David Simpson's Blog, page 8

$0.99 Kindle ebooks and Post-Human FREE!

Click Here to get your Free  Post-Human ebook.Happy Thanksgiving, American friends! As some of you who regularly follow my posts know by now, last Saturday night I read an article about author Amanda Hocking on Yahoo that blew my mind and kept me from getting some much needed sleep that night. Amanda couldn't find a publisher, so she decided to put her books up on sale on the Kindle. She moved a couple of hundred books in the first month, but in the second month she moved six thousand, the third ten thousand, and that December she sold 169 000 books!

As you can imagine, I was a little teeny weeny bit envious of her amazing success. So I've decided to use her strategy, which is to forgo a traditional publisher, who sets my Kindle prices way too high, make my own Kindle version (which, by the way, is extremely hard to do and took all week) and price them at the lowest price point possible, which is just 99 cents. (I'll be getting 35 cents per copy, in case you are curious.)

And as an extra bonus to help get this started, I am offering the Post-Human Kindle edition for FREE! I tried to get Amazon to let it be free, but they wouldn't let me because it is a self-published edition, but you can download the Kindle version for free by going to my website, and downloading it there! Don't have a Kindle? Not to worry! If you have an Android or an iPhone, you can get Kindle Apps, likewise if you have a tablet. Don't have those either? Well, you're still not left out in the cold! There is a PDF version you can download and read on your PC or Mac, all on my website.  Post-Humannovel.com

Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for all the people who have purchased editions of my books in the past, who have written kind reviews, told friends, or been supportive to me personally. I feel like a shmuck asking any of you to do anymore for me, but please, if you have some time, tell your friends who you think are looking for something good to read about the writer who's giving away a book he worked really hard on for free, and his other two books for as close to free as he can get!

You are all eternally awesome :)


Here's the link to get to the 99 cent Kindle editions of Trans-Human or The God Killers. :) Thanks again to everyone. :)


Kindle Edition of Trans-Human and The God Killers for $0.99

Thank you. Brian Degrechie! (Reader appreciation day 5)

Today's thank you goes out to Brian Degrechie! Brian first heard about my writing through his wife, Sandra. After reading my first book, Post-Human, he very kindly posted that he thought it was the best he had read in the genre in quite a few years. We became friends on Facebook and I've had many, many conversations with him over the last year or so, all of which I cherish. One of the most interesting ongoing discussions we've had is about e-books, and Brian has probably been the biggest proponent in my life for just going all out in the e-book format and not worrying about traditional publishing. Despite that fact that I agreed with him, I've been dragging my heels for some silly reason, but Brian was absolutely right! I should have done what you said earlier, Brian! But, thanks to your advice and the example of Amanda Hocking that I recently read about, I'm now going to be drastically changing the strategy of my writing career! You sure called that one in advance! Thank you, Brian for all your advice, your many posts recommending my book to your friends, and your continued friendship! I hope it lasts a long, long time! 

Thank you. Brian Degrechie! (Reader appreciation day 5)

Today's thank you goes out to Brian Degrechie! Brian first heard about my writing through his wife, Sandra. After reading my first book, Post-Human, he very kindly posted that he thought it was the best he had read in the genre in quite a few years. We became friends on Facebook and I've had many, many conversations with him over the last year or so, all of which I cherish. One of the most interesting ongoing discussions we've had is about e-books, and Brian has probably been the biggest proponent in my life for just going all out in the e-book format and not worrying about traditional publishing. Despite that fact that I agreed with him, I've been dragging my heels for some silly reason, but Brian was absolutely right! I should have done what you said earlier, Brian! But, thanks to your advice and the example of Amanda Hocking that I recently read about, I'm now going to be drastically changing the strategy of my writing career! You sure called that one in advance! Thank you, Brian for all your advice, your many posts recommending my book to your friends, and your continued friendship! I hope it lasts a long, long time! 

Thank you. Jerry Dazzlepants! (Reader appreciation day 4)

Today's thank you goes out to, yet another terrific reader of mine, Jerry Dazzlepants. Jerry picked up my book through the website goodreads.com. A few weeks after she read it, I was e-stalking my book to find any hits about it online and found that Jerry had written a very kind 5 star review for it and posted it on goodreads. As a writer, we always appreciate every 5 star review that we ever get, so I shot her a message to thank her and she graciously wrote back that it was no problem. I stayed in contact with her through Facebook, and then, when my wife and I were considering what it might be like to live in the Gold Coast in Australia, I contacted Jerry once again and asked her what life as an Aussie was like. Out of the goodness of her heart, she wrote me a great big, very detailed letter about everything (which all sounded terrific, except for the frog part) and really helped us visualize what we'd be getting into if we ever moved to the other side of the world. Jerry is a long way away, but thanks to Amazon, Facebook, goodreads, and Post-Human, I now consider her a great friend. Jerry, thanks so much for reading my book, being so kind about it, being so awesome, and for having such colorful profile pics! You rock! 

