Mike Jastrzebski's Blog, page 87

From Rags to Riches-One year later.

By Mike Jastrzebski

It's been a full year now since my first book, The Storm Killer, became available as an eBook on Amazon. That first full month (July, 2010) I sold 92 books and earned $182.15. On August 1oth of last year I added my second book, Key Lime Blues (A Wes Darling Mystery), to the Kindle store. That August I sold 547 books and earned $1059.57.

My best sales month to date was this April when I sold 1635 books. 1330 of those were priced at .99 centa and 305 were priced at $2.99. My best earnings month was March when I earned $1818.29 from sales of the two books, each priced at $2.99.

On May 10th, after listing both books at .99 cents for several weeks, I raised them back to $2.99. In May I sold 136 books at .99 cents and 913 books at $2.99. In May I earned $1380.36. Right now Key Lime Blues is outselling The Storm Killer. Dog River Blues, the sequel to Key Lime Blues will be available next month and it will be interesting to see how it affects the sales of the other books.

As I mentioned in a previous post, my June sales were down so I lowered the price of both books back to .99 cents. I sold 295 copies of The Storm Killer and 475 copies of Key Lime Blues. 373 of the books were sold at .99 cents and 397 were sold at $2.99.

My total Kindle book sales to date are 8760 books sold. 4635 copies were of The Storm Killer and 4125 copies were of Key Lime Blues (A Wes Darling Mystery).

This month I am going to keep both books priced at 99 cents and I will report both my sales and earnings at this lower sales price next month.

In the meantime, have a happy 4th.

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Two Hats

New Plymouth, Green Turtle Cay

I've just returned in my dinghy from my evening dog walk over at Pineapple's Bar on Green Turtle Cay.  My boat is out in the anchorage off town now. Most of the boats I know from Fort Lauderdale have headed in to the Bluff House where there is an event tonight with a (promised to be) great band out of Nassau.  Sometimes I follow the crowd, but this afternoon, when I started a conversation at the bar, I shifted hats.

Most of the cruising boats here are interested primarily in having a good time.  That is the one hat they wear.  Come over to the Abacos to party during Abaco Race Week.  But I wear two different hats.  It's the split personality thing again.  I am a sailing writer and when a research gift falls into my lap, I have to say, screw the dinner plans, this is more important.

It took three trips to Pineapples over these past couple of weeks to get him to open up, but tonight, I got to have a long conversation at the bar with the 80-year-old patriarch of the Macintosh clan on Green Turtle Cay, Cardinal (Cardey) Macintosh.  I have sat next to him at the end of the bar before, but we hadn't really exchanged words.  Tonight was different.

I hadn't planned on staying at Green Turtle Cay this long, but I'd had problems with my alternator, problems with my outboard, sewing projects that needed finishing and one thing led to another, and here I've been for almost two weeks.  I spent four days on the dock at the Other Shore Club, and I managed to finally finish my sewing project there.  It's also been long enough to get to know people like the lady who cooks in the back room and Yvonne the bartender and Cardey Macintosh.

All the beautiful young people were gyrating to the music and pushing each other into the saltwater swimming pool, but I was more interested in the white-haired man at the end of the bar.  He sucked on his beer and his dull eyes followed the younger generation, and when I struck up a conversation, he started in with the usual line.

"You're beautiful, darling."

I flirted for a few minutes with the older gentleman, but what I really wanted to know was what it was like here during the second world war.  The dullness went right out of those eyes when I asked.  A delightful mischievous grin crept across his face.  I got the feeling that very few people want to hear the old stories.

For the next couple of hours while my dog sat patiently under my bar stool, the patriarch of the Macintosh clan (seven sons and five daughters, grands and great-grands so numerous he claims to have lost count) regaled me with tales of the Bahamian people eating well off all the goods that washed up on the northern beaches during the war years.  He said they found food and candy and lumber and guns and ammunition a plenty.  I thought about all the U-boats prowling these waters and to the north, and all the ships that sank during those years.

"What about bodies?" I asked.

"No, we never found any bodies."

Where did they go?  Sharks?  Or was the distance too great and they just sank into the abyss?  How strange to think that the guns lasted longer than the men did.

He talked about Churchill and the big cigars the man smoked and what it was like to be a part of the British Empire in those days.

