Mark R. Hunter's Blog, page 48

Price reduction on my book, and hardcover ... or so I hear

It's been kind of a rough year, and especially a rough last month or so. But as an author I have to get back on the horse, because gift giving season is coming (I don't use an actual holiday name until November), and it turns out promotion is part of an author's job.

It's helpful for that effort that Arcadia Publishing has our Images Of America book priced at $21.22 for print, a drop from the original price. It's one of three history-related books Emily and I put together ... together. Or will that be four by this time next year? Stay tuned ... news to come.

https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/Pro...

You can get it on all those various electronic formats too, of course--even the Nook. Anybody still have a Nook?

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/albi...



Personally, for a photo-heavy book like this, I think it's better in paperback. But then there's the surprise I got when I checked our Amazon page. Take a look, and see if you can figure out what shocked me:

https://www.amazon.com/Albion-Noble-C...

See that there, in the middle? They have it listed at $28.99, with a price drop to $20.78. Why $20.78? Why not $20.80, or $20.99? I don't know, but it still seems like a pretty good buy for a hardcover version. The only copies of the book I have are paperback.

That's because I didn't know there was a hardcover version.

If any of you happen to have ordered the hardcover, please let me know if this is a real thing or not; I've never had one of my books turned into the version that can be used in home defense. I realize that if you don't have a connection to Noble County you probably don't have any version, and in that case check out the Arcadia Publishing website: If you live in America, they're likely to have a book out covering something in your general area.

(And, as usual, check out all our books at http://markrhunter.com/ ...)

Reviewing The Walking Doctor: A Tale Of Two Season Openers

Sunday was the season 9 opener for The Walking Dead, and the--what--season 48?--opener for Doctor Who, the British SF series originally designed for children that went into development the year I was born. It was also my only night off that week, so even though my wife doesn't like watching more than an hour and a half or so of TV a night, we managed to catch both of them close to the hour of their premiers.


They'd make for a great crossover, since the Doctor often seems to spend most of his time running from things that want to eat him, anyway.


Many think The Walking Dead has stumbled the last few seasons, and despite the fun presence of Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Negan, the show's best villain yet, they're not wrong. (Your opinion may vary--The Governor was pretty cool, in a bad way.) It's hard to keep a show fresh for going on ten years, even killing off several major characters every year.


But this time around The Walking Dead does seem to have invigorated itself with season 9, which flashes forward several months from the climactic battle with Negan's Saviors at the end of S8. Negan is imprisoned, the Saviors part of a wider attempt at a community, Maggie's years-long pregnancy is past, and one of the show's most annoying bad guys is no longer hanging around by the end of the episode. There's a new show runner, and we go in with the announcement that Andrew Lincoln's Rick is exiting the show, apparently at the mid-season break.


The perfect time for A New Beginning, which happens to be the title of the episode. It mostly concerns a mission into Washington, D.C., and its aftermath, and we get both hope for the future and hints of conflicts to come.


Lots of people watch The Walking Dead for the zombies, and there are plenty stumbling around. I watch the show for the characters, and in that it remains strong. Whether it can continue to be strong without the strong center of Rick I don't know, but ... so far, so good.







Meanwhile, back in England, a mysterious woman who can't remember her own name falls out of the sky--literally. For the uninitiated, The Doctor (His/her name is not "Doctor Who") is a time and space traveling alien who can cheat death by regenerating into a new body. The thirteenth Doctor is also the first female one, played by Jodie Whittaker as caring, a little frenetic, and slightly daft, about the average for the more recent Doctors.


Instead of getting the time she needs to adjust to her new self, the Doctor is thrown into a mystery involving a mysterious alien device--a lot of alien tech ends up in England--followed by a nasty alien warrior. The Doctor follows his--um, her--usual pattern by collecting together some new companions and throwing them in the deep end.


There's been a lot of discussion about this version of the Doctor, some of it pretty nasty. I'm not a fan of gender swapping established characters, but in this case we already know the Doctor can swap bodies, and being an alien there's no reason why he can't regenerate into a she. My normal new Doctor fears evaporated by the end of the episode: Whittaker does a good job, and as she adjusts to the role might become great at it.


