Mike Jastrzebski's Blog, page 104

What does your dream writing space look like?

Private Library from A Space In Time on Vimeo.

I saw the above video on GalleyCat this week and I hope you will click through to view it.  I've tried to embed it here, but I can't get it to work right, but it's worth it to click through to take a look.  That video got me to thinking about the point of this blog — "so you want to move on a boat and write."  Yeah, but…

Sometimes, writing on a boat is difficult because of space.  There's not enough room for your books, or you're writing on the main salon dining table or the chart table.

Take a look at this set-up on writer Beth Leonard's boat.

Hawk nav station and writing desk from Beth and Evans's Homepage

Dreamy, eh?  Would your ideal writing space be somewhere you could see out windows or ports?  Would you require bookcases?  What about your chair?

Part of being a writer is being a dreamer.  Don't tell me I'm the only one who likes to dream about stuff like this?  If money were no object and you could design your own boat, what would your writing space look like?

Fair winds,

Christine

That $%##& critique group of mine

By Mike Jastrzebski

Today I'm going to open up and lay out all of the frustrations I feel about belonging to a critique group. 

I'm writing this after returning from my bi-weekly critique group meeting. I belong to a great group right now. Christine Kling is the author of four mysteries set in South Florida. Christine's books. Neil Plakcy is also multi-published in a variety of genres. Neil's books. Sharon Potts has one book published and another due out in February. Sharon's books. Miriam Auerbach is the author of two Dirty Harriett books. Miriam's books. Finally, there are my books which are available as e-books at Amazon (Mike's books) and Barnes and Noble http://tiny.cc/hjbc3.

The fact that all of the writers in the group are published means that they all have good feedback to offer. Now this is a good thing, right? Then why do I return home from every critique session swearing I'll never go back? It's not because they don't make good suggestions, they all make great suggestions. This means that the pages I've been slaving over, the pages I was convinced were perfect when I sent them out, need another re-write.

What usually happens after we meet is the following day I sit down at the computer determined that they must be wrong. These people don't know what they're talking about. So I open the pages the group has returned to me and begin to sort through the comments. Okay, I admit it. Christine has a point about needing a little more description of the marina. And Sharon's right about adding tension to the chapter. I should have caught the time frame discrepancies that Miriam points out, but I didn't. And Neil's spot on about that cliche' that I have to take out. And I have to admit, these were just the most glaring problems they pointed out. There are little things they suggested that I know will tighten up the chapter and make it more readable.

So I guess the real reason I'm writing this post is not to complain about all the extra work the group has caused me, but to say thank you to each member of the group for helping me make Dog River Blues, as well as The Storm Killer and Key Lime Blues better books.

What about you? Do you have a love/hate relationship with your critique partners?

November in New England

                     (End of the 2010 season - Westport, Massachusetts)

November in New England. For boaters, a time of reflection. The season complete, the boats out of the water and on the hard, and a year's worth of yard bills sit in mailboxes all around seaside towns.

January 1st, the well-established date for annual resolutions, is a month and a half in the future, but I suspect that I am not alone among those in the boating community who find that time for reflection is now upon them. Part of this phenomenon is that November is a triple-witching time for boat owners, at least here in our corner of the world – the triple witching being that this is when the final repair bills for season come in at the very same time that hauling and winter storage charges come due, along with notices for mooring/dockage deposits for the next season. If I had a boating accountant, I'd really be in trouble.

Fortunately, there aren't many boating accountants out there. And there's a reason for this fact. Imagine what would happen if a boat owner hired an accountant who naively revealed the true cost-benefit analysis of boating. The accountant would almost certainly reveal lousy economics, so much so that any rational person would immediately dispose of their vessel (thereby negating the need for further boat accountant work). Or imagine the person who hires the accountant, but decides to keep their boat. The boat owner would have no choice but to fire the numbers man lest the boat owner be repeatedly confronted with the foolishness of their investment. In either case, the boating accountant would soon find himself or herself out of work and out of their profession.

