Mike Jastrzebski's Blog, page 56
September 11, 2012
Tipping Point
Have you noticed the proliferation of tip jars? At one time this was largely limited to the summer phenomenon of student employees – especially those working at ice cream shops, but it’s way beyond that now. Perhaps businesses are reluctant to increase wages in a tight economy so they’re conning workers into thinking they will get higher effective wages via the tip jar. Whatever it is, things are starting to get out of hand. You stand in line to get a loaf of fresh French bread, see the register ring up $6.50, and you’re supposed to make a tip? How did this happen? Did someone just decide to turn the little extra penny dishes into tip jars?
I, for one, have actually always like tipping. Besides, money flow is good for the economy. In the past four years we’ve heard a lot about how reviving the economy is dependent upon the consumer. As much as saving is a virtue, the entire economy is dependent upon spreading cash around.
But shouldn’t there be reasonable limits? And besides, who is it that determines the tipper versus the tippee? After all, if you just paid $6.50 for a loaf of bread aren’t you the one who deserves thanks? Isn’t the customer king? Shouldn’t it be: “Here’s some cash in your hand for coming to my store to pay an outrageous amount for a daily staple?” And if someone orders a chocolate martini that rings up in the high teens, shouldn’t it be the establishment’s turn for tipping? Their way of saying, “Here’s some change in your pocket so you’ll want to come back again to pay an unthinkable amount for that funny looking drink.”
I suppose card points or airplane miles are akin to a tip. The same for those rewards receipts boaters get at West Marine. Still, there’s nothing like cold hard cash at the time of the transaction.
So let it start here at Write On The Water. Next time someone tells me I’m doing a good job keeping-up that old wooden sailboat, I’m going tell them that I am pleased I added to their visual experience and then slip them the tip jar. A favorable comment from a reader who enjoyed my book? Tip jar. When someone thanks me for throwing them a dock line? Yup.
The opportunities are many.
So there it is. And by the way, if you enjoyed today’s post, please be sure let me know. I can be reached via my online Pay Pal account, s’il vous plaît. Merci.
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September 10, 2012
Pop-Up
Do you know what a ‘Pop-Up’ event is? Let me explain, because before I wrote a piece on a pop-up art gallery for a local paper, I didn’t know.
Fast Buck Freddie’s was a department store on Duval Street in Key West. Years ago, Tony Falcone and Jimmy Buffett pooled their money and bought the building on Duval & Fleming streets. Buffett has his restaurant and T-shirt shop there, and Falcone opened the department store.
The economy being what it is, and Falcone not being Jimmy Buffett, Fast Buck’s just wasn’t the moneymaker it had been for many years, so it closed. Falcone told me that as the store was emptying out, he’d walk by and feel depressed to see such a large empty space where there was once a thriving business.
After talking with some friends, he took a few suggestions and offered the space, free of charge, accept for electric, to a group of artists and galleries. One condition, other than paying the electric, everyone had to work together to keep the space open on certain hours.
Falcone told me he was pleasantly surprised to see the artists and galleries working together, helping each other set up. So, until the space is rented to some business, the large store is now a ‘pop-up’ art gallery.
Which leads me to why I’ve mentioned this in the first place. A month ago, the woman that coordinated the gallery ‘pop-up’ contacted local writers and said she wanted to do one-night writers of Key West ‘pop-up’ event in the gallery.
The variety of writers include fiction, poets, columnists, children lit writers and a few that challenge description. It was a fun night. I don’t think any of us walked away with a million dollars, but I sold three sets of my Key West books and met a few folks who asked what books were on Kindle. They took my promotional bookmarks and maybe added to my eBook sales.
During the art walk on the first Friday of each month at Upper Duval Street a number of businesses, wine shops, real estate offices, join with the galleries and display artists’ work that isn’t in one of the local galleries.
Why can’t writer do the same thing? Why can’t we have ‘pop-up’ weekend events in some unlikely venues? One or two writers to 50 writers, no location is too small or too big. We don’t have to present talks and discussion groups only in bookstores or libraries. Coffee Houses, art galleries, restaurants and bars, are all good locales. And it’s good for the business too, we bring in people who will browse and spend money on food, drinks and whatever.
What’s in your neighborhood that could be turned into a writers’ ‘pop-up’ for a night?
