Author: J.M. Hardin

Swear Better with Literature

February 4, 2015

Insult Better with Shakespeare (from Grammarly's Facebook page)Perhaps you’ve seen the an image like the one on the right from Grammarly, suggesting that you could insult people better by quoting Shakespeare. Will was great at coming up with ways to say things in unexpected ways but he’s not the only one. I found some interesting ways to swear without running afoul of the language police while reading the books of Larry Niven.

Updated 20 March: It was brought to my attention that I had a gray moment and didn’t include a link to Grammarly’s website. I’ve used Grammarly to check my writing both here on WfaA, in web posts all over the ‘net, and even for things that aren’t completely web-based. If you do any writing in English you need to check out Grammarly and at least get the free browser plugin. You’ll wonder how you wrote without Grammarly, no matter who your English teachers were.

more “Swear Better with Literature” …

Courtesy the Franklin Park Coalition http://www.franklinparkcoalition.org/

Which parts of Franklin Park would you like me to post next?

January 23, 2015

Today I finally posted a collection of images from a scenic overlook in Franklin Park’s Wilderness (not the Overlook Ruins off the Playstead) and I was going to ask a question at the bottom of the post but I decided to split it off into its own post.

In addition to the pictures from the scenic overlook I’m hoping to get posted tomorrow, I also have a series of pictures of Scarboro Hill that my recent photo of the painted tree (posted on both Instagram (more detail) and on Twitter (more detail)), some pictures of Scarboro Pond (not nearly a complete set yet), and I want to take some pictures at Schoolmaster Hill and the Playstead, but where would you like me to get pictures of next? more “Which parts of Franklin Park would you like me to post next?” …

Franklin Park Wilderness Overlook (taken on 4 Jan 2015)

TestPics: Wilderness Overlook near Schoolmaster Hill

January 23, 2015

I’ve taken a lot of pictures in Franklin Park lately, and they serve as test pictures of the kind of pictures I’d shoot if I make a second try at a Kickstarter campaign to create a Franklin Park photo book. It turns out doing that brings some problems.

One problem I have now is that I now have a lot of pictures taken without a good way to post them online easily. The first day I went through Franklin Park I took over a hundred pictures, and Sunday I took another 80+ pictures. I could post them to Instagram but even posting them without filters will take a lot of time. There’s also the fact that some pictures don’t lend themselves to being cropped to a square without cutting something from them picture. I’ve posted pictures like that to Twitter, but again that’s a time-intensive process. more “TestPics: Wilderness Overlook near Schoolmaster Hill” …

Sneak Preview: A new scene from “He’s With the Band”

December 31, 2014

Before the year closes out I wanted to share something that I’d been working on since I haven’t published anything new this year. As I said earlier today (and in the past), I wrote a new scene for He’s With the Band earlier this year but I haven’t been able to get it all typed up. As a thank you to everyone who’s been waiting patiently for it I wanted to share what I have of the new scene available. It’s a very early draft so not only do I have more to add to it I may also make some pretty big changes to it when I finally get the new version published.

more “Sneak Preview: A new scene from “He’s With the Band”” …

"A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity" - Franz Kafka

About the crazy, creative person in known as me

December 31, 2014

"A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity" - Franz KafkaAs I said yesterday, I just read Amanda Palmer’s The Art of Asking and I’m blown away by how open she is about everything. As 2014 comes to a close I know it seems this writer hasn’t written much and in the spirit of Amanda’s begin open with her fans I wanted to try to explain why you haven’t seen much writerly output from me, and how I hope to change that in 2015.

FAIR WARNING: I may drift into TMI territory at times. If I do feel free to skip to the next paragraph. I’ll try to keep the oversharing to a minimum. more “About the crazy, creative person in known as me” …

“When did I become a futzing photographer?”

December 30, 2014

Sunday I started the day out of the rain at the Forest Hills MBTA station reading Amanda Palmer’s The Art of Asking (a book I can’t recommend highly enough, whether or not you’re a fan of her’s, whether or not you’re an artist or content creator or not, and especially if you’re pissed with her about her Kickstarter projects or any part of her Theater is Evil album and tour) and when it came time to head to Jamaica Pond I opted to head through Franklin Park via the Shea Rotary, even though it was a little out of the way. more ““When did I become a futzing photographer?”” …

Smashwords: Is Kindle Unlimited Devaluing Books? The Dark Side of Exclusivity

December 26, 2014

Monday Mark Coker, the founder of Smashwords, the company I use to distribute my ebooks to stores, posted an article on the downside to making ebooks available to Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited service. When I decided to publish my fiction writing as ebooks I turned to Smashwords to help get my ebooks to readers. Smashwords has a long list of online stores that they distribute to they have a caveat with Amazon: Due to the way Amazon has set up their Kindle Direct Publishing service they can’t do bulk uploads to Amazon like the other stores do. Fortunately, I can upload my ebooks to Kindle Direct Publishing myself so Kindle users can find my ebooks. But when it came to Amazon’s Kindle Select and Kindle Unlimited I channeled Charles Emerson Winchester III and said, “Thank you, no.”  more “Smashwords: Is Kindle Unlimited Devaluing Books? The Dark Side of Exclusivity” …