Thank you. Jerry Dazzlepants! (Reader appreciation day 4)

Today's thank you goes out to, yet another terrific reader of mine, Jerry Dazzlepants. Jerry picked up my book through the website goodreads.com. A few weeks after she read it, I was e-stalking my book to find any hits about it online and found that Jerry had written a very kind 5 star review for it and posted it on goodreads. As a writer, we always appreciate every 5 star review that we ever get, so I shot her a message to thank her and she graciously wrote back that it was no problem. I stayed in contact with her through Facebook, and then, when my wife and I were considering what it might be like to live in the Gold Coast in Australia, I contacted Jerry once again and asked her what life as an Aussie was like. Out of the goodness of her heart, she wrote me a great big, very detailed letter about everything (which all sounded terrific, except for the frog part) and really helped us visualize what we'd be getting into if we ever moved to the other side of the world. Jerry is a long way away, but thanks to Amazon, Facebook, goodreads, and Post-Human, I now consider her a great friend. Jerry, thanks so much for reading my book, being so kind about it, being so awesome, and for having such colorful profile pics! You rock! 

New Technology, New Industry, New David

This is an outstanding video, because it doesn't only focus on Amanda Hocking, the self-made, self-published millionaire and meteoric hero of mine, but also on the platform that made her story possible. E-books are changing everything in the literary world, perhaps faster than any other field so far, and it has completely changed my mind about my own writing career and future. Rather than struggling with publishers, arguing with editors, fighting with cover designers, and, especially, giving away 80% + of the royalties, I'm going to be self-publishing online from now on. Watch the video and you'll understand why. Oh yeah, and although they allude to how much money she's made, saying she'll be buying a house in cash, they never say how much she has made in the last 18 months. It turns out that she made 2 million in Kindle sales, another 2 million by signing a publishing deal, and an undisclosed amount for selling her movie rights. Holy shiz! Congratulations, Amanda! What a cool chick! :)

Goodbye, Fatty?

I was going to do a different posting today, but then I read this article and knew I had to write about it; it seems almost everyday we're reading about a phenomenal new breakthrough. This time, science has fat in the crosshairs. For those that have read Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near, you know that he claimed in that 2005 book that a pill that would keep people slim, no matter what they ate, was 5 to 10 years away. Well, we're moving into our 7th year, and today we're learning that such a pill might be just around the corner. It's already worked in monkeys. The pill works by starving fat cells, therefore killing them off. What is the most interesting about this development for me (besides the fact that I want to start taking it immediately) is how our culture will react once the first real miracle weight loss pill becomes readily available. Will we all just accept it like it is no big deal? Will fat people become an anachronism from the past? Or will some people mistrust it and decide to remain fat, just as some mistrust laser eye surgery and Rogaine? Only time will tell! 



