Now On Sale! "The Secrets of An Intelligent Consumer" by Leon Forte

On sale now for Amazon Kindle, "The Secrets of an Intelligent Consumer" by Leon Forte.

Newly reedited for easy reading and understanding.

Easy techniques for the average person to save $200,000 over a working life without scrimping or sacrificing.

Buy the same goods and services you're using while saving large amounts of money.

Shop in many of the same stores right in your area.

Have more cash in your wallet and have more money saved.  Owe less money.

Anybody with a high school education can easily learn to become An Intelligent Consumer.

Everything is covered from food, clothes, and cars to buying or remodeling a house.

Learn to spot when you're being played for the fool.

In today's bad economy, I would imagine this book would be very helpful to consumers.  I also noticed this thing is 633 (!) pages long.  Don't be fooled by some of the other books out there with a similar topic that are just thrown together and are usually less than 10 pages long.  This is the real deal!

You can buy it now at Amazon for $4.99.  Just click on the link here.

Ramblings #21: Blogs, Books, and Ads

Ok...so I just received this email yesterday from "Anonymous":

"You have to start putting up more content about your life or you are going to lose readers."

It made me wonder, what is it, exactly, that you the readers want me to write about?  If I write a blog post about a book I just published, that IS content about my life.  That is what I'm doing at the moment.  That is what I have been spending most of my time on since early December working on.  At least I'm sharing that with you, the reader, rather than just giving the blog a two month hiatus.

I write the blog as a hobby.  I make no money from it.  The ads you see on the edges of the screen, known as "Adsense" in the blogger world, bring in (literally) pennies a month.  The only ads that actually bring in some real money (though still not a lot) are the ones I put up myself as a blog post.  So when you see those, don't freak out, it's just a way to help other writers and make a few extra bucks.

I've been writing this blog (and the Taiwan one) for almost five years.  Any long time reader would know that I'm not always prolific.  I go through periods of writing a lot of material, and periods of writing next to nothing.  I have actually written quite a lot lately, it's just gone into the books, rather than the blog.  I've published 5 books within the last two months, and there is no way I can continue that pace.  When things start to slow down again, I will return to the blog.  I always vowed that I would never be the type of blogger who just writes nonsense about what they had for breakfast or what dream they had the previous night.  When that's all there is to write about, it's time to just give it up.  If I don't have something interesting to write about, I'd rather not write anything at all.

Now on Sale for Amazon Kindle: "In the Midst of Secrets" by Katherine Vogel

Now on sale for the Amazon Kindle: "In the Midst of Secrets" by Katherine Vogel.

Synopsis:
"Her father was an intimidating man who held fast to his belief in his African heritage; that black should not marry white to avoid racial confusion.  She was in love with a white man whose mother wished to keep her family's heritage intact by not crossbreeding with another race.
Tiffany only wanted to be with Jonathan but had to face a father who was hell bent on controlling his family's every move.  Revelations would take him off his high horse as he realized all his family members kept secrets from him, secrets they knew he could not tolerate.  The showdown would bring a proud and sometimes unreasonable man to his knees.
A son's quest to find the truth would reveal a secret so crushing that the family may never recover.  "A secret that was buried for over thirty years."

Sounds interesting.  The racist father sounds a little like my own (deceased) father-in-law.  If this were an Asian-white story, I'd think she was writing about my life.

You can buy the story by clicking on this link.

My Latest Book..Now Available!

My second fiction book was just released today on Amazon.  It's another supernatural/horror/ghost thing called "Small Town Evil."  Unlike my last story, "Interstate 10", which my wife Christy called "like a table with three legs instead of four," she really liked this one.  She assures me that this story "has all four legs."  Okay...odd analogy, but I get it.

This story was based on a screenplay that I wrote back in 2003.  Unless your name happens to be Quentin Tarantino or George Lucas, screenplays just don't sell for the Amazon Kindle.  People don't want to read them.  So, rather than publish that screenplay as is, I decided to completely re-write it as a novella, taking out the parts I thought didn't work, and adding some new stuff.  It wasn't as easy as I thought it would be.  It's almost like taking something and translating it into another language.  In a screenplay, you can just write "they fight" and that's good enough.  In a book, you can't be that lazy.  You have to be a bit more descriptive.  However, since it was a screenplay, the story still remains somewhat dialogue-heavy, and that might turn off some of the gore hounds looking for a cheap thrill (it does have a little bit of gore, but not a lot.)

I like the cover for this one more than the last one.  Usually I just tell him one or two sentences about the story, and he comes up with the covers.  This time he really nailed it.  He captured the image of the girl I was looking for, and the car driving on the foggy road is straight from chapter 1 of the book, and this guy didn't even know that.

So, here it is, the latest book, Number 5 in my catalog.  You can buy it by clicking here.

Adventures in Publishing

So...I've got four stories up for sale on Amazon Kindle, and it's been quite a learning experience.

One thing I've learned is that anyone...and I mean ANYONE can publish a book on Amazon, so my initial pride at publishing my first book has been slightly diminished by this fact.

Since I started publishing my stuff on Amazon, I thought I'd check out some of the other material written by indie writers, and so much of it is complete and utter dreck.  Some of what I am reading looks like it was written by teenagers.  Here is a sample excerpt from a story I was browsing over called "Cupids Arrow Hits the Target"

"Jenn a grad school teacher, in a very poor neighborhood.  And yes she just loves her job.
Her folks were just working people, mom was a house mom and dad worked in a factory.
Threw all those years they were never well to do people.  So all of the children were more than grateful for whatever they got..."

This is exactly how it was written, word for word.  Unbelievably bad, and after getting two positive reviews (likely from relatives), it is now getting trashed by the legitimate reviewers.  Then there are other books where you can tell the author put absolutely no effort into.  I looked at one, 12 page book supposedly about Abraham Lincoln which was basically just a copy of (unreadable) news clippings.

I think it's great that Amazon is providing an opportunity for writers to publish their material without having to jump through hoops or pay money to agents, but when people who clearly have no idea how to write are publishing this sort of material, in a way it hurts everyone.  Readers will become reluctant to buy anything written by an indie author if this is the bulk of what they are being offered.  I do understand, however, that these types of books will likely fade into obscurity, and the ones that are good will somehow find an audience.  It's not easy, though.  Someone has to first buy the book, and tell others that it's either good or bad.  For indie authors, reviews will either kill your book, or push it to the next level.

So far I've been pretty lucky.  I've gotten almost entirely positive reviews, and my books are actually selling (slowly, but still selling.)  "An American Teacher in Taiwan" is currently selling the most, but my last book, the fiction book "Interstate 10" is gaining fast and is already second in sales.  "From Taiwan to Texas" is selling okay, and "The Reluctant Austinite" seems DOA.  Not that it's gotten bad reviews (actually it hasn't got any), it just probably has an extremely limited appeal.

I've learned that fiction seems to be where the audience is at on Amazon.  500 people downloaded my fiction story when I offered it for free for a couple of days, where the others were less than 200.  So that's likely what I'll be focusing on in the future.

So to anyone who is reading this blog who happened to buy any of my books, thanks. If you happened to leave  a positive review, thanks for that as well.

"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