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July, 2011

  1. OY! Not ANOTHER Email address.

    July 22, 2011 by dbo355446115

    Along with your new web site, you notice I also suggested that you choose another /host and on the next line is a new email address. Now it was listed that way for a specific reason, while you are determining your new web sites name, I suggest checking out different hosting services. I will post a resources list, but the bottom line is that most host sights will register your name for free, at least for the first year, if you host your site with them. Now before I hosted my first web site I asked around and did a LOT of research about who had the best price, and that who I went with. The only problem was, the  folks I was asking didn’t host sites that were like mine, so what worked for them didn’t work for me. So don’t choose your host JUST on low cost alone, as a matter of fact I suggest you not buy ANYTHING just on cost alone.

    But I digress, the fact of the matter is, after my first yeqar I had a better idea of what needs I had and now I have 2 hosts, but only because I’m too lazy to move everything over to one, the last time I did that it took me a MONTH to get everything straightened out. In case youre wondering two of the most popular site hosts among writers seem to be 1and1.com and Godaddy.com. I wont inject my opinion other than to say I host 8 web sites with one of them and am very happy.

    On my second recommendation, do you remember why I suggested a new web site? Well just in case thee were a few reasons, but lets stick with three easy ones:

    1)         Branding: bubba@pfn.com is a great email address right? Its short, easy to remember, and most of all it means something to my family and friends. But it has nothing to do with, and doesn’t support my writing at all.

    2)         Organization: Remember I mentioned earlier that one of my hosts hold 8 of my web sites? Well by wimple math that could lead you to believe that I have at least 8 email addresses right? Umm yeah, I wish, I have at least 24 and that’s just with those 8 sights. However because of the way I organize them I don’t have to “check” 24 accounts a day. But to keep my book email separate from anything else, I need at LEAST one email for my book’s sight. (actually 3 but I’ll discuss that later)

    3)         Professionalism: I correspond with my students, with my readers and with corporate HR and Administrators for training. My students might get lost if they started getting email from yahoo@tnt.com, and I know my corporate clients don’t want email from anyone that they cant immediately identify. As a matter of fact a local hospital was trying to hire me, before I instituted this rule, and I couldn’t ever get an email through. It turned out that their firewall had marked one of the words in my personal site as a flag, and stopped all inbound emails. So don’t do anything that can stand in your own way.

    “But J, I can’t afford a web site or host or a new email address.” OK I get that, the past several years have not been kind to many of us. On the off chance that you absolutely can not find a way to buy, rent or barter for a new website with its own email address, you may use one of the free email services, with a few caveats. (you knew that was coming didn’t you?)

    1)        Choose one of the more respectable services. I recommend gmail.com for many reasons, but the offline tools that they offer alone make them a much better business tool than any of the others. Plus it may be funny that your home email address os at AWESOMEQB@NFL.COM again its not screaming professional author.

    2)        Choose a name that goes with your book. Lets say your book is on making guitars and someone already has GuitaMaker@gmail.com try for GuitarAuthor@gmail.com of GuitarModifier@gmail.com or something else that seems to describe what you do. The free services are a great way to get your feet wet, but sometimes they will try and assign you a name that just doesn’t work.

    3)        Look for one that is liberal with file sizes ad storage time. At one time it was rare for a free email to give you more than a few MB of storage, most offer a few GB to start, but it is something you want to watch for. If you use that email address to email copies of your book to and from your copyeditor, that can chew up your space VERY quickly. Also something that some of the larger services are offering is a related “cloud storage” area, so that your email isn’t used to store files (I know I have done that). GMAIL and MSN LIVE both have the tools that allow you to access their “cloud storage” from the mailbox.

     

    Finally one last note on cloud storage. If you use ONLY cloud storage to store, transfer and collaborate your book files, you deserve whatever happens to you. Now, understand I am not wishing you ill will, but working in IT for 20+ years has taught me 2 things First, it will crash, the question is when. Typically the answer is, when you can least afford it. Next, you will forget your password, again its only a matter of when. Some services make password recover very easy and well, I have a free email that I have been unable to access for 9 years, because may password stopped working one day, and their support kept promising me that they fixed it, and it wasn’t fixed, so, it is what it is.