Obese Monkeys Given Miracle Weight Loss Pill (video)
Dream team researchers – and married couple – Wadih Arap and Renata Pasqualini have created a drug that fights obesity by killing blood vessels that vascularize fat cells.Do we finally have a miracle weight loss drug? I mean, for real this time? The data seems to support such a claim, at least for overweight monkeys that simply can't drop those extra pounds no matter what they try. After receiving the drug for just four weeks, the monkeys lost between 7 and 15 percent of the body weight, and averaged a more than 38 percent loss of total body fat.The study , published November 9th in the journal Science Translational Medicine, was headed by husband-and-wife team Wadih Arap and Renata Pasqualini at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Their drug, called Adipotide, targets the blood vessels that feed fat cells, or adipocytes. Attacking those blood vessels chokes off the nutrient supply that the fat cells need to survive and they either die or become stressed to the point that they don't function.Of course, blood vessels are needed to keep all cells alive. But the major medical advancement that adipotide brings is its ability to kill blood vessels associated with fat cells while leaving other blood vessels alone. The strategy has been long sought after by cancer biologists trying to kill cancer cells while leaving normal cells unharmed. Where others had failed, Arap and Pasqualini, cancer biologists themselves, succeeded by taking an approach that was novel in multiple ways.A typical approach to drug development is to find or manufacture compounds that somehow slows or stops a disease. But instead of a targeted approach, the Arap and Pasqualini cast a wide net . Proteins in the body bind to other proteins, and which proteins get together is determined by their amino acid sequences. The Arap-Pasqualini team chopped up proteins into bits of peptide, or short chains of amino acids, injected them into the body and simply tracked where the peptides ended up. It's as if the different parts of the body have different "zip codes" and each peptide sequence is drawn to a specific zip code. What made the study possible was the case of a brain-dead man who happen to be at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. The man had wanted his organs donated but his cancer had advanced too far. After explaining their experiment, the man's family agreed to allow Arap and Pasqualini to inject their peptides into the man's body. Afterwards, tissue from the man's skin, muscle, bone marrow, fat, and prostate were collected to see if any peptides had specifically bound to one tissue and not the others. They found one that bound only to blood vessels in the prostrate. Body measurements such as body mass index and abdominal fat were measured using MRI.
In 2004 they conducted a study that bridges the gap between the cancer work and the current study. In the study they discovered a peptide that binds specifically to the blood vessels of fat tissue. Experimenting in obese mice , they showed that attaching a deadly substance to the peptide reversed the animals' obesity, as they lost 30 percent of their body weight. In addition, metabolic impairments associated with obesity were also normalized.The current study is essentially the mouse study repeated in rhesus monkeys. Importantly, the monkeys were naturally obese – eating more an being less physically active than the other monkeys – and thus did not require any special interventions to make them overweight. After four weeks of treatment the monkeys experienced an average loss of 11 percent of their body weight. Physical measurements such as body mass index (BMI) and waistline – abdominal fat dropped 27 percent – were also reduced. Adipotide goes after the so-called white adipose tissue, or the unhealthy type that amasses beneath the skin and around the abdomen. The fat cells that die after having their blood supply cut off are reabsorbed by the body. Conversely, giving the drug to monkeys of normal size resulted in slight weight gain.As with obese humans, obese monkeys displayed an increased resistance to insulin. After a meal insulin is produced by the pancreas and released into the bloodstream to promote sugar uptake by muscles. Thus, insulin resistance can lead to high level of blood sugar levels which, in turn, can lead to complications such as kidney failure, heart disease, and blindness. Insulin resistance is also a hallmark of type 2 diabetes, the devastating condition that, along with obesity, is fast on the rise in the US and the rest of the developed world. Adipotide showed additional promise as a diabetes drug, as it decreased insulin resistance in obese monkeys by 50 percent. Arap and Pasqualini discuss the study in the following video.
The demonstration in monkeys is a major step if Adipotide is ever to be realized as a treatment as many drugs have shown success in rodents but not primates. "All rodent models of obesity are faulty because their metabolism and central nervous system control of appetite and satiety are very different from primates, including humans," Pasqualini explained in a press release .So how soon could Adipotide benefit humans? The group is currently preparing for clinical trials that could begin as early as next year. They plan on giving the drug to obese patients that have advanced prostrate cancer. Mortality with prostrate cancer who are also obese is much higher than that with patients of normal weight. The patients will be given the drug for four weeks with the intent to battle both body weight and cancer simultaneously. The monkeys that took the drug displayed no indications that the drug made them feel sick, a reassuring sign that Adipotide might not have major side-effects. The monkeys did, however, show a modest degree of kidney failure. Side-effects will be a major concern during the human trials as treatment is expected to be given to the patients long term.Another major question, of course, is whether or not the zip code strategy will be as effective in humans. If it's less selective and attacks other blood vessels, side-effects could be dangerous. Obesity and cancer aside, the fact that it worked in monkeys is already scientifically interesting. It shows that not all blood vessels are the same, that blood vessels which supply blood to the, say, kidneys are different from those that supply blood to the prostrate. The finding opens up the possibility for site-specific drug delivery in other types of cancer and other diseases. Two companies are already working with Arap and Pasqualini to translate their drug targeting strategy to actual treatments. Ablaris Therapeutics is already working with the Food and Drug Administration to begin clinical trials testing Adiplotide's potential as an obesity therapy. Alvos Therapeutics will do the same with a drug that targets prostrate-supplying blood vessels to treat prostrate cancer. A study on the drug has already been completed at M.D. Anderson but the results haven't been reported yet.In scientific circles, hypothesis-driven experiments are vaunted while "fishing expeditions," such as throwing a drug at the body and seeing where it sticks, are often viewed as not 'true' science. But it's hard to argue that Arap and Pasqualini's blind, wide net approach to battling disease should be discouraged. I wonder what other "zip codes" these cancer-turned-obesity scientists discovered with their peptides. Certainly we haven't seen the last of that data. For the sake of medicine, let's hope that there were plenty more fish in the sea.[image credits: Popfi, Chron.com]
[video credits: mdandersonorg via YouTube]
image 1: Obese monkeys
image 2: Scientists
video: MD Anderson

The Mind's Eye... you'll be using it soon.

