Tyson Adams's Blog, page 88
January 24, 2013
Friday Funny
Well, reading nerd funny at least.
Tagged: Friday, Funny, Humor, Humour, Right What You No, Romeo and Juliet, Shakesbear, Shakespeare, Tyson Adams, William Shakespeare
January 22, 2013
Short stories now on Amazon
That’s right. I decided that there was no better way to learn how to publish my novellas than to practice with two of my short stories. I’m now prepared for the task of crossing the threshold into “professional author” territory, letting my creations escape the confines of my head and harddrive. I’ve priced both short stories at the Amazon standard $0.99, which is about what I think short stories should go for – novellas $2.99, novels somewhere between $7 and $10.
So if you would like to read some short stories, may I suggest you download mine from Amazon. Running the Cross is “A test of mind and body, running the cross is the ultimate test. A dozen rail lines, thousands of tonnes of freight trains travelling at high speed, a race across the tracks to prove yourself. Will you survive?” Rum and Roses “The police don’t like ‘Skinny’ McAfree, but they do like him for the disappearance and possible murder of his next door neighbour.”
I really enjoyed writing both of these, especially Running the Cross, and hope you enjoy reading them.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B3WP0OK – Running the Cross
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B3XTKFO – Rum and Roses
Tagged: Amazon, Author, Books, Buy me, Crime, E-books, Literature, Noir, original work, Right What You No, Rum and Roses, Running the Cross, Sale, short story, Thriller, Tyson Adams, Writing
January 18, 2013
January 14, 2013
Things you can’t do with an accordion
White, Nerdy and Awesome.
Look cool
Pick up chicks
Conduct physics experiments
Teach a dog to fetch
Play Highway to Hell by AC/DC without sounding like you hate AC/DC
Play music
Tagged: ac dc, Accordion, chicks, Funny, Highway to Hell, Humor, Humour, Music, play music, Polka, Right What You No, Tyson Adams, Weird Al
January 11, 2013
January 8, 2013
Cool book art
The down side of this great art is that the books are no longer readable.
Tagged: arts, Book art, great art, Huffington Post, illustration, Literature, Right What You No, Tyson Adams
January 4, 2013
Reading stats for 2012
Hot off of the presses we have two new American reading surveys: Reading Habits in Different Communities and E-book Reading Jumps; Print Book Reading Declines.
Actually, the phrase “hot off of the presses” is rather antiquated now. News stories that are breaking generally hit electronic mediums, or in some cases, such as celebrity gossip, they hit the TV and radio mediums. Interesting research or data is normally promoted virally via Twitter and the like. Should we have a new phrase like “just blogged” or “trending tweet” instead?
Back to the survey. While not all of us live in the USA, despite what some American congress-people might say, their trends in reading can be seen as indicative of what is happening elsewhere or is likely to happen elsewhere. The Pew Institute have done a pretty decent survey, it would be great if a few others were done for other countries.
What I found interesting was the growth in e-books and e-readers. There are further breakdowns in the full reports about why the change is happening, but suffice to say, e-books have many advantages over paper, despite paper books still being the most popular reading format.
We can see a growth of 9% in people reading e-books during 2012, up from 21% to 30%. In terms of age demographics we can see that most age groups are taking up e-books, although the big growth is still in the middle age (30-49) group.
The next point of interest was who the readers were and how much they read. We can see that there is still a sizeable chunk of the community that don’t read and another chunk that pretend to read. I’d hazard a guess that light readers read non-fiction and the latest talked about bestseller only. Because they never really read good books it takes them ages to read one book and thus don’t read often.
Among those ages 16 and older who had read a book in the past 12 months:
8% read 1 book
17% 2-3 books
16% 4-5 books
19% 6-10 books
18% 11-20 books
22% more than 20 books (this is my category)
And my final comment, women are still the readers. They make up a bigger proportion of book readers and they read more books. I have my own hypotheses as to why this is: boys are expected to like sport and reading is the opposite of sport; and reading doesn’t make you look as sexy as playing sport, so boys think you are less likely to get laid if you read. The big change I’d like to see, and this seems to be the case with e-readers and e-books, is for the average reader to read more books in a year, even if it is only so that people read the book before they make the movie of it.
Tagged: America, Books, celebrity gossip, Demographics, E-books, E-readers, electronic mediums, Hot off of the press, Literature, Pew Institute, Reading, reading surveys, Right What You No, sizeable chunk, Statistics, Survey, Tyson Adams, USA, Women readers
January 2, 2013
Things you can only do whilst drunk
We’ve just come out of the drinking season and it is time to reminisce about what a great time we had and how we wish we weren’t back at work. It has always amazed me that there are certain things we only do when we are drunk. Obviously a little social lubricant and we suddenly feel we can do things we wouldn’t normally even contemplate. But what about those activities that only seem to be possible when drunk? This isn’t just about suddenly having courage or a lack of appreciation for the consequences, the following list are special talents that are revealed only with copious amounts of alcohol.
Play pool, snooker or billiards.
Eat a kebab.
Find a kebab store.
Listen to the greatest hits of the 80s.
Go to a nightclub.
Queue for a nightclub.
Dance.
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Yes, that is Han Solo drunk dancing.
Sing Karaoke.
Not drop dead instantly from embarrassment from being at a Nickleback concert.
Tagged: Alcohol, Billiards, Dance, Drinking, Drunk, Funny, Humor, Humour, Karaoke, Kebab, Nickelback suck, Nightclub, Pool, Right What You No, Snooker, Tyson Adams
December 28, 2012
Five great ways to ruin an evening out
Start a conversation with a 9/11 conspiracy nut.
Doesn’t matter what conversation you start with them, they will eventually raise the topic in order to spew their wacky world view at you. Try not to raise actual science or evidence with them, as they believe rust is thermite residue, and that thermite could have cut steel girders.
Discuss your children’s health and getting them vaccinated.
Without fail, someone will be an anti-medicine kook who will then call you a child abuser for vaccinating. Don’t worry, they’ll get polio and whooping cough, the universe likes irony.
Take your teething baby with you.
Especially to a cinema or restaurant.
Invite work colleagues for drinks, people whom you can’t stand to be around, and then get drunk.
Fun times will ensue as you tell your colleagues exactly what you think of them. It will be even better on the following Monday when you see them again.
Take a date to see a Ben Stiller or Adam Sandler movie.
Any chance you had of having another date with this person just evaporated as they realise that you have dragged them to see another in the long line of abysmal films starring Ben Stiller or Adam Sandler (except Dodgeball, which was hilarious).
Tagged: 9/11, Adam Sandler, Baby, Ben Stiller, Cinema, Conspiracy, Conspiracy theories, Five, Funny, Humor, Humour, Movies, Right What You No, Teething, Tyson Adams, Vaccination
