The Time Capsule

What defines a person? Is it their career? Their hobbies? Their personality? Many things tell people who we are, but often, we use our career to define ourselves. I’m an engineer, I’m a mechanic, and I’m a pizza delivery person . But is a career so important that it makes us who we are? In my full time employment, I am a customer service representative for a printing company. It’s my job. It helps me pay the bills. But by no means do I believe that having that job defines who I am as a person. I believe many things define a person and trying to pinpoint all of them would be near impossible. When I look at myself, I see many different aspects. Essentially, when it comes to this blog, I’m a writer. That is what I define myself as here. At home, I’m a dad with a family. When I’m with friends, I’m something else. And it just keeps on going. We are who we are when we need to be it. No person should limit himself or herself to being one thing. It takes away from who you are as a person, and

If Amazon did not allow self-publishing on the Kindle format, part of me believes I may not have begun writing the Miscorrection series. Once I saw that they allowed for it, I had my first motivation to write. More importantly, Amazon made it easy to self-publish. If a person was compelled to write something, they can use Kindle Direct Publishing to get that work out there for others to see and purchase. You can upload your printed work to the service in a number of formats, but I find that saving it in an HTML format works the best. If you upload from Microsoft Word, the files have a tendency to get a little messed up. The great thing is you can save your written works to HTML from within Word. So, you don’t need to know all kinds of coding just to make it work. After your HTML file is made, put it and any linked graphics into a folder. After that, compress it and save it as a ZIP file. Then it is ready to be uploaded through the Kindle Direct Publishing web site. Fortunately, you

Writing the Miscorrection series has been a lot of fun. While I enjoy writing it, my goal is for other people to enjoy reading it. This means that I have to somehow put the stories out there and make people aware they exist. This is a very difficult task, mainly for the reason that I am a self-published author and writing is a hobby for me. Since that is the case, I have no marketing dollars to advertise the series. So how can I get my writings noticed by other people? Phase One: I attempted to use Facebook ads to promote the book. Facebook had given me a $50 credit for advertising. I put it to use and do you know what happened? Nothing. Sure, I got some impressions and a few clicks on the ad. But the result was that my Miscorrection Facebook page saw no additional fans and no additional sales of the series. Phase two: Twitter . I began using Twitter to advertise. Since the Miscorrection series is mainly available for the Kindle, I searched Kindle related posts on Twitter. Whenever s

When I set out to write my stories in the Miscorrection series, I decided to write them as short stories. At least that is what I decided to term them. My reasoning was that a short story is short. I concluded that if you could read the whole story in thirty to forty-five minutes, then that was a short story. But an interesting thing happened as I began diving into writing even further to get a better understanding of things. And then yesterday, via Twitter , someone sent me a short story that he wrote. Its title is Epoch’s End . It really is a good short story and takes a span of about three to four minutes. I suggest you read it, if you have the time. This is a true short story. And really, it testifies to how challenging it can be to write a short story. Epoch’s End is a little over 900 words, and yet it is able to tell you so much as you read it. This led me to question what I am calling the stories in Miscorrection series. Can I label them as short stories? or are they something

Recently, Amazon opened up the Kindle to allow for book lending. It's about time that they allowed for this, since one of their direct competitors, the Barnes & Noble Nook , has had this feature for a long time. There are a few things that you need to know when it comes to book lending. A book can only be loaned if the publisher allows for it. (Don't worry, all books in the Miscorrection series will always be lendable!) You have seven days to accept a loan from the time you receive the notification that it is available. Once you have accepted a loan, you have fourteen days to read it. After this time, the book will be "returned" to the lender. If you loan out a book, you cannot read it during the loan period. You can only loan a book out once. Loans can be read on your Kindle device or on the Kindle apps that are available for various platforms. This is all well and good, but you may be asking yourself what good is it for you. Perhaps you don't h

How do you write a story with an ending that surprises? That question is what I am asking myself as I begin writing story four in the Miscorrection series. The direction my story is going to take is known. However, it is not known how it will unravel. My goal is to write the story to make the reader think that they know what is happening. They need to believe they understand what the ultimate goal is going to be. But at the end, while what happens will be in line with their thoughts, the ending will be more than they expect. This is my dilemma. Slowly, hints of information will need to reveal themselves. Some misdirection will no doubt need to take place. All of this to reach the finish line that leaves the reader satisfied and not frustrated. Perhaps it’s happened to you. You’re watching a movie, TV show, or reading a book. You don’t know how it is going to end, or you think you do. But when that ending comes, it pulls the rug underneath your feet. Rather than being impressed by the