Yet, some boats remain economical. For example, consider our Sunfish. This boat, named Bean Machine by a previous owner, was given to us for free by a neighbor. That first year I did some fiberglass patching, painted over the glasswork, filled in a gouge at the bottom of the centerboard, and varnished the centerboard, rudder and tiller. The total cost of purchase and repairs: approximately $25. Also, we keep the boat on the beach so there are no storage fees and there is no associated insurance. Twenty-five bucks covers everything. True, we didn't use the Sunfish at all this summer and only once last summer, but with a cost per boating experience of $12.50 who could complain. And given that two people can sail on the Sunfish, that's a cost per boater event of about six bucks, less than a movie. Unfortunately, the Sunfish resides at one end of the continuum, far distant from the reality of most boaters.

Of course, the cost of boating is more palatable if you use the boat frequently. Most of us don't. In fact, when I count the number of days spent of the boat in a given season I'm always tempted to make the number more acceptable by adding in days when I went aboard with the mechanic, or days I stepped on board to secure lines before a hurricane, or even days I took the launch out to the mooring to see if she was still floating. Yet, even then I never get on the water as much as I want and the short season makes it even worse.

So here I am, ready to accept the costs of boating, ready to look at the facts. And with this, I make my November boater's resolution: One of these days I'm going to sail to Florida so I'll be able to spread those annual costs over an entire year and as a result I'll enjoy that same kind of cost per usage. Until then, you can still find me at my desk on a dark November evening writing out some checks for another year of boating. With the bills all paid, I'll likely be tweaking chapters in my latest Steve Decatur manuscript. And when I do, I might just send my protagonist south where he can boat year-round, getting out on the water each day, driving that cost per use way down. I figure if not yet me, why not him.

Writing and drinking, it's only a myth

By Michael Haskins

A friend said it sounded as if I drank and wrote. She suggested I straighten out the misconception.

She's right. I do not drink alcohol at home and then write. I drink alcohol at home and go to sleep! My days of trying to out do Hemingway are gone, and I am surprised my liver is still hanging on. Not to say I don't enjoy a good stout or Irish whiskey. Most Friday nights I meet friends for happy hour and have a drink or two and cigar.

Sometimes it's at the Hog's Breath and sip a Jameson on the rocks and listen to songwriters performing their music live. Over the years I have become friends with many of the singer-songwriters who play at the Hog, so when they're in town I stop by. They are writers too, poets even.

After three beers or two Irish whiskies I'm drinking bottled water. I have too much going for me to get involved in a DUI; or worse, cause an accident that seriously hurt someone.

What I do, sometimes, when I am sitting at the bar, or under my stilt house, with a drink and cigar, is to let my mind wander without the pressure of a blank screen staring back at me. Enjoy the drink and cigar and let my unconscious mind work for me, while consciously I am relaxing and enjoying myself, listening to live music or something from my CD collection. Of course, when people come up and talk to me, as happens in bars, my unconscious mind shuts them out and continues with its search for the solution to my problem, while I go on being sociable. Great, ain't it?

Let's look at this weekend. It is raining today, so maybe I get a stout at Finnegan's Wake, since the Hog and Schooner Wharf are open bars and heavy rain will keep the musicians off the stage and clear out the outdoor section of the restaurant. We need rain in Florida; I only wish it would take a break for a few hours.

I will get home sometime between 8 – 9 p.m. (wild life I live!) and probably read. I've just finished Michael Connelly's "The Reversal," and about to begin "Collusion" by Irish writer Stuart Neville.

 This is good a time as any to mention that writing includes a lot of reading. I read blogs, newspapers and books. My home office has a floor-to-ceiling bookcase made of 2-inch-by-12-inch shelving. Heavy, but I guess it's a complex leftover from my years in earthquake prone Southern California. I made my computer desk the same way.

The shelves are full of books I've read and then stacked on their sides are more books I need to read; a few histories, but mostly mystery novels. In 1998, I lost about 2,000 books, mostly signed first edition when my floating home floated away in Hurricane Georges! Looking at my bookshelves now I wonder why the sucker didn't sink from the weight of books.

