I din't write this but it is chilling and telling of how we as american's are being robbed by our government who continues to not allow us to drill fooil here.
Why don't we patronize companies who give jobs and pay taxes to us.
You might want to pass this on. I buy 90% of our gasoline at BP ...................but take a look at WALMART. WOW they do it right (Notice where WalMart gets their gasoline!)
WHERE TO BUY AMERICAN GASOLINE. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT TO KNOW. READ ON.
Are you aware that the Saudis are boycotting American products? In addition, they are gouging us on oil prices.
Shouldn't we return the favor? Can't we take control of our own destiny and let these giant oil importers know who REALLY generates their profits, their livings? How about leaving American Dollars in America and reduce the import/export deficit?
An appealing remedy might be to boycott their GAS. Every time you fill up your car you can avoid putting more money into the coffers of Saudi Arabia . Just purchase gas from companies that don't import their oil from the Saudis.
Nothing is more frustrating than the feeling that every time I fill up my tank, I'm sending my money to people who I get the impression want me, my family and my friends dead.
The following gas companies import Middle Eastern oil:
Shell...................................... 205,742,000 barrels
Chevron/Texaco.................... 144,332,000 barrels
Exxon /Mobil.......................... 130,082,000 barrels
Marathon/Speedway............. 117,740,000 barrels
Amoco................................... 62,231,000 barrels
And CITGO oil is imported from Venezuela by Dictator Hugo Chavez who hatesAmerica and openly avows our economic destruction! (We pay Chavez's regime nearly $10 Billion per year in oil revenues!)
The U.S. currently imports 5,517,000 barrels of crude oil per day from OPEC. If you do the math at $100 per barrel, that's over $550 million PER DAY ($200 BILLION per year!) handed over to OPEC, many of whose members are our confirmed enemies!!!!! It won't stop here - oil prices could go to $200 a barrel or higher if we keep buying their product.
Here are some large companies that do not import Middle Eastern oil:
Sunoco.....................0 barrels
Conoco.. .................0 barrels
0ASinclair..................0 barrels
BP / Phillips........... 0 barrels
Hess........................0 barrels
ARC0.......................0 barrels
Maverick..................0 barrels
Flying J...................0 barrels
Valero.......................0 barrels
Murphy Oil USA*.....0 barrels
*Sold at WalMART http://www.walmart.com/%3E> , gas is from South Arkansas and fully USA owned and produced.
*Not only that but they give scholarships to all children in their town who finish high school and are legal US citizens..
All of this information is available from the U.S. Department of Energy and each company is required to state where they get their oil and how much they are importing.
But to have a real impact, we need to reach literally millions of gas buyers With the help of the internet, it's really simple to do.. Now, don't wimp out at this point....keep reading and I'll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people!!
I'm sending this note to about thirty people. If each of you send it to at only ten more (30 x 10 = 300)....and those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 = 3,000)....and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth generation of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers!!!!!!!
If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted! If it goes one level further, you guessed it...THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE-the entire population of the United States of America !!!!
Again, all you have to do is forward this message to 10 people. How long would that really take you? If each of us sends this e-mail out to ten more people, within one day all 300 MILLION people could theoretically be contacted during the next eight days
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
National Day of Prayers
I didn't write this either but a s Christian American i am Offend and angry that the Person in the White has lied about his religion and continues to lie about everything over and over. With this exposure, i now demand as a citizen that the person in the white house present all birth certificates, college records and any other personal records. for I do not believe he is qualified to set in the chair he now occupies!
This is chilling ...
In
1952
President Truman
established one day a year as a
"National Day of Prayer."
In
1988
resident Reagan
designated the
First Thursday in May of each year as
the National Day of Prayer.
In June
2007
(then)
Presidential
Candidate Barack Obama
declared that the USA Was no longer a
Christian nation.
This year
President Obama,
canceled the
21st annual National Day
of Prayer ceremony
at the White
House under the rouse
Of "not wanting to offend anyone"
On September 25, 2009
from 4 am until 7 pm,
a National Day of Prayer
for the Muslim religion was Held on Capitol Hill,
Beside the White House.
There were over 50,000 Muslims that
Day in DC.
I guess it Doesn't matter
if "Christians"
Are offended by this event -
We obviously
Don't count as
"anyone" Anymore.
The direction
This country is headed
Should strike fear in the heart of every Christian.
Especially knowing that the
Muslim religion believes that if Christians cannot be
Converted they should be Annihilated
This is not a Rumor –
Go to the website
To confirm this info:
( http://www.islamoncapitolhill.com/ )
Pay particular attention to the very bottom of the page:
"OUR TIME HAS COME"
I hope that this Information will stir your spirit.
The words of 2 Chronicles 7:14
"If my people, Who are called by my Name,
Will humble themselves And pray,
And seek my face, and Turn from their Wicked ways,
Then will I hear from Heaven
And will forgive their Sin and will heal Their land."
We must pray for Our nation, our communities,
Our families, and especially our children.
They are the ones that are going to suffer the most
If we don't PRAY!
May God have Mercy...
IN GOD WE TRUST.
Please pass this on,
Maybe someone, somehow can figure out a way to put America
back on the map as it was when we were growing up,
a safe place to live and by
The Ten Commandments and Pledge of Allegiance.
This is chilling ...
In
1952
President Truman
established one day a year as a
"National Day of Prayer."
In
1988
resident Reagan
designated the
First Thursday in May of each year as
the National Day of Prayer.
In June
2007
(then)
Presidential
Candidate Barack Obama
declared that the USA Was no longer a
Christian nation.
This year
President Obama,
canceled the
21st annual National Day
of Prayer ceremony
at the White
House under the rouse
Of "not wanting to offend anyone"
On September 25, 2009
from 4 am until 7 pm,
a National Day of Prayer
for the Muslim religion was Held on Capitol Hill,
Beside the White House.
There were over 50,000 Muslims that
Day in DC.
I guess it Doesn't matter
if "Christians"
Are offended by this event -
We obviously
Don't count as
"anyone" Anymore.
The direction
This country is headed
Should strike fear in the heart of every Christian.
Especially knowing that the
Muslim religion believes that if Christians cannot be
Converted they should be Annihilated
This is not a Rumor –
Go to the website
To confirm this info:
( http://www.islamoncapitolhill.com/ )
Pay particular attention to the very bottom of the page:
"OUR TIME HAS COME"
I hope that this Information will stir your spirit.
The words of 2 Chronicles 7:14
"If my people, Who are called by my Name,
Will humble themselves And pray,
And seek my face, and Turn from their Wicked ways,
Then will I hear from Heaven
And will forgive their Sin and will heal Their land."
We must pray for Our nation, our communities,
Our families, and especially our children.
They are the ones that are going to suffer the most
If we don't PRAY!
May God have Mercy...
IN GOD WE TRUST.
Please pass this on,
Maybe someone, somehow can figure out a way to put America
back on the map as it was when we were growing up,
a safe place to live and by
The Ten Commandments and Pledge of Allegiance.
Health Care and the constitution
No I did write this informamtion but as a very patriotic American I felt I had to past the information to you. for too long we the people have been silent while the kookys and nut jobs have infiltarted our government and now they are about to steal our rights making us in to dictatorship, unless we stop them. Read it believe it and pass it on. The clowns in Washington have to go and go now! Not just some but all of them!
Snopes says correctly attributed
Truthorfiction.com says this is the opinion of a respected constitutional attorney......
..........................................................................................................................................................
A retired Constitutional lawyer has read the entire proposed health care bill. Read his conclusions and pass this on as you wish. This is stunning!
Please take the time to read this and forward it out as you see fit. Thanks
The Truth About the Health Care Bills - Michael Connelly, Ret. Constitutional Attorney
Well, I have done it! I have read the entire text of proposed House Bill 3200: The Affordable Health Care Choices Act of 2009. I studied it with particular emphasis from my area of expertise, constitutional law. I was frankly concerned that parts of the proposed law that were being discussed might be unconstitutional. What I found was far worse than what I had heard or expected.
To begin with, much of what has been said about the law and its implications is in fact true, despite what the Democrats and the media are saying. The law does provide for rationing of health care, particularly where senior citizens and other classes of citizens are involved, free health care for illegal immigrants, free abortion services, and probably forced participation in abortions by members of the medical profession.
The Bill will also eventually force private insurance companies out of business, and put everyone into a government run system. All decisions about personal health care will ultimately be made by federal bureaucrats, and most of them will not be health care professionals. Hospital admissions, payments to physicians, and allocations of necessary medical devices will be strictly controlled by the government.
However, as scary as all of that is, it just scratches the surface. In fact, I have concluded that this legislation really has no intention of providing affordable health care choices. Instead it is a convenient cover for the most massive transfer of power to the Executive Branch of government that has ever occurred, or even been contemplated If this law or a similar one is adopted, major portions of the Constitution of the United States will effectively have been destroyed.
The first thing to go will be the masterfully crafted balance of power between the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of the U.S. Government. The Congress will be transferring to the Obama Administration authority in a number of different areas over the lives of the American people, and the businesses they own.
The irony is that the Congress doesn't have any authority to legislate in most of those areas to begin with! I defy anyone to read the text of the U.S. Constitution and find any authority granted to the members of Congress to regulate health care.
This legislation also provides for access, by the appointees of the Obama administration, of all of your personal healthcare direct violation of the specific provisions of the 4th Amendment to the Constitution information, your personal financial information, and the information of your employer, physician, and hospital. All of this is a protecting against unreasonable searches and seizures. You can also forget about the right to privacy. That will have been legislated into oblivionregardless of what the 3rd and 4th Amendments may provide.
If you decide not to have healthcare insurance, or if you have private insurance that is not deemed acceptable to the Health Choices Administrator appointed by Obama, there will be a tax imposed on you. It is called a tax instead of a fine because of the intent to avoid application of the due process clause of the 5th Amendment. However , that doesn't work because since there is nothing in the law that allows you to contest or appeal the imposition of the tax,it is definitely depriving someone of property without the due process of law.
So, there are three of those pesky amendments that the far left hate so much, out the original ten in the Bill of Rights, that are effectively nullified by this law It doesn't stop there though.
The 9th Amendment that provides: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people;
The 10th Amendment states: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are preserved to the States respectively, or to the people. Under the provisions of this piece of Congressional handiwork neither the people nor the states are going to have any rights or powers at all in many areas that once were theirs to control.
I could write many more pages about this legislation, but I think you get the idea. This is not about health care; it is about seizing power and limiting rights. Article 6 of the Constitution requires the members of both houses of Congress to "be bound by oath or affirmation to support the Constitution." If I was a member of Congress I would not be able to vote for this legislation or anything like it, without feeling I was violating that sacred oath or affirmation. If I voted for it anyway, I would hope the American people would hold me accountable.
For those who might doubt the nature of this threat, I suggest they consult the source, the US Constitution, and Bill of Rights. There you can see exactly what we are about to have taken from us.
Michael Connelly
Retired attorney,
Constitutional Law Instructor
Carrollton , Texas
AFTER HAVING READ THIS, PLEASE FORWARD....
If you don't care about our constitution, or your rights under it, just do nothing.
WE MUST HOLD CONGRESS ACCOUNTABLE BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.
Snopes says correctly attributed
Truthorfiction.com says this is the opinion of a respected constitutional attorney......
..........................................................................................................................................................
A retired Constitutional lawyer has read the entire proposed health care bill. Read his conclusions and pass this on as you wish. This is stunning!
Please take the time to read this and forward it out as you see fit. Thanks
The Truth About the Health Care Bills - Michael Connelly, Ret. Constitutional Attorney
Well, I have done it! I have read the entire text of proposed House Bill 3200: The Affordable Health Care Choices Act of 2009. I studied it with particular emphasis from my area of expertise, constitutional law. I was frankly concerned that parts of the proposed law that were being discussed might be unconstitutional. What I found was far worse than what I had heard or expected.
To begin with, much of what has been said about the law and its implications is in fact true, despite what the Democrats and the media are saying. The law does provide for rationing of health care, particularly where senior citizens and other classes of citizens are involved, free health care for illegal immigrants, free abortion services, and probably forced participation in abortions by members of the medical profession.
The Bill will also eventually force private insurance companies out of business, and put everyone into a government run system. All decisions about personal health care will ultimately be made by federal bureaucrats, and most of them will not be health care professionals. Hospital admissions, payments to physicians, and allocations of necessary medical devices will be strictly controlled by the government.
However, as scary as all of that is, it just scratches the surface. In fact, I have concluded that this legislation really has no intention of providing affordable health care choices. Instead it is a convenient cover for the most massive transfer of power to the Executive Branch of government that has ever occurred, or even been contemplated If this law or a similar one is adopted, major portions of the Constitution of the United States will effectively have been destroyed.
The first thing to go will be the masterfully crafted balance of power between the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of the U.S. Government. The Congress will be transferring to the Obama Administration authority in a number of different areas over the lives of the American people, and the businesses they own.
The irony is that the Congress doesn't have any authority to legislate in most of those areas to begin with! I defy anyone to read the text of the U.S. Constitution and find any authority granted to the members of Congress to regulate health care.
This legislation also provides for access, by the appointees of the Obama administration, of all of your personal healthcare direct violation of the specific provisions of the 4th Amendment to the Constitution information, your personal financial information, and the information of your employer, physician, and hospital. All of this is a protecting against unreasonable searches and seizures. You can also forget about the right to privacy. That will have been legislated into oblivionregardless of what the 3rd and 4th Amendments may provide.
If you decide not to have healthcare insurance, or if you have private insurance that is not deemed acceptable to the Health Choices Administrator appointed by Obama, there will be a tax imposed on you. It is called a tax instead of a fine because of the intent to avoid application of the due process clause of the 5th Amendment. However , that doesn't work because since there is nothing in the law that allows you to contest or appeal the imposition of the tax,it is definitely depriving someone of property without the due process of law.
So, there are three of those pesky amendments that the far left hate so much, out the original ten in the Bill of Rights, that are effectively nullified by this law It doesn't stop there though.
The 9th Amendment that provides: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people;
The 10th Amendment states: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are preserved to the States respectively, or to the people. Under the provisions of this piece of Congressional handiwork neither the people nor the states are going to have any rights or powers at all in many areas that once were theirs to control.