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September 9, 2012
My thoughts on Christine’s blog
By Mike Jastrzebski
Christine and I have had many discussions over the last couple of years about self-publishing and Amazon in particular. I took the leap first and along with Kindle, I put my books on Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Sony, even the I-Bookstore, all through Smashwords. When Barnes and Noble came out with their Pubit program I jumped right in. The results for every reader except for Kindle were disappointing.
Starting when I published my first book, The Storm Killer
, I have shared my sales information, along with all of my promotional efforts, on this blog under the category of Rag to Riches on the Kindle.
Although I have not been as successful as Christine, in the past two years I have sold over 20,000 copies of my books on Amazon, but only a few hundred between all of the other Ebook sales sites. I recently asked myself the same questions Christine is raising about making my books available on all devices.
For me the answer was really pretty simple. Not only have I sold way more books on Amazon over the past two years than any other sites, but sales of my books are actually up over 40% since I joined the KDP select program.
For me, it’s a matter of economics. Until I hear from other writers that they are selling a lot more books through Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and Apple, or until my sales begin to fall drastically, I’ll stay exclusive with Amazon. I know Christine well enough to know that she’ll make the decission that’s right for her.
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September 6, 2012
Principles or income – what’s a self-published author to do?
I don’t know what to do. I’m having a helluva time making a decision, and I’m hoping that if I can lay out the issues, that perhaps some of the very smart readers of this blog can help me out. For the sailors who read my posts, my apologies. This is going to be a very techie, writer-centered post.
So, here’s the deal. I did it. I quit my job and moved onto my boat to write – and now I am completely dependent on my income from my ebooks. I’ve had some great months – and some not-so-great months of sales. So some months I’ve been able to install my new refrigeration and my new head – and other months I’m eating frijoles.
I spent about an hour today on the Engadget site today watching their liveblog of the Amazon Press Conference where they introduced the new Kindles you see in the photo at the top of this post. They are some very impressive pieces of hardware offered at incredible prices, but what sets Amazon apart from Apple, who currently has the majority of the tablet market, is that Amazon sees themselves as content providers, and they don’t mind losing money on their hardware – hence these prices. Apple, on the other hand, sees themselves as hardware providers, hence their lousy search capabilities in the Apple iBookstore. As a part of their announcement today, Amazon announced Whispersync for voice. This is something I have been longing for. See, I love audiobooks and I also love to read ebooks. Now, if you own both the audiobooks and the ebook, you can listen to the audiobook while on watch, and when you climb into your bunk at night, your Kindle will ask you if you want to sync to the same place where you left off listening to the audio. Pretty cool, huh? See, Amazon gets what content consumers want.
There’s a big issue in the world of ebooks today – for authors and booksellers – as to whether or not Amazon is going to completely overtake the market and become a monopoly (a claim made by Barnes and Noble, Apple and the Author’s Guild) especially given the decision reached Thursday by the court concerning the settling parties to the DOJ lawsuit. And, yes, I am now a Thomas & Mercer (an Amazon publisher) author, and I am proud to say that the new T&M version of Circle of Bones now has a release date of February 19th. So, theoretically, I should be 100% in the Amazon camp.
However, I am a hybrid author in that I kept the rights to self-publish my Seychelle books, and I think I will always want to remain partly independent and partly traditionally published. So, it is the self-published part of me that is having this difficulty making a decision. The self-published part of me does not like the idea of exclusivity. For the past several months I’ve had my books enrolled in the Kindle Select Program which requires authors to make their books exclusive to Amazon. I had to take them down from all the other sites to participate. In return, I was allowed to make my books free for 5 days out of every 90 day period, and this helped to propel my books up the Amazon bestseller lists and when they came off free, I sold lots more books. But I know there are other folks out there who own iPads, Nooks, Kobos and Sony readers as well as those who are invested in other online stores like Diesel and Smashwords and Bookbaby, and I would occasionally get emails from people asking me why my books were not available for their ereaders.
So, gradually, I have been rotating my books out of the Amazon Select Program and trying to make them available on other sites. But here’s the issue – nobody, I repeat NOBODY is as good at providing content as Amazon. And the question is, can I afford to lose money while the others try to figure it out?
