Andrew Einspruch's Blog, page 4

The Star of Whatever — Available and On Special

You know what sucks?

Getting tossed into a deadly, purple fog.

You know what sucks more?

Having to go back in there to try to save your twin sister.

I’m thrilled to let you know that my book The Star of Whatever, book two in the humorous fantasy series The Western Lands and All That Really Matters, is now out and ready for you to enjoy.

The Star of Whatever picks up where The Purple Haze left off, with Princess Eloise dashing back into the mysterious Purple Haze in a desperate attempt to rescue her sister, Johanna.

Here’s what one Amazon UK reviewer said:

“What an awesome follow on-book. The princesses and her helpers go on a rescue mission and face an incredible trial . No spoilers all I can say is its so worth a read it has humor in abundance, brilliant characters and a storyline that keeps you wanting to read more. Totally recommended read.”

So, early readers are enjoying it. You can read an excerpt of it here.

To celebrate, I’ve put The Star of Whatever on special at Amazon for about half off the normal price. That’s in all Amazon stores.

To celebrate even more, I’ve also put book one, The Purple Haze, on sale at 99 cents/pence for a limited time on Amazon as well (US and UK stores only for now).

Of course, if you’re a Kindle Unlimited reader, you can pick them both up for free.

And for those of you who like paper, both books are available as paperbacks as well.

Get Your Copy of The Star of Whatever

Get your copy of The Star of Whatever from Amazon at half off the normal price.

US: Ebook or Paperback
UK: Ebook or Paperback
Australia: Ebook

If you use a different Amazon store, just do a search of the title and my name. It’ll show up.

Thank you for giving The Star of Whatever a try. I hope you enjoy it.

Get Your Copy of The Purple Haze

Here are the links for The Purple Haze on special for 99 cents/pence:

Amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk

Some of you were waiting for paper copies of The Purple Haze. Those are available now as well:

US Paperback
UK Paperback

Video: First Aid Kit singing “Silver Lining”

The Swedish sisters Klara and Johanna Söderberg perform as the band First Aid Kit. Enjoy their song “Silver Lining,” which I played over and over and over about a year ago.

Cover reveal: The Star of Whatever

The Star of Whatever, the second book in my series The Western Lands and All That Really Matters launches, in a week so I’ll be sharing a couple of extra emails leading up to that. I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to bring you the next part of Princess Eloise’s adventures.

And now, it’s my pleasure to share with you the book’s cover. Ready…. (Drum roll.) Ta da!

I love the design work Stuart Bache is doing for the series. If I can share a small behind-the-curtains detail— this is actually the first cover he did for me. The concept was originally for book one, The Purple Haze, but it occurred to me early on that it fit much better with The Star of Whatever, so we slotted it there and tried again for the first book.

What you think? Leave a comment and let me know.

Video: Why We Say “OK”

OK, OK, OK, this is a fun, interesting video from Vox on that most recognisable of words, OK, which dates from 1839.

It’s not an abbreviation for a dockworker’s name (which is what I’d heard). It’s not from the Choctaw. But it does have an unexpected origin.

Also, “It affirms without evaluating,” which is part of why it endures.

OK, got it.

A Phone and a Molotov Cocktail

Those of you who’ve been with me a while know I love my tech (we’re all-in Apple), but the implications of tech also concern me. As such, allow me to point you to a fantastic bit of writing from Mat Honan at BuzzFeed: The Google Pixel 3 Is A Very Good Phone. But Maybe Phones Have Gone Too Far. Here’s the slugline: “We are captives to our phones, they are having a deleterious effect on society, and no one is coming to help us. On the upside, this is a great phone.”

How many phone reviews have you read where the first image on the page is a pic of someone throwing a Molotov cocktail? The article is part review of the latest Google phone (apparently it’s very good. If forced to go Android, I’d probably go with a Pixel) and part contemplation on what we are letting these glass slabs and their associated tech and apps do to the world now that we are all always head down and absorbed. The data collection, the privacy concerns, the reflexive where’s-my-phone anxiety—it’s all there.

You know there’s a problem when tech is building in features to protect you from itself. Apple will give you a screen usage report every week, including how much time and on which apps, so you can monitor your addiction. The Pixel will turn your phone’s screen grayscale and turn off notifications so you’re less tempted.

An excerpt from the article:

I wanted to share all of the information this phone captured about me during the long weekend I spent reviewing it. But there was simply too much of it, and in too much detail. Publishing it would put me in real financial and perhaps physical peril. And, besides, I’m not even sure if I am aware of it all, or if I even could capture it all. What’s out there? We have no idea.

We are reaching a point of no return, when it comes to information collection, if we have not already gone beyond it. Cameras and screens, microphones and speakers. Capture your face and your voice and your friends’ faces and voices and where you are and what’s in your email and where you were when you sent it and… What did you say? Click, here’s an ad. And where did you go? Click, here’s an ad. Who were you with? Here’s an ad. What did you read here’s an ad how do you feel here’s an ad are you lonely here’s an ad are you lonely here’s an ad are you lonely?

I found it powerful, thought-provoking writing. The changes to the world since Steve Jobs stood on a stage just over a decade ago and introduced the iPhone are staggering. When was the last time you looked at a paper map? When did you last carry a separate music device? Have you stopped buying cameras?