I could write many more pages about this legislation, but I think you get the idea. This is not about health care; it is about seizing power and limiting rights. Article 6 of the Constitution requires the members of both houses of Congress to "be bound by oath or affirmation to support the Constitution." If I was a member of Congress I would not be able to vote for this legislation or anything like it, without feeling I was violating that sacred oath or affirmation. If I voted for it anyway, I would hope the American people would hold me accountable.
For those who might doubt the nature of this threat, I suggest they consult the source, the US Constitution, and Bill of Rights. There you can see exactly what we are about to have taken from us.
Michael Connelly
Retired attorney,
Constitutional Law Instructor
Carrollton , Texas
AFTER HAVING READ THIS, PLEASE FORWARD....
If you don't care about our constitution, or your rights under it, just do nothing.
WE MUST HOLD CONGRESS ACCOUNTABLE BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
SO Now What? by Chris Keys
So now what? By Chris Keys author of the soon to be released “Reprisal! The Eagle Rises!” And “The Fishing Trip-A Ghost Story” due out summer of 2010
So, now what? What you haven’t been paying attention and you not sure what it is I’m talking about? Well let me enlighten you.
A couple of weeks ago now, Ning, the leader in free social networking sites, decided to change its business model. They are going to shutdown the hundreds of free social networking sites in favor of offering only Premium pay for use sites.
Now, I personally do not administer a Ning social site but I do belong to about thirty of them. The social sites are a major portion of my marketing plan and without them. Leaving me, like you, having to figure out where to go from here.
I know one of my sites is moving to Face Book and still another is quickly developing their own website where the members can interact. While a few, are just folding up their tent and calling it a day. With just one so far opting to switch to an upstart website provider, I guess that is what they are called, Wackwall.com. So as a member of these sites I’m wondering, what I can do to market myself now. Where ever the sites go that you care about, you need to go too. Follow the site as it evolves into whatever comes next on the world wide, web.
Your sites for blogging will most likely remain in existence and so your blog is that much more important. So I’ll still keep blogging and you should too. Your blog can be used as a place to post updates on the books you’ll be writing. They can be part of the blog or the whole blog, plus you can post updates and excerpts to the notes page of Face Book.
If you have a book out already and you do not have a fan page on Face Book get one. For those of us about to have a book or are working on it…work faster and then get a fan page on Face Book I know, I have the same feeling. Isn’t a bit presumptuous to get a fan page? What if they don’t like the book? There is an old adage, “You have to fake it, until you make it!” Yes, I said fake it. If you want to b a best selling author or a household name or even make a living at writing, then you have believe enough in yourself to act like you belong on the list with other best sellers. Lots of celebrities have fan clubs and many have fan pages on Face Book. These are easy to create. The trick will be developing a fan base who actually buys your book. That is another blog for another time after I’ve actually managed to sell a few books. It’ll happen and it’s coming soon. But back to the subject once you’ve got a face book page and fan page then do what you have to get followers. I suggest that you read a friend mines blog posting, “Marketing Tips for Authors” by Tony Eldridge. His url is Tony@marketingtipsforauthors.com He has a blog currently 4/28/10 about the very subject of building a Face Book following and selling more books. You need to read this.
Then in addition, you’ll need to develop you own website, being sure to spend the money, or at least as much as you can afford to, to maximize your search engine presence. Your website will need to be the best you can make it with pictures, bio of you, the author; your comments about your books and other authors books; reviews of both, and you’ll need to even more now develop relationships with other authors to create a solid word of mouth advertising campaign and links and hyperlinks between your site and theirs. And last but not the least by far, you’ll need to repeatedly ask the customer to buy your book(s). I’ll blog soon about how to ask without getting too pushy which will chase away your reader. My own website site is in the process of development. It’s a free site for the initial time period and then it’ll cost me. There are several where you can get started for free. The draw back to free sites is you’re limited to what the template allows. Ideally, I would think you’d want your own site, one that you can control, from what is seen on it, to how it is presented and where. You’ll want to control the number of ads that you run on it, as well as having the profit from running the ads come to you not the web host or Goggle. So investigate the costs involved with having an independent site and if it makes financial sense for you do it. If you’re like me poor or cheap, than start with the cheap website until you can afford more or want more. Just remember to always ask for the sale. If you don’t ask, you don’t get!
You’ll need to develop your twitter site. Yeah, I hear you. I’m in the same boat. I find myself struggling to say anything with the limited number of words I can use. So I’ll have to discover the inter-man of few words so that I might be able to develop a following. I strongly suggest though that you read, From Miller Mosaic Power Marketing-“What you should know about using Twitter effectively and Strategically, plus, Tony Eldridge’s-“Conducting effective Twitter Contests” These are both on my to buy list as soon as I have the cash so that I can be an effective user of Twitter.
The next thing that we’ll all need to do is develop our Amazon pages to their fullest potential. There are several sites on the net that offer to help you do this but I haven’t had a chance to explore them so I won’t make any recommendations. I will however, be getting a Amazon page of my own soon, I hope, and I’ll be blogging about it, when it happens.
So there it is! That’s what I think is what we do now that Ning is going away. Who knows maybe this will open up whole new horizons on the net or maybe it’ll be a real bummer. I don’t know and to be honest, I don’t acre. I just want to find the best way to sell my books. You now if you read any of my blogs before, Reprisal! The Eagle Rises! Or The Fishing Trip-A Ghost Story the whole family can read this one. Reprisal! Not s much.
Good luck and God Bless until next time, Chris Keys
So, now what? What you haven’t been paying attention and you not sure what it is I’m talking about? Well let me enlighten you.
A couple of weeks ago now, Ning, the leader in free social networking sites, decided to change its business model. They are going to shutdown the hundreds of free social networking sites in favor of offering only Premium pay for use sites.
Now, I personally do not administer a Ning social site but I do belong to about thirty of them. The social sites are a major portion of my marketing plan and without them. Leaving me, like you, having to figure out where to go from here.
I know one of my sites is moving to Face Book and still another is quickly developing their own website where the members can interact. While a few, are just folding up their tent and calling it a day. With just one so far opting to switch to an upstart website provider, I guess that is what they are called, Wackwall.com. So as a member of these sites I’m wondering, what I can do to market myself now. Where ever the sites go that you care about, you need to go too. Follow the site as it evolves into whatever comes next on the world wide, web.
Your sites for blogging will most likely remain in existence and so your blog is that much more important. So I’ll still keep blogging and you should too. Your blog can be used as a place to post updates on the books you’ll be writing. They can be part of the blog or the whole blog, plus you can post updates and excerpts to the notes page of Face Book.
If you have a book out already and you do not have a fan page on Face Book get one. For those of us about to have a book or are working on it…work faster and then get a fan page on Face Book I know, I have the same feeling. Isn’t a bit presumptuous to get a fan page? What if they don’t like the book? There is an old adage, “You have to fake it, until you make it!” Yes, I said fake it. If you want to b a best selling author or a household name or even make a living at writing, then you have believe enough in yourself to act like you belong on the list with other best sellers. Lots of celebrities have fan clubs and many have fan pages on Face Book. These are easy to create. The trick will be developing a fan base who actually buys your book. That is another blog for another time after I’ve actually managed to sell a few books. It’ll happen and it’s coming soon. But back to the subject once you’ve got a face book page and fan page then do what you have to get followers. I suggest that you read a friend mines blog posting, “Marketing Tips for Authors” by Tony Eldridge. His url is Tony@marketingtipsforauthors.com He has a blog currently 4/28/10 about the very subject of building a Face Book following and selling more books. You need to read this.
Then in addition, you’ll need to develop you own website, being sure to spend the money, or at least as much as you can afford to, to maximize your search engine presence. Your website will need to be the best you can make it with pictures, bio of you, the author; your comments about your books and other authors books; reviews of both, and you’ll need to even more now develop relationships with other authors to create a solid word of mouth advertising campaign and links and hyperlinks between your site and theirs. And last but not the least by far, you’ll need to repeatedly ask the customer to buy your book(s). I’ll blog soon about how to ask without getting too pushy which will chase away your reader. My own website site is in the process of development. It’s a free site for the initial time period and then it’ll cost me. There are several where you can get started for free. The draw back to free sites is you’re limited to what the template allows. Ideally, I would think you’d want your own site, one that you can control, from what is seen on it, to how it is presented and where. You’ll want to control the number of ads that you run on it, as well as having the profit from running the ads come to you not the web host or Goggle. So investigate the costs involved with having an independent site and if it makes financial sense for you do it. If you’re like me poor or cheap, than start with the cheap website until you can afford more or want more. Just remember to always ask for the sale. If you don’t ask, you don’t get!
You’ll need to develop your twitter site. Yeah, I hear you. I’m in the same boat. I find myself struggling to say anything with the limited number of words I can use. So I’ll have to discover the inter-man of few words so that I might be able to develop a following. I strongly suggest though that you read, From Miller Mosaic Power Marketing-“What you should know about using Twitter effectively and Strategically, plus, Tony Eldridge’s-“Conducting effective Twitter Contests” These are both on my to buy list as soon as I have the cash so that I can be an effective user of Twitter.
The next thing that we’ll all need to do is develop our Amazon pages to their fullest potential. There are several sites on the net that offer to help you do this but I haven’t had a chance to explore them so I won’t make any recommendations. I will however, be getting a Amazon page of my own soon, I hope, and I’ll be blogging about it, when it happens.
So there it is! That’s what I think is what we do now that Ning is going away. Who knows maybe this will open up whole new horizons on the net or maybe it’ll be a real bummer. I don’t know and to be honest, I don’t acre. I just want to find the best way to sell my books. You now if you read any of my blogs before, Reprisal! The Eagle Rises! Or The Fishing Trip-A Ghost Story the whole family can read this one. Reprisal! Not s much.
Good luck and God Bless until next time, Chris Keys
Monday, April 26, 2010
In defense of South Park? By Chris Keys
I find myself confused as I write this. I am about to defend the right of the South Park creators to draw whatever, whenever, regardless of what the subject matter is. I have to be honest with you, I don’t watch South Park, I saw five minutes of it many years ago and I never watched it again, too much vulgarity and too much sophomoric humor for my tastes. Recently though, I saw an article on Big Government.com that caught my attention. Below is the article.
The crux of the article is that Comedy Central was threatened by Muslim’s with violence because the South Park people were planning on airing an episode where they drew a cartoon of Mohammed. Now in what context the drawing was to take place I’m not aware, but regardless of the context whether it was flattering or outright disrespectful. The South Park people have a right to say it. The hate speech of the Muslim’s towards non-Muslim’s isn’t acceptable, though.
To illustrate the point, all we need to do is look at the Muslim nation’s and their visitation and immigration laws. Most, if not all, will not allow a Christian to move to their country, non Muslim’s are considered dirty and unfit to be among the holy and the righteous. Most Muslim countries will not allow a bible to be brought into their country, as it could be used to deceive the faithful into changing religions. Which is by the way, punishable by death!
The Muslim’s think nothing of making fun or disparaging Christian’s or any other faith, yet they become enraged if someone including Muslim’s make a joke about the main religious figures of their religion.
These same people stand in our state houses and congress or lobby congress, to create laws giving them special dispensation on religious grounds. These laws would give Muslim’s special privileges and rights compared to the rest of us. They would also change our laws making anything that might be said against the Muslim’s illegal hate speech. Ask the Canadian’s who have been sued under the laws that protect diversity up there. The Canadian laws are written in such a way that Christians aren’t given the same protections as the Muslim’s. That is the Islamic influence or dhimmitude, submission to the Muslim’s as they are the only true religion in their opinion.
In America, no one religion is better than another. No one has more protection under the law than others. We all have the right speak our minds in a civil discourse. Unfortunately, far too many of the people who currently hold public offices, have no back bone, no courage and no true sense of the American way. They will allow themselves top be bought for money, in exchange for passing stupid and detrimental laws to the country.
You never hear of a Catholic or Presbyterian threatening to kill a Muslim if he makes fun of Jesus. If fact we as a people would laugh at the people who complained about it. Yet when a Muslim makes that threat, many cower in the corner because the Muslim’s have killed people for the smallest of slights and they are the world’s preeminent terrorists.
I, for one, am an American. I will make fun of anyone and anything, I choose to. I will not be politically correct just because the politician’s are afraid to offend the Europeans or the people in the Middle East who give them campaign funds. Why? They expect us to either become enslaved by them or to submit to their way of life.
These are the same people who bring us, Women in Berka’s and veils. The no education system-where you are taught to read at only a basic level well enough to be read the Koran and that’s it. If you’re a woman not even that. They bring us women who do not drive cars, leave home without a note from their husband, no swimsuit swimming, no unmarried sex, where if a woman is raped, they kill her for enticing the man to do it. The same people who bring us wife beating as an accepted form of settling arguments in the home.
They also bring us terrorists. Oh, not that there haven’t been other types of terrorists, it’s just that currently, over the last twenty five years or so nearly all terrorists acts have been carried out by Muslim’s. Currently we have a president who has ordered that no one in the administration refer to any Muslim as a terrorist or refer to anyone as an Islamic Terrorist. What’s up with that? They are Islamic and they are terrorists.
Through out Europe, the Muslim’s have intimidated the political figures into bending over backwards to accommodate the Muslim’s. In fact the Europeans have been bending over to Muslim’s for several centuries by paying tribute to the leaders so as to limit piracy in the Mediterranean and coastal Atlantic Ocean. Even America still pays the tribute to ensure that oil keeps flowing. America pays hundreds of millions to the terror supporting nations every year. This money is paid as tribute to our Muslim rulers. It is a tax we have no say about and it’s disguised as humanitarian aid, economic aid, housing aid and a whole host of other names. Why would we pay them anything? Oil? We have our own and we need to drill for it. To protect shipping? If we’d bother to protect our ships we wouldn’t have to worry about it. Our government does it because they are afraid of terrorism and piracy and it’s not their money. They are letting some rich tyrants steal money from us so that they might not get shot at or have suicide bombers attack them.