So, to me, reading is as much a part of writing as the pounding of keyboard keys. You need to read the masters, old and true (Chandler, Hammett) as well as people like Elmore Leonard for his ability at dialogue or James Lee Burke who can make you smell and taste New Orleans; Michael Connelly, who makes you step over the dirt and grit of Los Angeles and Robert Crais, whose mixture of the Hollywood Hills and tortured souls, helps you see the dirty little angels who survive there.

These writers are so damn good, I sometime want to hang up my keyboard. Of course, I can't. As a writer I need to write, even if that's only in my mind while trying to workout a problem in moving my story forward. Not writing has ever been an option in my life.

Think of how lucky I am, I get to roam Paradise, have a few drinks and good cigars, listen to great live music, talk to characters that would probably be locked up in a mental health facility in any other city, go sailing and then sit down and find the words to explain it all in stories formed in my imagination.

I may never catch up to my writing heroes, but I am enjoying the hell out of the chase.

Scrivener for Windows

By Mike Jastrzebski

Christine has written several times about Scrivener on this site and she often brags about the virtues of the software when we talk about our writing processes. I have to admit that she got me interested in the program, so I recently signed up as a beta tester for the new Scrivener for Windows.

So far I have mixed reactions to the program. First, let me say that it appears to have everything I want in a writing program. A great outlining tool, a corkboard that makes it easy to lay out a novel and an overall nice feel to the program. So why the mixed reactions?

It's more my fault than the program. The company made it clear that this was a beta test program and not all features would be working to begin with. The import of doc and docx documents from Word are not yet available. As a result, to import a document it has to be converted to Rich text, or it's necessary to copy and paste the document from word to Scrivener. Since I am working on a re-write of my novel, Dog River Blues, I find this option to be annoying. 

When I convert to Rich text and import the document it has a look and feel that I don't enjoy working with. The document shows each paragraph break starting with the number -480 and I can find no way to hide this number.

When I copy and paste, the resulting document is single spaced with left justification of all paragraphs. If I use the ruler to place an indentation it disappears when I close out the program and reopen it. I could live with this if I knew whether it was by design or by error. This brings me to my final problem.

I have watched the instruction video and gone through the tutorial, but there is no answer to the questions I pose above. Because this is a beta offering they do not have a manual available at this time. As a result, I don't know if these two problems are bugs or not. To give the designers of Scrivener credit, they do have a forum available for questions and help. The problem I have with this is time, or rather lack of time. I spent 8-10 hours playing with the program last week and because I am trying to finish up my re-write before Christmas I find that I don't have the time to spend on the program that I would need to learn what I want to know to make it work for me.

That said, I will buy a copy of the software when it becomes available early next year. I like what I've seen so far and once I finish the re-write of Dog River Blues I will have the time to learn the ins and outs of Scrivener. At that time I will post an up-to-date review of the finished product, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to like it.

Scrivener 2.0

November 1st was a big day for me.  On that day, Literature and Latte, the company that develops my favorite word processing program, released the next generation, Scrivener 2.0.  I've not yet fully explored all the new features, since this is a program that takes time to get to know and use — and I've been using it for all my writing for over three years, but I still wanted to share with our readers here my enthusiasm for this application.  While version 2.0 is only available for the Mac, the folks at L&L are working on a Windows version.  They have currently released an early Beta version of the Windows app, but it doesn't yet have all the functionality of the Mac version and as a true Beta, it has some bugs that need working on.

I have been a Mac user and lover of Scrivener for a long time.  I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that this new big novel I've been working on would not have been the same book if I had not made the switch to Scrivener.  I'll admit, I was frustrated by it at first.  It took me months to get used to thinking differently about my work flow.  But now, I would never go back.

When anyone is first contemplating writing a book, it seems overwhelming.  I am the sort of person who has trouble seeing the whole big picture at once, and even after writing a couple of books, I would often feel as though the story were too big to fit in my head at once.  I was often searching and scanning my 300+ page MS Word document trying to remember where a particular scene was.  And my research was always collected in a big three ring binder.  I have one for each of my four novels, but even then I would flip through my hundreds of pages of printed out websites and brochures trying to find the one document I was looking for.

