now.  It's a short story, probably under 50 pages, that I'll sell for around 99 cents when it's finished.  I'm hoping that some of my loyal readers (however few or many there may be) will follow me to the next genre.  We'll see.

You can buy the third book here

Second Book Now Available!

My second book is now available for sale.  Called (big surprise) "From Taiwan to Texas: Life in Mid-America."  Yes, it's based on THIS blog.  The one you are reading right now.

"Is the book an exact copy of this blog?" you ask yourself.

The answer is NO...it is not.  The second book is actually based on the second half of my first blog, "An American Teacher in Taiwan" and I chose some selected highlights in this blog as well (which have now been removed, per Amazon's policy.)  My first blog is still up, but now I'm using at as more of a promotional tool.

The new book does include a couple of stories that I've never told before.  Stories that, at the time they happened, they were just too personal for me to write in the blog.  They are only in the book, so...being the smooth capitalist that I am, you would have to buy the book to read them.  Hey...it's only $2.99, cheaper than a meal at McDonalds!

I hired the same guy once again to do the cover for this book, and again he impressed me.

I hope to have a third book out sometime this year, and I promise you it won't have "Taiwan" in the title.

So..here is the link for the new book should you wish to purchase it!

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.