Then he started in on the stories about the years he spent on a 25-foot sailing cargo vessel.  They had a five-man crew:  Captain, cook and three hands.  They slept in shifts in the bunks below.  There were no lights in the islands then.

"And no GPS?" I said.

His look was blank at the mention of it.  I'm not sure he has ever sailed with GPS.  He recognized the huge difference that lights on the major points had made, but I don't think he understood how GPS has changed the world of mariners.

They sailed down to Grand Bahama and brought back lumber.  Much of the town here that I know as New Plymouth was probably built by lumber brought in by the younger Cardey Macintosh.

Then he told stories about his years on the sponge boats working the banks down off Great Sale Cay.  It was a rough life.

"But I am blessed," he said.  "In all my life I have only ever been to the doctor once.  Never really been sick.  And when I am, I know which bushes to eat or to use to brew myself a tea."

I sat there wishing I had a camera, microphone and recorder.  Will I be able to capture this face, the broad nose and razor sharp cheekbones, the way his white whiskers contrast so beautifully with his dark skin?  And that smile?  How many 80-year-old gentlemen still have such a mouthful of beautiful white teeth?  But it was his stories about sailing across the Bahama banks in the days when people didn't sail over here for vacation — back in the days when that was the only way they had to travel — that made me shift gears, put on my research hat and start to take mental notes.   It was his stories that I've filed away and which may one day get new life in a character in one of my books.

Fair winds!

Christine

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You know you've arrived…

C.E. Grundler

…when fan-art starts showing up in Deviant Art!

Hazel by ~Sinister-Chocolate

Hazel Moran, from C.E. Grundler's thriller novel, Last Exit in New Jersey. She out and about, running into trouble, as usual. This is where she runs into a certain troubled yet endearing young man. But I won't say more, just go read it!

As most of you already know, the last week has been an eventful one for me. It all began bright and early on Wednesday, June 22nd, when my book was the scheduled sponsor in ereadernewstoday.com. I'd set that up back in the beginning of April, and had been counting down the weeks, hoping the added exposure might give my book a boost in sales. Prior to the sponsorship I'd been moving an average of 70 books a day, and it had taken months of slow but steady increases to reach that point. Most days I go online at 5:15 a.m. It's the slowest point of the day and I'm up, so that's when I total what I've sold in the last 24 hours. That morning I checked my sales and rank… and discovered that my book's description on the Amazon sales page had turned into a collection of broken up sentences, as though someone had randomly hit the 'Enter' key every few words.

I couldn't imagine what had happened or why. Everything had been perfectly normal the night before, and my paperback, with the identical description, had no format issues. I made few unsuccessful attempts to correct it in Author Central and at 8:00 a.m. I called Amazon. They assured me it was just some temporary problem and everything would be back in order… in three to five days. The sponsorship came and went, yielding me 198 sales on Wednesday (a new record!) and an additional 137 on Thursday, dropping my rank all the way down to 286. Not bad, considering my description still looked like word confetti.

Friday morning I logged in, check my numbers and debated between some strong caffeine or going back to bed. I checked my book's page on Amazon to see if the description has been fixed. Nope. Still, sales had been pretty good the last few days even with this description issue. I'd been up writing pretty late the night before, so I opted for sleep, and checked my sales one more time: they'd reached an all-time high. 1774. With the 4th of July weekend approaching, I mused: 'Two more sales would be revolutionary.'

Two hours later I got back up, opened my computer, and checked my book's page on Amazon, hoping my description had returned to normal, which it hadn't. This was the third day… maybe it would be fixed before lunch. I checked my sales page… and stared in confusion, trying to process the number on the screen.

1943? How was that even possible? It had to be another Amazon glitch. There was no conceivable way I'd gone from colonial times straight to the middle of World War II in the span of two hours… especially at that hour of the morning. I stared at the monitor, trying to wrap my brain around a number that didn't compute, certain it couldn't be mine, and wondered what had become of *my* sales.

I closed the browser and opened it again, as if that would make the mistake go away. Now it read 1954. WTF? Try yet again, only to see 1965. In a matter of minutes I'd jumped three decades. These *couldn't* be MY sales. But the page claimed it was, indeed, my account, and those were the sales for Last Exit In New Jersey. My daughter looked up from her tea, trying to read my expression.

"Is something wrong?" she asked.