     

    UNTIL THEN:

    Facebook/writeyourbookin21days

    Or

    On twitter @BOOKIN21DAYS…

     

    Category author, blog, book, market, NON Fiction, NON Fiction How To, print, publish, resources, Site Maintenence, SYSTEM, website, Whats NEW, write | Tags: | No Comments

  2. Bussing

    July 20, 2011 by dbo355446115

    As he had run out the door John glanced at the newspaper that his mom was reading and had to force himself not to throw up everything in his system. “Wait a minute, when did I last eat?”, he thought. Suddenly it was there at the end of the driveway, the sight that every High School Junior in his situation dreaded, the school bus. The door was open and the driver was laying on the horn, John knew that he must have seen him leap the hedge, yet even as he reached the door it was starting to close. “Hey pops, you want to hold on a second?” John through out with maybe a little more sarcasm than was required.

    As the brakes were applied sharply the driver turned around and started shaking a bony finger at him, “Listen here Mr. Porter, you may be ‘Mr. Kool’ at school, but right now, I’m your only hope of getting there on time, and THAT means you do what I tell you when I tell you, so sit down and shut yer trap.” Ah yes, John thought, old man Brooks, the most miserable driver in the fleet, and lucky me he has been on this route of over 30 years. Penny had told him one afternoon, that her driver had actually installed a tape deck and extra speakers on her bus. She got Boston, he got a lecture.

    John turned and made his way to the back of the bus, “rules are rules you know!” Well maybe in 1962 the rule was that you had to sit in the back, but your would think that by NOW, oh right, it hasn’t been THAT long anymore has it? John was going to have to correct his thinking until he could figure this whole thing out. Somehow he just didn’t feel like he fit in anymore. When you’re a pale white, skinny kid carrying a thousand dollars in camera equipment, “fitting in” was more important than ever.

    “Hey camera man”, Robbie called out, and then it began. Robbie Anders was one of the best looking most popular kids in the whole school, he was also bandleader, which meant that he could dance his butt off. John couldn’t remember how they had gotten on good terms but he was glad that they had, having a guy like Robbie on your side was a good thing, especially considering that everyone on the bus when he got on, were either related to him or close intimate friends. But for some reason Robbie liked John, or more probably liked all the ‘action shots’ John caught him in for the front page of the county paper. Robbie had gotten contacted by the State College, and in his letter they had included a copy of the article from the paper, that made John feel good, like his photos counted.

    He took the only open seat, the one right next to Robbie’s little sister. Now Althea was very pretty, and she and John really had a lot in common and had great conversations, but se made it very clear that she had ideas on making it more physical than verbal, as soon as she could.  But considering Robbie threw watermelons in the summers and after school, John didn’t feel like this was a chance he wanted to take, most folks didn’t believe it when girls said that they had been turned ‘down’ by John, but he tried not to let his pants rule every thought.  John had never seen Robbie fight, but he knew from experience in the gym, that pressing over 350 pounds was not a big issue for Robbie.

    Just as John sat down he felt a sharp pain in his arm, the arm that was holding him up as he ‘squeezed by’ Altheas more than “healthy” upper half, and it gave out. Althea squealed, part from surprise and part from, well just then Robbie’s friends looked up and shouted “Hey Robbie, looks like shutterbug is making his move…”

     

    Angela Pettyjohn had been an ER nurse because the pay was better, the hours worked with her son and she wouldn’t have to deal with some of the hospitalists. Unfortunately, since her facility was a trauma unit, she normally sa more than her fair share of gore and messes. Tonight was no different, the chopper came in lights and sirens, indicating a car wreck with possible head wounds, unfortunately that didn’t do anything to prepare her for what she saw on the gurney.