Okay, so you may very well ask what IT is? What does Amazon do that is so much better? It’s all in the algorithms, baby. The consumer reviews, the ability to LIKE a page, the categories and the multiple best seller lists are what make the difference. And clearly the Kindle Select program has made it possible for Indie Authors to compete against the big NYT bestsellers. None of the other bookselling platforms have giving Indie authors a similar tool for success. And as for brick and mortar stores- furgettaboutit. They still don’t even want to talk to Indie book folk or even to Amazon imprint authors.
When a customer used to walk into a Borders, they were often overwhelmed by all the books. Inside Amazon, readers can drill down through lists that connect to lists and find books they want via subject and price point. And there’s no need to encounter a bookstore employee who’s a book snob and will flinch at your request for a thriller or vampire book or erotica.
But, after a full month of having my books listed on Kobo, I have sold a total of 17 books. I can’t figure out how to promote myself on Kobo. There don’t seem to be any Kobo-selling blog sites like there are for Kindle where I can buy advertising, and even though I’ve had Surface Tension priced at 99 cents, I can’t figure out how to make it more discoverable to readers.
I’ve been trying for a couple of days to get my books on the Nook Pubit site and for some reason, it won’t take my info and the site keeps timing out on me. I didn’t have this problem back when I listed Circle of Bones on Nook and I don’t know what the problem is now. The site is just not cooperating with me.
Meanwhile, in the first six days of this month I have sold 443 books on Amazon.
Back when Microsoft decided to invest several million dollars into the Nook in May, the amazing author Libby Fischer Hellmann wrote an open letter to Microsoft trying to explain to them what they would need to do to make the online Nook store competitive with Amazon. So far, I haven’t seen any changes for the better and by remaining exclusive to the USA, I think the Nook has already sealed their demise. Their recent forays into the UK market are too little, too late.
It seemed to me that Kobo with their new author portal called Writing Life was the real significant competitor to Amazon. Kobo has over 2.5 million ebooks in its catalogue, they claim they have readers in over 170 different countries, and as an originally Canadian company (since bought out by the Japanese), they claim to have over 50% of the ebook market in Canada. They, too, have recently released new versions of their ebook readers that are very competitive on price and performance.
However, I recently attempted to change the prices of a couple of my books on Kobo and Amazon at the same time. Amazon made the price changes effective within 18 hours, but they also found that the books had not changed on Kobo, so they noted the new price, and they price-matched and discounted my books to match the Kobo price. I found that the Writing Life interface gave me trouble for changing the price on Kobo, and it took me 5 days with repeated emails to their Support staff to effect the change. In fact, most of their emails to me were junk that sent me canned responses that did not address the issue I was dealing with. Clearly, their support for indie authors is understaffed while Amazon has always provided personal emails that addressed my problems within 24 hours.
And, of course, Apple is going to be announcing some sort of new hardware this month and the rumor mill is running full tilt about a mini-iPad at an affordable price. With all these new tablets and new e- readers, is Amazon going to hold on to their market share? With the holiday season approaching, would I be crazy to commit to another 90 days of Amazon exclusivity? With the various reading apps on iPad, iPhones and Android, do individual hardware makers matter anymore?
So, that’s my conundrum. And I know it is a conundrum shared by all self-published writers. Should I I hold to my principles and continue to try to make my five self-published books available to a larger market outside the Amazon ecosystem and lose sales in the process in the hope that these other sites will eventually become as author-centric as Amazon, or should I give up on the rest of the lame ebook sites and return to the Amazon exclusivity that has previously sold thousands of copes of my books?
I would welcome any input to help me with this difficult decision. What do you think?
Fair winds!
Christine
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E-publishing… the Next Generation
Back in February, I had an odd run-in with pirates. Not aboard my boat – that would have been strange indeed, considering her fixed position, high and dry within a shed. No, this was piracy of the digital variety. Someone had stolen content directly off of my blog, from some posts I’d done about some Kindle covers my daughter and I had made.
There it was, compiled into a book—every word, every photo, including ones where you could see my kitchen, my cat and my coffee cup. That’s getting a bit personal, don’t you think? But to add the ultimate insult to this injury, it was published it under my name. Someone was using my name and making money off of my writing. And worse yet, due to poor formatting, this ‘book’ was receiving bad reviews. Seriously! That’s what bothered me the most to me at the time: they’d actually had the nerve to steal my name, and tarnish it! I can do just as well without anyone else’s help. Truth be told, had they not done that, it’s likely I may have never noticed, and it would still be selling to this day. And ironically, it was selling quite well.
