Gerald Everett Jones's Blog: Gerald Everett Jones - Author, page 16
May 17, 2024
My Fascination with Vacuum Tubes
As you may know, I set my Preacher Evan Wycliff mystery novels in a small farm town in Southern Missouri. This was the ancestral home of my mother’s family. When I was a boy, my grandparents sometimes took me there on weekends. I learned to fish for catfish and smallmouth bass with a bamboo pole baited with an earthworm. I rode a horse (or, at least, sat on one briefly), and I was allowed to pet a sheep as I marveled at its runny nose.
On these outings, my grandfather, whose given name was Caspar, would sometimes share stories from yesteryear. I learned that as a young man he’d played on the Rockville softball team. His nickname then was “Dutch” because his body build was “dutchy” (long torso with short legs—like Popeye). My grandmother, Pearl, taught all the grades in Rockville’s one-room schoolhouse.
One of these stories was about the achievements of a local prodigy of his generation—Clarence Melton. Clarence was reputed to have calculated the pitch of a wooden propeller he was carving for his own light plane by observing a spiral staircase. He was also said to have invented the circuitry of the superheterodyne radio. He eventually moved north to Kansas City where he took a job as an aircraft engineer for Trans World Airways (TWA), which was headquartered there at Midcontinent Airport. During the Great Depression, Clarence urged Caspar, who was running an auto repair shop at the time, to apply for work at the airport, where he eventually became a maintenance supervisor on the big four-engine Constellation passenger planes.
Over the years the superheterodyne story stuck with me. When I was in my early teens, I scavenged tube radios. I got some working simply by replacing the tubes (which was about all I was capable of doing). I studied the basics of radio-frequency broadcast reception. And I learned how the superheterodyne circuit greatly improved the quality of the sound by both amplifying the signal and reducing noise.
Flash forward to my career as a novelist. When I wrote Bonfire of the Vanderbilts, I wanted to make the character Alan Atwood something of an evil genius. I had to give him a technical obsession. I chose to make him fascinated with the superheterodyne radio.
This chapter from the book takes you inside his head.
In Alan’s WorkshopChapter 8 of Bonfire of the VanderbiltsHere’s a chapter from my novel Bonfire of the Vanderbilts, which has an art historian in the present day who is researching a scandal in the 1890s. The character Alan Atwood in this excerpt is the historian’s husband.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010, Brentwood
As the display of the digital clock on the wall above his bench changed to 2:07 AM, Alan labored over the guts of a 1932 Stewart-Warner table radio he had found recently at a yard sale. Frowning through a pair of high-powered magnifying glasses he’d gotten from a medical supply website, Alan concentrated on soldering a new ceramic capacitor in place of a charred paper one.
Capacitors, he thought. If there’s a problem, if a set isn’t working, you can bet that the orderly flow of electrons has been disrupted by a little capacitor that simply can’t take it anymore.
May 15, 2024
11 Ways to Spot Fake News
Not to school hackers but to warn you, in this little coffee-break-short book are the most common ways someone can bend or break the truth to generate misinformation. Many of these tricks rely on leveraging emotion to cloud logic. Another technique is to confuse cause and effect, often implying that perpetrators are actually victims (and vice versa).
Free on Kindle today Wednesday, May 15
Coffee-break short and free today!
This little book in the White-Collar Migrant Worker series is adapted from my Eric Hoffer Award-winning textbook, How to Lie with Charts: Fourth Edition. This text has been adopted as supplementary courseware in some college-level studies.
Sorry, no discount for Congressional aides. Get it here.
Full-length (1hr+) video seminars supplement books in the White-Collar Migrant Worker series. Stream at lapuerta.vhx.tv.
Feed your curiosity with a paid subscription to this Thinking About Thinking blog. With a paid subscription, you’ll gain access to all the content that’s here, including podcasts, and you’ll be helping us build our worldwide community through storytelling and self-expression.
May 12, 2024
Book Review - 'Dangerous Business' by Jane Smiley
My colleague Marvin J. Wolf said as much about my Preacher Evan Wycliff mysteries, and he should know. He’s the renowned author of the Rabbi Ben series, which I much admire.