    “Over 100 years after Florence Nightengale died, and they were still referring to John Does as well, John Does,” Angela thought to herself, “ It just seems so impersonal.” But that was indeed how this one had come in to her, strapped down to a gurney like a 10 point deer, and sopping wet, the reports hadn’t mentioned drowning, but they also hadn’t mentioned how absolutely “weird” this guy looked. Angela couldn’t pin it down, and nothing in her medical memory would cause a patient who was still breathing to look like this, but there was definitely something strange about this character.

    It almost seemed ironic that as wet as this patient was, he still needed fluids moving through him, baseline of nursing, keep them wet and blue is bad, everything else in between we can clean.  Unfortunate “John” here didn’t want to take the IV, just as she was about to call for help, her foot slid on the tile, and her full weight came against the syringe. She drew in a sharp breath, afraid of what she might see when she cleared the patient, but there it was, what appeared to be a perfect insertion.

    Although he knew she couldn’t see him Clarence wiped his brow, let out a deep breath as though he had been holding it, and slowly and quietly turned towards the wall as he seemed to fade from view…

     

    UNTIL THEN:

    Facebook/writeyourbookin21days

    Or

    On twitter @BOOKIN21DAYS…

     

     

    Category author, blog, book, fiction, print, publish, website, Whats NEW, write | Tags: | No Comments

  3. How sticky IS that Web anyway?

    July 15, 2011 by dbo355446115

    Next in our resources list is to get a NEW website or NEW Web Host, what is that and why do you care? I know a lot of folks already HAVE a website and a host that goes along with it, but other than very few special cases what you have is not going to help you, and in some cases may even hurt you. Now if that’s not confusing enough I’m not sure what is, but lets look a little closer at what were doing it, and why.

    Now one of our goals here is to not only write your book, but to help you promote your book, while your writing, editing and publishing your book, so that when it’s available you have folks who are waiting to buy your book. There is no doubt in my mind, or most other folks involved in the media today that the fastest way to promote things today is to involve the power and the exposure of the Internet. The challenge is to be able to promote your book and control the promotion.

    Every time I turn around I hear someone in a band saying “wow wouldn’t it be great if our video went viral?” Usually they get this star struck glazed over look, as they say it. Well as someone who works with the internet and computers on a daily basis I can tell you that just the thought of having anything that I’m working on “going viral” just terrifies me. Think about the last thing that you saw or heard of that was “going viral.” Who was talking about it, and what were they saying? Well the chances are pretty good that it may have been David Letterman or Jay Leno making the observation, followed by the observation of “what an idiot, this guy is…”

    So, how can we best control what’s being said about what we write? Write it yourself! Obviously you can’t control everything and you actually don’t want that, you need some unsolicited positive input. What you want to control is how that information gets out there. Now, remember how we came to the name of our book? Well now were going to use something just like that to find a name for your website.

    If you recall, from our naming lesson, we arrived at ““The Guitar Doctor’s Black Bag” with a subtitle of “Building and Repairing Guitars for fun and profit” So what do YOU think would be a great name for your web site? How about www.GuitarDoc.com ? Remember on the web short and sweet is ideal. Well the problem is its SUCH a great name; someone else already is using it. You now have 4 options. First you can try and buy it from the guy who owns it, but that can become expensive and I don’t encourage folks to invest a lot of money when you’re first getting started. Second you could hire a lawyer and try and force him into giving it to you, but there’s so much wrong with that idea, that we’ll just ‘say no to lawyers. Next you could try and setup www.GuitarDr.net or www.GuitarDR.info or www.GuitarDR.cc but in my experience all that’s going to do is drive more traffic to the other guy. Finally you can come up with another name.