As I said, my daughter had helped to create the original covers featured in these posts. She inherited my talent for working with her hands, and she’s an amazing seamstress as well. The covers we’d had online were early designs, ones she’d long since improved upon. And considering someone else had already proven that even done badly, this was a book people wanted, it occurred to her that it would be worth the time to put her own book together, done right. Knowing that most people prefer not to sew, she created tutorials for covers anyone could make without ever needing a needle or thread. And what started as one book grew into a series of four. She’s turned to me for a bit of help with the whole e-book publishing part, and the other day, under a pen/nickname, her books went live.
So, I’d like to ask you all to welcome a new writer into the fascinating and ever-evolving world of self-publishing and e-books. It will be interesting to see how her light and friendly ‘how-to’ books do compared to my fictional murder and mayhem. I usually don’t ask, but if you could ‘like’ this on Facebook and help get the word out, that would be wonderful. And, in a strange way, I’d like to thank that unknown pirate, whoever you may be, for opening her eyes to an opportunity she’d never even imagined until you showed us its value.
And here they are – we’d both love to know what everyone thinks:
Would you like a beautiful new one-of-a-kind Kindle cover, but without spending lots of money, and without needing to sew? Then look no further! This book shows how you can create your own stylish, one-of-kind covers, simply and inexpensively, using materials you already have and easy-to-find supplies. Make your covers as stylish, playful, elegant, or rugged as you’d like.
These covers are really quite simple and easy to create — all you need are the basic crafting skills you learned in kindergarten. Over 40 photos accompany detailed descriptions guiding you through every step of the process, and these covers can be as simple or complex as you’d like. The possibilities are endless—your only limit is your imagination.
And they aren’t just for Kindles — these customizable designs work for all models of e-Readers and tablets, so once you’ve made your own, you can create wonderful personalized and unique gifts for family and friends as well.
VOLUME 1 – THE SUPER-EASY COVERS, guides you through every step from start to finish to make A Super-Simple, Ultra-Cheap DIY Kindle Cover, A Duct Tape Kindle Cover, The Padded Placemat Cover, and The “Phone Book” Stealth Cover. – Only $0.99
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September 2, 2012
‘Ham’ing it up
By Mike Jastrzebski
Ten years ago, when we were wrapping up plans to move aboard Rough Draft, Mary and I both got our General Class Ham licenses. We bought an Icom IC-706KIIG transceiver with an AH-4 antenna tuner with the intention of mounting the radio on the boat.
After living nine years on the boat, I’m one wire away from being ready to go on the air. All I need to do is connect the tuner to the backstay antenna and if all goes well we’ll be ready to go live.
One of the reasons it’s taken so long to hook up the radio is that we didn’t really need it. There were so many projects that the radio kept being moved to the bottom of our to-do list. After spending a month in the Bahamas we realized that it would be nice to have long range communication available so when we started preparing for our next trip it quickly moved up the list.
The other reason I put off the installation was that I thought I’d have to run copper foil under the floor of the boat for a ground plate system. I have a dynoplate ground on the boat but I’ve been told that’s not enough, so that left the foil. I was not looking forward to the backbreaking job of running that foil, and then one of the boaters down the dock mentioned the KISS-SSB counterpoise radial system.
This system replaces the ground plane system, cost only $139.00, and involves nothing more than connecting one wire to the tuner and laying out a ten foot cable. The KISS-SSB is designed for the marine SSB, Winlink, Sailmail, or Ham frequencies from 2MHz through 28MHz.
Will it do the job? All my research says it will, but only time will tell. I’ll let our readers know what the results are sometime in the future when we’ve had a chance to use the radio for awhile.
By the way, the radio is not the only project I’ve put off for the past nine years. Before we left Minnesota we bought a radar unit and it’s still sitting, waiting to be installed. I just bought everything I need to build a radar mast, and as soon as I get the davits installed I’ll put up the radar unit.
I never would have guessed when we bought this boat that it would be such a time and energy consuming project. I’m not complaining, but if your thinking of buying a boat and have never owned one, be prepared to put in some long hours before taking off for distant shores.
