After purchasing some lunch meat from my local supermarket, and then making a sandwich using its contents, slopping on the appropriate condiments, I paused just before placing it in my mouth and biting down. Thinking, Well, here goes.
Archive for July, 2010
Lunch meat & moi
Friday, July 30th, 2010My two published novels from 2009 are now available on Kindle
Thursday, July 29th, 2010
It’s taken a while but I have my two books up and running as Kindle eboooks, via Amazon, of course.
You can find the “link to Self-Portrait of Someone Else” here.
You can find the link “How to Find Yourself (or a reasonable facsimile)” here.
Pricing is $2.99 from Amazon.com.
(Should insert “What a deal!” and other exclamation marks here.)
Purchasing these outside the USA will be higher than my stated price, as Amazon adds some suspect transfer fees, and as we know, it’s oh so much more expensive to download files in the USA compared to, say, Canada or Belgium. There’s little I can do about it currently, because at this point, it’s Amazon’s way or the highway. It will no doubt remain this way until Amazon, slowly but surely, gets its act together as Kindle distribution centers are established in the rest of world. *see below
Note: my base price stays of $2.99 is the same, no matter what you are charged.
Anyway, if you have a Kindle, you can get my books and have a happier summer, a more expansive life and all in all general all-purpose beatific experiences….
Thanks for reading.
* (Update Aug.6, 2010) I believe I was wrong when I first posted this. I just ran into this:
“…in most EU countries, taxes on e-books are double the taxes on p-books, thanks to a rather bizarre ruling of the European Commission, which decided that the supply of a “book on any physical support comes under supply of goods, whereas the downloading of an e-book is defined as a supply of services. Therefore different VAT rates apply.” This quite clearly means that according to EU bureaucrats, taxation on books should be lower, because they are printed on paper or stored on a DVD, and not because the book is a repository of culture and knowledge. Or to go one step further in this line of reasoning, for European bureaucrats the novels read on paper are culture, but the ones read on Kindle are not. I’m sure Marshall McLuhan would love this way of reasoning as it shows that European bureaucrats are true believers of his dictum that “the medium is the message”. However, in the context of the e-book trade, this puts European e-booksellers in a more difficult position than their American counterparts as they are burdened with higher taxes. ”
Link to this article.
1/5 – Rejection Letter—Grafton Books
Friday, July 23rd, 2010
Writers are always rejected, or their manuscripts are. This comes under the heading of, Things As They Are. The rejection does not stop, and oddly apologies rarely follow.
Way back when my first novel, “Self-Portrait of Someone Else”, was published by Viking-Penguin, New York, my literary agent at that time, Peter Lampack Literary Agency, set out to sell this self-same manuscript to a number of publishers based in the United Kingdom. It was the next step in my conquering the world.
As the refusals full of praise and regret came in, copies of the letters were kindly forwarded to me. To give equal measures of hope and despair, as these letters contained some of the best reviews/comments this novel ever received.
Now, with the novel re-issued under my own imprint, hidden people limited, I thought, in the interests of writerly retro-masochism and in a spirit of fun, I could construct some short videos around five of the rejection letters.
This first one I’m releasing was from Grafton Books. This editor thought I had a heck of future ahead of me. Well, twenty years later, my future came and went and I gave it a friendly wave at it as it passed by. Today my publishing future is pinging about on a different level of hustle and gumption.
If you want to read the actual letter, I put it into a pdf file and it is right here: Grafton Book Rejection Letter
Here’s THE VIDEO LINK! Enjoy. Leave comments on this site just below, or on the YouTube channel.
Thanks for reading.
Oh, and if you never saw my original launch video for this book, CLICK HERE TO VIEW, or the video where I read some real newspaper reviews this novel received, including from the New York Sunday Review of Books, CLICK HERE to view.