I’m sure some of you would agree with the government as you’re afraid that they will attack us and it’s wrong to go to war with them. After all, we just need to understand what we are doing wrong and then they will accept us. Wrong! I’m willing to bet you believe there are moderate Muslim’s too! Wrong! If you ask a Muslim in America how they would describe themselves, they say they are Muslim American’s. If you ask a Catholic, they say they are American. You have most likely bought the line from the Muslim’s that the terrorists are just a small group of malcontents. Wrong, yet again!
Their religion demands that they strike out against any and all non Muslim’s. Those who do not actually commit the terror, don’t speak out against it, do they. Oh yeah sometimes a Muslim may go on TV and kinda of sort of make the case that not all Muslim’s are terrorists but they will not say that is a despicable act and that all Muslim’s should shun these thugs. No, you won’t hear that. But you will hear, is that they support the Muslim charities that support ending hunger in the Middle East They support it by donating money, an estimated six hundred million from Muslim American’s. The charities once the FBI looks into them, it is discovered every time they are simply funnels to terrorists.
There is no common ground with an Islamic terrorist unless you’re an Islamic Terrorist! You can not stop a terrorist attack by bribing nations or terrorists. You must go to the source and kill it there! You do not stop a bully by running away or begging not to be bullied. You have to stand toe and to toe and punch the crap out the bully. That’s what the Muslim’s are bullies that need have the crap kicked out of them.
What does all this have to do with not drawing cartoons of Mohammed? It’s very simple. By not drawing the pictures, it is a downgrading of our rights as American’s. It is cutting out a chunk of our free speech rights. What will be next, we can’t draw cartoons of the President? Or we can’t question the action’s of the police, military or congress? We as a people have to stop and stand up to these bully’s and our government has to follow our action and do the same. So I’ll be leading by example on April 29, 2010 and I will be posting a stupid drawing of Mohammed on this site and my facebook page. Because you can’t tell me I can’t say what I want to say. This is America and I will speak up and I will call a spade a spade regardless of color. Mohammed is a joke. Look at the people who spend their lives suffering under the Muslim way of life where the rich dictator’s steal them blind and hide behind a religion that is nothing more than a declaration of war and an excuse to make women slaves and any non Muslim slaves. It is a declaration of tyranny disguised as religion so the conquerors can continue in power over those who were conquered centuries ago in most cases. The Saudi’s have even gone so far as to declare themselves protectors of the two most holy sites in Islam in order to try keep the strangle hold over their subjects. Yes they declared themselves, kings!
Why are we giving money to some of the richest countries on the planet? Why would we need to give any aid money at all to them? They have money more than the Swiss could shake a stick at. Their leaders, the one’s the oil money flows to, are all among the world’s richest men and they are all multi billionaires. Why don’t they take care of their people better?
SO on April 29th if you’re a real American, you should be drawing a stupid Mohammed and posting it every where you can. Stand up for our rights and tell the Muslim’s to just go home. They and their sick religion are not welcome here. If you want to be An American. than act like one. If you want to be something else and then an American, Leave! We don’t need or want you here. We aren’t Muslim, we are Christians! It is a Christian Nation live with it! Oh yeah, President Obama, we are a Christian Nation, stop telling the world we are not Christian. You may not be, but we are! And we have the right to speak our minds! Speak yours on April 29th. Tell the world and the Muslim’s we can and will make fun of you and anyone else we find humorous regardless of your threats. Oh yeah, one last thing. In America, only the progressives don’t own guns, the rest of us have a bunch. Bring your jihad by anytime you’re ready to see if you really get seventy two virgins if you sacrifice yourself.
Author Chris Keys the author of Reprisal! The Eagle Rises!, The Fishing Trip-A Ghost Story and The Motor Home-God does work in Mysterious Ways! Look for all three summer of 2010!
BIG GOVERNMENT ARTICLE BY DAN SAVAGE
Dan Savage has declared May 20th “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day,” in defense of Matt Stone and Trey Parker. All freedom-loving Americans should get behind this. While initially I thought it was an ironic joke that South Park was censoring everything related to Mohammed in their last episode, obviously we have seen over the last few days that against the creators’ will, Comedy Central cowered in the face of a thinly veiled Muslim threat.
In fact, submission, the definition of Islam, is the apt word to describe Comedy Central’s cowardice.
The bottom line is that the First Amendment guarantees free speech including criticism of all peoples. We are an equal opportunity offense country. To censor ourselves to avoid upsetting a certain group (in a cartoon no less) is un-American.
It is especially egregious because it represents dhimmitude. We are sacrificing our law and our heritage to Sharia. The law of our land is the Constitution and beyond that the natural law granted to us by our divine creator.
Giving in to Islam at the cultural level is the first step towards going the way of Europe. Just as with leftism, the loss of our values begins not with the politicians but with the public. We must stop this madness now and stand in solidarity against those who wish to destroy our way of life and replace it with theirs. You can try to bully Matt Stone and Trey Parker but you cannot bully a million red-blooded, liberty-loving Matt Stones and Trey Parkers.
Let me end by evoking the words of a great many South Park characters: “If you don’t like America, then you can git out.”
The crux of the article is that Comedy Central was threatened by Muslim’s with violence because the South Park people were planning on airing an episode where they drew a cartoon of Mohammed. Now in what context the drawing was to take place I’m not aware, but regardless of the context whether it was flattering or outright disrespectful. The South Park people have a right to say it. The hate speech of the Muslim’s towards non-Muslim’s isn’t acceptable, though.
To illustrate the point, all we need to do is look at the Muslim nation’s and their visitation and immigration laws. Most, if not all, will not allow a Christian to move to their country, non Muslim’s are considered dirty and unfit to be among the holy and the righteous. Most Muslim countries will not allow a bible to be brought into their country, as it could be used to deceive the faithful into changing religions. Which is by the way, punishable by death!
The Muslim’s think nothing of making fun or disparaging Christian’s or any other faith, yet they become enraged if someone including Muslim’s make a joke about the main religious figures of their religion.
These same people stand in our state houses and congress or lobby congress, to create laws giving them special dispensation on religious grounds. These laws would give Muslim’s special privileges and rights compared to the rest of us. They would also change our laws making anything that might be said against the Muslim’s illegal hate speech. Ask the Canadian’s who have been sued under the laws that protect diversity up there. The Canadian laws are written in such a way that Christians aren’t given the same protections as the Muslim’s. That is the Islamic influence or dhimmitude, submission to the Muslim’s as they are the only true religion in their opinion.
In America, no one religion is better than another. No one has more protection under the law than others. We all have the right speak our minds in a civil discourse. Unfortunately, far too many of the people who currently hold public offices, have no back bone, no courage and no true sense of the American way. They will allow themselves top be bought for money, in exchange for passing stupid and detrimental laws to the country.
You never hear of a Catholic or Presbyterian threatening to kill a Muslim if he makes fun of Jesus. If fact we as a people would laugh at the people who complained about it. Yet when a Muslim makes that threat, many cower in the corner because the Muslim’s have killed people for the smallest of slights and they are the world’s preeminent terrorists.
I, for one, am an American. I will make fun of anyone and anything, I choose to. I will not be politically correct just because the politician’s are afraid to offend the Europeans or the people in the Middle East who give them campaign funds. Why? They expect us to either become enslaved by them or to submit to their way of life.
These are the same people who bring us, Women in Berka’s and veils. The no education system-where you are taught to read at only a basic level well enough to be read the Koran and that’s it. If you’re a woman not even that. They bring us women who do not drive cars, leave home without a note from their husband, no swimsuit swimming, no unmarried sex, where if a woman is raped, they kill her for enticing the man to do it. The same people who bring us wife beating as an accepted form of settling arguments in the home.
They also bring us terrorists. Oh, not that there haven’t been other types of terrorists, it’s just that currently, over the last twenty five years or so nearly all terrorists acts have been carried out by Muslim’s. Currently we have a president who has ordered that no one in the administration refer to any Muslim as a terrorist or refer to anyone as an Islamic Terrorist. What’s up with that? They are Islamic and they are terrorists.
Through out Europe, the Muslim’s have intimidated the political figures into bending over backwards to accommodate the Muslim’s. In fact the Europeans have been bending over to Muslim’s for several centuries by paying tribute to the leaders so as to limit piracy in the Mediterranean and coastal Atlantic Ocean. Even America still pays the tribute to ensure that oil keeps flowing. America pays hundreds of millions to the terror supporting nations every year. This money is paid as tribute to our Muslim rulers. It is a tax we have no say about and it’s disguised as humanitarian aid, economic aid, housing aid and a whole host of other names. Why would we pay them anything? Oil? We have our own and we need to drill for it. To protect shipping? If we’d bother to protect our ships we wouldn’t have to worry about it. Our government does it because they are afraid of terrorism and piracy and it’s not their money. They are letting some rich tyrants steal money from us so that they might not get shot at or have suicide bombers attack them.
I’m sure some of you would agree with the government as you’re afraid that they will attack us and it’s wrong to go to war with them. After all, we just need to understand what we are doing wrong and then they will accept us. Wrong! I’m willing to bet you believe there are moderate Muslim’s too! Wrong! If you ask a Muslim in America how they would describe themselves, they say they are Muslim American’s. If you ask a Catholic, they say they are American. You have most likely bought the line from the Muslim’s that the terrorists are just a small group of malcontents. Wrong, yet again!
Their religion demands that they strike out against any and all non Muslim’s. Those who do not actually commit the terror, don’t speak out against it, do they. Oh yeah sometimes a Muslim may go on TV and kinda of sort of make the case that not all Muslim’s are terrorists but they will not say that is a despicable act and that all Muslim’s should shun these thugs. No, you won’t hear that. But you will hear, is that they support the Muslim charities that support ending hunger in the Middle East They support it by donating money, an estimated six hundred million from Muslim American’s. The charities once the FBI looks into them, it is discovered every time they are simply funnels to terrorists.
There is no common ground with an Islamic terrorist unless you’re an Islamic Terrorist! You can not stop a terrorist attack by bribing nations or terrorists. You must go to the source and kill it there! You do not stop a bully by running away or begging not to be bullied. You have to stand toe and to toe and punch the crap out the bully. That’s what the Muslim’s are bullies that need have the crap kicked out of them.
What does all this have to do with not drawing cartoons of Mohammed? It’s very simple. By not drawing the pictures, it is a downgrading of our rights as American’s. It is cutting out a chunk of our free speech rights. What will be next, we can’t draw cartoons of the President? Or we can’t question the action’s of the police, military or congress? We as a people have to stop and stand up to these bully’s and our government has to follow our action and do the same. So I’ll be leading by example on April 29, 2010 and I will be posting a stupid drawing of Mohammed on this site and my facebook page. Because you can’t tell me I can’t say what I want to say. This is America and I will speak up and I will call a spade a spade regardless of color. Mohammed is a joke. Look at the people who spend their lives suffering under the Muslim way of life where the rich dictator’s steal them blind and hide behind a religion that is nothing more than a declaration of war and an excuse to make women slaves and any non Muslim slaves. It is a declaration of tyranny disguised as religion so the conquerors can continue in power over those who were conquered centuries ago in most cases. The Saudi’s have even gone so far as to declare themselves protectors of the two most holy sites in Islam in order to try keep the strangle hold over their subjects. Yes they declared themselves, kings!
Why are we giving money to some of the richest countries on the planet? Why would we need to give any aid money at all to them? They have money more than the Swiss could shake a stick at. Their leaders, the one’s the oil money flows to, are all among the world’s richest men and they are all multi billionaires. Why don’t they take care of their people better?
SO on April 29th if you’re a real American, you should be drawing a stupid Mohammed and posting it every where you can. Stand up for our rights and tell the Muslim’s to just go home. They and their sick religion are not welcome here. If you want to be An American. than act like one. If you want to be something else and then an American, Leave! We don’t need or want you here. We aren’t Muslim, we are Christians! It is a Christian Nation live with it! Oh yeah, President Obama, we are a Christian Nation, stop telling the world we are not Christian. You may not be, but we are! And we have the right to speak our minds! Speak yours on April 29th. Tell the world and the Muslim’s we can and will make fun of you and anyone else we find humorous regardless of your threats. Oh yeah, one last thing. In America, only the progressives don’t own guns, the rest of us have a bunch. Bring your jihad by anytime you’re ready to see if you really get seventy two virgins if you sacrifice yourself.
Author Chris Keys the author of Reprisal! The Eagle Rises!, The Fishing Trip-A Ghost Story and The Motor Home-God does work in Mysterious Ways! Look for all three summer of 2010!
BIG GOVERNMENT ARTICLE BY DAN SAVAGE
Dan Savage has declared May 20th “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day,” in defense of Matt Stone and Trey Parker. All freedom-loving Americans should get behind this. While initially I thought it was an ironic joke that South Park was censoring everything related to Mohammed in their last episode, obviously we have seen over the last few days that against the creators’ will, Comedy Central cowered in the face of a thinly veiled Muslim threat.
In fact, submission, the definition of Islam, is the apt word to describe Comedy Central’s cowardice.
The bottom line is that the First Amendment guarantees free speech including criticism of all peoples. We are an equal opportunity offense country. To censor ourselves to avoid upsetting a certain group (in a cartoon no less) is un-American.
It is especially egregious because it represents dhimmitude. We are sacrificing our law and our heritage to Sharia. The law of our land is the Constitution and beyond that the natural law granted to us by our divine creator.
Giving in to Islam at the cultural level is the first step towards going the way of Europe. Just as with leftism, the loss of our values begins not with the politicians but with the public. We must stop this madness now and stand in solidarity against those who wish to destroy our way of life and replace it with theirs. You can try to bully Matt Stone and Trey Parker but you cannot bully a million red-blooded, liberty-loving Matt Stones and Trey Parkers.
Let me end by evoking the words of a great many South Park characters: “If you don’t like America, then you can git out.”
The Basics of Marketing Your Book by Chris Keys-Author of The Fishing Trip-A Ghost Story and Reprisal! The Eagle Rises!
I’d like to thank for allowing me to subject you…er, rather allowing me this opportunity share with you my limited expertise in the field of book marketing. However, I do have over twenty five years of experience in the field of self promotion, and marketing of small businesses on less than shoe string budgets. My latest opportunity to practice my skills in self promotion and small business marketing is with my own writing career.
What? Did I just say, “Self promotion and small business marketing in the same sentence as writing career?” What? This is usually followed by the standard line of, “I’m not in business, I’m a writer!”
