09:53 – More kit stuff today. At this point, we’re building subassemblies for stock that we can later use to assemble finished kits quickly. Basically, everything that doesn’t have shelf-life considerations gets built now in anticipation of the heavy sales period from late July through mid-October.
Last night, I started reading Rain Strickland’s Tipping Point, another PA novel written by a Canadian woman. And, like Theresa Shaver, Strickland is an actual storyteller who writes competently. This book gets a high percentage of poor reviews on Amazon, mostly from readers who take offense at the strong language and explicit sex, neither of which bother me. I made it through only the first 15% of the book last night, but so far it seems like a good addition to the genre. It’s available under Kindle Unlimited, so I went ahead and downloaded the second book in the series and stuck it in my TBR queue. Book Three is due out in June.
“…readers who take offense at the strong language and explicit sex…”
It is how actual living people talk and one of their favorite activities. The stuff I’ve been working on sporadically has some pretty salty dialogue, because these are working people, cops, soldiers, etc., but I don’t spend a lot of time and energy devising steamy sex-capades. And from what I’ve read in other fiction, esp. action-type stuff like this, it seems as though most writers throw in a couple of obligatory sex scenes just to have them there, in case anyone wants them, I guess, but they LOOK like they’re just tossed in. Any I do will likely be for comic effect, however.
Gorgeous day here; just took Mrs. OFD to the airport for her flights out to OK City, OK, one of the remaining four or five states she hasn’t been to yet. I think the others are Alaska, Hawaii, North Dakota, West Virginia and Arkansas. She just did a gig in MA, is now doing a week out there, and then has a three-day job down in Concord, NH. And we’re both still trying to get over whatever nasty little bug she caught out in Kalifornia and I’m still dealing with a painful lower back (when I’m standing or walking). Dealt with both situations before but being older it seems to take longer to recover.
I’ll be working on whatever I can manage this week, plus VA med appointments, dump run, and a quick visit to one of my two remaining firearms dealers that I care to deal with up here, over on South Hero Island, Lake Champlain. It seems like the closer they are to the “city” the less pleasant they are to deal with, and the more distant and rural, the better. My other guy is up over in Highgate Center, near the Quebec border. Closer than our twelve miles, anyway.
Heh. I like messing with tropes, cliches, and expectations, too. Be warned, though, that a lot of people vociferously object to such, in the form of low ratings or negative reviews. Other people do like this. I don’t know how the pluses and minuses balance out in terms of sales or views.
Re: grammar
I used to dither over minor issues. Not quite as much as Oscar Wilde with his comma, but nearly so. Now I might pause momentarily about using what is gramatically correct versus what scans better. For example, in this post, I thought about using “bothers” versus “bother”.
“…I thought about using “bothers” versus “bother”.”
I believe your choice was preferable, since you used “neither of which.” But “bothers” seems to work, also, though my ear picks it up as not as preferable, for some reason. Just because I got English grammar pounded into my head by Mr. Donovan half a century ago doesn’t mean I remember all the actual rules; they just come unbidden; they’re part of my DNA now.
Beyonce chose to honor two thugs with her music in support of BLM. Not a mention of the Black blood that flows daily in Chicago. Talk about pandering. Oh, wait, only Blacks killed by WHITEY! (that includes Zimmerman according to the MSM) matter. I’m sure Sharpless, Jackwagon and Fartinacan have Beyonce on their playlist.
“…with her music in support of BLM…”
Yo, lissen up, foolz; a more accurate rendition of the ack-shoo-all reality on the ground is to go back to the beginning of hip-hop and work forward to the present day, when so much of it glorifies gangsta lifestyles and slappin’ dem bitches around and blowin’ mofos away left and right.
Instead, millionaires Beyonce and JayZ will rake it in and get nothing but adoration and worship from the MSM and the music industry and most foolz out here will believe that only nasty white cops and Klansmen are working overtime to murder helpless black chillenz. Nothing, zero, about what they’re doing to each other in those cities, with nary a whitebread cracka anywhere in sight.
The other point worth mentioning is that former Obola commissar Rahm Emmanuel runs that city and it has among the strictest gun control zones in the country, yet there they are, a veritable combat zone 7×24 with shooting murders running nonstop. How can this be??? Oh yeah, that’s right: Twelve Years of Reagan-Bush and all them outlaw gunstore peeps and NRA types.
