The Time Capsule

Things are starting to take shape with the second season of The Permanent Man . It premieres on November 11, 2014. As I considered this upcoming season, I had to choose between using the same cover template as last season or making a new template. I chose the latter to help differentiate the two seasons when browsing books online. Some of my decision processes for this season focused on different items. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Take a look at the cover below and read on for the changes I opted to make. The first thing you'll notice compared to last season is that the series name is less prominent. Before, it stood out nice and big on the top of the cover. Now it's broken up on the right side with the words mixed together similar to a crossword puzzle. I did this because I wanted the episode's title to stand out more. The episode title is now at the bottom, where previously I had my author name. It is the largest type on the cover. My author name is move

It's hard to believe that a year ago around this time, I had written all 12 episodes of The Permanent Man . Some were already finalized and ready to go and a few still needed that last copy edit and cover made. Fast forward to now and things are much different for Season 2. I've written almost the first four episodes of the season. None of them has been copy edited. And I don't have any covers made. Yes. I'm way behind schedule. Life does this thing where it gets busier. I have a family with three children. I have a full time job. And I have other personal responsibilities that take up my time. Writing is not a career. Writing can't take the ultimate priority for me. My approach to it has changed over the past few years. Now I write when I can and if I have the energy. It is  a hobby. A few months back, I began considering not publishing a second season of The Permanent Man . Demand wasn't there for it, nor the money. So unless I began getting a flood of

Brendon Villegas & Rachel Reilly (Brenchel) Reality TV Stars from Big Brother and The Amazing Race Image: CBS I'll say it now, I'm not a big fan of reality television shows. Keeping Up with the Kardashians , Amish Mafia , Deadliest Catch , overall, I couldn't care less about these types of shows or enjoy them. However, we all have our guilty pleasures that we have to watch. I have been a longtime fan (since the beginning) of Survivor  and Big Brother . I love that these are essentially game shows. They require strategy on the part of contestants. They're a study into human behavior and reaction. They're a lot of fun to watch and not too much different than watching your favorite sport. You begin to root for somebody to win and if they do, it's exciting. My biggest Survivor moment was the first season when Richard Hatch won. He set the tone of strategy for seasons to come. My wife and I rooted for him to win it and he did. That's a very exciting

I'm happy to say that The Permanent Man - The Complete First Season  is now available in digital and print! If you haven't read all the individual episodes (or even the free pilot episode ) here's your chance to get into the series. On top of that, you'll get bonus author commentary in the book that will give more insight into the stories, my writing process, and why I made certain decisions with the plot. What are you waiting for? Pick up your copy today! From Desmond Shepherd, author of  Imaginary Me , comes the breakthrough adventure told in a serialized format. Private Investigator Patrick Hold’s life is turned upside down when a secret agency claims he is someone called the Permanent Man—a man incapable of dying. Fearful of what they want with him, Patrick attempts to escape, only to find himself catapulted back in time. With a pregnant wife waiting for him in the future, Patrick is determined to find his way home, even though all hope seems lost. From the

With the upcoming release of The Permanent Man - The Complete First Season , and the fact that the e-book sample contains almost the entire first episode in it, it's only fair to offer the standalone digital copy of the first episode for free. You can pick your digital copy for free at the following e-book retailers: Amazon   |   iTunes   |   Barnes & Noble   |   Google Play   |   Kobo Books   |   Smashwords And don't forget, the The Permanent Man - The Complete First Season will be coming April 8, 2014 in print and digital!

A month and a half ago, I pre-ordered Frozen  in Digital HD from Amazon for my daughter. I did something similar with Wreck-It Raplh  last year. I don't have a Blu-Ray player, so Digital HD is the way to go for me to watch movies in hi-def. And Disney releases Digital HD copies of their movies a month ahead of the Blu-Ray/DVD release. So it's a win-win all around to do that. My wife had no knowledge of me pre-ordering the movie, so she actually pre-ordered the Blu-Ray/DVD/Digital HD combo from the Disney Store in our area. When I found out, I quickly cancelled my order with Amazon. But then I wondered how the Digital HD Copy that comes with the combo discs works. In the past, it came with a disc that allowed you to download the movie file to your computer. But that offered limited choices for viewing the movie. Unless you had the right devices, you could only watch in on your PC. In other words: Dumbo. Yesterday, we picked up the Frozen  movie, and I'm happy to say

For the past few years, I have submitted an entry into the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. In 2012, it was Fram Gage and The Infinite Ability . In 2013 it was Futan Vice: The Trouble on Drabble . The way the contest works, there are several rounds to pass through to win the award. The first round is The Pitch. In this round, the judges choose what novels will make it to round two based on a pitch of 300 words or less. When I entered Fram Gage and The Infinite Ability , I didn't make it past this round. But Futan Vice  did make it to round two. Round two is based on an excerpt of the novel. This is the first 3,000 to 5,000 words of the book. If the judges like this enough, they send it to round three. Unfortunately, I never made it past this round. In round three, the entire manuscript is evaluated. Submission requirements state that this must be no less than 50,000 words and no more than 125,000 words. Five semi-finalists are then selected from each of five categor

Here in the Northeast, we've had an unprecedented winter. Continuous deep freeze temperatures. Snowstorms. Sleet. Ice. Falling tree limbs. Massive power outages. All I'm waiting for now is fire and sulfur to fall from the sky. But I'm hopeful that won't happen, at least not until summer. Some are dubbing this winter Snowmageddon, and I think the name is appropriate. I've experienced all of the above problems, along with damage to my home from these storms. Below is a little snippet of that experience. The tree in front of my property split in half last week on Wednesday morning during the freezing rain event we had. Other trees on my property experienced similar fates. That ice, along with the wet snow on the limbs from two days earlier, led to the destruction. I know what you're thinking: At least the snowman made it out alive. Well he did, losing only his left arm. But as the day wore on and the freezing rain warmed to plain ole rain, he began to droo

Almost a year ago, I envisioned a book series where I told the story similar to the way a weekly television series airs. I'll avoid going into the details of it as I've blogged about the process of writing it and the format extensively. And so, The Permanent Man  became a reality. Beginning on November 12, 2013 and running through to January 28, 2014, I "aired" a new episode of the series every Tuesday. It even had a double-length season finale similar to the two-hour finales that many television dramas do. Continuing in that format, I'm happy to announce that the complete first season of The Permanent Man  will be available in print and digital on April 8, 2014! The book will contain all 12 episodes of the season and will include bonus author commentary for each episode. The commentary highlights my writing process, points out interesting facts about decisions I made for the story, and even contains some spoilers. In addition to this, buying the entire seas

A few months back, I posted about an upgrade to my service with Xfinity . They had emailed me to say that they had boosted my bandwidth speed. And I was like "great". But it came with a catch. In order to take advantage of these speeds, I had to upgrade the modem to the new DOCSIS 3.0 standard because the modem I had was outdated. Fortunately, I rent my modem and Xfinity sent me a new one without charge. Well, without charge except for the additional $1 per month they added to my modem rental fee. So did my speeds improve upon installing the new modem? First, here is the speed I was getting with the old, outdated, junky cable modem (Model: Terayon TJ715) And now, here are the speeds I am getting upon upgrading my modem (Technicolor TC8305C): Update: A reader of my blog kindly  pointed out my second tests was not on the same server as the first. So I reran the test on the same server and here is what I got: As you can see, the speeds did improve.