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August 30, 2012
“The dolphin’s smile is nature’s greatest deception” -Ric O Barry
by Christine Kling
These past few weeks I’ve been reading and watching the shenanigans in the political arena. On the Sisters in Crime email list, they’ve been holding a discussion about whether or not it is appropriate for writers to voice their opinions about the touchy subjects of politics, religion, sex, etc either in their fiction, on their blogs, on Facebook or out in public in general. I’ve been rather shocked by the discussion, actually.
Writers shouldn’t inject their opinions into their work or their lives? Tell that to the authors of Lysistrata, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Nineteen Eight-Four, or The Gulag Archipelago. Hell, I’d even throw in The DaVinci Code since it was considered commercial fiction or entertainment and that is mostly what I write.
The dolphin’s “smile” is really just the shape of his mouth. It’s not a real smile. Is that what we writers are supposed to wear?
My current WIP (Work in Progress) has a storyline set in 1945 in the Pacific at the end of World War II. As with most research, one ends up meandering through the fibers of the Web and sliding off on tangents. My interest was piqued when I read about a covert operation in Japan in more recent years. This operation resulted in the documentary film title, The Cove.I watched it recently, and I wept. This film that was produced by The Ocean Preservation Society is part mystery, part thriller, part horror movie. It tells the story of a group of brave men and women who fight the status quo to inform the world about the brutal slaughter of dolphins that takes place every year in Taiji, Japan. Watch the trailer:
For anyone who loves dolphins, cetaceans of all sorts, and the ocean, I strongly suggest you watch this film which is available to rent through iTunes and Amazon, or you can purchase the DVD here.
There is a significant amount of research out there that suggests that dolphins are self-aware and very close to humans in their intelligence. It’s reasonable to believe that these animals suffer immensely from being enclosed in concrete pools where they can only swim in tight circles and their sonar bounces off the walls. After watching The Cove, I went to the website Save Japan Dolphins and signed the petition to help save Japan’s dolphins.
Every sailor can tell stories about the many times they’ve interacted with dolphins who came to play around the bow of their boat. And in my experience at sea, almost every time I have been really low because I was exhausted or frightened, dolphins have arrived to give me a burst of adrenaline and/or confidence to get me through. I’m not usually superstitious, nor do I believe in much paranormal, psychic woo-woo stuff. But when it comes to dolphins, I’ve simply had too many amazing experiences to call it coincidence.
The killing season in Japan starts on September 1st. Tomorrow, August 31st at 2:00 p.m., I’ll be marching and protesting in front of the Japanese Embassy in Miami. I’ll be taking my camera, and I may add some photos or more comments to this blog when I get home that night. As for those authors who say we shouldn’t write about our beliefs or our politics? I could no more do that than I could give up writing or the water.
Fair winds!
Christine
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Do Not Disturb… (I’m already disturbed enough as it is.)
C.E. Grundler
You can always tell when I become truly immersed in something I’m writing. I drop off the radar. Friends don’t see or hear from me, either online or in real time. My posts drop off to a few random words assuring people I’m okay, just busy, and only to pre-emptively head off any phone calls or email inquiries into my absence. Or I simply recycle older posts (such as I did last week.) I disappear into my own world, a world of words and voices and characters, and in my single-minded focus everything outside that becomes secondary. I know it might not be the best thing, but for better or worse, it is how I operate.
For the last few weeks I’ve been wrapped up in a binge of productivity that has sidelined most everything else in my life. It’s a cycle I go through, and I can only sustain it for so long before it burns me out. Then I’ll go into a recharge mode, cutting back on writing time as I catch up on other facets of my life and let my brain de-frag before the next round kicks in. I’ll spend some time away from the computer. I’ll get some real sleep. I’ll walk the dogs more. I’ll absorb some UV rays. I’ll promise myself I’ll put more time into my blog and my online presence. And I actually might … for a while at least. But before long, the ideas will start to backlog in my brain, and the only way to clear my head will be another intensive round of shutting out everything else as I tap compulsively away at the keyboard.
So perhaps in a week or two my posts will get a bit more interesting, or I’ll at least take some pictures of the work that’s been moving ahead aboard Annabel Lee. But right now, I’m going to keep this short and sweet – I’m needed back in my other world.