Thanks for reading and seeing and coming ’round. VE
P.S. Oh, if, in case, who knows, if you’re not the proud owner of your very own copy, CLICK HERE TO HAVE A CLOSER LOOK, read excerpts, hear audio excerpts, and links to Amazon where the book is available as print and via Kindle….
Links for July 22, 2010
Thursday, July 22nd, 2010
Here’s something I rarely do, but it’s the summer, and the heat has gotten to me, or something has gotten to me, & so you get this..
BIG BANG BIG BOOM – the new wall-painted animation by BLU. Extraordinary, fascinating animation. Boggles the mind how much effort and preparation this must have taken. The creativity speaks utterly for its own astonishing self.
CLICK HERE TO VIEW.
BEING AN AUTHOR, BEING A SCREENWRITER – Nick Harkaway, who has worked in films and published a novel, pretty much gets it spot on with both careers and how one is treated by those in the industries. Most amusing, most accurate.
CLICK HERE TO VIEW.
A LIVE SHOW IS A LIVING THING – Ryan Miller is a storyteller I know and here he pretty much gets it spot concerning the process of creating a story-monologue-performance for an audience, and how it evolves. Ryan’s headed to to the Edinburgh Festival in a few weeks.
CLICK HERE TO VIEW.
“WHO’S ON FIRST” – A classic. From Abbott and Costello. You may need to know a bit about American baseball. And the colorful nicknames they used to give players. While it’s high-standard comedy, it’s also about wordplay and the use of language at a rather sophisticated level. V. funny, and Costello is so spot on with his timing.
CLICK HERE TO VIEW.
Thanks for dropping by.
Cherries on top
Monday, July 19th, 2010
A while back, the cherry tree in my backyard did it blossoms. I did a short video of it: SEE IT HERE.
And now, deeper into the summer, this is what those blossoms foretold: many baskets of cherries, and this is just one of them:
This qucikie, short post is part of my summer “whatever comes up” holiday blog…
Summertime and the blogging is easy….
Monday, July 12th, 2010
Hi there, whoever you are reading this.
I’ve noted that some blog writing people take breaks over the summer, reducing frequency or simply quit posting material on their blogs. Not me. Oh no. “Buck the trend Eaton”, as I’m known in freaky cults better not mentioned here.
However, I am adjusting for a “summer blog schedule”.
What I’ve been doing—for those not paying close, obedient attention—was releasing audio clips on Mondays, videos on Wednesdays, and short-short stories on Fridays.
My summer schedule is going to be this (until a better idea pops up or I just plain Change My Mind):
One last summer video will be posted this next Wednesday, thereafter random actual written blog posts on what’s up and what’s going on. I’ve had some things on my mind and some on my plate, and what better time to put it out there but during the summer when few are paying attention?
To repeat: look forward to my tossing some thoughts and visions, expectations and plans, onto this blog over July-August, because a guy’s a guy, a writer’s a writer, and a storyteller has stories to tell.
Video: “Big Toe Walkabout” — flash fiction
Wednesday, July 7th, 2010…Here’s this popular short-short story, comes in three different forms:
WORDS
My short-short fiction piece, “Big Toe Walkabout” has proven to be popular story.
AUDIO
So after the story appeared, I made it into a Podcast/Audio clip.
VIDEO
Yet, maybe some out there would like to watch this big toe illustration while listening, so now I have made it as a one shot video story.
Yep, stories come in all sorts of packaging around here.
Enjoy, and endure. Thanks for reading, seeing, listening. And leave a comment below! Or in the YouTube comment box–I’ll get it.
AUDIO – Story of “Big Toe Walkabout”
Monday, July 5th, 2010 I wrote and posted a short-short story (read HERE–click it!) about a toe detaching itself from my foot to go live its life. It proved popular. So I recorded it.
Listen (and/or download) here: Big Toe Walkabout read by the author.
It’s less than 3 1/2 minutes.
Enjoy and thanks for dropping by. Don’t forget to leave a comment below! Vincent….