These are short stories put up each Friday that you can read for free. By the next Friday the post will be taken down and a new one will go up.
This is Bring Back Our Girls, Part 2/3 (map below)
Note: This is the fourteenth post in Free Fiction Fridays. These are short stories put up each Friday that you can read for free. By the next Friday the post will be taken down and a new one will go up. This is Bring Back Our Girls, Part 2/3 (map below) To be Concluded!
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I really got into a big time reviewing binge on Goodreads today. See, I’m not working on a whole lot right now. Well, I am, but I’m not. First, I don’t have any writing jobs for people right now, so that frees up some time, but puts the pinch on the finances. Next, I just finished a short ESL book and plowed through a lot of ancient history for another nonfiction book due later this month. I’m kind of taking a break today.
You Might Also LikeNote: From Heaven to Earth: Ancient Chinese History, 8500 - 1046 BC is now on sale! Do Chinese people believe in God? It’s a good question, and the answer is yes…sort of. It’s not the god you and I might think of, more along the lines of a mythical god. Actually…that’s not quite right either. See, it’s damn hard figuring out what people 10,000 years ago were thinking. The source materials aren’t that good, and often come from centuries later. Plus Buddhist and Taoist influences from centuries, and even millennia earlier, come into play. But I don’t want to bore you. I’ll do that later this month when Ancient Chinese History: From Heaven to Earth, 8500 to 1046 BC is released. Until then, wet your appetite on this legendary story of the Jade Emperor, which comes from one of the earliest manifestations of God, Shangdi. Enjoy! The Jade EmperorThe Jade Emperor came from another world, someplace called the kingdom of Pure Felicity and Majestic Heavenly Lights and Ornaments that had existed for at least 126 million years. His birth makes it clear he was not human. He emitted a “wondrous light that filled the entire kingdom,” no doubt making it clear to all around that a new day was dawning. A new day was what was needed. The world was a harsh place at that time, and people had it rough. Creatures of nightmares roamed about and people lived with suffering and want. Death was seen as better than living. The Jade Emperor was born into this world and his youth was spent doling out kind acts to the needy, particularly those that had been forgotten by society, such as the hungry, disabled, and poor. He treated all with respect and when his father died it was with a great happiness and hope from his people that he took the throne. The Jade Emperor knew he wasn’t ready, however. After ensuring everyone in the kingdom had peace and plenty, or at least as much as it could, he headed off to the Bright and Fragrant Cliff to cultivate his Tao. To do that he needed to engage in kalpas, which are extremely long periods of time, eons really. Sometimes they’re called trials, and those last even longer. The Trials of the Jade Emperor The Jade Emperor started with 1,750 kalpas, which totaled 129,600 years. It was enough quiet contemplation for him to attain Golden Immortality, which allowed him to study more. Going with the trials, he would have completed 3,200. Since each lasted 3 million years that would total 9.6 billion years. Whether the Jade Emperor cultivated his Tao for 100 million years or 9.6 billion is unknown, but what is known is that the outside world crept into his consciousness during that time. He was disturbed by something, a growing evil in the land. Shortly after the Jade Emperor had gone away the evil he’d done such a good job ridding the world of once again returned. What this evil was isn’t known, although it was some kind of powerful entity that had one desire – to overthrow the existing hierarchy of deities and enslave the world to its cause. To do that it’d need power, and to get power it had to cultivate its Tao, just like the Jade Emperor was doing. But whereas the Jade Emperor went 3,200 trials, this evilness only went 3,000 trials. This impatience proved to be a fatal mistake. 3,000 trials at 3 million years each would be an even 9 billion years. No one can really blame the evil entity for thinking that was long enough to gain the power needed to rule the world, long enough to cultivate its Tao fully. Coming out of its long slumber, the evilness was able to rally an army of demons to its side. With them it attacked Heaven and succeeded in defeating all of the deities. The world looked finished. The Most Epic Battle…Ever! Defeating deities wasn’t something even the most evil of evils could do overnight, and the process in fact took closer to 200 trials, or 600 million years. It was just the amount of time the Jade Emperor needed to fully cultivate his own Tao, the Tao the world needed in the most epic battle the planet’s ever seen. Mountains became plains and deserts turned to sea as the two cosmic beings fought across Heaven and Earth. How long their battle raged is unknown, but eons wouldn’t be a bad guess. In the end the extra 200 trials that the Jade Emperor had endured proved the difference. Those extra trials had taught him the power of benevolence, or giving selflessly. The evil entity knew no such thing, and perhaps that was the reason it’d originally stopped the trials early. Whatever the case, the Jade Emperor defeated the evilness and banished it from the Earth. The remnants of the evil’s army were scattered by what was left of the pantheon of Gods and the few immortals still living. Light returned to the land, and it was clear to Gods and men that the Jade Emperor was the Supreme Divinity, or God. Read another excerpt about the ancient Xia Dyansty and the Great China Flood of 2200 BC. Or just go ahead and buy this great book on Amazon or Smashwords today! Notes