Scrivener has changed all that by making each novel or article or whatever you are writing — into a project.  On the far left side of the screen is a column that is called the binder.  There you have a folder for your draft and another for your research.  You can add more, so I've added one for characters, too.  Now, in my draft folder, each of my chapters is a folder and the chapters can be broken up into scenes within the chapters.  All of these can be dragged and dropped to rearrange the order as I write.  If I want to write a chapter out of order, it's easy now and I will always remember it's there as I will see it in the binder.

On the far right of your screen is a column that you can choose to view or not, and this is the Inspector.  Here, you are able to create a short synopsis for each chapter or scene you include in your project.  The title of the chapter will always be the same in the binder and in the inspector and changing it in one place also changes the other.

The center column on your screen is the main viewing screen for writing your text or viewing a research article or photo.  However, Scrivener has several other viewing modes as well.  You can change to cork board view and then all the synopses that you have written in your inspector will be displayed on notecards on a cork board background. Moving them around in this view will also move them in the main document.  And finally, there is a linear outline view that will show your complete outline with synopsis for every chapter.

The research folder can contain all my bits that used to go into my physical binder.  I admit, that since this current book has straddled my Scrivener period, I do still have a paper binder, too.  I used lots of texts that were not yet digital and I have some of that paper in the binder.  For my next book, I doubt I'll have any paper at all.  Anything not digital, I'll scan.  In my research folder I have photos, maps, web pages, charts, videos, audio files, etc.

Now when you are working, Scrivener has a split screen option that can be used in many different ways.  You can look at a photo of a place while you are writing a description.  You can put an older version of a scene next to a newer one.  Or, you can keep a research document next to the text you are using that references it, and you can split your screen vertically or horizontally.

So with all that, what could they possibly add to the new version 2.0?  What I like most about this upgrade is that they have taken the things they already did well and made them even better.

The one thing I love is that I can now print out a beautiful version of my outline directly from Scrivener.  They have a dded a new feature called collections that means I can easily keep all the chapters that take place in the past together for viewing as one story.  They have added a fun name generator for finding character names and a cool quick reference tools that makes the Mac's Quick Look feature into something editable.  They have greatly expanded the ability to comment on manuscripts which is something I am using more and more with my critique group, and the choices for exporting or compiling the manuscript have expanded to include the ePub format so Scrivener can now be used to prepare books for self-publishing to the Kindle or other eReaders.  Finally, they have made exporting to Dropbox and Simplenote, both of which are available on the iPad very easy so now, I can really write on my iPad and bring it back into Scrivener without cutting and pasting

The folks at Literature and Latte have created a host of videos both on their site and on YouTube to introduce new users to many of Scrivener's unique tools.  Check out the videos on Scrivener here.

Fair winds!

Christine

What is a friend?

By Mike Jastrzebski

Monday, Mary and I went to the Ft. Lauderdale boat show. To be honest, I wasn't overly impressed. Much of the show caters to the mega-yacht crowd, but we wandered around, added a few things to our dream list, and went off to meet a friend. Now this is where life becomes a little strange.

Victoria Allman, who blogs on this site a couple of days a month, and I have been friends since last March when I started Write on the Water(WOW), but we had never met. Christine Kling, another of our bloggers, introduced us through an e-mail.

Because we read each other's posts on the blog, we knew a lot about each other. I've got long-time friends who don't know things about me that Victoria does. But then, they don't read the blog. It was an interesting meeting. We chatted for well over an hour, I got to meet her husband and see where she works. This got me thinking, how many people do I consider to be friends that I've never met? Surprisingly, there are more than a few.

Tom Tripp, who also blogs on WOW is a nice guy. He has interesting things to say, writes clearly and cleverly, and I only know him through his picture and writings.

There are others, too. A couple of writers I've never met who I correspond with through Facebook on e-mails, and some readers who like my work and started writing back and forth with me. Then there are the friends that I've met while boating that I may never see again, but we keep in touch by e-mail.

I guess in the past these friends would have been considered pen pals. Hand written letters are more personal by nature, but with Facebook and blogs and websites and e-mail I get to follow the lives of these friends as if they lived next door and I was watching them through the kitchen window.