I’ve heard that line only a few hundred dozen times and I’ve only been blogging about the subject about six months. What many would be writers don’t realize is that writing is a business. A small business with potential of being a very big profit maker, but few of us go into writing worrying about how much money we’ll make writing our poems, short stories or even novels. We go into writing because we believe we have something to say or we can help people or we just have great story to tell. But the house hold names from the literary field, Grisham, Clancy, King, Roberts, Cussler, and several dozen more, did go into it realizing up front they wanted top make a living writing books and they approached it that way.
As a non household name, you need to stop and first of all, decide where you see your writing going. Do you see it as just a hobby or would you really like to have it make so much money you could quit your day job and write full time. For simplicity, we’ll assume that you want to be a household name. You want to be read in mass by the public and you want to be showered with acclaim as the next great literary genius. You just know you can stand on top of Hemingway and crush him…sorry. I get carried away when I start thinking about how my new novel due out this summer titled “Reprisal! The Eagle Rises!” could be the next great American novel.
But let’s get back on track here. You want to be more than just someone who hides in the spare room, yelling at the kids now and then to be quiet, with a shelf full of manuscripts that need dusting. This is where self promotion and marketing come in.
Sending off your manuscript to a publisher for their consideration is self promotion. It is also marketing. You’re getting your name out in front of the publishing company’s gate keeper, the person who does a cursory review of your manuscript and decides if it gets a closer look by someone else higher up the food chain. It is also marketing, in the most minimal of ways because your asking them to buy to your book. Maybe they will, but in the current market place, they probably won’t. The market is just too packed with good and or great stories and the only ones given serious consideration without the author providing proof of a following, by way of a career in the writing field in non fiction, such as reporting or commentary are celebrities. The Paris Hilton’s of the world or rock stars, former politicians and movie stars. If your not one of those people it doesn’t mean you can’t grow that following, create that buzz about your book or you can’t make money from your book. It just means you have to get serious, about self promotion and marketing.
Three paragraphs back, I joked about my desire to be a household name and of standing on top of Hemingway to get there, you of course groaned, but I got the name of my upcoming book in front of you. Quick what’s it called? Made you look. That’s a marketing ploy for getting the title of your work known. The New York ad men don’t usually use that style of plug when they do their multimillion dollar budget ads but then I’m on half a shoe string and even that maybe more than my budget can stand. The whole idea is to get exposure for you as a writer and for what you have written.
Everything you do, from this moment forward needs to be directed at developing a following for you, and here is a very basic plan for doing that. I can expand upon the different ideas here later, after you’ve enjoyed some minor success following the plan and have tuned your mind to the required setting to be able to shamelessly plug your book without making too many people barf and run away. That’s the real trick, doing it in a way that no one realizes it’s happened. I hereby claim the coinage of the name, “Stealth Marketing” But that’s only part of the plan.
Things you’ll need in order to be serious about marketing yourself and your book start with joining social networking sites. It’s easy and painless so just jump right in and start posting your opinions. Be sure to join a few of the sites to start with and then change sites, add some, lose some as you grow in confidence that you can write well enough to get your point across. That’s what the sites are for. Writing practice! So practice.
Then you want to get yourself set up with a blog. I was very hesitant to start blogging, myself. I knew it was a good way to get people to know about my work but I had no idea what I would write about. I knew I had a good story and I thought I had a publisher, so I wasn’t in any big hurry to blog.
Then my publishers announced that they wanted me blogging. They didn’t care where I did it, just that I did it. It was one of the ways they wanted me to get exposure and it was hoped that after a while, I’d develop a following. It was part of their marketing plan for any books they published. So get blogging. I’m currently blogging on Blogspot. Writerchriskeys.blogspot.com, check me out and become a follower. It’s a very easy site to set up your blog on. You can also get paid to blog and there are several sites where you can do that. A couple of pay per blog sites are, Today.com, Fanbox.com, and Hubpages.com. They will all pay depending upon the number of hits your blog receives.
One of the biggest social websites is Face Book. You’ll want to be setup there, for sure. Once you’ve opened your Face Book page you’ll want to start seeking as many friends as you can get. One of the ways I’ve been able to develop friends on Face Book is to ask friends that I already have to recommend friends that I can ask to be friends. On Face Book, you’ll post your excerpts, blogs, info about you and your writings. Don’t get too personal but do try to provide some insight into the inner workings of your creativity.
Then you’ll want to open a twitter account. I have to confess, I’m struggling with twitter. I’m unsure what to talk about and how to limit my word usage to 140 characters. After all I was politician and I am trained to expound upon a subject until at least fifty percent of the audience falls a sleep. I have trouble being brief, but I’m a reformed politician. Really I am. Honest you can trust me. To get a good handle on twitter, I’d suggest you check out a web friend of mine, Tony Eldridge, author of, “The Samson Effect” soon to be a major motion picture. He has a website dealing with marketing for authors, titled “Marketing tips for Authors”. I whole heartily recommend you sign up for his news letter, lots of great marketing tips.
You will next need to develop your own website. Yep, you need a website. It’s not as hard as it seems. There are several free website building sites and many, when they do charge for hosting are very inexpensive. Mine currently is only five dollars a month. I’m using Intuit-Homestead.com.
There are dos and don’ts, to having a website. A few of the major things to keep in mind: Your website needs to be user friendly and it needs ask the reader to buy your book(s), blog collections and /or your branded collectables. Yes, your website will be your book store, where you’ll sell your books and maybe posters, coffee cups, ball caps, pen sets etc. plus you’ll post excerpts from your books, info about yourself, maybe links with other authors and ads from Google and Yahoo to help pay for your host fees.
There are going to be some expenses in promoting yourself and your book for things like travel to book signings, book trailer video, book marks with your info, picture, book title and or other info you see fit to put on it, editing, book covers and listings on the right lists to insure that your book(s) are available to libraries and the major booksellers.
Now some of these costs you’ll avoid if you are lucky enough to get a traditional publishing contract but if your like the vast majority of us new writers, you’ll be self publishing until you develop enough of a following to ensure a strong likelihood that the publishers will make money off your book. By then though, you may not want to be with a publisher who is only willing to pay you 20% of the profit when you can get 85% of the profit when self publishing. Just a little something to remember as your writing career develops.
You’ll also want to learn all you can about virtual book tours, developing links with other authors by helping to promote them with blurbs about them and their books. Most of the other authors will gladly trade blurbs, which helps both of you. You need to develop friendly relationships with as many other authors as possible. Your success, as well as theirs, is dependent upon getting as many other people talking about you and your work as possible. Don’t worry if the other authors are new or old pro’s, because you never know who someone else knows, and who they might introduce to your writing, and where that might go.
I’ve mentioned a number of things so far and none of it is too taxing on your time or your wallet, but you still have couple of things to do. The last clear marketing item you need to be aware of needing to do, is also the first thing that you need to do -- ask for the sale! Ask on your blog, on your website, on your book marks, your book covers your email, your social interaction sites, everywhere. If you don’t ask, you won’t get. There are a few ways to ask for the sale, and it takes a mix of the methods to be successful in making the sale. Those ways are, directly, indirectly and the stealth way. To be honest, the stealth way is part of the indirect way. The direct way is when you come out and just ask some to buy your book. You know, “Hey, you should buy my book.” The indirect way is showing the picture of your book cover with a note about how you can use pay pal to buy it. The stealth way is showing a picture of your book cover and have a person reading it with a big smile on their face. You don’t actually ask them to buy it, but infer they will be happy if they do. Which if you have really good vision, that’s exactly what I’m doing in the background of this very page. There is a good looking man or woman, which ever works for you and their reading my newest story, The Fishing Trip-A Ghost Story and they’re wearing a great big smile. Well ok that’s not quite true, well actually it’s a lie but you get the general idea right?
So now you have the very basics for developing your self promotion and marketing plan, destined to make you a household name and get your books read by the largest possible number of readers, except for the actual book itself. When you get ready to publish, you need to be sure you are offering the very best possible product you can. Make sure you have had the work professionally edited, that the cover art is very professional, that the books layout is crisp clean and easy to read and that story itself is one that’s worth while for someone other than you to read. Five hundred pages about how your pet frog likes to eat fruit flies, instead of house flies just won’t draw as many readers as a rags to riches story of a handicapped individual who overcomes impossible odds to become the President, and then the U.N.’s leader, when all hostilities ended between Arabs and Israelis. If the work you’re selling isn’t very well written, or the story isn’t compelling, then at best you’ll only sell a few copies even if you have the absolute greatest marketing campaign ever conceived. The word of mouth of how bad it is will kill it. Unless of course that’s the niche you’re trying to fill, then maybe by telling people it’s so bad they need to read it, just might be the best way to market it.
Thanks for enduring, Chris Keys the author of Reprisal! The Eagle Rises!, The Fishing Trip-A Ghost Story and The Motor Home-God Does Work in Mysterious Ways! Look for all three books this summer as Ebooks and POD’s. Follow Chris on Blogspot, Facebook and Twitter, as well as, Writer’s World.
Books are what is meant to fill the space between your ears! You should read one or all of mine! **********
What? Did I just say, “Self promotion and small business marketing in the same sentence as writing career?” What? This is usually followed by the standard line of, “I’m not in business, I’m a writer!”
I’ve heard that line only a few hundred dozen times and I’ve only been blogging about the subject about six months. What many would be writers don’t realize is that writing is a business. A small business with potential of being a very big profit maker, but few of us go into writing worrying about how much money we’ll make writing our poems, short stories or even novels. We go into writing because we believe we have something to say or we can help people or we just have great story to tell. But the house hold names from the literary field, Grisham, Clancy, King, Roberts, Cussler, and several dozen more, did go into it realizing up front they wanted top make a living writing books and they approached it that way.
As a non household name, you need to stop and first of all, decide where you see your writing going. Do you see it as just a hobby or would you really like to have it make so much money you could quit your day job and write full time. For simplicity, we’ll assume that you want to be a household name. You want to be read in mass by the public and you want to be showered with acclaim as the next great literary genius. You just know you can stand on top of Hemingway and crush him…sorry. I get carried away when I start thinking about how my new novel due out this summer titled “Reprisal! The Eagle Rises!” could be the next great American novel.
But let’s get back on track here. You want to be more than just someone who hides in the spare room, yelling at the kids now and then to be quiet, with a shelf full of manuscripts that need dusting. This is where self promotion and marketing come in.
Sending off your manuscript to a publisher for their consideration is self promotion. It is also marketing. You’re getting your name out in front of the publishing company’s gate keeper, the person who does a cursory review of your manuscript and decides if it gets a closer look by someone else higher up the food chain. It is also marketing, in the most minimal of ways because your asking them to buy to your book. Maybe they will, but in the current market place, they probably won’t. The market is just too packed with good and or great stories and the only ones given serious consideration without the author providing proof of a following, by way of a career in the writing field in non fiction, such as reporting or commentary are celebrities. The Paris Hilton’s of the world or rock stars, former politicians and movie stars. If your not one of those people it doesn’t mean you can’t grow that following, create that buzz about your book or you can’t make money from your book. It just means you have to get serious, about self promotion and marketing.
Three paragraphs back, I joked about my desire to be a household name and of standing on top of Hemingway to get there, you of course groaned, but I got the name of my upcoming book in front of you. Quick what’s it called? Made you look. That’s a marketing ploy for getting the title of your work known. The New York ad men don’t usually use that style of plug when they do their multimillion dollar budget ads but then I’m on half a shoe string and even that maybe more than my budget can stand. The whole idea is to get exposure for you as a writer and for what you have written.
Everything you do, from this moment forward needs to be directed at developing a following for you, and here is a very basic plan for doing that. I can expand upon the different ideas here later, after you’ve enjoyed some minor success following the plan and have tuned your mind to the required setting to be able to shamelessly plug your book without making too many people barf and run away. That’s the real trick, doing it in a way that no one realizes it’s happened. I hereby claim the coinage of the name, “Stealth Marketing” But that’s only part of the plan.
Things you’ll need in order to be serious about marketing yourself and your book start with joining social networking sites. It’s easy and painless so just jump right in and start posting your opinions. Be sure to join a few of the sites to start with and then change sites, add some, lose some as you grow in confidence that you can write well enough to get your point across. That’s what the sites are for. Writing practice! So practice.
Then you want to get yourself set up with a blog. I was very hesitant to start blogging, myself. I knew it was a good way to get people to know about my work but I had no idea what I would write about. I knew I had a good story and I thought I had a publisher, so I wasn’t in any big hurry to blog.
Then my publishers announced that they wanted me blogging. They didn’t care where I did it, just that I did it. It was one of the ways they wanted me to get exposure and it was hoped that after a while, I’d develop a following. It was part of their marketing plan for any books they published. So get blogging. I’m currently blogging on Blogspot. Writerchriskeys.blogspot.com, check me out and become a follower. It’s a very easy site to set up your blog on. You can also get paid to blog and there are several sites where you can do that. A couple of pay per blog sites are, Today.com, Fanbox.com, and Hubpages.com. They will all pay depending upon the number of hits your blog receives.
One of the biggest social websites is Face Book. You’ll want to be setup there, for sure. Once you’ve opened your Face Book page you’ll want to start seeking as many friends as you can get. One of the ways I’ve been able to develop friends on Face Book is to ask friends that I already have to recommend friends that I can ask to be friends. On Face Book, you’ll post your excerpts, blogs, info about you and your writings. Don’t get too personal but do try to provide some insight into the inner workings of your creativity.
Then you’ll want to open a twitter account. I have to confess, I’m struggling with twitter. I’m unsure what to talk about and how to limit my word usage to 140 characters. After all I was politician and I am trained to expound upon a subject until at least fifty percent of the audience falls a sleep. I have trouble being brief, but I’m a reformed politician. Really I am. Honest you can trust me. To get a good handle on twitter, I’d suggest you check out a web friend of mine, Tony Eldridge, author of, “The Samson Effect” soon to be a major motion picture. He has a website dealing with marketing for authors, titled “Marketing tips for Authors”. I whole heartily recommend you sign up for his news letter, lots of great marketing tips.
You will next need to develop your own website. Yep, you need a website. It’s not as hard as it seems. There are several free website building sites and many, when they do charge for hosting are very inexpensive. Mine currently is only five dollars a month. I’m using Intuit-Homestead.com.