"I'm confused," I mumbled, searching Google for any new mentions of me or my book. Nothing new or unusual appeared.

"Confused good or confused bad?"

"I'm not sure."

This made no sense. I checked my blog stats, but found nothing telling there either. Baffled, I checked the sales numbers again: I'd reached the 1980s now. I checked my email to see if Amazon had sent me any follow-ups or offered any hint to when my mis-formatted description would return to normal. And sure enough, there it was, an email from Amazon, only this one read: $0.99 Kindle Mysteries.

Could that be it??? Was that even possible? I open it.

Summer sizzles with a spate of popular mysteries sure to leave readers enthralled. These top-rated, $0.99 mysteries–including Simon Wood's Accidents Waiting to Happen–offer red herring aplenty. How do you like your stone-cold whodunit?

And there it was… right in the middle of the second row down: one of six featured books: Last Exit In New Jersey

I stared at the image as if seeing it for the first time. That was most definitely the yellow sign from just down the road, and there was the hood of the very same Dodge pickup parked in my driveway… and there was my name at the bottom. My Name. My Book.

I must have made some strange noise or (more likely) mumbled a string of four-letter astonishments, because my daughter rushed over to look, confirming my hallucination with a "Holy sh*t" of her own. But I still couldn't wrap my head around it, and I wondered if this was one of those dreams where you dream that you've woken up and gone through your usual day, only it isn't your usual day. But if it was a dream, then why was my description still messed up? I checked my rank but everything must have happened so fast that it wasn't reflected on my page… not yet at least.

Some part of my brain still wasn't registering this entirely, almost as if I looked too close it might disappear, so instead I headed down to work on the boat for a while, as I'd originally planned. Just before she left for work my daughter called me.

"Hey, mom! You know what your rank is? #112!"

112? I decided maybe I wanted to head home and see how many sales that equaled. By time I reached the house, my rank was down to #42. My description was still broken, but sales were flooding in. By night's end, my rank reached #27, and I'd sold over 1983 books. Saturday saw another 1260 sales and a rank of #35. Sunday was 1017 and #34. Monday, 1036 and #31. Tuesday, 712 and #39. Wednesday had dropped to a still respectable 604 and a rank of #51.

As I write this it's been over a week since my description turned into diced sentences. Amazon has reassured me they understand my frustration and they are working to resolve this problem, though they "don't yet have an estimate of when it will be fixed." I knew once the initial surge of last Friday's visibility passed sales would drop but it is my hope things level out to a higher daily average than when I began. Whatever the case, this has been one blast of a ride; one I don't think I'll ever forget. My blog has gone from relative obscurity with random hits for 'stuffing box', 'cutlass bearing' and 'leaky decks' to hundreds of visitors searching for 'c.e. grundler', 'last exit in new jersey' and 'no wake zone' People are even searching for 'c.s. grundler', 'c.e. grindler' and 'c.e. grumbler' and finding me all the same, which leads me to believe word-of-mouth is building, and makes me grateful for a name that's easy to find even when it's wrong.

I really do hope Amazon can get my description ironed out soon, though friends have joked that I haven't done so bad with the chopped up one. Some have suggested perhaps I should invest some time and money into marketing in an effort to retain my 'Top 100' status, but the last week's events have only reinforced my desire to stick with my original plan: completing No Wake Zone.

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From Blog to Book 2: Too Easy

The author is on delivery of a Catalina 32 and hopefully enjoying a giant, juicy prime rib right now safely in port in Cartagena. See his current position via SPOT tracker. He will respond to comments as soon as he finds a 3G or Wi-fi signal.

Soon after my whiny post last time I had a breakthrough.  Of course, I disregarded all of your kind advise. In my previous post, I mentioned a WordPress plug-in called Anthologize which I could not get to work. I tried the plug-in again and was able to work around it's many bugs and turn selected blog posts into books.  I am an author.  In fact, I have published two books available for purchase via Kindle. As I write that sentence, I cringe.

See, I have entered the spam genre of books where any random grouping of poorly formatted non-sense can be mashed together into an e-book and published to Kindle. While Amazon does verify your book, apparently their standards are pretty low. My books have no covers, chapters, or front matter. If you haven't seen these types of books, I expect you will soon as the barriers to publishing disappear. Publishing an e-book has taken me less than three days of my time, and I have not had to pay one cent. While there are kinks, the process is almost automatic.