I feel as if the whole concept of friendship has changed. This isn't a complaint, just an observation. I kind of like the whole idea of making friends this way. What do you think?

Revisions

So there I was…staring at the computer screen. I had finished the first final draft of my second book a month ago and, like conventional wisdom suggests, had put it away for a few weeks to percolate. In that time, two beta readers had gone over my pages and made suggestions and comments. I was eager to make the changes I agreed with and start finessing the next version.  I had one of their marked copies in front of me, the file was open on my computer screen, and a steaming mug of Oceana coffee sat to the right of my laptop. Only problem was, I didn't know where to start.

How do you start a revision?

I picked up the pages and thumbed through them. There were red marks indicating where I missed a comma (quite a few) or when I spelled something wrong (less due to spell-check, but far from non-existent).  I started with those changes then went back to staring at the screen.

I decided I needed some professional help.  I consulted my file on advice from editor Ally Pelitier from her seminar at the Florida Writers Association Conference.

#1- BACK UP EVERYTHING

I plugged in my zip drive and hit copy. Step one completed in two and a half minutes.  Maybe this revision thing wasn't so bad after all.

#2- READ OUT LOUD, SLOWLY

I read two paragraphs out loud to the carved wooden statue I brought home from Papua New Guinea before I halted. Did I just say that? Ugh, it sounded dorky. I retyped a different phrase and began reading again.

#3-LOOK FOR UNNATURAL DIALOGUE

Ally advises:

Check for contractions and use of formal or informal speech. Does your character talk that way? Are the voices of each character different?

Well, that should be an easy one. I write memoir, so one of the characters is me. It stands to reason that I would write me the way I speak..right??? Turns out, I don't.

#4- TOO MUCH "TELLING", NOT ENOUGH "SHOWING"

This happens a lot in my first drafts when I rush to get the story down on the page. I went back through and looked for places where I could set a scene.

Ally advises:

Be descriptive and show with emotion, body language, action and dialogue rather than tell us "She was angry"

Avoid boring words like beautiful, attractive, elegant, embarrassing, wonderful, interesting.  They do not tell us anything.

I searched for those terms.  It seems I used them a lot in this first draft.

#5- INEFFECTIVE USE OF NOUNS AND VERBS

Tighten writing by looking for the perfect words.  Replace 'melting snow' with 'slush' or 'ran quickly' with 'sprinted'.

Ooh, I could do that.  It is like a game. I love word games. What's another word for tasted?

#6- PASSIVE VOICE

This is my demon in first drafts. I knew I had to pay attention to this. Ally suggests one trick is to circle and analyze all "to be" verbs: am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been and then rework the sentence to make it stronger.

Hmmm, there are a lot of red circles on my page.

#7- USE OF CLICHES-

I knew these are considered lazy writing and over-used, but I really thought the Bahamas were as hot as hell in chapter six.

#8 DOUBLE CHECK

Now that I had started changing things, Ally suggested looking for places where I cut a sentence but left the period. Or, when I reworked a scene but forgot to change the lead-up in the previous chapter.  It was good advice as I now had Corfu on the wrong side of the Corinth canal and our first mates name had changed from Hans to Dylan in all but two spots.

#9 GET ANOTHER OPINION

I spent two weeks going over changes and reworking the manuscript. Only problem was that now I was more confused than when I started.  I read, re-read and re-re-read and then printed it out and sent it back to another critiquer to make sure I hadn't missed any glaring errors.

So, here I sit, having just finished the second final draft and waiting again.  This leads me to the last piece of advice Ally said in her speech.  "Revision is not only about writing. It is about thinking, then writing a little, then thinking a whole lot more."

What about you?  What is your revision process? Do you have any tricks?

Victoria Allman has been following her stomach around the globe for twelve years as a yacht chef.  She writes about her floating culinary odyssey through Europe, the Caribbean, Nepal, Vietnam, Africa and the South Pacific in her first book, Sea Fare:  A Chef's Journey Across the Ocean.