Allan, Tony and Charles Phillip, and John Chinnery. Land of the Dragon: Chinese Myth. Duncan Baird Publishers: London, 2005. Christie, Anthony. Chinese Mythology. Hamlyn Publishing: Feltham, 1968. Harper, Donald. “A Chinese Demonography of the Third Century B.C.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 1985. Jeaneane D. Fowler and Merv Fowler. Chinese Religions: Beliefs and Practices. Sussex Academic Press: Eastbourne, 2008. Xinzong, Yao. Chinese Religion: A Contextual Approach. Bloomsbury Academic: London, 2010. p 154. Yang, Lihui, et al. Handbook of Chinese Mythology. Oxford University Press: New York, 2005. This is the tenth post in an ongoing series of useful and interesting content that goes up each Wednesday. Here you can find links to different SEO, content marketing, social media marketing, self-publishing, and other various articles from the past week that I think you might like. This week there are 18 articles. Enjoy! Post removed 03/26/151234...knock on the doorBack in December I wrote a post about Taking Back Your Internet Bookmarks. In that post I talked about the sites I visit regularly, or bookmark using Ctrl-D with Google Chrome, which is the browser I prefer. Lately I’ve run into a problem, much like I did back then, where I have too many sites crowding my bookmark bar. You can see the sites I’ve got on the side there, and I like to keep that bar within one screen length. And to do that I’ve got to get rid of 19 bookmarks from that list. So which will go and which will stay? Let’s take a look, and maybe you’ll get some ideas on how to manage your bookmarks bar as well. My BookmarksI try to keep my bookmarks bar segmented into three areas:
Sites that get added to my bookmark bar automatically go to the bottom. Sometimes I immediately go in and move it where it needs to go in that general group dynamic, sometimes I just let them sit. And that has a tendency to clutter the bottom of your internet bookmarks bar with a lot of debris. Really, do you need all those sites? I’m willing to bet your bookmark bar might have twice as many sites as mine, and perhaps no general layout or planning involved. That’s a bummer, but not impossible to fix. All you need to do is get rid of those useless sites. My ‘Useless’ Sites Alright, right away I’ll be stepping on some feathers here. After all, no one wants to see their site get axed. But unfortunately that’s what happens, and you just happen to be invited to this public execution. Here are the sites I’m culling from the list, and why:
Sites That Are Damn Close to Going These sites are just not that valuable to me anymore, and I’m thinking of cutting them. They were spared this time, but that should be a clear sign they need to improve, in my opinion, in order to have the honor of staying on my bookmark bar. Yes, it is an honor.
Adding Old SitesSome people run into a problem when they’re organizing they’re bookmarks bar – they add more sites. I’m going to do that today, and let me tell you why. There were two sites that I cut back in December, Copyblogger and Boost Blog Traffic. Lately I’ve gone to those sites a bit more, and I think I’ll add them back because of that, and also because I’m tired of typing their name into Google (I typically misspell the name to give the SEO folks a tough time, and to remind them of what can happen when they cross me). Now, those two sites will be added back, but as you can see, with the cuts I’ve made I’ve still got a decent bookmark bar. Alas, the work is never done, and this is just one step in a continual and often agonizing process. I’m glad you were here with me today to lend support, and I hope you’re not scared away for good by what you’ve witnessed here today. You Might Also LikeHippos are interesting creatures. They have huge proportions, which reflect their sedentary lifestyle. The fact is, hippos don’t move around a whole lot. Yep, they’re lazy. Hippos tend to stay in groups of about fifteen animals, and they have a clear hierarchy there. The older the hippo the more of a social rank it has, and if it’s a male it’s even better. There are two main types of hippos, the East African hippo and the West African hippo. The first is the larger of the two and the one we commonly think of. They weigh 3,300 to 4,000 pounds, or two tons. It’s quite common for them to get larger, and 7,000 pounds is not unheard of for older males. The largest hippo ever recorded was 9,900 pounds (4,500 kg). The smaller hippos are often called pygmy hippos and they’re a bit more shy, tending to stay in forests. If they ever ran into a larger hippo they’d surely feel cowed, and probably wouldn’t wish to do so again. All hippos have a squat and bulky body set atop four stumpy legs. To support all their weight the feet have four toes, each with webbing between them, which helps the beast swim and remain upright on land. And they need to stay on land to eat the typical 150 pounds of grass they go through each day. Interestingly, hippos have no sweat glands or sebaceous glands, both of which wet and lubricate the skin and keep it cool. So hippos can get