But I’m not exactly being original in saying it is not all good, and it’s not always obvious just how that not-good manifests.

Have a read. And then perhaps do what I did, and have a think. A long one.

Feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you thought of his article.

Video: Shooting Shaina’s Sequence from Kidding

You know that kind of scene where they do a one-take time-lapse kind of thing to show a character’s passage through time (there’s the famous walk through the seasons scene in Notting Hill). Here’s a split-screen look at one of them being filmed from the show Kidding. On the left is the cast and crew scrambling to get it done (including the director calling who’s clear and who’s on screen). On the right is what the camera sees. I’ve watched this a dozen times. Fascinating.

The Glory of a Media Fast

This week, I declared another media fast for myself. I mentioned last time that a media fast was part of what I did to get The Purple Haze written. Now I’m working on The Light Bearer (book three in the Western Lands and All That Really Matters series) and I felt the need to do it again.

For me, a media fast is mainly no podcasts, no audio books, minimal Facebook and Twitter, turning the TV off, and deleting newsletters unread. Instead of letting myself be distracted by yammering, allowing my political outrage to be fuelled, or letting someone else’s mind burps rattle around in my head, I give myself over to letting my story percolate in there instead. Amazing what your brain will do if it isn’t being distracted by three guys speculating on what Apple will release next (and believe me, I *love* that kind of stuff) or analysing the latest political malfeasance.

My wife, Billie Dean, created an online course called 30 Days of Spiritual Wildness. On Day One, she encourages everyone to:

“Make a promise not to watch the news. Turn it off. Slide by the bad news on Facebook. Don’t listen to the radio news. Don’t read the papers. Try having a month-long news fast. The news is just depressing, and a lot of it is planned to keep us depressed, distracted  and fearful. The old world is in chaos. We don’t want to put our emotion or energy there. We want to get busy creating the new world, where the bad news no longer exists.”

That resonates with me every time I read it. Whether one wants to get busy creating the new world or get busy creating new art, eliminating the yada-yada of the world is a great way to shift your focus.

And people find it incredibly transformational. Surprisingly so. Such a simple exercise. Such a difference it can make.

I don’t know how long this particular media fast of mine will last, nor how strict I’ll be with it, but I’ll let it go on a while, anyway. Perhaps you’d like to join me. If you do, let me know what you think.

Colbert Connects Chance the Rapper with “Lord of the Rings”

There’s something stupendous about this short clip from Stephen Colbert, where he connects a rhyming pattern from Change the Rapper’s “Favourite Song” (featuring Childish Gambino) back to Gilbert and Sullivan, and on to Tolkien. Don’t worry if you don’t like rap or know the song. Just seeing how his mind works is something to behold.

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“Please, please marry my son.”

Let me tell you a story. Stick with me.

I used to teach creative writing classes called Freeing Your Creativity. I taught a lot of them, especially, in the early- to mid-2000s. I’d talk about what makes a story work, a bit about story structure, and we’d do written exercises for creativity.

At the beginning of the class, to loosen people up, I’d do two or three two-minute writing sprints based on a first-sentence prompt I’d provide. Because I wanted to set a good example and because it was more interesting to me if I did, I’d do the exercises along with everyone else.

One of my standard first sentences was, “Please, please marry my son.”

At one of these classes, probably 16 years ago, I wrote a sprint using that particular prompt, which started like this: “‘Please, please marry my son,’ implored the chipmunk to the maiden.”

Two minutes later, I had a cute germ of an idea about a mother chipmunk who was trying to convince a princess to marry her son, despite his utter unsuitability.

The idea stuck with me, and over the years, I’d tweak it and see if it would go anywhere.

It didn’t.

Every now and then, I’d take it out add a few hundred or a thousand words. But somewhere around 15,000 words I completely bogged down.

In April of 2016, I thought, “I have to finish this thing.” I put myself on a media fast (no podcasts, no audio books, no anything) and just let the story rattle around in my head. Between that and discussing it with our daughter, Tamsin, who is wonderful and very good at this kind of thing, I got a framework for a story which had a beginning, middle, and end.

I got to writing.

I finished the first draft in January of 2017, and kept writing, because the story wasn’t the little 35k word YA novella I thought it was going to be. It had grown into something more substantial, a multi-book humorous YA series that you’ve heard me talking about if you’ve been with me for even a little while.

My fellow human, it gives me incredible pleasure to let you know that The Purple Haze, book one in the Western Lands and All That Really Matters series is ready for you to enjoy.

I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to be able to write that sentence.

Do you know what the first line of the finished novel is?

“‘Please, please marry my son,’ implored the chipmunk.”

After all this time, it’s still there.

Get Your Copy of The Purple Haze

At the moment, The Purple Haze is exclusive to Amazon, and ebook only (I’ll get to paper soon, I promise). If you’re in Kindle Unlimited, you can get it that way for free.

At the moment, The Purple Haze is exclusive to Amazon, and ebook only (I’ll get to paper soon, I promise). If you’re in Kindle Unlimited, you can get it that way for free.

Here are the main links:

Amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com.au

If you use a different Amazon store, just do a search of the title and my name. It’ll show up.

Thank you for giving The Purple Haze a try. I hope you enjoy it.