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August 28, 2012
Sailing Backwards
We are passing the entrance to the Westport River along the edge of Buzzards Bay and Rhode Island Sound. An eighty degree day. The sails are full and water passes below as FactorX enters the harbor. Enormous glacial remnants of granite mark one side of the channel, a long white sand beach the other, both populated by children of all ages playing along the water’s edge. The winter hours lost to sanding, varnishing, and painting at once make sense as I practice the art of living in the moment.
“What’s that?” I ask as my wife’s voice stirs me from my daydream and causes me to refocus the angle of the tiller.
“We aren’t moving.”
I look down and confirm that the water is indeed rushing by the hull and I glance up at the sails, which are set full although the wind is light.
“Actually, I think we’re now going backwards,” Sally says with the reasoning of a seasoned sailor and extremely reliable observer.
My eyes scan down to the GPS. I assert, with the manly confidence of my gender, “We aren’t going backwards. We’re holding steady.”
Holding steady. Sounds so much better than not moving, don’t you think?
The tidal flow of the Westport River produces a significant current, especially where the channel narrows at the river’s mouth. In light air this challenge is compounded by those huge granite rocks that block the wind, enough so that light air conditions necessitates the use of the engine for all but the saltiest of sailors. I get the diesel going and propel us forward.
(Chart of the approach to the entrance to the Westport River)
Our movement is still slow against the current giving me ample time to think of the whaling ships that left this harbor in the mid 1800s. I suppose that back then, waiting for a favorable current wasn’t such a big deal. What’s a few idle hours when you’re about to spend the next two years at sea.
Today, sailors are aided by the Eldridge Tide & Pilot Book, which provides accurate predictions on ebbs, flows, and surges for areas all along the coast. By religiously referring to Eldridge you can speed your trip and avoid hours-long slogs against the current. In areas such as Wood’s Hole, the Cape Cod Canal or New York’s Hell’s Gate, use of Eldridge becomes a heightened catechism if you want to stay off the rocks.
Yet, as much as I try to keep a copy of Eldridge aboard, it’s not always easy to make needed time calculations while the tiller is in one hand and a sheet in the other. For this reason I was especially interested to learn of some current data available online or via a smartphone courtesy of the University of South Carolina. Check it out:
http://tbone.biol.sc.edu/tide/worldmap.html
There’s a wonderful passage in Farley Mowat’s classic book The Boat Who Wouldn’t Float that describes Mowat’s troublesome engine that would frequently operate only in reverse. Mowat describes how he departed a Canadian harbor backwards, his sails up and full but not able to overcome an engine that was cranking away in the wrong direction. Someday I might want to recreate that scene, but if I do, I want to do it intentionally (or at least have some basis for supporting that claim), so I’m going to spend some time testing-out this South Carolina computer database.
If you’re a sailor give it a look because sooner or later we all end up sailing backwards for some period of time, don’t we.
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August 26, 2012
Ghosts of hurricanes past
By Mike Jastrzebski
This weekend we found ourselves preparing for a hurricane that might, or might not come our way. The prospect of Isaac turning east got me thinking of the hurricanes we’ve had to contend with since we moved aboard Rough Draft nine years ago and headed south.
Every time a hurricane begins to form and we find ourselves in the cone, my first thoughts are of denial. I just don’t want to believe we’re going to get hit. Sometimes we do, and sometimes we get lucky.
Those of you who have followed this blog for awhile know that in August of 2005 Katrina put our boat into someone’s back yard. We were living in Mobile, Alabama at the time and both Mary and I lost our jobs to the storm. Katrina chased us from Mobile, but it wasn’t the first hurricane we had to face.
That would have been Ivan. Ivan hit Mobile Alabama in September of 2004, just 8 months after we arrived in Mobile. We were fortunate with Ivan. We took our boat up the Mobile River to a hurricane hole and suffered no damage to the boat, although the dock at the Grand Mariner Marina where we were living suffered some damage.
The following June we found ourselves in the center of the cone for Hurricane Dennis. Fortunately, Dennis turned right and hit the Florida Panhandle. We had some flooding in Mobile, but nothing serious.
As I’m writing this we now know that Isaac is heading toward Louisiana and not likely to turn our way. Because of what we’ve been through I have mixed emotions. I’m happy that we don’t have to worry about Rough Draft being damaged, I feel bad for those people in the Gulf who have to go through this one more time.
So I wonder if any of our readers out there have an interesting experience with a hurricane. If so, why don’t you click on the comments box and tell us about it.
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