I am an author, but my work is far from done. Victoria commented as much last time. You think once you have written all the content you are basically finished. Instead I feel maybe two thirds there. You will not find any links or advertisements to purchase my books. I need to take a serious look at who I am as a writer and what I want to say. There is an intrinsic permanence to a book. I can always change a blog post, but a book must be processed, submitted, and verified.

The Anthologize developers say they are releasing a new version of their software soon. With that, some soul searching, and editing to fit, someday soon I hope to be a "real author" with art that I am proud enough of to share.

Ever wonder the story behind the wooden schooner on the New River between Little Florida and the Wiggles?

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Sources Stranger Than Fiction

by Tom Tripp

Those of us who write fiction spend a great deal of time worrying about the realism of our plots and characters and settings; at least those of us who don't write Sci-fi or Fantasy.  Sometimes a complicated plot development, or the audacity of a main character presents us with the potential for losing our readers when they become no longer willing to suspend their disbelief.  These are legitimate concerns, to be sure. 

And yet, hardly a week goes by in this new information age when I don't hear about some incredible true story.  The comments that often accompany such stories include something along the lines of "If it had been a movie script, Hollywood would never have bought it — too unbelievable."

Lately, I've been reading some fantastic true stories that are inspiring my own writing.  Recommended by an artist friend who is also writing her first mystery novel, they are both books about major art thefts.  The Art of the Heist, by Myles J. Connor, Jr., is the audacious autobiography of the most notorious art theif of the late 20th century.  Connor robbed banks, private homes and most of the major art museums in the northeast United States.  While Connor's ego is almost as impressive as his larcenous achievements, the stories are true and comprise a breathtaking collection of possible plot elements.  Connor's warped genius would almost seem over the top as a fictional character.  And yet he's as real as they come.  Incidentally, I read it on my Kindle.

The second book is The Gardner Heist: The True Story of the World's Largest Unsolved Art Theft, by Ulrich Boser.  I'm still reading this one on the Kindle, but Boser's narrative pulls together everything that is known about a 1990 theft that saw priceless masterworks, including seminal pieces by Rembrandt and Titian, vanish into the Boston underworld.  He goes through all the physical evidence from the robbery, including logs of motion detectors that recorded the path of the theives throughout the museum.  He interviewed many of the known art criminals and the reader gets a fabulous treat to all kinds of great plot and character possibilities, including red herrings, false leads and cold trails. 

Ironically, even though he was in a jail cell the night of the Gardner Museum heist, Myles Connor is still regarded by many, including the FBI, as one of the leading candidates for mastermind of the Gardner heist.

All of this great factual accounting of probably the most infamous art heists in American history provides a wealth of source material for some great fiction — even if the truth remains stranger still.

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Congratulations C.E. Grundler.

By Mike Jastrzebski

On Friday our fellow blogger, C.E. Grundler's book, Last Exit In New Jersey, moved into the top 30 on the Amazon best seller list. C.E. has maintained this rank throughout the weekend and if you want to learn a little more about C.E., she blogs right here on Write on the Water every Thursday. Again, congrats, C.E.

My own sales have been down this month and it seems I'm not the only one seeing this. J.A. Konrath addressed the subject on his blog, A Newbie's Guide to Publishing.

Now my background is retail sales and one thing I've learned is that when business slows down, it's time to have a sale. So, I have reduced the price of my books to .99 cents at Amazon and Barnes & Noble until my new book, Dog River Blues, is released in August. Here are the Amazon Kindle links, The Storm Killer and Key Lime Blues (A Wes Darling Mystery). Here are the B&N Nook links, The Storm Killer and Key Lime Blues.

Here's the cover for Dog River Blues, designed by Vicki Landis. (You can contact her at bookpainter319@hotmail.com )

Next Monday I'll post my June sales figures and write about my experience with running Goodreads ads for both of my books.

 

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Self Reliance

by Christine Kling

I'm sitting here in the cockpit of my boat tied to a little dock in Black Sound in Green Turtle Cay.  Off in the distance I can hear music drifting over the top of the island.  It's the Gully Roosters playing some Rake and Scrape at Sundowners over in the village at New Plymouth.  Here at the dock, it is nothing but me and a billion stars and the soft gurgle as the wind pushes the water under my stern.  I walk the decks, checking the dock lines and making sure the boat will ride the tide well during the hours that I sleep.

When Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote about "Self Reliance" in his famous essay, he was mostly advising his readers not to be afraid to be different, to trust their inner voices and not feel compelled to follow the crowd.  I think this advice is great for writers because chasing fads never quite works out.  If you decide to try to write teenage vampire books because they are hot, they will certainly not be the thing by the time you have finished yours.

But when sailors talk about self reliance, it means something a bit different.  Yes, by virtue of wanting to head out to sea, we are already marching to a different tune than most folks out there.  But the type of self reliance I would like to write about tonight is the idea that if you choose to go to sea, you should do everything in your power to make your voyage as safe as possible before departure. And ignorance, especially, is no excuse.   It is your responsibility to educate yourself and to take care of yourself.

This is not to say that we will not have things go terribly wrong at times no matter how well prepared we are.  And sometimes, we can't do it alone and we reach out to others for help.  So then we get to this question:  should we legislate requirements for preparedness?  Right now, the requirements we have in the states for fire extinguishers and a few flares and life jackets don't really address this problem.  Should someone who has never done much of any boating be allowed the freedom to go offshore — and possibly call for help putting in motion a multi-million dollar search and rescue effort?

I'm thinking about all this under this starry sky tonight because of the experience I had crossing the Gulf Stream last week between Fort Lauderdale and West End.  I am going to refer to the boat I traveled with as the Buddy Boat.  I was introduced to the captain in a bar, but that's a place where many accomplished sailors are known to hang out. A friend said, "Since you are both crossing to the Abacos, why don't you travel together?"  It never occurred to me to quiz him on his boating knowledge.  Note to self — next time, quiz away.

We left at 11:00 p.m.  We had intended to leave at dusk, but a thunderstorm passed over Fort Lauderdale that night, and I suggested we wait it out.  The forecast was for 5-7 knots of wind, seas flat.  About 4 miles outside Fort Lauderdale, their engine quit.  They said it had overheated. They had tried to open their raw water strainer, but they couldn't get it open.  Clearly, they hadn't checked it before leaving the dock.

They said they would give it an hour to cool down, so I circled while they drifted.  Finally, their engine started up again so onward we went.  Only this same thing happened again a few hours later.  They were disappearing behind me, and I couldn't raise them on the radio, so I turned around and motored a couple of miles back to get inside their very short radio range.  Now the lights of the mainland were barely visible.  We were well into the shipping lanes.  They put up their big genny and started to sail along at about 2- 3 knots.  I kept pace with them doing half the speed I was capable of doing.  It was a long night.

By day break, we were both sailing a bit.  The forecast was for a trough to pass over us and bring 14-15 knots of wind.  I was looking forward to increasing our speed, but the winds after the trough were gusting to 20 and by mid-morning, that was when things really started to go wrong on the Buddy Boat. I had put a reef in my main and rolled up the job partially, so I was sailing along at a good clip.  I looked back and they were so far behind me that they were nearly below the horizon.  Again, I turned around and motored back because I got no answer on the radio unless I was within about a half mile of them.  Motoring back, my engine quit.  I reckoned it was a clogged fuel filter, so I switched to the clean one and went below to bleed the engine.  This is not fun in 15-20 knots of wind.  By the time I got the engine running again, I decided I didn't want to clog the second filter in the rough seas, so I would save my engine for getting into the harbor.  When I went topsides, the Buddy Boat was about 3 miles off headed forty degrees off course.  They were back to motoring and through the glasses I saw that their mainsail had a twist in it.  I couldn't tell if it had blown out or what.

Finally, after chasing them going in the wrong direction for two hours, I got close enough to hail them on the radio.  I only caught them because their engine had quit again.

"Where are you going?" I asked.

"Uh, we had a little GPS miscalculation.  What course should we be doing?"

By this time I was banging the radio microphone against my forehead.  "West End is about 14 miles off on a bearing of 45 degrees."

"Okay, we'll change course.  But our engine has quit again, and we lost the jib halyard up the mast when changing sails.  You can see our main isn't much good."

Again, hitting my forehead with the microphone.  It was 3:30 p.m.  I was tired from being up all night, and I wanted to get into West End in daylight.  "Look, if I tack now, I can make it into port before dark.  I don't know if I can take another night out here.  Should I go on ahead?"