Victoria is a columnist for Dockwalk, an International magazine for crew members aboard yachts.  Her column, Dishing It Up, is a humorous look at cooking for the rich and famous in an ever-moving galley.

She also regularly contributes tales of her tasty adventures to Marina Life Magazine and OceanLines.

You can read more of her food-driven escapades through her web-site, www.victoriaallman.com

Getting the Lead Out

by Tom Tripp

In the fall of 1999, trade relations between the United States and the People's Republic of China were at a crucial turning point, and the atmosphere in negotiations between the two countries was tense. I was a part of the U.S. negotiating team then and, as they say, a funny thing happened on the way to the Forbidden City.

We had been in Beijing for several days already and the talks had stalled. President Clinton had decided he wanted to bring China into the World Trade Organization as a way of leveling the playing field for trade partners of this quickly growing economy. And he wanted the deal before the quickly approaching end of his second term in the White House. There had been some positive signals in recent months from the Chinese that formerly intractable issues might be re-opened, and so we packed up our delegation and flew to the Middle Kingdom.

But now everything had pretty much ground to a halt and we were wondering how to proceed. The Chinese were hard-core negotiators. They used every trick in the book (and some that weren't in the book) to gain leverage. We played hardball, too, however. At one point, our team leader, the U.S. Trade Representative, a full Ambassador, ordered us all to phone home and tell our families we were coming home. She knew the Chinese would be listening to our phone calls. We made a big deal of packing our bags and discussing flight logistics with the American Embassy. The Chinese undoubtedly knew it might only be a ploy on our part, but they couldn't take a chance. They knew their best chance at this agreement was with Clinton, versus a potentially unknown successor in the White House in 2001.

At the last minute, the Ambassador's phone rang. We were summoned back to the table. Now it was getting exciting. Soon, we were in our convoy leaving the hotel, but this time we drove right past the Trade Ministry and into the very heart of Beijing. Our motorcade passed directly in front of the southern gate of the Forbidden City and then turned into the main gate of the Zhongnanhai, one of the former royal gardens on the western side of the Forbidden City and the home of the Chinese leadership.

When we pulled up in front of the large, ceremonial hall, it was apparent that our new negotiating counterpart would be the Premier himself, Zhu Rongji. Zhu was the equivalent of the COO of the Chinese government; reporting only to the President, Ziang Zemin. The setting was intimidating — an extremely formal room, with very high ceilings and two large chairs sitting next to each other against one wall.  Extending out from the wall were two opposing lines of chairs, one for each "team."

I was sitting out toward the end of "our" line of chairs and it was a bit hard to follow the conversation up at the head of the negotiation. But the mood was upbeat, a marked contrast to the past few days of dreary stagnation at the Trade Ministry. I studied the face of the Chinese diplomat across from me but he let nothing slip. Next to my chair was a table covered in delicate silk. A tall, green covered cup of something sat on the table. I peeked under the lid. Tea. Of course. There was also a pad of paper and two beautiful pencils.

The pencils. The more I looked at the pencils, the more I thought they were special. Yes, they were yellow pencils. But they had THE MOST exquisite gold lettering on them; intricate Chinese characters that ran almost the entire length of the pencil. I recognized the character for the Chinese word "Zhong," which means "middle" and is the main character for "China." I didn't understand any of the others, but that one character suggested something significant.

A profoundly important international negotiation was happening down at the other end of the chairs. One of the oldest civilizations in the world was negotiating with one of the youngest, yet most powerful. And they were discussing a subject that would quickly make a huge difference in the lives of millions of both Chinese and Americans.

But the pencils. Now THOSE were something else. I wanted one of those pencils.  Actually, I NEEDED one of those pencils. I had been cooped up in diplomatic talks for the entire week and I had not a single souvenir. I SHOULD TAKE one of these pencils.

I looked up. My opposition was staring at me. Oy. How long has he been watching? Can he tell I'm coveting these pencils? I glanced up the row at the principals who were both smiling and laughing. I casually returned my gaze to the fellow across from me. Damn. He was looking straight at me; maybe even glaring just a bit.