quite hot quite quickly, and to make up for this they often stick to the water. But they don’t need to – hippos sweat blood. Well, it’s not blood per se, but it’s a viscous red fluid that really starts pouring forth when the animal’s excited. So they’re hot-blooded, hot-skinned, hot-tempered but no so hot to trot. That’s fine, they don’t much care what others think of them, so happy are they to stick to their groups and wile away the days near their mud holes and rivers. One of the main problems hippos run into involves water, however, and more precisely, the lack of it. When hippos don’t have enough water they have to travel over land, and they don’t like this because it disrupts their normally pleasant routine. See, hippos are lazy, and they don’t like change. It angers them, and there’s nothing that will pose a greater danger to you than an angry hippo. What’s more, when there’s a lack of water in one area there’s often a lack in another. Now different groups of hippos are forced to congregate around ever-diminishing pools of water, and this leads to animosity, bellicosity, and eventually aggression and violence. Yes, Hippos fight, frequently and without cause. A quick look at one of the hairless beasts gallivanting around will tell you that. They’re scarred and maimed and going about with open sores that turn to scars. These scars come from their large teeth, razor-sharp, and which they aren’t afraid to use. Tusk-like canines mesh with knife-like incisors, the perfect flesh-tearing tools. When agitated the hippo will snort and bellow and generally try to get its way. When this fails it charges forth, the blood pouring forth from its deformed sweat glands, its beady eyes locked onto its target. It either succeeds or it fails, but either way it’ll leave the battle with more scars than it had going in. Often nothing is accomplished from these fights, but hippos have been persisting in them since the dawn of time. Sources: http://www.outtoafrica.nl/animals/enghippo.html Each month I get emails on this site. Sometimes they’re people asking for advice, other times they’re people telling me how stupid I am. I thought it’d be fun to take a look at some of the questions I get from people. Maybe I can answer them here and you can get some ideas or solutions for your own problems, whatever they may be. Question from June: How can I get my Book on Createspace? What problems will I run into? A lot, more than you could ever imagine, enough to make you want to give up for good, and probably carry through on it. Createspace is a bitch and if you’re new to it good luck. You might want to find someone that will do the formatting and uploading. What will that cost? I don’t know – probably anywhere from $50 to $500. Createspace says itself that it’ll get you the cover you need for $399. Fucking-A! Who has that? I sure don’t! I’ve got maybe $20 I can spend to get my current eBook cover turned into the PDF cover (complete with back and spine) that I need. And let’s not get into the problems you’ll encounter when you have to copy/paste your eBook into a Createspace template (typically 6x9). And let’s not get into the problems nonfiction books hold either, especially with pictures or with internal color formatting and such. What the hell am I talking about? Take a look at these screenshots I took to show someone why their current manuscript would be so difficult to get formatted for Createspace: As you can see, there are lots of problems that go along with Createspace formatting and uploading, and I’m just getting around to getting all my books on that platform. It’s a super pain, and if you want help with your book, let me know. I do this for people, and depending on the severity of the job you’re looking at $50 to $150 with me. I won’t take jobs like that above, simply because I can’t solve your problems. I mainly focus on people that have eBooks on Amazon now that want to expand into print, and also those that have nothing and need to start from scratch to get their book on the Amazon and selling. If any of that jazz interests you, contact me and we can talk. Question from Pat: I don’t know anything about blog tours. How do I get one set up? The best place to look for this is in my book Tour Your Book. It has 50 different sites that will help you, and this also saves you time from looking around on Google. Trust me – 10 minutes of that shit and you’ll be ready to throw in the towel! If you don’t want to spend any money on my book then I’d suggest you check out the post I did on the Top 7 eBook Blog Tour sites on The Book Designer or check out the category on Guest Posts & Blog Tours. Most of what you’re looking for is in one of those places. Question from Ziggy: Can you check out my book if you maybe have time and possibly, well, I don’t want to come right out and say this, but could you leave a review too? I don’t really do this stuff anymore, Ziggy. Personally, I don’t email people to check out my book or review it – that’s what I have a website for. Besides, no one’s clamoring to review my books, so I don’t really give a damn about someone that’s got the same problem as me. If I was interested in getting a review from someone that didn’t care about my book I’d go to the Author Promotion Group on or the Authors/Readers Group, both on Goodreads. Question from Marty: How do I pay someone to promote my books? This is a good question, and I have no ideas. You could pay me, but then you’re looking at a lot of money. Let’s look at one example.