Unfortunately, my concerns about the rest of the show remain. The writers seem determined to avoid any connection to the former Doctor Who universe, having ditched last season's companions and announced there would be no appearance this season by the more popular villains. We didn't even get the iconic opening credits, and the theme music only faded in for a moment when the Doctor first appears. The Doctor's ship, the TARDIS, didn't even show up in the episode.


That seems like a terrible idea, to introduce a brand new doctor and not keep anything to anchor long time fans. What, Bill and/or Nardole couldn't have stuck around for another season? To make matters worse, the new companions seem a bit uninteresting in comparison, and the episode as a whole had little of the comedic flash that often gave relief to darker storylines."It's darker" isn't necessarily a compliment.


In short, the new Doctor is fine; but the new season needs some work.

On my mother's passing

I just can't come up with anything to write at the moment, which I realize is a rare thing for me. So I'm posting here what my sister wrote:

It is with great sadness that my brothers, Mark Richard Hunter, Jeff Hunter, and I along with our stepfather (Harry Taylor) would like to let everyone know that our mother/wife passed away this morning due to complications from her stroke in August. Arrangements for a memorial service are pending per her cremation next week as were her wishes. We will all love and miss her dearly, but know she is in a much better place.

Mom had been in failing health for some time due to a stroke along with complications from diabetes and congestive heart failure. The service is going to be sometime toward the end of next week here in Albion, after the cremation--I'll post further details when I have them.

Lead, Follow Me, or Just Watch the Videos

I used to blog every day, after hearing authors say it kept their names in front of their readers. Then I realized blogging every day left me with no time to actually write anything for readers to read. Also, I'm not interesting every day--even after editing myself.

But this time I've been away from my blog for two whole weeks, which might be a record. I actually had a real vacation, by which I mean I not only didn't do my full time job, I didn't even work on writing. (We did spend a portion of our vacation in medical facilities, but that's tradition.)

I missed it. The writing, not the full time job. But sometimes a guy's gotta take a break.

But I wasn't totally offline. We've taken some very short videos in places we visited--I've posted a half dozen on Instagram so far, and they cross posted to Twitter and Facebook. They're fun videos, kinda, and give you a little sense of where we were, maybe, and if you turn the volume all the way up you can hear me, sorta. (I'm new to the video thing, and haven't gotten the volume part quite figured out yet. Some so far unpublished videos will probably have to come with subtitles.)

Having had very little luck posting videos to Blogger, I'd like to steer those who are interested over to my other accounts. I get videos and pictures up on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/ozma914/

Although I once swore never to go there, I'm a Tweeting Twit at:

https://twitter.com/MarkRHunter

When my first book came out Emily set me up with another account at https://twitter.com/StormChaserbook, but let's face it: The same stuff mostly goes up on both.

There's a similar thing going on at Facebook, where my regular account is at

https://www.facebook.com/MarkRHunter914

Personally, I'd rather everyone follow me on my author's page, at

https://www.facebook.com/MarkRHunter/

Why? Because as I understand it, it's easier to find what your favorite author is up to that way ... and don't you need someone else to fill in the time between hearing from your favorite author? Gaiman and Martin don't exactly post every day, you know. (By the way, I loved their comedy routines.)

Also, I've been hearing noises that small businesses (which is what authors are) are going to have a harder time promoting from personal FB pages, but we'll see. In any case, I'd very much like to avoid losing track of people who might someday want to read one of my books.

Or--and I hate to say this--you could do nothing. Because let's face it, you'll see the best of the photos we took right here, sooner or later, whether you read this on Blogger, Livejournal, or any of the other places I post to. I kind of like the little videos, but they'll never be nominated for a ... do they have an Internet Video Award?

I just realized that our only big news from vacation was that we bought a car-top carrier for camping gear. It's a nice change, to have no major accidents or illnesses.

Maybe for vacation we should book a hospital room

I expect you won't hear much from me for the next couple of weeks, because right after Labor Day we'll be on "vacation". The quotes are because our vacations in recent years have been of the kind people need a vacation to recover from.