Also in a meta sense, look at the coverage of the clan rally in GA.
You’d think from the headlines, and pull quotes that it was the CLAN that got violent, but if you read the article closely, the only actual violence was the BLM and socialist agitators who violently attacked police.
And note the useless quotes at the end that anti protesters “wanted non violent” protest. Well you can want to fly to the moon, but it ain’t gonna happen. What one or two quoted people “want” is irrelevant.
nick
[snip] strong language and explicit sex, [snip]
I rather enjoy both, especially when combined. Or did you mean only in books?
[snip] coverage of the clan rally in GA. [snip]
Long personal history has caused me to assume that any & all Klan meetings will get violent, so I’m perfectly willing to preemptively go off on them.
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to buy a former employer for a song, and I declined for a number of reasons. The largest one other than the fact that I thought Barack Obama’s legacy as President would be a stake through the heart of small business, was my lack of marketing knowledge.
I still have no idea what to do about President Obama’s legacy, but I have found some useful marketing information that is free. Seth Godin’s blogalways makes me think, and he even has some free stuff that you can download. Stuff like this and RBT’s science kit business is helping me realize that I can start my own small business on the side. Given that I’m not the only one here with the itch to start a business on the side, I thought I would share the links.
Make it Internet-based and home-based.
“Given that I’m not the only one here with the itch to start a business on the side, I thought I would share the links.”
Thanks, Mr. Dave. I’m currently looking at three potential “…Internet-based and home-based” biz startup ideas and looking to write a short and pithy biz plan for one of them, in-progress. It’s also conducive to running without the net, or the Grid, for that matter.
My last internet-based, home-based business failed miserably. I was selling porn — specialty porn to a very discriminating market — but there just wasn’t enough of a market for Hillary Clinton nudes. In fact, my only customer was some guy down in Australia, and I hated taking his money because he was such a freak that I figured the money was contaminated.
“…my only customer was some guy down in Australia, and I hated taking his money because he was such a freak that I figured the money was contaminated.”
Bummer, man. You probably didn’t catch the news outta Oz back then, but that customer switched over from the outdated and so-1980s cis-hetero thing to wombats and kangaroos and other marsupials. If you’d known in time, you could have really made your fortune.
Hot tip for ya, though; if you still have that gigantic collection of Hillary nudes (that I’m sure YOU never peeked at), there’s a burgeoning market for them among younger musloid females and metrosexual men.
Already planning along those lines. Still trying to figure out what product/service to sell.
Porn, my man. Just don’t rely too much on a niche market that may not be large enough to support you.
Back in the late 90s I knew of a guy on a board based out in SF who was running a bunch of porn off multiple servers; he claimed he couldn’t keep up with the money rolling in or having to do upgrades to his hw and sw all the time. Not my cup of tea, though. My cup of tea will work either with or without the net and/or the Grid. It’s why e-books don’t send me, but ones I can hold in my hands still do. And watching all the Tube vids on how to do something or fix something pale beside the hands-on.
I consulted at one place which, among half a dozen other services for web-based businesses, cropped or pixelated pictures for porn companies. (For what it’s worth, the consulting I was doing was in fixing a pile of Python utility scripts written by someone who didn’t know what he was doing, nothing to do with their porn services.) No doubt they’ve been driven out of that market by low-cost labor in India or North Korea or wherever low-cost internet services are coming from these days.
but there just wasn’t enough of a market for Hillary Clinton nudes
You chose your subject poorly. Any clientele that would risk such exposure is already blind, going blind (yeh, I know the joke) and lives on the edges of society. Such folk probably not having access to a computer (or shower for that matter).
Re: strong language in books.
I prefer Heinlein to others, but I don’t object to strong language in books. I tend to prefer milder language, however. It’s how I was raised. If a book is packed with f-bombs, I tend to find a negative correlation with the writer’s (or editor’s) abilities. I find these books are generally not as enjoyable for me.
My late Grandfather told me any fool can swear. It takes real talent to tear someone down and build them back up with clean language.
And I never, in 45 years, heard my Dad swear. Before he passed he told me that he had a pretty foul mouth at work, but he left it there, because he thought we could use a good example at home.
So I keep it clean most of the time, because my kids can use a good example at home.
JimL, I agree in all particulars.
Hmm. No, that doesn’t sound pompous enough. How about…
I’m SteveF and I approve that message.