True Life and Fiction

Is Amazon unfair to independent authors? Of course, I'm discussing here Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing platform or KDP. I hope you don't stop reading at this point but I believe the answer is a firm yes...  and no. The other day I was perusing through the Amazon bestseller list and noticed several kindle books at the top of the list that had a release date that was nearly a month away. In addition to this, each of the books had about 200 reviews. A later viewing showed books releasing at the beginning of next year with most reviews under ten. But still, they were all bestsellers already on the 2nd of November, 2018. "How is this possible," I thought. Of course, I know that an author with KDP can set a future release date but these early releases do not accumulate actual sales (although future sales have value in Amazon's algorithm) and can submit literary reviews through Author Central but Amazon does not allow a reader to post a review on somethi...

How many of you writers out there use the spelling and grammar checker in Word? Oh, come on. Don't be shy. I use it for the first pass on many of my writing projects, at the very least. It's great but I don't think it is the only thing that a writer should use to check their work. Grammarly promises to be extremely useful for writers, so I decided to give the free version a try and report my findings. Remember that my review is a personal accounting only and I am in no way advocating for or against the use of this product. I've found Grammarly to be extremely useful for posting on facebook, tweeting, or writing a blog post such as the one you are reading now. In fact, Grammarly shows my mistakes in real time and, if the mistake remains (through continued typing) provides me the opportunity to correct mistakes. Because of this feature alone, I can say that Grammarly fulfills all of its claims listed on television and youtube commercials. This feature alone has a...

Yes, I know that I normally post some nostalgic story on Saturdays. Not only am I a day late but I will post instead a short explanation for not posting yesterday. My old computer was getting, well, old and was affecting my writing. For my Birthday, my wife bought me a new computer. It uses the latest Windows operating system (yes my other computer lacked the computer power to operate with such a system) and I'm still learning, playing around, and generally getting to know the system. Still using Ywriter with great admiration. A bonus is that, with my new larger computer monitor, I can make the words bigger and easier to read. Thank you for your patience. I should be back to the regularly irregular schedule by Wednesday.

credit: flocabulary.com There are times when I'm writing that creativity escapes me. Sometimes, only for a moment, other times the dry spell could go on for days. To break this treacherous cycle, I often turn to any number of tricks or exercises to get going again. I might try working on another part of the project at hand, timed writing, free writing, listening to lyrical music or great classical music. Often, what works best for me is writing (or even reading or thinking about) poetry. Poetry is unique to the individual and can be written in any form. Of course, there are conventions and rules for poetry but I've yet to see anyone follow these rules. I've read poetry that doesn't rhyme or poetry that sounds more like a personal accounting that captivated me. I've dabbled in poetry since childhood but never seriously. I've had a poem published but even publication didn't keep me from criticizing it later. I will not be so vain as to imply or exp...

I'm sure most people of my age hold memories of their youth, and one memory that many remember with fondness, or horror, is learning to drive a car. I had no problem passing my driving test for the first time at the age of sixteen because I'd taken driver education class in school. Also, I'd been driving on occasion since I was fourteen. My sister was two years older than me and, when she started driving, my dad helped her buy an old 1960 Ford Falcon. I'm pretty sure she hated that car. Now, at about the same time, he must've found a great deal because he also purchased a 1968 Datsun 510 bluebird. In those days, before the gas crunch, foreign cars (as people called them) were inexpensive. Very few people seemed to want some small boxy car with an under powered engine. Nobody cared that these cars were easy on gas. What fun was that? Funny thing is that I believe my sister's Falcon had a four cylinder engine just like the Datsun my dad purchased for (...