I gave him a laser look right back. And I played with one of the pencils while I did so; flipped it right up and over my knuckles like Iceman did in Top Gun. Except Iceman didn't drop his and have it clatter all over the table, drawing stares from staid diplomats at least three chairs away.

Okay, I'll take a sip of tea. Draw attention away from the pencils. I lifted the lid and sipped the still scalding tea. I looked around the room, searching for surveillance cameras that might record the diplomatic pilfering of a State Pencil. There were none that I could see, so I made a plan to "remove" the two pencils from the negotiation. I rationalized it as the first implementation of the free trade scheme that had clearly just been agreed down at the other end of the chairs.

Both diplomatic groups stood at once as the end of the meeting was pronounced.  I sensed an opening and turned toward my chair, deftly nabbing the pencils and slipping them into the inner pocket of my suit coat.  Done! Now all I had to do was look casual and avoid getting stopped on my way out. I figured no one would understand why I risked getting thrown into a Chinese jail for two lousy pencils. I wasn't really focused on the possibility of causing an international embarrassment.

But the key now was to get quickly and safely back to the American Embassy so I could get the beautiful Chinese characters translated.  In my mind, I had already decided on the most likely translation – "Personal Writing Implement of Premier Zhu Rongji of the People's Republic of China."  Naturally, it took several days to make our way out of the Forbidden City and back to the Embassy. Or maybe an hour.

At the Embassy, I ran up to the second floor to the office of the Economic Attache. His Chinese was fantastic and I knew I'd get the best translation from him. I slid the pencils out of my jacket and handed him one; presented it to him really, as befit its special status.

"So, Jack (not his real name for obvious reasons), tell me, what does it say," I said.  He looked at the pencil for an impossibly short second.

"Jack?" 

He looked up at me.

"You took this from the Premier's Palace?" He looked incredulous. It made me a little nervous. I knew I'd been a bit foolhardy, stealing something from the Chinese government, but really, a pencil?

"Yes," I replied. "I just wanted a really unique souvenir. Now what does it say, Jack?"

Jack waited, watching me get more and more uncomfortable. Then a huge grin just exploded onto his face.

"It says, 'Number Five Chinese Pencil Factory."

Did you ever have a story turn out WAY different than you'd hoped?

From Rags to Riches on the Kindle? The fourth month.

By Mike Jastrzebski

It's hard to believe that it's been four months now since I published my first book, The Storm Killer, as an Amazon e-book for the Kindle. At the time I had three other books completed and I felt that with some serious rewriting I could have a total of three books on Kindle by the end of the year.

I was hoping to sell about 50 of each title per month, which would give me an income by the end of the year of about $300.00 per month. Since Mary and I are planning to go cruising next year that $300.00 a month would be a nice supplement to the pension Mary will begin collecting in February and my Social Security check which I will begin receiving in July. Boy did I figure wrong.

This past month I sold 333 copies of The Storm Killer and 150 copies of Key Lime Blues. My books are also available on Smashwords where I sold zero copies in October, and on the Nook, where I sold 2 copies of Key Lime Blues and zero copies of The Storm killer. Here's the link if you wish to buy one of my books for the Nook, http://tinyurl.com/3a4v5gx.

This means that my earnings for October will be approximately $950.00. This is a little more than my earnings for September ($826.72) and a little less than my earnings for August ($1059.57). A bit more than the $100.00 per book I hoped to earn when I started this endeavor.

For the record my total sales for the first four months as an Indie author are 1076 copies of The Storm Killer and 513 copies of Key Lime Blues. Although I did not go live with Key Lime Blues until August 10th, it obvious that The Storm Killer is selling better. I'm not quite sure what to attribute this to. I did do more advertising at the start for The Storm Killer, and I have 25 reviews for The Storm Killer but only 8 reviews for Key Lime Blues.

October is the first month that I did no advertising. However, in November I am planning to do a paid sponsorship for each book in Planet Ipad, a sister blog of The Kindle Nation. I have also scheduled a Kindle Nation short for Key Lime Blues for the week after Christmas. The Storm Killer is sponsoring the short so that both books will be advertised.

I'll keep you posted over the next two months about the sponsorships and my sales.