"Yes.  Our engine will cool down and run again.  And if the seas calm down we might try going up the mast to retrieve the halyard."

Yeah, and one of you might die in the process.  I could see that they couldn't sail, their engine was nearly useless, their radio had a range of less than a mile, and though they did have several GPS's aboard, I wasn't sure at this point that they knew how to use them.

"Do you want me to call BASRA?  Bahamas Air and Sea Rescue?"

"No, we'll be fine."

So I left them.  I sailed hard for the next three and a half hours beating under reefed sails and having my rudder stall completely several times in the gusts that were clocking my anemometer at 25 knots, but they were picking up spindrift so may have been higher.  My autopilot couldn't handle it, and I have to admit, as I wrestled with that wheel, I called those gusts every curse word I knew.

Once I was in and safely tied up (having taken 20 hours instead of the 13 I thought I would), I went to the marina office and we tried calling the Buddy Boat several times with their higher antenna.  No luck.  I found a fellow who would be willing to go out and fetch them, but he wanted to have a position.  I needed to make radio contact first.  I used Skype to call TowBoat US in Palm Beach, and I asked them to call on their powerful radio and to keep a look out for them.  I figured they would drift back out into the Gulfstream and they'd get blown back to the mainland eventually, but it might be up around St. Augustine.  I kept calling until nearly 11:00 p.m. when I just had to go to sleep.

All evening, I kept wondering if I should call the US Coast Guard or BASRA.  They were in a sound hull with plenty of food and water, and they were not headed for a lee shore – for a while anyway.  They had said no to a rescue, so I didn't make that call.  Ready or not, they needed to be self reliant.

I found out later that they made their way to shallow water off Wood Cay about 2 miles west of West End and anchored there. 

In the morning, I fueled up and took off for Mangrove Cay and on to Green Turtle the next day.  Just after passing through the Indian Cay Channel, I took this photo of Wood Cay off my stern.  When I look at the high res version, I can actually see the sailboat anchored on the ocean side of the cay.

Here in Green Turtle, I got an email from the Buddy Boat that they had made it to the anchorage off West End and they were going to take the bus to Freeport to get some new fuel filters.  They had left Lauderdale without any spares.  But I didn't think that was going to solve their overheating problem.  They supposedly left West End and crossed through Indian Cay cut three days ago.  There has been no more word.  I don't know if they are stranded on a reef or sand bar, or anchored out on the banks somewhere once again waiting for their engine to cool down.

I know we can't legislate good sense, but what do we do about boaters like the Buddy Boat who think they can buy an old beat up boat and take off on a 70-mile offshore passage with little or no knowledge or experience?

At any rate, I learned something from it all to add to my own self reliance.  The next time somebody suggests I buddy boat, you bet I'm going to have a lot of questions to ask before I agree.

Fair winds!

Christine

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Digital vs. Paper Plotting…

There are countless arguments for and against digital navigation. Some insist it's the way of the future; others claim you're relying on gadgets that could fail you at the worst possible moment. It's more accurate than the out-dated paper charts you'll find on the average boat, but spreading out a paper chart allows you to see the big picture, rather than having to zoom and scroll around on a tiny backlit screen. This topic creates some lively and often heated discussions both dockside and online, with proponents for each approach taking strong stands on their preferred methods of navigation. Myself, I'm a fan of redundancy; I feel both approaches have merit and I've chosen to embrace the new while still holding on to the old, proven ways.

The same holds true when it comes to writing. Many reviewers have used the term 'densely plotted' to describe my work. I alternate between two point-of-view characters who frequently don't know what the other is up to, and I also need to keep tabs on a cast of other players, both good and bad, with actions that will ripple outward. I know there are various computer programs designed for plotting; I've given them a try, but ultimately I found the monitor was too confining. I want to focus on every detail but I also need to see the big picture, to see how the whole thing would play out without clicking and scrolling around. When it comes to actually writing, you won't see me trading my laptop for a manual typewriter any time soon, but to plot my writing's course I've found the old tools still work best for me.

Enter my paper chart, otherwise known as the 'Board of Mayhem'. Technically it's several 12" x 18" pieces of cardboard, masking-taped together accordion-style and divided into key events throughout the story. It may look like chaos, but by the different Post-its I'm able to build the structure of the story, following my characters as they interact, and I can track all my clues and red herrings, as well as make note of changes that affect upcoming and past chapters. Color-coding makes it simple to see what's going on at each point in time and spot potential problems, allowing me to navigate around plot holes and keep the story from running aground.