My wife or I--or both--have been either sick or injured on every single vacation we've taken since the moment we met. Two years ago she was sick on vacation when a guy hit our car head on, leading to both of us being injured. In a variant of that, five years ago we were happily vacationing at a state park along the Mississippi River when we found out my father had been rushed to the hospital with cancer. (He's fine now, by the way.)

So I'm not expecting much.

In the run-up to this upcoming vacation my mother was hospitalized, and we got bad medical news about two other relatives, which I can't help thinking was a shot off our bow--a little warning that maybe we should just build a panic room and stay in it for two weeks. But no, we usually go for it; and Emily and I are fond of camping, hiking, and traveling to places where we can camp and hike. The question of what could possibly go wrong easily answers itself.

That answer may have come early this year. Maybe it was the hospital chairs, which were about as comfortable as the iron throne made of swords on Game of Thrones. Maybe it's because I've been wearing a knee brace, which could have caused me to lean more heavily on other muscles. Whatever the case, this week I've had the worst back pain since I pulled a lower back muscle three years ago--while on vacation.

It's in my middle back, in the area where I first hurt myself way back in 1983 at a business fire in downtown Albion. We wore heavy steel breathing air tanks back then, and I wore one for way too long, and you can guess the rest. (No, I wasn't on vacation at the time.) Instead of the dull ache I experience almost all the time, this was a sharp pain that refuses to be ignored, kind of like the American election cycle. It hurt so bad that for a few days I couldn't even concentrate on writing.

I could still read. Let's not get silly. (Oh, and about the end of the third Game of Thrones book: What The Living Heck?!?!)

So now I face going into vacation with back pain (oh, and knee pain), which might cut into my hiking time. I know what you're going to say: "Just relax, sit around the campfire with a good book and some music, have a beer ... you know, relax".

I hate beer. More to the point, according to Emily, I suck at relaxing. At the moment I'm thinking road trip, since I can still drive, and there's a lot of road we haven't seen.

In the evening I could work on a new story, which to me is relaxing. I also have a book to finish editing, which is not quite so relaxing, but might be if I'm typing on a lounge chair along Lake Superior.

There's also the fourth Game of Thrones book to read ... but man, those gargantuan kill-fests aren't so relaxing. Just the same, Emily and I do want to get away for awhile, kind of an escape from reality thing.

At least, until one of us gets sick.

The No-Campfire Girls: young adult adventure

Remember, folks: I have to sell the soap, from time to time!


The No-Campfire Girls, a YA adventure—just 99 cents on Kindle and $5 in paperback:

https://www.amazon.com/No-Campfire-Gi...

Fifteen year old Beth Hamlin is horrified to discover her beloved summer camp must go without campfires this year, due to the fire hazard from a drought. But Beth isn't one to just sit (or swim, or boat, or horseback) around. When her new cabinmate, Cassidy, claims a local Cherokee can do a rain dance, she jumps into action.

All they have to do is trick the Camp Director into letting Running Creek do the dance, avoid the local bully and a flying arrow or two, and keep from getting caught plotting with Cassidy’s firefighter father on a forbidden cell phone. With luck southern Indiana will get a nice, soaking rain, and Camp Inipi can have proper campfires again.

But when things go horribly wrong, the whole area is endangered by a double disaster. Now Beth and her unit may be the only people who can save not only their camp, but everyone in it.


*A portion of the proceeds of this book benefits Friends of Latonka, an organization made to save a summer camp in Wappapello, Missouri.

book review: Game of Thrones, by George R.R. Martin

So ... you've probably heard of this book, which has garnered some moderate success from an otherwise unknown author by the name of George R. R. Martin. Long-winded fantasy? Who does that anymore?

My wife and I were planning two long trips this summer, so we headed to the library to find an audio book that wouldn't make the dog howl like a direwolf. We were somewhat taken aback by Game of Thrones, an audiobook roughly as thick as the U.S. tax code. It was on 28 disks.

Twenty-eight.

Over a two week period we were on the road for roughly 26 hours of driving, and we still had to renew it from the library for another few weeks.

