Lubrican: Blog

Okay, I have explained this before, but some people don't read blogs, so I'll try again and just hope that they read it this time.

I write because I enjoy it. One side effect is that some people think I write well enough that they're willing to buy my books. That is a direct result of the education I got from SOL readers since 2005, as they coached me on how to be a better author.

For that reason, it is my policy to let all of my SOL family read everything I write for free. The caveat is, you have to download it as I post it, and save it on your computer. That is because, in some cases, the story will go behind the SOL pay wall.

Why?

Because I have learned the hard way that, that when I publish a book at Amazon or Smashwords.com, people (who are not members of the SOL family) Google the title and try to find it free somewhere. SOL is high up on the search algorithm, and if the story is posted for free at SOL, then people read it there, instead of buying it.

A lot of people think that all e-books should be free, just as they feel all music should be free.

Imagine you own a small business. Let's say you sell hot dogs. How would you respond if everybody approached you and said, "Give me a free hot dog." Would you be able to stay in business? Of course not.

I give free hotdogs to my SOL family, but not to the whole world. The only catch is, you need to grab that hotdog as soon as it comes off the grill.

I'm writing this because I've gotten numerous complaints that people were halfway through The Seventh Sense and then it went behind the pay wall. They were upset about this. They said it wasn't fair.

I started posting the story on the 13th of April and finished posting the story on the 25th of April. I left it in front of the pay wall until the 2nd of May. So, for roughly three weeks (during which the whole country was chafing under stay-at-home orders, with 'nothing to do' all that time) the story was sitting there, free to download.

Yes, you had to come back day after day, but I had to write it and post it every day, so we both had choices to make. If you had better things to do than download the story, then that's fine. You know what's important to you and what isn't. But if you just decided to wait and read it after if was completely posted, and then didn't download it for a week, I don't feel sorry for you. Especially since I posted blog entries about the length of the book and the posting schedule.

I offer it for free to a select group of people. I don't know of a lot of other authors who publish for sale who do that. I put blog entries out there giving you the information you need to know when to grab that hot dog off the grill.

So when you say I'm not fair for putting something behind the pay wall, it ticks me off, and I just don't feel like a horrible person.

I hope you and yours are safe from Covid 19

Thanks for reading.

Bob

First, I want to thank everyone for the very positive comments I received on this book. I wish I had more ideas like this one.

I got lots of suggestions about changing things. That's not unusual. Every reader has a unique imagination. In some cases people thought I should change details of the story because they "weren't possible". I get that, too, but this is science fiction, where "anything" is possible.

There was one change, however, that had to be made, because it went too far from reality. That was in the last part of the book, where I had babies being born without some genes. Even in science fiction, that stretches things.

There was a way to fix this, but it would have involved a lot of technical jargon and ethical issues I just didn't want to get into ... for now.

So, if you re-read this book some day, don't be surprised if you see something very different in the last part than you read before.

I just didn't want people writing to ask me if they'd gone crazy. A whole bunch of you lovely readers are old coots, like me, and our memories are a little tired, sometimes.

Thanks for a great time. I really appreciate you all.

Bob

Okay, since a lot of us are sitting at home, Andy hurried up and I hurried up (which may not be a good thing) and the book I promised is ready to be posted.

If I didn't promise it, then that's just my memory fading in and out and this will be a big surprise.

Now, this one is different. I know I've said that before, but this one is really different. Remember the woman who saved the Earth from aliens by screwing them? It's that different. Except this one isn't a comedy.

I'm required to put codes on things. People get very upset when I don't, or when I leave a code off. But there is no code that satisfies me it correctly describes this book. I'm using science fiction and mind control, but under protest. I suppose it is science fiction, since it involves science. But it's not really mind control. Not in the usual sense. It isn't fantasy, either. I don't know what it is.

It's also presented oddly. The first seven parts are documents presented in court. They "tell the story" Reader's Digest style. That is followed by 19 more parts (chapters that are called parts, because that fits the story better) that then tell the story in detail, along with the ending of the court battle that the first seven parts teased you with.

I guess what I'm saying is, it may not be for everybody.

It is going to be published for sale, so if you do want to read it free, do it as it's posted. It will take a couple of weeks to post the whole thing. As usual, I'll leave it up a week or so after it's finished before it goes behind the pay wall.

I'm going to get mail of the "WTF???" kind from those who don't read my blog.

Now you won't send me that kind of mail.<G>

I hope you enjoy it. It was a great deal of fun to write and I tried to think of everything.