There are dos and don’ts, to having a website. A few of the major things to keep in mind: Your website needs to be user friendly and it needs ask the reader to buy your book(s), blog collections and /or your branded collectables. Yes, your website will be your book store, where you’ll sell your books and maybe posters, coffee cups, ball caps, pen sets etc. plus you’ll post excerpts from your books, info about yourself, maybe links with other authors and ads from Google and Yahoo to help pay for your host fees.
There are going to be some expenses in promoting yourself and your book for things like travel to book signings, book trailer video, book marks with your info, picture, book title and or other info you see fit to put on it, editing, book covers and listings on the right lists to insure that your book(s) are available to libraries and the major booksellers.
Now some of these costs you’ll avoid if you are lucky enough to get a traditional publishing contract but if your like the vast majority of us new writers, you’ll be self publishing until you develop enough of a following to ensure a strong likelihood that the publishers will make money off your book. By then though, you may not want to be with a publisher who is only willing to pay you 20% of the profit when you can get 85% of the profit when self publishing. Just a little something to remember as your writing career develops.
You’ll also want to learn all you can about virtual book tours, developing links with other authors by helping to promote them with blurbs about them and their books. Most of the other authors will gladly trade blurbs, which helps both of you. You need to develop friendly relationships with as many other authors as possible. Your success, as well as theirs, is dependent upon getting as many other people talking about you and your work as possible. Don’t worry if the other authors are new or old pro’s, because you never know who someone else knows, and who they might introduce to your writing, and where that might go.
I’ve mentioned a number of things so far and none of it is too taxing on your time or your wallet, but you still have couple of things to do. The last clear marketing item you need to be aware of needing to do, is also the first thing that you need to do -- ask for the sale! Ask on your blog, on your website, on your book marks, your book covers your email, your social interaction sites, everywhere. If you don’t ask, you won’t get. There are a few ways to ask for the sale, and it takes a mix of the methods to be successful in making the sale. Those ways are, directly, indirectly and the stealth way. To be honest, the stealth way is part of the indirect way. The direct way is when you come out and just ask some to buy your book. You know, “Hey, you should buy my book.” The indirect way is showing the picture of your book cover with a note about how you can use pay pal to buy it. The stealth way is showing a picture of your book cover and have a person reading it with a big smile on their face. You don’t actually ask them to buy it, but infer they will be happy if they do. Which if you have really good vision, that’s exactly what I’m doing in the background of this very page. There is a good looking man or woman, which ever works for you and their reading my newest story, The Fishing Trip-A Ghost Story and they’re wearing a great big smile. Well ok that’s not quite true, well actually it’s a lie but you get the general idea right?
So now you have the very basics for developing your self promotion and marketing plan, destined to make you a household name and get your books read by the largest possible number of readers, except for the actual book itself. When you get ready to publish, you need to be sure you are offering the very best possible product you can. Make sure you have had the work professionally edited, that the cover art is very professional, that the books layout is crisp clean and easy to read and that story itself is one that’s worth while for someone other than you to read. Five hundred pages about how your pet frog likes to eat fruit flies, instead of house flies just won’t draw as many readers as a rags to riches story of a handicapped individual who overcomes impossible odds to become the President, and then the U.N.’s leader, when all hostilities ended between Arabs and Israelis. If the work you’re selling isn’t very well written, or the story isn’t compelling, then at best you’ll only sell a few copies even if you have the absolute greatest marketing campaign ever conceived. The word of mouth of how bad it is will kill it. Unless of course that’s the niche you’re trying to fill, then maybe by telling people it’s so bad they need to read it, just might be the best way to market it.
Thanks for enduring, Chris Keys the author of Reprisal! The Eagle Rises!, The Fishing Trip-A Ghost Story and The Motor Home-God Does Work in Mysterious Ways! Look for all three books this summer as Ebooks and POD’s. Follow Chris on Blogspot, Facebook and Twitter, as well as, Writer’s World.
Books are what is meant to fill the space between your ears! You should read one or all of mine! **********
Saturday, April 10, 2010
The first rule for selling anything including your book! by Chris Keys
I apologize, to the three or four people who’ll read this. You’ve probably read my other marketing exposes’ on how your blog is a real a marketing tool. I should have started with this one. I got ahead myself and it took a while for the old memory to kick in and remind me to point out this obvious fact. It’s been a couple of years since I have actively sought to sell anything,that's my excuse but it was there, buried in the recesses of my mind. However, if you haven’t been in sales basically your whole adult life you may not realize this is as important as it gets.
The first rule of selling anything; is to ask for the sale! Ok we're done now. Unless of course you'd learn the reasons why. You may have a great product but if you never ask anyone to buy it, you typically won’t sell very many. The basic rule is that if you don’t ask, you don’t get. The same is true when it comes to selling your book.
Now, I know, there are some people saying that they buy things all the time that no one ever asks them to buy. I can only answer back, maybe. The only products that come to mind, that I see very little advertising about, are vegetables and other produce items. Other wise, they all ask for the sale.
How? That’s really easy to explain. They advertise. Now advertising, that’s not so easy to explain. Advertising isn’t just the commercials you see on TV or hear on the radio. It’s not just the print ads you see in news papers and magazines. It’s not just the bill boards on the side of the road. It’s all that plus a whole lot more. From the words you chose to describe your product to the color of the package to the position on the shelf in the store, you need to be asking for the sale. Everything about the products you buy has been cultivated and designed to bring you to a favorable buying decision.
Asking for the sale isn’t always done like the late Billy Maze did it. Loud, obnoxious, fast paced, screaming at the customer, though some car dealers in my area still think that way. It’s also an extremely subtle poster that just shows the car and smiling people driving the newest model. It’s the company name or logo on baseball caps, t-shirts, coffee cups, pens, pencils, golf balls and book marks. Yep, your book mark is advertising. Now you haven’t got enough time to for me to go into great detail about what all can be used is used as advertising, but suffice to say it‘s everywhere.
Breaking it down to the major items of book marketing, that doesn’t involve blogging, goes something like this. You have the book cover, your website, the few pages inside the book that you’re allowed to place your bio, dedications and other notes on, it’s your book marks, your posters, your business cards, book signings, book reviews and even your emails.
Other items that come to mind, that you might want to consider as the budget allows are coffee cups as give aways at book signings, or radio interviews, book fairs etc. AS well as sell them on your website.The same is true for ball caps with your book title on it, t-shirts with your cover art on it, and or anything you can thing of to give away or sell to generate buzz about your books or make an extra buck off of because we can all use the extracash and it’s got the names or art work from your books on it.
Everything should and does ask the readers to buy your book. By having these things asking for the sale you’ll generate more interest and then it’s up to the work to impress them to provide you with the absolute best form of advertising, where someone else outside your marketing plan is asking readers to buy your book. That’s word of mouth advertising.
Now before you start writing things on your website like “BUY ME”, remember there are subtler ways to do it and it takes a combination to direct action motivators and soft sell motivators to get the average customer to buy. For books, I personally recommend that you mention the name of your current book as often as possible, without making people around you cringe every time you walk by or go to post a new blog or comment. Throw in occasionally comment that your book is for sale on so and so. If it is on your website, on every page ask for the sale, both ways. A small balloon button with the words buy me works well as the direct way and mentioning that they can buy at so and so or that they can pay with PayPal. Is good for a semi direct way and can also be used, plus having a really great picture of your book cover is good as a subtle way to ask for the sale. Reviews are also good subtle ways to ask for the sale. Just be sure they good reviews
Asking for the sale, when it comes to your books, is all about repeatedly asking the reader to buy it, showing them where to buy it, showing them how to buy it and then telling them when to buy it, which by the way, is always now. The more often you ask; the more readers that buy. So ask often, but be subtle most of the time. You don’t want to overpressure them, but you want them to know, they need to buy the book.
In another blog soon, I’ll provide several phrases that have worked well in the past me and some ad designs that present your book while asking them to buy, without hitting them over the head with it. Plus subtle ways to keep your books title, like mine, “Reprisal! The Eagle Rises!”, or “The Fishing Trip-A Ghost Story” in front to the public and hopefully only chase away about half the buyers. Just kidding, if we do it right, we’ll get lots more buyers, which means lots more readers. So ask for the sale!
So, buy my books, “The Fishing Trip-A Ghost Story”, coming soon in ebook form and paperback, plus “Reprisal! The Eagle Rises!” due out by summer 2010! Good example of the direct approach huh?”
Thanks for reading, Chris Keys
Author of “The Fishing trip-A Ghost Story” and “Reprisal! The Eagle Rises!”
Both books due out late spring 2010, Look for them on ebook, Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other fine retailers.
The first rule of selling anything; is to ask for the sale! Ok we're done now. Unless of course you'd learn the reasons why. You may have a great product but if you never ask anyone to buy it, you typically won’t sell very many. The basic rule is that if you don’t ask, you don’t get. The same is true when it comes to selling your book.
Now, I know, there are some people saying that they buy things all the time that no one ever asks them to buy. I can only answer back, maybe. The only products that come to mind, that I see very little advertising about, are vegetables and other produce items. Other wise, they all ask for the sale.
How? That’s really easy to explain. They advertise. Now advertising, that’s not so easy to explain. Advertising isn’t just the commercials you see on TV or hear on the radio. It’s not just the print ads you see in news papers and magazines. It’s not just the bill boards on the side of the road. It’s all that plus a whole lot more. From the words you chose to describe your product to the color of the package to the position on the shelf in the store, you need to be asking for the sale. Everything about the products you buy has been cultivated and designed to bring you to a favorable buying decision.
Asking for the sale isn’t always done like the late Billy Maze did it. Loud, obnoxious, fast paced, screaming at the customer, though some car dealers in my area still think that way. It’s also an extremely subtle poster that just shows the car and smiling people driving the newest model. It’s the company name or logo on baseball caps, t-shirts, coffee cups, pens, pencils, golf balls and book marks. Yep, your book mark is advertising. Now you haven’t got enough time to for me to go into great detail about what all can be used is used as advertising, but suffice to say it‘s everywhere.
Breaking it down to the major items of book marketing, that doesn’t involve blogging, goes something like this. You have the book cover, your website, the few pages inside the book that you’re allowed to place your bio, dedications and other notes on, it’s your book marks, your posters, your business cards, book signings, book reviews and even your emails.
Other items that come to mind, that you might want to consider as the budget allows are coffee cups as give aways at book signings, or radio interviews, book fairs etc. AS well as sell them on your website.The same is true for ball caps with your book title on it, t-shirts with your cover art on it, and or anything you can thing of to give away or sell to generate buzz about your books or make an extra buck off of because we can all use the extracash and it’s got the names or art work from your books on it.
Everything should and does ask the readers to buy your book. By having these things asking for the sale you’ll generate more interest and then it’s up to the work to impress them to provide you with the absolute best form of advertising, where someone else outside your marketing plan is asking readers to buy your book. That’s word of mouth advertising.
Now before you start writing things on your website like “BUY ME”, remember there are subtler ways to do it and it takes a combination to direct action motivators and soft sell motivators to get the average customer to buy. For books, I personally recommend that you mention the name of your current book as often as possible, without making people around you cringe every time you walk by or go to post a new blog or comment. Throw in occasionally comment that your book is for sale on so and so. If it is on your website, on every page ask for the sale, both ways. A small balloon button with the words buy me works well as the direct way and mentioning that they can buy at so and so or that they can pay with PayPal. Is good for a semi direct way and can also be used, plus having a really great picture of your book cover is good as a subtle way to ask for the sale. Reviews are also good subtle ways to ask for the sale. Just be sure they good reviews
Asking for the sale, when it comes to your books, is all about repeatedly asking the reader to buy it, showing them where to buy it, showing them how to buy it and then telling them when to buy it, which by the way, is always now. The more often you ask; the more readers that buy. So ask often, but be subtle most of the time. You don’t want to overpressure them, but you want them to know, they need to buy the book.
In another blog soon, I’ll provide several phrases that have worked well in the past me and some ad designs that present your book while asking them to buy, without hitting them over the head with it. Plus subtle ways to keep your books title, like mine, “Reprisal! The Eagle Rises!”, or “The Fishing Trip-A Ghost Story” in front to the public and hopefully only chase away about half the buyers. Just kidding, if we do it right, we’ll get lots more buyers, which means lots more readers. So ask for the sale!
So, buy my books, “The Fishing Trip-A Ghost Story”, coming soon in ebook form and paperback, plus “Reprisal! The Eagle Rises!” due out by summer 2010! Good example of the direct approach huh?”
Thanks for reading, Chris Keys
Author of “The Fishing trip-A Ghost Story” and “Reprisal! The Eagle Rises!”
Both books due out late spring 2010, Look for them on ebook, Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other fine retailers.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Making a choice, the first step to Epublishing by Chris Keys
MAKING A CHOICE, THE FIRST STEP TO EPUBLISHING
By Chris Keys
I have to admit, I am a bit overwhelmed. The dizzying array of information about E publishing is mind boggling. So after two to three weeks of, sort of in depth research and blog gogging, (that’s where you read blog after blog for hours) I’ve reached a few conclusions about E publishing.
The first and foremost conclusion, I’ve come to is, you shouldn’t pay to have your book epublished. I mean you can and they will change you as much as a thousand dollars, depending on what you want done for you, but why? The process appears to be very easy, despite the use of words like format, margin and upload. Plus, there are just too many sites where they will do it for free and pay you the lion’s share of the profit, if there is any. The books have got to sell to have a profit and the marketing on all epublish sites is on you to get it done.
After reviewing several dozen different sites, I’ve chosen to use Smashwords to publish the electronic version of my book. They seem to have the simplest and easiest site to work with. Smashwords seems to have at least a minor plan for helping you promote your book, which is all any of them will do for you. Smashwords has a free marketing plan that you can access to help you as well. They also state they will have you listed on Amazon, Yahoo, Ebooks, Barnes and Noble in their basic package.
They state that they are readable by just about every reading device on the market. Including Sony, Kindle, Stanza, Ipods, Irex, IPhone, Ereader, Shortcovers, Aldiko and word player. Supposedly the most in the industry.