    Ok, let’s go with the last one, it seems like it’s the least expensive option, but also leaves our options open for future expansion. So now that we are looking at other options lets look at some of the ideas that we want to pay attention to. We already said shorter was better. Nicknames are tough to, I heard a young lady on the radio promoting her book one day, and the only place you could buy it, was her website. Nothing wrong with that, what’s the address? Well her name was Taylor Jones (for example), and her nephew couldn’t pronounce her name so when she registered her site she thought that their nickname was so cute, she used it. Now the book was called “Six ways to discipline your child without spanking”, long but straightforward, instead her website was called www.auntytataysbooknuk.biz . Hey, guess what, that website is available, which means 1 of two things, either I spelled it wrong, or she’s no longer on the net. I can’t see you, so I won’t ask for a show of hands, but most folks who know me will tell you I spelled it wrong. But the fact that she was on a cell phone talking to an early morning radio show and trying to spell THAT web site out over the air. Well let’s just say it was a bad idea.

    So what should we use? Again, keeping it short and sweet, let’s look at: www.GuitarDocsBlackBag.com . Not only is that site available, but my host says that there are 13 derivations of that name that I can now own. Do I think you need all 13, no? But I do encourage you to own at least two domains that are similar. Typically I will choose the .COM first and the go for .ORG or .NET next. More on why later, but lets just say, spilt testing is vital.

    Now owing a domain name is no good without having a hosting company behind you. As of right now I don’t have a relationship with any particular hosting company, but I do have one that I like. But I like that one for two easy reasons, first they have the best price, secondly they offer 24/7/365 help line. Your brother may own a hosing company, but if they can’t offer you that kind of support, it’s not worth letting you business rest there. Now in my resources description I list get a new name/host as one item, but if your host offers the support you want at the price you’re happy with and they can do what we describe here, then stick with them, just get the new name.

    Now I have a lot of folks who ask me time and time again “But J, I have a website, why do I want to make/buy a new one?” There are several reasons, and I’m going to just highlight the top few here:

    1)        What’s your website for?

    Now I get folks all the time who then say “which one?” and that is my point exactly. The web site that we are establishing today is to promote our book first, and ourselves as an author second. My web personal site is to allow my friends and family to check on the growth of my son, my family and what were doing. I don’t think that the folks who are interested in my management books are that excited about my son launching his first rocket, or flying his first RC helicopter or losing his first tooth or…

    2)        This website will be a business resource.

    I am not an accountant or an attorney and I suggest that if you want to make a profit with your book, you think about hiring one of each. Regardless, if you sell your book for more than it costs you to print it, that difference is called your profit. Chances are you’re probably going to want to deduct certain things from your taxes to offset your income. Well somehow I have a feeling that if my homepage for my “book site” has a photo of the “toothless wonder” the IRS may have a challenge with me deducting the cost of it from my income. If it’s a book/author oriented website, their only question is going to be in paying for it, and your accountant can deal with that.

    3)   Who is connected with your current website?

    I have a great friend who I love dearly, but she lives an alternate lifestyle, she dabbles in alternate belief systems, she even has “alternate” types of pets. I love her more than anything, but somehow I have a feeling that one or two of my readers may have a challenge with seeing her 6 year old sitting on the couch with a 12 foot python wrapped around her neck. This also pertains to companies that “give away” free websites. If you decide that you absolutely can not find a few dollars to host a new site for a year, and you’re going to put your site on one of those ‘free sites’, they make their money off of advertising. Do you think you have any control over what ads will pop up with your website? What if you’re writing a book that teaches women how to protect themselves from stalkers, how will they react when the ad that pops up when they get to your site is for a “chat line?” Do you see where the challenges can come from when you’re trying to re-use your current sites?

    Ok, we have a new website, we have a great name, what are we going to put on that site? Well what do you know, look at that list we made a few days ago, were going to cover that in one of our next posts!