Okay, just quickly, is this not "the mind's eye" from my books, Post-Human and Trans-Human? In those novels, it isn't a contact lens, but rather a built in mental computer, but the images that this lens would project would do the same job. I really think this is the next step in being mobile. Imagine having a Skype conversation with someone while wearing these! 


Bionic contact lens 'to project emails before eyes' By Michelle Roberts Health reporter, BBC NewsA new generation of contact lenses that project images in front of the eyes is a step closer after successful animal trials, say scientists.The technology could allow wearers to read floating texts and emails or augment their sight with computer-generated images, Terminator-syle.Researchers at Washington University who are working on the device say early tests show it is safe and feasible.But there are still wrinkles to iron out, like finding a good power source.Currently, their crude prototype device can only work if it is within centimetres of the wireless battery.And its microcircuitry is only enough for one light-emitting diode, reports the Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering.But now that initial safety tests in rabbits have gone well, with no obvious adverse effects, the researchers have renewed faith about the device's possibilities.They envisage hundreds more pixels could be embedded in the flexible lens to produce complex holographic images.For example, drivers could wear them to see journey directions or their vehicle's speed projected onto the windscreen.Similarly, the lenses could take the virtual world of video gaming to a new level.They could also provide up-to-date medical information like blood sugar levels by linking to biosensors in the wearer's body.Delicate materialsLead researcher Professor Babak Parviz said: "Our next goal is to incorporate some predetermined text in the contact lens."He said his team had already overcome a major hurdle to this, which is getting the human eye to focus on an image generated on its surface.Normally, we can only see objects clearly if they are held several centimetres away from the eye.The scientists, working with colleagues at Aalto University in Finland, have now adapted the lenses to shorten the focal distance.Building the end product was a challenge because materials used to make conventional contact lenses are delicate.Manufacturing electrical circuits, however, involves inorganic materials, scorching temperatures and toxic chemicals. Researchers built the circuits from layers of metal only a few nanometres thick, about one thousandth the width of a human hair, and constructed light-emitting diodes measuring one third of a millimetre across.Dr Parviz and his team are not the only scientists working on this type of technology.A Swiss company called Sensimed has already brought to market a smart contact lens that uses inbuilt computer technology to monitor pressure inside the eye to keep tabs on the eye condition glaucoma.

Thank you. Patrick Weddell! (Reader appreciation day 3)

Today's thank you goes out to a very gracious reader that I am lucky to have named Patrick Weddell. Patrick sent me a quick note one day on Google+ that he was purchasing Trans-Human and then, less than 24 hours later, he posted on his Facebook status that it was "perhaps the best book he has ever read." For a writer, those words are what we would call... awesome! Patrick followed up this awesomeness by then taking the time to post a stellar review on the Barnes and Noble website. As with all the people I've thanked so far, I've never met Patrick and I've never done anything for him, so his public praising of my books and his encouraging emails are all done out of the kindness of his heart. He's just a great guy. If you've been following these thank you posts that I've been writing lately, you're probably noticing a theme: I have amazing readers, I'm really lucky, and I owe Patrick and all the rest of you a hella lot. Patrick, by the way, happens to be a young inventor, and, just a teaser, he's working on an invention that, if he's successful, will make him super rich -- so it might be a good idea to friend him on Facebook and get in on the ground floor 

Wow. So they are actually selling the Kindle Fire at below cost. I guess the idea is that they make up the loss in all the content its users end up buying.

(L-R) The Kindle Touch, Kindle Fire tablet and new Kindle are displayed in New York in September 2011. At $199, Amazon is selling the Kindle Fire slightly below the cost it takes to manufacture the tablet computer, according to market research firm IHS iSuppli. (AFP Photo/Emmanuel Dunand)
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/photos/199-amazon-selling-kindle-fire-slightly-below-cost-photo-181850184.html