Smashwords also is able to provide you with a free ISBN number, free cover art, (a program where you make the cover or you can import one if you already have one) Now the ISBN number is $9.95 unless you join they’re premium program which gets you listed on the lists for sale at Barnes and Noble, Kobo and Sony, plus a free ISBN.( well you paid for it the premium price duh!, which hasn’t been set, at least I could not find it) I saw the premium package mentioned in another blog, but they didn’t mention the price either. Yes, you must have a separate ISBN for each book and each ebook. You can not use the same one for both.
The best feature for me, the most computer challenged individual in the world. That Smashwords offers, is that they allow you to submit your properly formatted manuscript in Microsoft Word. That was the deal maker for me and that they handle the upload to Kindle too. My old computer will not allow me to run a PDF maker like Adobe. I guess I’ll have to use my laptop if I need to make one, because my desk top is too old.
Smashwords does offer help if you want to pay for it, in formatting, cover design and Public relations/marketing. They provide, as most of the publishers do, a marketing guide that provides the same basics as my blogs do.
Smashwords also provides a free author page where you can post your bio, picture and information about any and all of your books even if they aren’t with Smashwords, plus they offer a coupon program to help power up your marketing. I’ll cover that later in another blog since this is about epublishing and not emarketing. They’re similar but different.
Smashwords boasts of paying a generous commission of 85% of after costs profit. The only costs they mention are the PayPal processing fee and the Amazon seller’s commission.
Other costs you will have with any of the publishers is the cost to copyright, found on the Library of Congress website for $35.00 per book or ebook or you can just publish without it being officially marked. Because in 1989 Congress passed a law that states the moment you have written anything, unless you have signed away your rights, (contract work basically) you are granted the copy right. If you chose to go with the law and not get a copyright saving the $35, you’ll want to keep a printed copy somewhere saved complete with date verification just in case someone does try to steal your work. I supposed you could put on a disc and it would be the same thing. It’s what they used to call a poor man’s copy right but the current thought process is that it doesn’t make a difference. The law is the law and the rest is fluff.
You’ll still want to have your manuscript test read and edited. To ensure you have something worth publishing and it is salable. For my book, I‘ve had six different people, not one was a friend or relative, I asked for in depth feed back, before I decided to actually publish. It can be quite the task to get anyone to read your unpublished story, because who wants to read some piece of junk.
Then you’ll need to do all the marketing that you would be doing for any book. You know blogging, twittering, advertising, linking with other authors and maybe even doing radio interviews and reviews.
As this process continues, I will add more blogs so that you can see just how it works out for me. In the mean time, I whole heartily suggest that you do the research for your self. Verify what I’ve said and make sure if you chose to epublish, you know what you’re getting into. You may not care if it’s easy to do. You may want a site that does it all for you and they are out there. You may not like the name of the site so pick another publisher with different name, just be sure you’re getting a deal you can live with. Me, I wanted free, easy, simple, lots of features and fast. As soon as I get the editing done, I’ll be publishing, “The Fishing Trip-A Ghost Story” and the end result I’ll share with you. I may find I made poor choice or I may come back tell you how great it was. So far I’m quite happy with them, but then, I haven’t done anything really yet except check out several dozen publishers and decide on which one I’d try to use.
Chris keys-author of “The Fishing Trip-A Ghost Story” a soon to be Ebook and “Reprisal! The Eagle Rises!” Due out summer 2010.
By Chris Keys
I have to admit, I am a bit overwhelmed. The dizzying array of information about E publishing is mind boggling. So after two to three weeks of, sort of in depth research and blog gogging, (that’s where you read blog after blog for hours) I’ve reached a few conclusions about E publishing.
The first and foremost conclusion, I’ve come to is, you shouldn’t pay to have your book epublished. I mean you can and they will change you as much as a thousand dollars, depending on what you want done for you, but why? The process appears to be very easy, despite the use of words like format, margin and upload. Plus, there are just too many sites where they will do it for free and pay you the lion’s share of the profit, if there is any. The books have got to sell to have a profit and the marketing on all epublish sites is on you to get it done.
After reviewing several dozen different sites, I’ve chosen to use Smashwords to publish the electronic version of my book. They seem to have the simplest and easiest site to work with. Smashwords seems to have at least a minor plan for helping you promote your book, which is all any of them will do for you. Smashwords has a free marketing plan that you can access to help you as well. They also state they will have you listed on Amazon, Yahoo, Ebooks, Barnes and Noble in their basic package.
They state that they are readable by just about every reading device on the market. Including Sony, Kindle, Stanza, Ipods, Irex, IPhone, Ereader, Shortcovers, Aldiko and word player. Supposedly the most in the industry.
Smashwords also is able to provide you with a free ISBN number, free cover art, (a program where you make the cover or you can import one if you already have one) Now the ISBN number is $9.95 unless you join they’re premium program which gets you listed on the lists for sale at Barnes and Noble, Kobo and Sony, plus a free ISBN.( well you paid for it the premium price duh!, which hasn’t been set, at least I could not find it) I saw the premium package mentioned in another blog, but they didn’t mention the price either. Yes, you must have a separate ISBN for each book and each ebook. You can not use the same one for both.
The best feature for me, the most computer challenged individual in the world. That Smashwords offers, is that they allow you to submit your properly formatted manuscript in Microsoft Word. That was the deal maker for me and that they handle the upload to Kindle too. My old computer will not allow me to run a PDF maker like Adobe. I guess I’ll have to use my laptop if I need to make one, because my desk top is too old.
Smashwords does offer help if you want to pay for it, in formatting, cover design and Public relations/marketing. They provide, as most of the publishers do, a marketing guide that provides the same basics as my blogs do.
Smashwords also provides a free author page where you can post your bio, picture and information about any and all of your books even if they aren’t with Smashwords, plus they offer a coupon program to help power up your marketing. I’ll cover that later in another blog since this is about epublishing and not emarketing. They’re similar but different.
Smashwords boasts of paying a generous commission of 85% of after costs profit. The only costs they mention are the PayPal processing fee and the Amazon seller’s commission.
Other costs you will have with any of the publishers is the cost to copyright, found on the Library of Congress website for $35.00 per book or ebook or you can just publish without it being officially marked. Because in 1989 Congress passed a law that states the moment you have written anything, unless you have signed away your rights, (contract work basically) you are granted the copy right. If you chose to go with the law and not get a copyright saving the $35, you’ll want to keep a printed copy somewhere saved complete with date verification just in case someone does try to steal your work. I supposed you could put on a disc and it would be the same thing. It’s what they used to call a poor man’s copy right but the current thought process is that it doesn’t make a difference. The law is the law and the rest is fluff.
You’ll still want to have your manuscript test read and edited. To ensure you have something worth publishing and it is salable. For my book, I‘ve had six different people, not one was a friend or relative, I asked for in depth feed back, before I decided to actually publish. It can be quite the task to get anyone to read your unpublished story, because who wants to read some piece of junk.
Then you’ll need to do all the marketing that you would be doing for any book. You know blogging, twittering, advertising, linking with other authors and maybe even doing radio interviews and reviews.
As this process continues, I will add more blogs so that you can see just how it works out for me. In the mean time, I whole heartily suggest that you do the research for your self. Verify what I’ve said and make sure if you chose to epublish, you know what you’re getting into. You may not care if it’s easy to do. You may want a site that does it all for you and they are out there. You may not like the name of the site so pick another publisher with different name, just be sure you’re getting a deal you can live with. Me, I wanted free, easy, simple, lots of features and fast. As soon as I get the editing done, I’ll be publishing, “The Fishing Trip-A Ghost Story” and the end result I’ll share with you. I may find I made poor choice or I may come back tell you how great it was. So far I’m quite happy with them, but then, I haven’t done anything really yet except check out several dozen publishers and decide on which one I’d try to use.
Chris keys-author of “The Fishing Trip-A Ghost Story” a soon to be Ebook and “Reprisal! The Eagle Rises!” Due out summer 2010.
Monday, April 5, 2010
What a workout! a diet challenge you've got to read about! by Chris Keys
What a workout! A diet challenge you just gotta read about! By Chris Keys
Author of the soon to be released ebook The Fishing Trip-A Ghost Story and Reprisal! The Eagle Rises! Due out summer 2010
I am sure that many of you can relate to this blog. Dieting is America’s number one pass time beating out the fan favorites of baseball, wrestling and even football. A friend of mine, who is a doctor, has written a diet book, which despite the crowded market place has preprinting sales that I’m sure I can only hope for when my first book hits the market place.
I, myself, have been on a diet for several months. No, it hasn’t been supervised by a doctor but it has been effective. I have lost over thirty pounds. It’s the age old diet that was practiced by millions over the years. Push back from the table and don’t put any food in your mouth. It has worked. For the longest time, I felt I was on the see food diet. See food and gain weight, but now I’ve learned not to look. The longer I can avoid looking the more weight I don’t gain from eating whatever I see.
So what does this have top do with writing? Well, over the last three years as I started to write, I’ve found myself spending more and more time sitting at the computer, writing. I’ve become a “Pooter tater.” That’s a new name I’ve just coined for people who sit at the computer all day and night, blogging or socializing or writing. We have the “Couch Potatoes” that are the TV watchers and now we have “Pooter Taters” for the computer potatoes. I am the top tater. I spend hours and hours, everyday, writing this or that, or editing something or rewriting something so it is fit to publish, making me a “Pooter Tater”
Of course I have an excuse. I have a disability that limits my mobility so it’s not like I’m going to suddenly stop being a “Pooter Tater” and become the next exercise guru. I simply have to limit how much I eat, if I’m going to lose weight. Which brings me to Easter Sunday, after church time, we went to a local park and picnicked which was great. I was very good about not eating too much of anything and I actually had to walk a bit, which was good for me, despite the issues.
The problem came into focus for me after we returned home and discovered that we, this included our two daughters, our two grand children, one boyfriend and Great Grandma plus five dogs, for a total of eight people and five animals, hardly ate enough of the food to have bothered to bring it in the first place. There was almost the entire potato salad left over. The baked beans only had few spoonfuls missing; plus we had burgers and hot dogs left over as well. Plus as I soon discovered, the chips and dip hadn’t been touched.
Chips and dip, the crinkled cut dipping chips all nice and salty with the French onion sour cream dip, was and still is my favorite snack food. Now as many of you will attest, this is like pouring contact cement glue into your veins and stuffing yourself with lard. Not exactly great stuff when you’re not super physically active, like when I a teenager some forty years ago. I sat and eyed the bags of delicious chips, knowing I shouldn’t eat them. But oh they were so tempting. When my wife crashed at six o’clock and went soundly to sleep, I was left with a quandary. I could make myself something for dinner, eat the left over potato salad and other items from the picnic or I could just eat the potato chips and dip. I mean who would know? I was basically alone in the house. It was just me and the chips and dip. I battled the issue for a couple of hours, mentally fighting the urge to devour the chips. I spent my time as usual editing my book, the big novel, Reprisal! The Eagle Rises! trying to focus on it, rather than on eating. For the most part, it almost worked.
I guess I’m a nervous eater, because when I’m writing or rewriting, I tend to look for something to nibble at. The draw back being, that while this is happening, the writing and nibbling, I’m not paying any attention to how much I’m nibbling, but a bag of pretzels, a full one pound bag only lasts for a chapter or two, depending on their size.
Once I’d managed to hold out against my desires for close to three hours, I decided to finally eat something. So I went to the refrigerator and was all set to eat potato salad when I was shocked to see that the potato salad was gone. The daughters upon helping us get back home, it was on their way home, had helped themselves to most of the food from the picnic. It was ok they did so, since Donna and I wouldn’t have eaten it and it would have gone to waste. But it did create another issue, because they left the chip dip.
So I did my best to resist. I closed the refrigerator door and checked the cupboards for something else, though nothing sounded very good. I went back to editing and did my best to ignore the calling of the chips. But at last I surrendered and gave into my desires. As the wife slept, I cheated. I cast aside the trust and the emotional investment I had placed in my diet, for the cheap tawdry sensation of the mouth watering taste of chips and dip. The months of sacrifice now ended as I gave in. I allowed temptation to overwhelm me and destroy all of my hard work and the bond of trust I had forged with myself over my diet.
So, today as I write, I’m not snacking at all. I’ve renewed my efforts to lose weight while not exercising at all. Except for my continuing with my regiment of jumping to conclusions, watching spectator sports and running my proverbial mouth for all the exercise it may provide. I am have rededicated myself to success in my quest to lose weight and then to write the definitive diet book, based on will power, alone. Just don’t let anyone get too close with chips and dip or ice cream for that matter.
Yes, this was just a writing exercise, but the story it is true. I felt I needed to fill some space with my brand of musing while I continued to research and develop my take on epublishing and POD publishing. Look for my first book to reach the market, The Fishing Trip-A Ghost Story, to be an Ebook and a POD (Print on Demand) paperback book very soon. I’m going through the system with this much smaller book so that I can work out the kinks on my end before I get involved with publishing my super novel, that’s a book over 140,000 words, which mine is. Check out the excerpts and synopsis on my Face Book page under notes for, The Fishing Trip-A Ghost Story. It should be released by the end of the month at the latest. I’ll be sure to post when it’s available. Chris Keys 04/05/10
Maybe the next book could be diet horror story?
Author of the soon to be released ebook The Fishing Trip-A Ghost Story and Reprisal! The Eagle Rises! Due out summer 2010
I am sure that many of you can relate to this blog. Dieting is America’s number one pass time beating out the fan favorites of baseball, wrestling and even football. A friend of mine, who is a doctor, has written a diet book, which despite the crowded market place has preprinting sales that I’m sure I can only hope for when my first book hits the market place.
I, myself, have been on a diet for several months. No, it hasn’t been supervised by a doctor but it has been effective. I have lost over thirty pounds. It’s the age old diet that was practiced by millions over the years. Push back from the table and don’t put any food in your mouth. It has worked. For the longest time, I felt I was on the see food diet. See food and gain weight, but now I’ve learned not to look. The longer I can avoid looking the more weight I don’t gain from eating whatever I see.