Your comments, as usual, are welcome.

Thanks for Reading
Bob

Oh! It's called The Seventh Sense.
I'd forget my head if it wasn't attached.

I've gotten a few inquiries as to the state of my health. I don't credit that to the quality of my writing. I'm pretty sure all my regular readers know how old I am, and that I'm prime meat for this virus. So it's normal for there to be a betting pool on how long I'll last.

That said, ever since my Army days, I've always been a sort of closet prepper, buying in bulk, to the point my wife often complained. "Why do we need that much of X?" she would say. She's not complaining anymore.

I've never had lots of money, so I've always repaired what I could, manufactured what I could, and all that sort of thing. I'm a life member of The Handyman Club of America. I also live out in the country, so I don't have neighbors around to infect me.

Basically, staying home isn't a pain for me. I have lots of chores to do, and I'm working on four different writing projects. Andy (my wonderful editor) has a very long book I sent him that he's poring over, which may be ready by May. He found a technical issue that will take me a week to fix when it gets back to me and then I can start posting it.

It will be interesting to see what people say about it. There isn't really a code for this kind of book. It's not mind control, but has elements of mind control in it. It doesn't fit "fantasy". It's definitely science fiction, but only because science is involved, and it's a fictional story. I have no idea how to code it.

Anyway, I'm alive and kicking. There's only one case of the virus where I'm living and that person is quarantined.

So thanks for asking. I hope you all are safe and sound, as well.

Thanks for reading.
Bob

This might seem like a long, rambling kind of entry, but there's a point to it. Fair warning. When I get to the part about smoking dope, you'll probably think I got wasted before writing this.

I was, as the British would say, "mucking about" in some of the folders on my memory box (computer) the other day, and found something interesting.

I should give you the background on my memory boxes. I prefer PCs, because my fingers are large and don't work very well, and when I try to type on a laptop it looks like this: Ihgq[ig lotgw of wong =kleys.

A full size keyboard cuts down on the gobbledy gook.

So every once in a while, the PC either dies, or (more usually) the benevolent overlord Microsoft comes up with a new operating system.

This means I get a new PC, and that means I have to to copy 200+ books and stories, and the 250+ ideas in my project folder, and all my half finished projects onto a flash drive and move them onto my new hard drive.

Then I store the old computer (if it still works) because that's my ultimate backup. I still have my original PC, which booted with a floppy disk that has DOS 3 on it, I think.

Anyway, the easiest way to do all this copying and pasting is to copy whole directories (folders, to you wet behind the ears types) at once. Then I dump them into a directory I call "Old machine", from which I can pull things out to establish new working folders. This lets me clean house, so to speak. There's lots of stuff I started, but which died a deserved death. I won't throw it away completely, but I can relegate it to "old machine" status.

Now, if you ever smoked weed, you might be familiar with the term "second generation joint". I only know about this because my friends smoked weed in college. I experimented with it, but like Bill Clinton, never inhaled.

What I have, though, are second (and third and fourth and fifth) generation folders in the cobwebby "old machine" folder on my computer. I mean there are files in there that have dates in the 1999 time frame. They survived Y2K.

And once in a blue moon, there will be a pearl lying within the mud. It may be a stinker in and of itself, or as written, but the idea is a great one. And something I wasn't skilled enough to write in 2001 might be within my talents, now.

What I found, the other day, was a story I think I originally wrote to enter into a Valentines Day contest of some sort. I think that's what it was, because it was in a folder called "contests and unpublished".

But I don't think I ever entered it into a contest. That's probably because it's 6 chapters long, and most contests won't accept anything that long. But it couldn't be any shorter without gutting it. Imagine Beauty and the Beast with just Beauty in it.

So I rewrote it and, since there is no contest to enter it into, I'm just going to post it this year as my Valentine to all my readers.

It's what I'd call a reflective story, looking back on what might have been your life, if you were a boy raised in say, the fifties, sixties or seventies. If you're younger than that, then it might have been your father's story. There's more innocence in it than there would be in today's youth.

I often get mail from people who tell me a story of mine dredged up a (happy) memory from their youth. The memory I hope this one dredges up is pinning a corsage on a girl's dress, and in the process sliding your fingers between her dress and breast in the process - right in front of her parents.

That part of this story is definitely autobiographical.

So, two chapters a day should get the whole thing up before the big day.

Happy Valentine's Day to everybody.

Bob