Game of Thrones opens with an execution, and believe me when I saw that's far from the only death to come along. The story follows nine viewpoint characters on a world where summers can last decades but winter hits hard, where dragons once flew, and where a giant, centuries old ice wall protects the continent of Westeros from the supernatural dangers of the north.

Most of the story revolves around the Stark family, led by Lord Eddard "Ned" Stark. After a long war, Ned's best friend Robert has become king of an assemblage of former nations, and now wants the reluctant Ned to be the King's Hand--basically the guy who does all of his dirty work. The honorable and dutiful Ned--you won't find a lot of characters like that here, outside of the Stark family--packs up and dives into the politics of an increasingly divided kingdom.

What could possibly go wrong? In Martin's world, pretty much everything. Tragedy, misunderstandings, treachery, and accidents ensue, as various characters give and take allegiance while others plot for power and ... well, pretty much just power. Despite Ned's desire to just go home, he finds himself entangled in events that will bring war to their world, even while winter nears and evil from north of the wall approaches. Meanwhile, the former royal family of the kingdom plots to take back what they consider theirs.

Sound complicated? It is. You can find dozens of maps online, just to show people where all the lands and cities are, and character trees to make interrelationships a little more clear. There's also plenty of nastiness, from graphic violence to child endangerment to incest. It's dark, detailed, and horribly addictive.

Emily and I were still catching our breaths when she took the audiobook back to the library. She returned with a new book, this time on good old fashioned paper, and I later determined it was five times as long as my first published novel.

Yep. Second book in the series, A Clash of Kings. We haven't seen the TV series, but my biggest warning about the world of A Song of Ice and Fire (which is the name of the entire book series) is that you should maybe schedule some vacation days before you start reading.

Slashing a Fat Synopsis

Well, I finished my first draft of the synopsis for Fire On Mist Creek.

3,642 words.

Now, opinions differ on how long a novel synopsis should be. (In my opinion, I should be rich enough to hire someone else to write my synopsis and not worry about how long a synopsis should be.) The general consensus in the writing community is that a synopsis should be kept strictly between two thousand words and, oh, fifty words long. But the shorter the better; just like opera, or congressional term limits, or that little guy from Game of Thrones.

So I have some cutting to do, and with an ax, not a scalpel. There's a certain irony in cutting a novel down to something you then have to cut down. Meanwhile, I've identified a possible publisher for the book, but according to their publishing guidelines my novel is four hundred words ... too long. (Which is not something I'm remotely worried about for the moment.)


Later I'll probably have to boil my synopsis down into a back page blurb. There'll be significant shrinkage.

The Writer's LIfe: judging and revising and young authors

I spent some time last week judging 4-H writing projects. As usual, I marveled at how good the entries were ... many of them much better than I was at the same age. It's great to know there are still young writers and readers out there. It's also great to know my own childhood writing has disappeared.

Then I dove back into revising Fire On Mist Creek, which I wrote last fall and edited in early winter. Revision isn't all that much fun to me, so I made myself a promise: Once I get this manuscript done ... I can start work on another story. The most fun parts for me are brainstorming the story, writing the first draft, and those little edits later on, when the story's mostly done and I can relax a little. (Maybe I should have promised myself cake.)

Major revisions of the rough draft, on the other hand--pulling stuff out, moving it around, changing whole scenes and so on--not so much fun. It beats self-promotion, though.

You know what else it beats? Writing a synopsis. I hate writing synopsis ...um, synopsi ... um, synopsises. Unfortunately, for the purposes of an upcoming submission I've paused the revision, and gone over to finish the synopsis, first.

Still a better job than assembling axles at a factory, or working at a bee moth larvea farm. Trust me on that.

Wave your cowboy hat at my better half

A South Bend radio station has done a profile of Pokagon State Park in northeast Indiana:

http://www.wndu.com/content/news/One-...

Part of their profile includes the Pokagon Saddle Barn, where my wife works. She's only on screen briefly: She's the woman in the cowboy hat saying "My name is Emily, but if you forget you can call me Horse Lady". I think I'm going to call her Horse Lady from now on!