Let’s say you’ve got a decent book and the cover is good and the blurb and look inside are all good – your three-legged marketing stool is in place. So can you get BookBub? Well, let’s submit it. And let’s submit it to a few other big sites that cost a lot of money. Let’s say you get all of those (read more about 75 sites that promote eBooks here) and they want their payment. So for just a few top sites like BookBub and eReader News Today or Kindle Nation Daily you’re looking at $500 to $1,000 if not more. Now let’s get some of those middling sites that aren’t going to be as effective but which will give you some exposure, and possibly even a few sales. That will probably cost an extra $200 to $300 right there. What sites are these? Bargainbooksy, Booksends…things like that. But let’s not forget about all the smaller and free sites. If you want to do a free promo we need to get those. The good news is that you’re looking at just $50 to $150 or so, maybe less. And let’s get all that social media marketing on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and whatever other places you’re using. You do have accounts set up already, right? I suppose we better get on Goodreads and get you set up there, if you’re not already, and if you don’t want to do it, then I better get an account set up with forums like Kboards and the Amazon Forum so I can get your name out there, or at least username. So should I be paid for all that, and how long does something like that take? Perhaps a better question is, ‘do you have $1,000 to $2,000 to spend on eBook marketing with no guarantee that you’ll sell even a copy, let alone sell a copy a month from now when it’s all said and done. Still want to hire someone to do our eBook marketing? Note: This is the thirteenth post in Free Fiction Fridays. These are short stories put up each Friday that you can read for free. By the next Friday the post will be taken down and a new one will go up. This is Bring Back Our Girls, Part 1/3 “But sir, I–” “You wanted this, remember?” Murray choked back his words, although he wasn’t exactly sure why. “Get that aspect of it going in Niger while General Orrin takes those eighty soldiers we’ve got in Chad and sends them to Lake Chad and into Nigeria if necessary – I want these people followed and anything they leave behind destroyed.” “And Shekau?” the CIA director asked. The President gave him a hard look. “I want his balls in a box and on my desk by the end of the week, got it?” To be Continued... In case you haven’t noticed, I added a new logo to the site. Yep, it’s right up there on the top, where the “Big Sky Words” title used to be. In case you’ve already forgotten, here’s a look at it: And as you can see, the new logo looks like this: The whole reason for this is for branding purposes. I want to use something that looks the same for everything, everywhere. That’s why I’m using that same logo on the title page of all my books, at least the new ones I’m putting out. I’ll go back and do the 35 or so old ones later, mainly because it’s a pain. So why the skull, and what does it mean? Well, a cow skull like that is an easily-recognizable symbol to most people in Montana for Montana. You see these things dotting the landscape, and it’s just…well, I don’t know. It just seemed right. So that’s what’s on my website now, and I realize that might rub some people the wrong way. So let’s vote on it. Below is a poll, and you can say which logo you like better. The results are public, so be careful – lives depend on this. So will the vote change anything? I don’t know – does voting change anything in America? I guess we’ll see right here in this lab of democracy called the internet. (Please more than 6 people vote) I’m doing a guest post on The Book Designer today. For those of you that don’t know, The Book Designer is one of the top self-publishing sites out there. If you want advice on eBook covers, eBook marketing, or formatting eBooks then this is the place you want to have on your bookmark bar. It’s that first point they really do the best on, however – eBook covers. And that’s the topic of my guest post today, which is called “Using Freelancer Contests for Your eBook Covers.” So what’s it about? It’s about using freelance cover designers from all over the world to get your eBook covers dirt cheap. This is how I get the vast majority of my eBook covers, and it works for me. Well, if you want to call working the ability to get your book on Amazon. When it comes to sales, maybe not so much. I got an email from someone a week ago, a cover designer. She had found my site and thought to mention that my poor eBook covers were likely the reason for my poor sales. She said that if I was just using a professional designer and not making the covers myself my sales would surely improve. Maybe. But I haven’t made my own book covers since…oh, probably February, 2013, a month after I first got started. Instead I use Freelancer, and perhaps those are just a little too homemade for some of you. Sorry. But remember, you’re not buying my books anyways. Nope, you’re coming here for free advice, and if you want that today, you’ll have to go The Book Designer. You Might Also Like |
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