He also likened my prose to that of Jane Smiley and John Irving. I’d read Irving, but Smiley, despite her renown, had gone unread by me.
I recently heard her speak on a panel at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. She was promoting her new book, Lucky, about a young woman whose music lessons eventually propel her into a rockstar career.
I wasn’t drawn immediately to the premise Lucky, perhaps because the plot seemed such a thinly veiled metaphor for the early days of Smiley’s writing career. I felt I’d been there, no interest in trodding that path again.
Instead, I picked up Dangerous Business, a historical novel about two prostitutes who become friends in the seaport town of Monterey, California in 1851.
Two sex workers consciously emulate Poe’s detective Dupin.
May 9, 2024
A failed experiment?
Another telling metric - the Open Rate on the survey post was almost half the otherwise consistently impressive number.
I’m embarrassed to show the results. There was one voter, and he lives in my house!
Do leave me your thoughts in the Comments, but for now we’ll hit PAUSE on this offering.
Feed your curiosity with a paid subscription to this Thinking About Thinking blog. With a paid subscription, you’ll gain access to all the content that’s here, including podcasts, and you’ll be helping us build our worldwide community through storytelling and self-expression.
May 8, 2024
What They Don't Tell You About Those 'Would-You-Recommend?' Surveys
These days it seems every time you check your email or visit a vendor website or call customer service, you will be asked to take a customer satisfaction survey. Veteran marketers understand what’s happening here, but many consumers don’t.
Customer surveys are concerned primarily with the value of the vendor’s brand, not necessarily the actual quality of its product or service. Aren’t those the same thing? Or so strongly related you can’t separate them?
Not at all. The diagram below shows how most people assume the survey process works.
It’s natural to assume the survey will be used to improve quality.
Customers who receive survey forms may assume their responses will trigger improvements in the product or service.
Which audiobook do you want next?
One chapter will release each weekday. You can find them on the Podcast tab of this blog. Stream or binge. Or add to your Apple Podcast or Spotify feed.
If you are currently reading for Free, upgrade to Paid for $5 per month or $30 per year to get all posts and media releases.Thinking About Thinking is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts - including audiobook releases - and support my work, consider becoming a Paid subscriber.
Scroll down to the Vote buttons.Mr. BallpointA Novel
Mick & Moira & BradA Romantic ComedyIn 1945, Milton Reynolds introduced the ballpoint to the United States and triggered the biggest single-day shopping riot in history at Gimbels in Manhattan. The Reynolds International Pen Company made $5 million in eight weeks during the first non-wartime Christmas season. Thereafter, increasing competition from established companies such as Eversharp triggered several years of the "Pen Wars". An exuberant entrepreneur who had already made and lost several fortunes, Reynolds bragged that he "stole it fair and square". This novel is told from Jim's, his mild-mannered son's, point of view about coping with Milton's outrageous schemes then their sudden success.
Choke HoldAn Eli Wolff Thriller
If you’re a fan of pop music and you’re curious about what goes on behind the cameras - you’ll enjoy this ride!
GOLD Winner 2023 IPA Awards, Finalist 2023 Amor Romance Novel Awards, The BookFest Awards Spring 2023 Silver.
Mick McGraw is an aggressive Hollywood agent who reps famous singers. Moira Halimi-Joubert is a headstrong criminal defense attorney who studied opera. Brad Davenport is an arrogant billionaire hedge-fund manager who has a soft spot for dogs. Mick wants to make Moira a superstar, but she may have to dump Brad. What does the battle of the sexes look like when the combatants are equally matched—and might actually like each other? #MeThree?
The twisty plot takes you inside a big-time movieland packaging agency as Mick’s team scrambles to put together a stadium concert patterned on Cher’s “Farewell Tour.” The superstar they’ve scheduled has canceled just nine weeks before opening night. They need a totally new show theme - and a new star. With Moira in the role, her “Follow This!” show brings back famous names and songs from pop culture - and surprises everyone, including Moira, who must decide whether to pay the high price of fame. The contentious but lighthearted story of Mick & Moira & Brad engages this trio in a “full and frank exchange of views.”
Hank Ellis was murdered in his own home for dissing the cops in front of his neighbors.