     

    UNTIL THEN:

    Facebook/writeyourbookin21days

    Or

    On twitter @BOOKIN21DAYS…

     

    Category author, blog, book, market, NON Fiction How To, print, publish, resources, SYSTEM, Whats NEW, write | Tags: | No Comments

  4. When it rains, well you know…

    July 12, 2011 by dbo355446115

    Harry stepped back as the paramedics ran up, stretcher extended, coats and jump kits flailing. “Poor guy “, he thought, “looks like he was on his way out to dinner or something, hope he wasn’t too hungry, could be a while before the rolls arrive.” The last thought made him chuckle a little. There wasn’t enough joy in his job, Harry tried to make light of certain situations, it helped him get through what he knew was about to happen. The sound of the clothes ripping always got to him, probably because he’d always been a utilitarian dresser himself, he just hated to hear the tearing of that good cloth that guys like this one always seemed to be wearing for their shirts. He knew it was necessary, but over his career he’d probably seen $50,000 worth of shirts torn to shreds, just so you could burn a guy’s chest hair off. That was another one of those thoughts that always seemed to come to him during these moments. Then the chief paramedic said the words “CLEAR”, as they administered the first set of shocks.

    You know it wasn’t like what they showed on TV, on the medical shows they never showed how the body seemed to jump almost a foot off he pavement, as every muscle in the torso contracted at once. The AMA had released a report a few years ago stating that after lengthy investigation and 20years of data, THEY had determined that most of the broken ribs that patients received during these “life saving operations,” were in fact from the defibrillator , not the chest compressions. “Here you go Mr. Smith, we got your heart started but we punctured your lunch and broke 6 ribs.” Harry winced again as he saw the medics come at the guy again with those paddles…”Clear…”

    John was just getting out of the bed when all of a sudden he felt like he got hit with a baseball bat, just as he doubled over and started to catch his breath he heard someone say, “John, you ok?” Without looking up, John could feel the blood drain from his face why that sounded just like…”Yeah, hang on a second, “he croaked,“ Just had a cramp While looking at the floor he forced himself to take a few deep breaths, the pain seemed to pass, but wow that was strange. Then he looked up, at the door, at that point things got really strange.

     

    The rain almost seemed to be getting worse, Harry thought, as they loaded the guy up into the ambulance. As far as he could see the guy was still down for the count, but the medics said something about some weird readings when they did that last shock. Well, Harry knew that if the guy didn’t make it, they weren’t going to call it here; they had to get him back to St Joe’s somehow and at some time. Now seemed as good as any. Harry turned and looked at the car the guy had been driving, not much more than part of a frame now. Harry bet, some slick agent would try and get the insurance company to ‘fix it’ but Harry knew that some cars just shouldn’t go back on the road, and this was one of those cars. More strange thoughts as the ambulance tore off, lights and sirens screaming.

     

    John took three very deep breaths and then slowly brought his gaze up towards the door, where the voice had come from, and then things got stranger yet. “Dad?” he said. “His father standing in the door, looking in his late forties, and maybe a little heavier than he ought to be replied, “Yeah bud? Come on, your mom’s been calling for 30 minutes, you’re going to be late for the bus again, you do that and you’ll have to go to the office on your own this time, that principal you have is a little weird.” Suddenly the haze started to clear and John remembered someone who might fit that description, there was only on, but that would mean. “Dad, what’s today’s date?” His dad looked at him a little strangely and said, “Monday?”

    John shook his head, that wasn’t it, “No dad, the date, what’s today’s date.” His dad looked at him quizzically as John stood up, “Oh well I’d have to look at the calendar, But I believe its…” As the answer sink in John started to realize, “well the date is the same, but the year, that can’t be right.” But then his father also couldn’t be standing there before him, having succumbed to heart related issues almost seven years ago, or is that 20 years from now? John’s head started to ache again, when his dad spoke up again, ‘John you better jump to it, if you’re going to make the bus.”

    Oh, no, not the bus. John had attended private schools most of his life, when his folks decided that in High School he needed more “socialization” they’d had to test him, to have his grades accepted. In doing so, they found that his reading, writing and science skills were several years ahead of most kids his age. Combine that with a ‘mid year’ birthday and he was one of the few High School Juniors who still had to ‘ride the bus.’ John through himself in the shower, and while shaving noticed he was wearing a ring on his hand, that wasn’t that unusual, he loved rings, but this ring was one he hadn’t seen in years, it was a Tigers Eye, his parents had brought back from the islands one year on one of their many vacations.  As much as he loved that ring he knew that now it had some even more special significance, if he could only remember what it was.