So what does this have top do with writing? Well, over the last three years as I started to write, I’ve found myself spending more and more time sitting at the computer, writing. I’ve become a “Pooter tater.” That’s a new name I’ve just coined for people who sit at the computer all day and night, blogging or socializing or writing. We have the “Couch Potatoes” that are the TV watchers and now we have “Pooter Taters” for the computer potatoes. I am the top tater. I spend hours and hours, everyday, writing this or that, or editing something or rewriting something so it is fit to publish, making me a “Pooter Tater”
Of course I have an excuse. I have a disability that limits my mobility so it’s not like I’m going to suddenly stop being a “Pooter Tater” and become the next exercise guru. I simply have to limit how much I eat, if I’m going to lose weight. Which brings me to Easter Sunday, after church time, we went to a local park and picnicked which was great. I was very good about not eating too much of anything and I actually had to walk a bit, which was good for me, despite the issues.
The problem came into focus for me after we returned home and discovered that we, this included our two daughters, our two grand children, one boyfriend and Great Grandma plus five dogs, for a total of eight people and five animals, hardly ate enough of the food to have bothered to bring it in the first place. There was almost the entire potato salad left over. The baked beans only had few spoonfuls missing; plus we had burgers and hot dogs left over as well. Plus as I soon discovered, the chips and dip hadn’t been touched.
Chips and dip, the crinkled cut dipping chips all nice and salty with the French onion sour cream dip, was and still is my favorite snack food. Now as many of you will attest, this is like pouring contact cement glue into your veins and stuffing yourself with lard. Not exactly great stuff when you’re not super physically active, like when I a teenager some forty years ago. I sat and eyed the bags of delicious chips, knowing I shouldn’t eat them. But oh they were so tempting. When my wife crashed at six o’clock and went soundly to sleep, I was left with a quandary. I could make myself something for dinner, eat the left over potato salad and other items from the picnic or I could just eat the potato chips and dip. I mean who would know? I was basically alone in the house. It was just me and the chips and dip. I battled the issue for a couple of hours, mentally fighting the urge to devour the chips. I spent my time as usual editing my book, the big novel, Reprisal! The Eagle Rises! trying to focus on it, rather than on eating. For the most part, it almost worked.
I guess I’m a nervous eater, because when I’m writing or rewriting, I tend to look for something to nibble at. The draw back being, that while this is happening, the writing and nibbling, I’m not paying any attention to how much I’m nibbling, but a bag of pretzels, a full one pound bag only lasts for a chapter or two, depending on their size.
Once I’d managed to hold out against my desires for close to three hours, I decided to finally eat something. So I went to the refrigerator and was all set to eat potato salad when I was shocked to see that the potato salad was gone. The daughters upon helping us get back home, it was on their way home, had helped themselves to most of the food from the picnic. It was ok they did so, since Donna and I wouldn’t have eaten it and it would have gone to waste. But it did create another issue, because they left the chip dip.
So I did my best to resist. I closed the refrigerator door and checked the cupboards for something else, though nothing sounded very good. I went back to editing and did my best to ignore the calling of the chips. But at last I surrendered and gave into my desires. As the wife slept, I cheated. I cast aside the trust and the emotional investment I had placed in my diet, for the cheap tawdry sensation of the mouth watering taste of chips and dip. The months of sacrifice now ended as I gave in. I allowed temptation to overwhelm me and destroy all of my hard work and the bond of trust I had forged with myself over my diet.
So, today as I write, I’m not snacking at all. I’ve renewed my efforts to lose weight while not exercising at all. Except for my continuing with my regiment of jumping to conclusions, watching spectator sports and running my proverbial mouth for all the exercise it may provide. I am have rededicated myself to success in my quest to lose weight and then to write the definitive diet book, based on will power, alone. Just don’t let anyone get too close with chips and dip or ice cream for that matter.
Yes, this was just a writing exercise, but the story it is true. I felt I needed to fill some space with my brand of musing while I continued to research and develop my take on epublishing and POD publishing. Look for my first book to reach the market, The Fishing Trip-A Ghost Story, to be an Ebook and a POD (Print on Demand) paperback book very soon. I’m going through the system with this much smaller book so that I can work out the kinks on my end before I get involved with publishing my super novel, that’s a book over 140,000 words, which mine is. Check out the excerpts and synopsis on my Face Book page under notes for, The Fishing Trip-A Ghost Story. It should be released by the end of the month at the latest. I’ll be sure to post when it’s available. Chris Keys 04/05/10
Maybe the next book could be diet horror story?
Friday, April 2, 2010
Waht No Second Date? by Chris Keys
Today, my blog is a maybe a short story or one of the chapters of a new book I'm wirting. It fits both. It's long but reads fast and I think you'l like it.
WHAT NO SECOND DATE? By Chris Keys
It was a gun, all silver and shiny! I wasn’t expecting to see one here, I mean, after all it was only our first date and yet, there it was pointing directly at me.
“Give me your wallet, Romeo” Tania was demanding. Tania was my date for the evening. She was a truly beautiful brunet with long legs and a great smile. She was wearing a form fitting dress which the minimum left to the imagination.
“What’s with the gun? Dinner conversation not up to your usual standards?” I asked, as I stared at the gun. It looked like it was a 32 cal. or maybe a 22 cal. It was small. It fit snuggly in her hands. Women have small hands and it was made for someone with small hands. I doubt my finger would even fit in the trigger guard, let a lone pull the trigger.
“Shut up and hand it over. Don’t make me shoot you.” Tania threatened.
“Do you shoot people often? I mean on the first date?”
“Shut up and give me your wallet, NOW!” Tania hollered as her face got red and her eyes took on menacing look. It was hard to believe that this gorgeous babe was robbing me, after we just had diner together.
As I struggled to get my wallet out of my back pocket, I asked, “So, what? You accept dates, so you can set the guy up to rob him after dinner?”
“Something like, that.” She answered smugly. “Hurry up!”
“And here, I thought we had some chemistry.”
“Oh please, take a good look at you and a good look at me. Do you really think there could be chemistry between us? Please, you’re so far beneath me.” She delivered the cut with the practiced skill of a surgeon. She had a point though, I was an almost in shape guy with less than perfect hair, an ok smile and plain to average looks. But I do have big hands, really big hands.
“It’s nice to know that you have such a healthy self esteem” I managed to get the wallet free finally and I sat there holding it.
“Give me the wallet. Nice and easy or I’ll blow a hole thru you!” Tania snarled, but it was hard to accept that this super babe was also a stone cold criminal. Hell, with most men, all she’d have to do get their wallet was ask and bat her eyes, while slipping her arm in theirs and they’d gladly do whatever she asked. She didn’t need a gun, not as long as she had that body, that face and that smile.
“There’s no money it.” I said as I handed it to her, nice and easy as instructed. I certainly didn’t want a hole blown thru me.
“There has to be. I know this restaurant isn’t cheap and I saw you pay with cash.” Tania stated curtly as she opened the wallet and stared in to it. Then she asked, “What the hell is this?” she suddenly raised the gun to shoulder height, dropping the wallet and grabbing the gun with both hands to steady her aim. “Well?”
“I told you, it didn’t have any cash in it.”
“Where’s the money?”
“I brought just enough to cover dinner and a tip. I was planning on stopping at an ATM, if the night managed to stretch into extra innings, so to speak.” I liked the fact that I used a baseball analogy, it showed her I was multifaceted. I’d used a football analogy earlier in the evening and it had seemed to impress her. Maybe she’d see how cool I was at gun point and her opinion of me might improve.
“Look jerk! I have a gun and I’m going to shoot you in two minutes if you don’t produce some cash. Now where is it?” she was actually starting to scare me now, since she had spittle dribbling out of the corner of her mouth. I think her patience was running out and she was starting to get irate.
“Hey, you should have mentioned something about my needing extra cash on me, for the after the date robbery, before we had dinner. There was an ATM inside the front door next to coat check.” she fired the gun. Luckily, I’d opened the window when we first got in for the drive home. It was a fairly warm night and I had thought some fresh air would have been a good thing. As it turned out, it saved me the cost of a window, but the Lexus parked next to me; well, it would not only, need a passenger side window but a driver’s side window as well. The bullet went clean through both windows, shattering them. It made one of those spider web designs that safety glass is famous for in each window, and then it impacted in the brick wall beyond, leaving a circular scar on the wall.
“Damn,” I blurted out as I took a look at the Lexus, “they’re going to be pissed when they come out and find the windows blown out.”
“I won’t miss the next time” Tania slurred through her clinched teeth.
“I believe you. It’s just there isn’t any way I can get you any money, unless we go to an ATM.” I explained the problem as succinctly as I could to her, as she sat there shaking with what I believe was frustration and rage combined. I guess her other dates were more prepared than I was to facilitate her robbing them. She was hoping for a quick score and here she picked the wrong target. So much for dinner, drinks and a quick getaway.
Finally she spoke, “Alright, start the car and drive to an ATM.”
“But there’s one right inside the door of restaurant. Wouldn’t it be quicker just to go inside and get it?” I suggested an alternative to driving around in a strange neighborhood trying to find an ATM.
“I said drive, Damn you! Drive!” she was becoming uncivil. I backed the car out of the spot and quickly exited the parking lot, turning right and drove to the end of the block and stopped at the stop light, which was red. So I stopped and asked, “Do you know where there is an ATM around here?”
“What?” she asked with a puzzle look on her face.
“I’ve never been in this neighborhood before and I don’t know where an ATM is? Do you?” I lied of course, I mean wouldn’t you? She was holding a gun on me and expecting me to take her to an ATM to rob my bank account. I mean, I’m a nice guy, but there are limits.
“How should I know? You’re the man, find one!” she demanded, so I turned left. I knew this would lead us into a warehouse district, in the opposite direction of the nearest bank. After a few minutes of turning this way and that way, each street leading us further into the warehouse district, she demand that I pull over. “Get out of the car!” she screamed at me, the moment I stopped.
“Wait a minute. This is dangerous neighborhood. If there’s anybody around, they’re up to no good and they’ll probably mug me.” I protested.
“I don’t care, get out!” she shouted once again. I slowly opened the door and pulled the key from the ignition and started to slide out when she yelled, stop. I did, half in and half out, of the car. “Give me the keys, jerk.” she ordered. I started to slide back in, while I reached out my hand with the keys in it. “Stop there. You don’t need to get back in. Hand me the keys over your shoulder and get out.”
“Ok” I said as I reached over my shoulder and dropped the set of keys.
“Get out, get out. You aren’t fooling me. You did that on purpose. Get out and move back away from the car.” Tania instructed me, providing a poke in the back with the gun for emphasis.
‘Hey, I’m going, I’m going. Take it easy!” I complained so she might feel she was in charge and maybe she’d then relax and lower her guard. I stood up and had taken about ten steps from the car, when she yelled for me to stop. I did as I was told, but I also quickly turned around and found her digging between the seat and the console. She was holding the gun up and out towards me, but she was clearly focused on the search. She glanced at me for a brief moment and went right back to searching.
I moved as quickly and quietly as I could, towards the back of the car. As I moved to my right, I also moved closer to the car, until I was right up next to the car. I crouched down so she couldn’t see me. It became strangely quiet as I waited to hear what Tania was up to, either getting out of the car or climbing over the console into the driver seat.
Time dragged by so slowly, I started to get a cramp in my back, due to being hunched over and crouched down for so long, but I endured and I waited for Tania to make her move. Finally she did. I heard her shifting around in the car, it wiggled next to me, as I imagined her twisting and turning to trying to see where I’d gone. She groaned loudly, as she pounded the dashboard with what sounded like the butt of her gun. It was solid thud. Damn, I hope it didn’t damage the dashboard.
When the car wiggled again I stole a peak over the edge of the side panel and I saw her climbing over the console into the driver’s seat. She was just tall enough, that she had to wiggle a lot to get herself over the console and then, slip her long luscious legs under the steering wheel. Any second now, she’d have to lean over to reach the door, which I had left open on purpose, as far as I could. I did so knowing she’d have to lean way out of the car to reach it. And being a good foot shorter than me, she’d be very venerable when she did. When she leaned over to grab it, I’d grab her. Then I’d toss her pretty little butt into the street and I’d drive away, leaving, my would be robber, to fend for herself in the middle a high crime district without her gun for protection. She kept wiggling and wiggling, something told me something wasn’t right, so I backed up around the rear corner of the car and waited. Suddenly the wiggling stopped and I stole another peek. This time, I looked over the car’s trunk lid and I didn’t see her. I dropped to the ground and peeked under the car, knowing I’d see her feet if she had gotten out and I‘d know which way to go.
What I saw, was her shadow. She was leaning out of the car door, gun first, looking for me before she reached for the door. She was smart, she’d thought about what I try and she was taking reasonable precautions. If it hadn’t been for my sixth sense, I’d have been either back being held at gun point or worse, lying on the pavement having been shot. As soon as I could tell she had sat back up, I moved. I ran around the corner of the car and raced right up to her. I grabbed her arm and pulled as hard as I could. She flew out of the car and bounced off the car door on the way. Upon impact the gun went off and she screamed, as the hard collision against the door, had dislodged the gun from her hand. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw it slide under the car and out reach for the moment.
I flung her into the street after bouncing her off the door, where she sprawled on her hands and knees after doing a somersault, which made a mess of her dress and hair.
It also tore up her knees, elbows and hands. But somehow even with the slight case of road rash she was still gorgeous. I almost felt sorry for her, but not really.
“You son of….” She started to yell but I cut her off.
“Hey, there’s no need to swear at me. You thought I’d just let you steal me blind?”
“You’re a real jerk. I’d have left your wallet.” She proffered as she did her best to get up without exposing any her private parts. It wasn’t easy since the dress was kind of tight and short to start with. “You didn’t have to throw me on the ground. You’ve ruined my dress.” She actually thought this was a reasonable point for her to be making after having held me at gun point.
“Gee, that’s too bad. Don’t they give you a discount on dry cleaning down at the arm robbery union?” I tried to retort glibly but failed.
“You’re a jerk. So what, you’re just going to leave me here, in this bad neighborhood?” she inquired, while giving me puppy eyes.
“Yeah, I hate to inflict you upon them, but I’m willing to bet that they can handle you.” Yeah, that was better, not too funny but sassy. Everybody fumbles now and then.