So, what works for the rest of you? What is your preferred method of plotting?

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Varnished Truth

It's been quite a week. The Boston Bruins won the Stanley Cup, we celebrated my mother's birthday (at 96 she may have incentive to finally take up golf as she'd have a decent chance of joining the elite group who can score at or below their age), and June 21 marked the official first day of summer.

Given my overall feelings of elation, I thought that I might take a generous turn and share some wooden boat expertise with readers. What better place to start than the art of varnishing.

There are several books and loads of magazine articles written on how you can master the task of varnishing, but I can distill most of this down to one sentence: It's all in the preparation – sanding, applying thin coats, and building up to nine coats if you want a deep final finish.

It's that easy. Is it really that easy? Pretty much. But I wouldn't want readers accusing me of holding back on the secrets that make for a truly fine finish. You know, something akin to the person who shares a recipe but manages to withhold a key ingredient? Lest I be put in a category with such despicable actors, I am going to share the following additional pearls of wisdom I have leaned along the way. Follow these guiding principles and you can't miss. Here goes:

1) If you are going to varnish in the morning, start early enough that the application dries before the owner of the neighboring boat goes to town on last year's bottom paint with a belt sander. Alternatively, if you are going to varnish in the afternoon, don't begin prior to the final Fed Ex/UPS delivery if your boat yard has a gravel parking lot;

2) Wear your best Sunday duds when working to ensure that any drips accumulate on your clothes rather than on some unintended part of the boat;

3) Pour yourself a glass of wine before varnishing as a way of setting a relaxed, but purposeful, mood;

4) Pee before varnishing to avoid the chance of ruining a relaxed, but purposeful, mood;

5) Keep three pairs of rubber gloves ready when applying each coat – one pair to be used while you are opening the can and mixing, the second pair to be used while you are varnishing, and the third to be used when you climb off the boat and unintentionally grab the freshly varnished surface as a handhold.

Follow the above and you will be all set. Remember, too, buy extra sandpaper in case you create a mess and have to start all over.

Kind of like writing, isn't it?

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Release of 'lost' Mick Murphy mystery

Michael Haskins

Key West

I am going to add a Mick Murphy novel to Kindle in a week or so and then put it out as a trade paperback to be distributed on Amazon. REVENGE is one of three Mick Murphy novels I wrote when I lived in Southern California. Actually, it is the first ever Mick Murphy story. I began it on a legal pad while sitting around a hotel pool in Tijuana, Mexico.

The interesting thing about this novel is that it was 'lost' after Hurricane Georges tore it's path through the Florida Keys in 1998. The three Mick Murphy novels I began in Tijuana were lost. There were no flash drives for back up back then. But, there were 'floppy disks.' My sister sent me a floppy I had asked her to keep, after the hurricane. I forgot about it until I had a thought, looked all through my CD files, and found a 2×2 floppy titled three.

Great, three what? I couldn't open it, but my friend Rich (Texas Rich to readers of my Key West mysteries) had an external drive that would, so I gave it to him. Then I found a CD in my files – just like on TV, it was the third CD for the back! Any, three were not chapters, what I feared, but the three Mexican stories. Two done, one-half written and all three with Mick Murphy.

I sent REVENGE out for editing and cover. Now it's being formatted for Kindle and my computer guru young lady is trying to get page numbers on the copy for the paperback. For some reason, I cannot get my novels' pages number consecutively. I don't know if it is Word or me. But, I have a new Vaio – birthday present – and still it doesn't work, so it wasn't my old desktop and that only leaves me or a Word glitch for numbering pages on long documents.

I didn't go with my traditional publisher because it would take two to three years for the book to be published, since I already have another Mick Murphy novel due in August 2012. Also, by going to Kindle and Amazon, I will see money a lot sooner and in today's publishing world, it's all about money! I am selling more copies on Kindle of Chasin' the Wind than I ever did of the original hardback edition. In addition, thanks to Mike J, I am getting 70% of the money!

I hope you will look for REVENGE (or any of my other books) on Kindle or Amazon in another week or two. If you buy it, let me know if you enjoyed it or not.

Thanks.

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