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” …

My books in Aldiko as of 19 December 2014

How to find Smashwords authors on Aldiko

December 19, 2014

Find Smashwords books on AldikoI’ve partnered with Smashwords to distribute my ebooks to online retailers, and one of the retailers they distribute to is Aldiko, an app for Android devices. Up until recently I haven’t had a way to see how to find my ebooks on Aldiko, so tutorial will show you his to find Smashwords authors on that app. I’ll also show you how to add ebooks from other sites to your Aldiko library. more “How to find Smashwords authors on Aldiko” …

A glimpse at a video I would have made for the Franklin Park photobook

December 10, 2014

Read my posts about the Franklin Park photobook I wanted to make this past summerSome of my readers will remember that at the end of the summer I ran a Kickstarter campaign to try to raise funds to buy the equipment I needed to create a photobook of a year in Boston’s Franklin Park. Not only would I have taken a year’s worth of pictures for the book, I also would have shots some videos as well. This morning I was finally able to shoot a video that I’ve wanted to make for a year and a half. more “A glimpse at a video I would have made for the Franklin Park photobook” …