    After his shower he threw on some clothes and grabbed a bunch of stuff and headed for the door. “Don’t forget your camera john.” He heard his dad yell from the other room. His camera, like he could ever forget that. What had started as a way to satisfy a freshman crush had turned into a career for him? Everyone in school knew john, most, not by his name, but by what he had on his jacket, “SHUTTERBUG.” He hurriedly searched the front room, and finally found a very battered old case, a leather case from the Korean War his dad had told him. It had gone through some of the greatest conflicts of that war, and gone on to shoot several more presidents, before his dad finally retired. Every now and then he thought about buying a newer one, one of those big new models with all that room and padding and, no that would break his dad’s heart. That thought sent a cold chill down his back, as he ran out the door.

     

    The rain seemed to get worse in the hour the ambulance took to drive to the trauma center. Unfortunately when accidents happen in smaller towns on rainy nights like this one, the driver thought, the choppers are all up in the air already. Jack the paramedic in the “tub” working on the guy from the wreck had seen worse injuries, but never with results like this. He scratched his head as he reported back on the radio, “Yes that’s what I said, he reacted visually to the last shock, but nothing since then, he has a weak thready pulse, and his color is ‘off’. I know that’s not a real description, but its not like the gray they get when their waterlogged, this guy’s just like, ‘not home.’ Yes, I’ve checked his eyes, they are clear but non reactive, I’ve never seen anything like it. Yeah the Highway Patrol has his ID and is looking for family, if he were younger I’d say he was just in shock, but at this guy’s age, it could be almost anything. Yeah I’ll keep going, for all the good it’ll do, I get the feeling this one’s not coming back unless HE wants to…”

    Gabriel turned and looked away, “How right you are Jack Holloway, how very right you are…”

    UNTIL THEN:

    Facebook/writeyourbookin21days

    Or

    On twitter @BOOKIN21DAYS…

     

    I’ve had several folks contact me and tell me to HURRY UP, with this post, it looks like maybe I have struck a chord? Amazing guy that Mazlow eh?

    But I did promise I would start alternating, so next time we are going to get back to technique, I’m sure I’ll hear about that…

    Category author, blog, book, fiction, Fiction How TO, print, publish, Uncategorized, website, Whats NEW, write | Tags: | No Comments

  5. What’s in a name anyway?

    July 7, 2011 by dbo355446115

    You want to write a book, or someone else thinks you should write a book, ever notice how when work is involved folks always think that you would be the perfect person to perform it? Be that as it may, somewhere along the line you have come to the point in your life where writing a book seems to be a good idea. SO, what are you going to call it?

    Now if that question just caused you heart to miss a beat, that’s OK. Some of the most popular most prolific writers on the planet “backed into “ the names of their books. By that I mean, they may write a book, create a cover and develop a marketing plan, then from all THAT they will come up with a name. However those same authors will almost always start out with one of the following three things:

    1)        They have a core concept or idea. Typically this will be the idea or thought around which the entire rest of the book revolves. If youre writing a Non Fiction book about how to build birdhouses, than maybe your core concept is “How to build the best Birdhouse you can without spending more than $50 and a weekend.” Great idea, a little too long for a title.

    2)        They have an idea for a character. I have started researching an entirely new fictional book that I want to write, because of one character. Now this character was a real person and some of what they will be doing in my book they did actually do. However much of what I will write will revolve around what I think that character will do in a completely different situation!

    3)        They have a scenario. I once wrote an entire screenplay based upon a hill I saw, a song I heard, and s “panning” shot that I could imagine. In a book, you may have a great ending in mind, or the perfect love scene or even the one secret that everyone needs in business. But many authors start with one scenario and start to build a book around it.

    Now if you have #1 either in name or idea, youre in business, if however you have numbers 2 or 3 you have a hint of a beginning, but unfortunately many folks who start that way start books, and never finish them. Which is why this method of writing is so successful, after were done you’re not going to b able to stop until you have a fully fleshed out book.