She started to walk towards me and I gave her the look, the one I give my nephews when they’re about to act out. It worked, she stepped back and I could tell she was resigned to her fate. It never worked on the nephews. I glanced into the car, saw my wallet on the passenger seat and started to slide in when she started shaking the set of keys I had dropped.
“It’s going to be hard to drive way without these.” She stood there shaking the keys and acting smug.
I gave her a big fake, “Oh my God!” look, as I reached into my pocket and pulled the real car keys out. I then stuck the key in the ignition and turned it. The engine roared to life. I’d switched the keys with a set of old keys, I’d found in the junk drawer at home. It was another fortunate mistake, to have forgotten to take them out of my pocket, before I picked her up for dinner. I had no idea what those old keys, she was holding went to, but I was pretty sure, they were of no value to me. Every key I needed or used, was on the key ring with my car keys.
I reached out and closed the door, looked up, smiled politely and started to pull away, when I remembered that the gun was on the ground under the car. She was running as fast as she could to get it, now that I had moved. I gunned the car and swung around the corner, as if I were driving in a NASCAR race. She managed to fire off a couple of rounds in my direction, but they were way wide. I honked my horn several times ina parting gesture, as I broke the land speed record getting the hell out of there.
I made good time on the trip home, and as I pulled into the driveway, I noticed that she had left behind her purse. I picked it up and opened it and there wadded up, buried in the bottom under a cell phone, breath mints, address book, makeup crap, scrapes of paper, condoms, tampons and a wallet, was a huge chunk of money wrapped with a rubber band. I pulled it out and discovered that she had a wad of hundred dollar bills, around a wad of twenties and fifties. A quick count showed that she left behind, just under ten grand. I rifled through the rest of her purse and discovered her wallet had another five hundred dollars in it and that her name wasn’t Tania it was Andrea. Andrea Cole. She didn’t live where I had picked her up, but in a completely different city. No wonder she wanted to meet me at the curb outside her apartment. Luckily, she had no idea of my actual address, but she might have memorized my license plate number, so I took the cash including the cash in her wallet and then backed out of the driveway and drove off into the night.
The purse and all of it’s contents minus her license and the cash, went in the trash bin back at the restaurant, then I went back home and went to bed. I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d see Andrea again. Most likely, she’d just show up with her gun in hand or worse with the police, claiming I robbed her. And to think, I didn’t get a good night kiss or even the promise of a second date.
******
WHAT NO SECOND DATE? By Chris Keys
It was a gun, all silver and shiny! I wasn’t expecting to see one here, I mean, after all it was only our first date and yet, there it was pointing directly at me.
“Give me your wallet, Romeo” Tania was demanding. Tania was my date for the evening. She was a truly beautiful brunet with long legs and a great smile. She was wearing a form fitting dress which the minimum left to the imagination.
“What’s with the gun? Dinner conversation not up to your usual standards?” I asked, as I stared at the gun. It looked like it was a 32 cal. or maybe a 22 cal. It was small. It fit snuggly in her hands. Women have small hands and it was made for someone with small hands. I doubt my finger would even fit in the trigger guard, let a lone pull the trigger.
“Shut up and hand it over. Don’t make me shoot you.” Tania threatened.
“Do you shoot people often? I mean on the first date?”
“Shut up and give me your wallet, NOW!” Tania hollered as her face got red and her eyes took on menacing look. It was hard to believe that this gorgeous babe was robbing me, after we just had diner together.
As I struggled to get my wallet out of my back pocket, I asked, “So, what? You accept dates, so you can set the guy up to rob him after dinner?”
“Something like, that.” She answered smugly. “Hurry up!”
“And here, I thought we had some chemistry.”
“Oh please, take a good look at you and a good look at me. Do you really think there could be chemistry between us? Please, you’re so far beneath me.” She delivered the cut with the practiced skill of a surgeon. She had a point though, I was an almost in shape guy with less than perfect hair, an ok smile and plain to average looks. But I do have big hands, really big hands.
“It’s nice to know that you have such a healthy self esteem” I managed to get the wallet free finally and I sat there holding it.
“Give me the wallet. Nice and easy or I’ll blow a hole thru you!” Tania snarled, but it was hard to accept that this super babe was also a stone cold criminal. Hell, with most men, all she’d have to do get their wallet was ask and bat her eyes, while slipping her arm in theirs and they’d gladly do whatever she asked. She didn’t need a gun, not as long as she had that body, that face and that smile.
“There’s no money it.” I said as I handed it to her, nice and easy as instructed. I certainly didn’t want a hole blown thru me.
“There has to be. I know this restaurant isn’t cheap and I saw you pay with cash.” Tania stated curtly as she opened the wallet and stared in to it. Then she asked, “What the hell is this?” she suddenly raised the gun to shoulder height, dropping the wallet and grabbing the gun with both hands to steady her aim. “Well?”
“I told you, it didn’t have any cash in it.”
“Where’s the money?”
“I brought just enough to cover dinner and a tip. I was planning on stopping at an ATM, if the night managed to stretch into extra innings, so to speak.” I liked the fact that I used a baseball analogy, it showed her I was multifaceted. I’d used a football analogy earlier in the evening and it had seemed to impress her. Maybe she’d see how cool I was at gun point and her opinion of me might improve.
“Look jerk! I have a gun and I’m going to shoot you in two minutes if you don’t produce some cash. Now where is it?” she was actually starting to scare me now, since she had spittle dribbling out of the corner of her mouth. I think her patience was running out and she was starting to get irate.
“Hey, you should have mentioned something about my needing extra cash on me, for the after the date robbery, before we had dinner. There was an ATM inside the front door next to coat check.” she fired the gun. Luckily, I’d opened the window when we first got in for the drive home. It was a fairly warm night and I had thought some fresh air would have been a good thing. As it turned out, it saved me the cost of a window, but the Lexus parked next to me; well, it would not only, need a passenger side window but a driver’s side window as well. The bullet went clean through both windows, shattering them. It made one of those spider web designs that safety glass is famous for in each window, and then it impacted in the brick wall beyond, leaving a circular scar on the wall.
“Damn,” I blurted out as I took a look at the Lexus, “they’re going to be pissed when they come out and find the windows blown out.”
“I won’t miss the next time” Tania slurred through her clinched teeth.
“I believe you. It’s just there isn’t any way I can get you any money, unless we go to an ATM.” I explained the problem as succinctly as I could to her, as she sat there shaking with what I believe was frustration and rage combined. I guess her other dates were more prepared than I was to facilitate her robbing them. She was hoping for a quick score and here she picked the wrong target. So much for dinner, drinks and a quick getaway.
Finally she spoke, “Alright, start the car and drive to an ATM.”
“But there’s one right inside the door of restaurant. Wouldn’t it be quicker just to go inside and get it?” I suggested an alternative to driving around in a strange neighborhood trying to find an ATM.
“I said drive, Damn you! Drive!” she was becoming uncivil. I backed the car out of the spot and quickly exited the parking lot, turning right and drove to the end of the block and stopped at the stop light, which was red. So I stopped and asked, “Do you know where there is an ATM around here?”
“What?” she asked with a puzzle look on her face.
“I’ve never been in this neighborhood before and I don’t know where an ATM is? Do you?” I lied of course, I mean wouldn’t you? She was holding a gun on me and expecting me to take her to an ATM to rob my bank account. I mean, I’m a nice guy, but there are limits.
“How should I know? You’re the man, find one!” she demanded, so I turned left. I knew this would lead us into a warehouse district, in the opposite direction of the nearest bank. After a few minutes of turning this way and that way, each street leading us further into the warehouse district, she demand that I pull over. “Get out of the car!” she screamed at me, the moment I stopped.
“Wait a minute. This is dangerous neighborhood. If there’s anybody around, they’re up to no good and they’ll probably mug me.” I protested.
“I don’t care, get out!” she shouted once again. I slowly opened the door and pulled the key from the ignition and started to slide out when she yelled, stop. I did, half in and half out, of the car. “Give me the keys, jerk.” she ordered. I started to slide back in, while I reached out my hand with the keys in it. “Stop there. You don’t need to get back in. Hand me the keys over your shoulder and get out.”
“Ok” I said as I reached over my shoulder and dropped the set of keys.
“Get out, get out. You aren’t fooling me. You did that on purpose. Get out and move back away from the car.” Tania instructed me, providing a poke in the back with the gun for emphasis.
‘Hey, I’m going, I’m going. Take it easy!” I complained so she might feel she was in charge and maybe she’d then relax and lower her guard. I stood up and had taken about ten steps from the car, when she yelled for me to stop. I did as I was told, but I also quickly turned around and found her digging between the seat and the console. She was holding the gun up and out towards me, but she was clearly focused on the search. She glanced at me for a brief moment and went right back to searching.
I moved as quickly and quietly as I could, towards the back of the car. As I moved to my right, I also moved closer to the car, until I was right up next to the car. I crouched down so she couldn’t see me. It became strangely quiet as I waited to hear what Tania was up to, either getting out of the car or climbing over the console into the driver seat.
Time dragged by so slowly, I started to get a cramp in my back, due to being hunched over and crouched down for so long, but I endured and I waited for Tania to make her move. Finally she did. I heard her shifting around in the car, it wiggled next to me, as I imagined her twisting and turning to trying to see where I’d gone. She groaned loudly, as she pounded the dashboard with what sounded like the butt of her gun. It was solid thud. Damn, I hope it didn’t damage the dashboard.
When the car wiggled again I stole a peak over the edge of the side panel and I saw her climbing over the console into the driver’s seat. She was just tall enough, that she had to wiggle a lot to get herself over the console and then, slip her long luscious legs under the steering wheel. Any second now, she’d have to lean over to reach the door, which I had left open on purpose, as far as I could. I did so knowing she’d have to lean way out of the car to reach it. And being a good foot shorter than me, she’d be very venerable when she did. When she leaned over to grab it, I’d grab her. Then I’d toss her pretty little butt into the street and I’d drive away, leaving, my would be robber, to fend for herself in the middle a high crime district without her gun for protection. She kept wiggling and wiggling, something told me something wasn’t right, so I backed up around the rear corner of the car and waited. Suddenly the wiggling stopped and I stole another peek. This time, I looked over the car’s trunk lid and I didn’t see her. I dropped to the ground and peeked under the car, knowing I’d see her feet if she had gotten out and I‘d know which way to go.
What I saw, was her shadow. She was leaning out of the car door, gun first, looking for me before she reached for the door. She was smart, she’d thought about what I try and she was taking reasonable precautions. If it hadn’t been for my sixth sense, I’d have been either back being held at gun point or worse, lying on the pavement having been shot. As soon as I could tell she had sat back up, I moved. I ran around the corner of the car and raced right up to her. I grabbed her arm and pulled as hard as I could. She flew out of the car and bounced off the car door on the way. Upon impact the gun went off and she screamed, as the hard collision against the door, had dislodged the gun from her hand. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw it slide under the car and out reach for the moment.
I flung her into the street after bouncing her off the door, where she sprawled on her hands and knees after doing a somersault, which made a mess of her dress and hair.
It also tore up her knees, elbows and hands. But somehow even with the slight case of road rash she was still gorgeous. I almost felt sorry for her, but not really.
“You son of….” She started to yell but I cut her off.
“Hey, there’s no need to swear at me. You thought I’d just let you steal me blind?”
“You’re a real jerk. I’d have left your wallet.” She proffered as she did her best to get up without exposing any her private parts. It wasn’t easy since the dress was kind of tight and short to start with. “You didn’t have to throw me on the ground. You’ve ruined my dress.” She actually thought this was a reasonable point for her to be making after having held me at gun point.
“Gee, that’s too bad. Don’t they give you a discount on dry cleaning down at the arm robbery union?” I tried to retort glibly but failed.
“You’re a jerk. So what, you’re just going to leave me here, in this bad neighborhood?” she inquired, while giving me puppy eyes.
“Yeah, I hate to inflict you upon them, but I’m willing to bet that they can handle you.” Yeah, that was better, not too funny but sassy. Everybody fumbles now and then.
She started to walk towards me and I gave her the look, the one I give my nephews when they’re about to act out. It worked, she stepped back and I could tell she was resigned to her fate. It never worked on the nephews. I glanced into the car, saw my wallet on the passenger seat and started to slide in when she started shaking the set of keys I had dropped.
“It’s going to be hard to drive way without these.” She stood there shaking the keys and acting smug.
I gave her a big fake, “Oh my God!” look, as I reached into my pocket and pulled the real car keys out. I then stuck the key in the ignition and turned it. The engine roared to life. I’d switched the keys with a set of old keys, I’d found in the junk drawer at home. It was another fortunate mistake, to have forgotten to take them out of my pocket, before I picked her up for dinner. I had no idea what those old keys, she was holding went to, but I was pretty sure, they were of no value to me. Every key I needed or used, was on the key ring with my car keys.
I reached out and closed the door, looked up, smiled politely and started to pull away, when I remembered that the gun was on the ground under the car. She was running as fast as she could to get it, now that I had moved. I gunned the car and swung around the corner, as if I were driving in a NASCAR race. She managed to fire off a couple of rounds in my direction, but they were way wide. I honked my horn several times ina parting gesture, as I broke the land speed record getting the hell out of there.
I made good time on the trip home, and as I pulled into the driveway, I noticed that she had left behind her purse. I picked it up and opened it and there wadded up, buried in the bottom under a cell phone, breath mints, address book, makeup crap, scrapes of paper, condoms, tampons and a wallet, was a huge chunk of money wrapped with a rubber band. I pulled it out and discovered that she had a wad of hundred dollar bills, around a wad of twenties and fifties. A quick count showed that she left behind, just under ten grand. I rifled through the rest of her purse and discovered her wallet had another five hundred dollars in it and that her name wasn’t Tania it was Andrea. Andrea Cole. She didn’t live where I had picked her up, but in a completely different city. No wonder she wanted to meet me at the curb outside her apartment. Luckily, she had no idea of my actual address, but she might have memorized my license plate number, so I took the cash including the cash in her wallet and then backed out of the driveway and drove off into the night.
The purse and all of it’s contents minus her license and the cash, went in the trash bin back at the restaurant, then I went back home and went to bed. I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d see Andrea again. Most likely, she’d just show up with her gun in hand or worse with the police, claiming I robbed her. And to think, I didn’t get a good night kiss or even the promise of a second date.
******
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