Cynical personal-injury attorney Eli Wolff rediscovers his idealism for simple justice when he sues the city for the wrongful death of an unarmed African American man at the hands of two police officers. Ellis was killed in his own home, choked to death, after angry officers stormed in without a warrant, anxious to teach him a lesson for disrespecting them in front of his neighbors.
The guilty parties probably think you care more about entertainment than justice. But no one will make you write Congress about it. The author suggests in the epilogue that holding mandatory public inquests in these cases might disclose evidence and encourage dialogue before some angry mob decides that setting fire to their neighborhood is the only way to get their side of the story told.
All chapters of the Preacher Finds a Corpse (Evan Wycliff #1) audiobook are now available on the Podcast tab for Paid subscribers to binge anytime. Preacher Fakes a Miracle (#2) has been #1 Psychological Fiction in the Kindle Store for the past week, and the ebook is currently FREE in both Kindle and EPUB.
May 6, 2024
Preacher #1 is No. 1!
Okay, it was set for free. Read on and fear not!
Feed your curiosity with a paid subscription to this Thinking About Thinking blog. With a paid subscription, you’ll gain access to all the content that’s here, including podcasts, and you’ll be helping us build our worldwide community through storytelling and self-expression.
If you’re a free subscriber here, upgrade to paid for $5 per month or $30 and get access to all content, including Thinking About Thinking book reviews, thoughtful essays, podcasts, and audiobooks.
May 5, 2024
Book Review - 'Leviathan' by Paul Auster
Or so goes the truism expressed by philosopher and literary critic Roland Barthes. Another of his observations was:
A novel is the question without the answer.
Both of these assertions are true of Paul Auster’s Leviathan, which is deliberately and unashamedly a confessional mind-trip that defies genre descriptions.
As to being a long sentence, much of Auster’s work reads that way. I made the same comment in my review of his 4 3 2 1. His style defies the show-don’t-tell rule often doled out by writing instructors. In both novels, there is very little dialogue and only occasional action. Thoughtful might be an apt description. Auster relates events as if setting them down in a history book. Then he muses on their meanings, along with the narrator’s opinions about the motivations and mindsets of the actors.
Leviathan by Paul Auster (Viking Press 1992)
May 1, 2024
How About a Free Team-Building Game?
In this team survival game, participants collaborate in small groups. A team score determines whether the team survives, and a private individual score helps participants evaluate their effect on the outcome.
The ebook of Marooned! A Team Survival Game is a free download. The opt-in form requires your email address, but if you already subscribe to this blog, fear not, you won’t be signing up again.
The ebook is FREE but the download link is below the paywall. As with much of our free stuff, you have to be a paid subscriber to find out how to get it.
This book is just one of the helpful guides in the White-Collar Migrant Worker series of coffee-break-short books to help you make your way in the gig economy.Feed your curiosity with a paid subscription to this Thinking About Thinking blog. With a paid subscription, you’ll gain access to all the content that’s here, including podcasts, and you’ll be helping us build our worldwide community through storytelling and self-expression.
If you’re a free subscriber here, upgrade to paid for $5 per month or $30 and get access to all content, including Thinking About Thinking book reviews, thoughtful essays, podcasts, and audiobooks.
April 28, 2024
Apollo Papyrus
You may be surprised how the story ends. The next book in the series is Preacher Fakes a Miracle.
Spirited talk with host Aaron Apollo CampThank you for your kind attention!
A lot of this is a survey of my booklist, including fourteen novels. If you’re new to this Thinking About Thinking blog, consider this an introduction. And if you want to know what else there is to explore besides the Preacher Evan Wycliff novels, there’s a lot more between the covers.
Fourth in the series, but possibly not the last.
Feed your curiosity with a paid subscription to this Thinking About Thinking blog. With a paid subscription, you’ll gain access to all the content that’s here, including podcasts, and you’ll be helping us build our worldwide community through storytelling and self-expression.
If you’re a free subscriber here, upgrade to paid for $5 per month or $30 and get access to all content, including Thinking About Thinking book reviews, thoughtful essays, podcasts, and audiobooks. Paid subscribers can find audiobook episodes on the Podcast tab.
Gerald Everett Jones - Author
- Gerald Everett Jones's profile
- 488 followers
