Euphoria and A Big Month Ahead!

The big news this week was the arrival of a box of fifteen copies of my novel Let Sleeping Dog Lie. To finally hold a physical copy of my first published novel was a huge high for me. I love it. The book looks terrific.

I'm intending to sell fourteen copies and try to use the third one to garner some publicity with one of the local radio stations. Nine are already sold and there are four other people who have already stated their intention to buy. At this point it is a first come first serve. The people who were promised first choice have already got their copies. I expect the rest will be gone early next week. I wish I had the resources to carry a larger inventory. I'm sure at work I could sell off more than twenty-five copies. Have to stay within my finances though.

Today is the start of NaNoWriMo. Our family has five people taking a shot at it. Again I'm probably the weak link with a brutal schedule. I will try to make it happen though.

The only other writing project I'm working on at this point is preparing to put together a few niche websites. I want to see if I can make a small income doing that. I have good solid ideas for two sites. One of those site I have sufficient content already written to get started. My focus right now is experimenting with several different advertisers. I haven't been terribly impressed at this point. I will update progress on this project here periodically.

A plate full for November, I hope to make it a very successful month.

A Little of Your Time For a Worthy Cause

This won’t cost you or me a single penny. You don’t have to sign up for anything. In fact, you can remain completely anonymous.

My 14 year old niece Emily is working to go on a mission to the Dominican Republic. To be able to go she needs to raise $1400. So far she has earned $100 with her babysitting. You can read about it here: http://www.bubblews.com/news/1299559-why-i-am-here Please note that she has not asked me for donations, she is working to make the money needed herself. I applaud her goal and her resourcefulness.

If you clicked the link in the preceding paragraph you are already contributing to her success. One way she is working to make the money is to write on Bubblews. Every time anyone in the world online views one of her articles she will get a penny. Every time one of those people decides they liked what she wrote and hits the like button there she gets paid another penny. Remember writing is work and her goal is to earn those pennies.

For anyone interested. I write on Bubblews, in my limited spare time, as writing practice and make fifty dollars or more there every month. I’m writing to line my own pocket and promote my own writing. With hard work she could earn more than I do and part of me wouldn’t mind that at all.

Intrigued? Bookmark her profile link http://www.bubblews.com/account/91712-missiongirl and check her contributions there. If I understand correctly she will be writing a short article on something regularly. I write daily and I believe she is trying to follow my example.

You do not have to sign up for the website. You do not have to identify yourself in any way. No one is going to bother you or send you anything. You are not being tracked unless maybe you’ve cheesed off the NSA and that is an unrelated issue.

My wife and I will be cheering her on there and encouraging her work, so will quite a number of my friends. We’ll be delighted when anyone chooses to join us. Feel free to share her writing links on social media with your friends. That will give her work additional well-deserved exposure.

Good luck, Emily! I’m sure your hard work will pay off and you will realize this goal. The whole experience will be good for you and will help others.

A Little Housecleaning

Did some housecleaning here on the Bubblews Log. I did make a couple of mistakes that I noticed. Managed to correct them. Hard not to make mistakes working on this. Harder to find them and correct them. Any reader who spots a problem and lets me know would be highly appreciated.

Added a new section under Bubblews Favorites called Writing. I don't like the way everything shows up with the fonts I have. I will have to monkey around with the setting some to make the section titles stand out more.

I will likely highlight my cycling articles next. There are not too many of them at this point. Easier work when it isn't too big of a job. I'm not sure at this point what else to highlight. Book reviews already have their own sections.

Bubblews Favorites Page Added

This new page is still in its infancy but I've tried to make it worthy of a visit. I started out separating the humour stories out so they can be highlighted. Just like me to try and start with the most difficult one. I'm happy with the result now. I will add other categories later as I have time. The idea is to make it so that interested readers don't have to wade through my whole log to find something interesting to read. Will post updates as changes or additions are made.

So if you want to have a chuckle go ahead and check out this new page right away. Fourteen humour stories are waiting for you.

http://picosplace-pico.blogspot.ca/p/bubblews-favorites.html

Added Bubblews Log

It still needs a lot of work but I have added a Bubblews article log to my blog here. Most of my practice writing goes there because I get paid. If someone goes to that page and looks at an article I get paid a penny. If they click like I get another penny. If they add a comment, I get a penny for every one of those as well. It adds up. Currently I make more money faster there than any other paid website I've ever worked with. If you want to try it yourself, here is my referral link (something else they pay me for): http://www.bubblews.com/?referral=51f5bbc90f3fe9.59547344.

I will put more work into it in the future. My intention is to categorize and highlight some of my work there. A number of my humour pieces just didn't get much attention and highlighting them here will probably solve that issue. I know they are just getting lost in the shuffle.

Another point that I discovered from a friend there is that it is not good to publish articles on my blog and on Bubblews at the same time. Hurts the ranking of both sites apparently and therefore I will immediately cut that out. Unique content only on each site from now on. I will likely make references to those articles here and often though.

Please Do NOT Repeat That!

Today is my last day of retraining to work in the customer care department. Part of our training has been spent "shadowing" more experienced representatives. Because of the time of day our class is run, we don't get to listen to the cream of the crop. Most of them are newbies fresh off the street.

The other day a customer complained that the representative had apologized (with the same phrase) fifteen times during the call. He exaggerated. It was only eight. I couldn't help but count. I'm sick of hearing the words certainly and definitely. Not only are they evil adverbs, the bain of decent writers everywhere but after hearing them about fifty times each per day you just want to scream. 

That of course has reminded me of an important writing tip. Constantly repeated words and phrases don't sound any better in writing than they do in speech. They could well sound worse. There are of course exceptions but in general find other ways to say the same thing if need be.

We all do it. We all have favorite words and phrases. Getting rid of them is an important part of editing your work. 


Not picking on anyone here by the way. This was wholy inspired by listening to badly managed customer care calls.

*This article was first written on Bubblews. If you are interested in participating on that site my referral link is: http://www.bubblews.com/?referral=51f5bbc90f3fe9.59547344

Confession of a Former Poetry Hater

In high school the most boring part of the most boring class was poetry. Most of us guys absolutely hated poetry. Don't blame our instructors. It's hard to push through the perception that poetry is for wimps and wusses. To their credit I learned something and as I matured and developed my own writing, I started to appreciate the art of poetry.

Do you want to be a serious writer? Even if you don't intend to write a single poem in your entire life, you should take the time to study. The reason is simple the elements of poetry don't just happen in poems and if you understand and recognize them you can use them to make your own writing better.

I'm not going to go into exhaustive detail because when it comes to poetry I'm no expert. I write books, short stories and articles. I still understand the importance of the way the words sound and the rhythm of my sentences. They help me create moods and strengthen the emotional reactions of my readers. Believe it or not I deliberately create an overall rhythm between my chapters and scenes. I know also that throwing in a strong poetic image can have a dramatic impact in the right place. I even deliberately add rhymes here and there because they sound right. In the end, if I've written a book, I want my readers to finish the book satisfied. When they get to the end, the images and symbolism that I've cultivated since the first page need to all come together. I learned a great deal of that in poetry class.

So to my English teachers in high school, Mr. Zelickovics, Mr. Lafontaine, Mr Bauer and Ms. Read, I know I probably wasn't much fun to teach but I actually learned something in your class. I didn't appreciate it then but I do now. Thank you!

Related articles:  http://www.bubblews.com/news/1008222-symbolism-has-no-real-value-what

*This article was first written on Bubblews. If you are interested in participating on that site my referral link is: http://www.bubblews.com/?referral=51f5bbc90f3fe9.59547344