    But if you’re not sure of exactly what you name or core idea is, what’s the best way to determine it? Well there are several “default” ideas that almost any of us can fll back on. One of the most popular of course is the “family book.” The family book is primarily for folks like me, who are part of an extended family, who you don’t keep in contact with. I honestly couldn’t tell you the names or anything about anyone above my parents level of our family tree other than my direct grand parents. Therefore one of the simplest (not the easiest mind you) would be to interview my extended family a write a short “biography style” book about my family.

    The challenge of course is that there are probably only about 100 people who want to read it (mom’s family was catholic), so unless your grand father few with the crew from Area 51, its not really a general interest book. However there are dozens if not hundreds of other subjects that you could wrte about, that would indeed be of interest to many, many more readers globally.

    Let’s look at hobbies and interests. What do you do for fun or interest? Now these are not necessarily things that you do to earn money, certainly not what you do for a living, but if you enjoy making birdhouses from discarded soda bottles, chances are there are a bunch of other folks around the world who would enjoy that as well. But how can we be sure?

    Lets start with one of my hobbies and use it as an example: Guitars. I’m 40+ years old, and instead of starting to play guitar at 16 and continuing my whole life, I played a little in high school, changed instruments, played some more in college, changed instruments, and then a few years ago decided I wanted to really get into the guitar. So I’m going to write a book about guitars, lets run through some ideas about what I could write a guitar book about:

    1)     A general Intro to Guitar Book

    2)     A general intro to Playing the guitar.

    3)     A general intro to Bass Guitar Book.

    4)     A general into to playing Bass guitar.

    5)     Building guitars

    6)     Repairing guitars

    7)     Setting guitars up to play

    8)     Building Bass guitars

    9)     Repairing Bass guitars

    10) Setting Bass guitars up to play

    11) Building guitar amps.

    12) Repairing guitar amps.

    13) Setting guitar amps up to play

    14)  Refinishing guitars

    15) Refinishing Bass guitars

    Whew, 15 different options all focused on one segment of one hobby. I didn’t even get into the history of them, or in playing with a band (which like  #1 and #2 introduces the choices of different styles), nor did I touch the acoustic items.

    So, lets look at #5 ‘Building Guitars’, what’s the best way to find out if this is a good idea for a book? Well lets do the simple things first. Lets use the free tools that are available. Start with the 2 biggest spots on the Internet. Google and Amazon. Go to your browser and open Google.com. Once its open in the search tool put “building guitars” and see what happens.

    Wow: About 43,700 results (0.21 seconds)

    That’s a good result! It’s also very positive. Now here is what I suggest to folks looking to really utilize Google to its utmost and highest. Look at the 1st 10 pages and the last 10 pages and see what you can determine.

    Using our current search (and I wont drag this out I’’l look at 1st 2 and last 2). On the first two pages (20 results) there are only two retail results, 2 Amazon results and a few YouTube results. That’s good. Now in the LAST 2 pages, almost all of the listings are for retail sites, there are a few you tube sites and no Amazon sites.

    Now lets look at Amazon: We have 17 books on repairing guitars. Again, VERY good information. There is a lot of room in the market. Especially when you are looking at a ‘bookstore’ that claims to have over 3 million books (not including ebooks, but see my warning a few posts back about ebooks).

    So we now know that repairing guitars is a GREAT core idea for your book. Lets see if we can get a little closer to the mark. Google has a free set of tools designed to help marketers refine their advertising, we are going to use them to refine an idea. The easiest way to find them is to go to google and type in “google keyword too” it will take you to another search page. In the search box I put the terms “guitar repair, electric, build, how to” each one needs its own line. Then hit search.

    You are presented with 2 results boxes. The first shows you how many times last month those terms were used globally and locally. For example Guitar Repair = 110,000 Global and 60,500 local searches.

    The SECOND box is the important one, this one looks for OTHER words that were also used in conjunction with yours for searches. I’m only going to choose 3 results, but there are over 100! “guitar repair tips” sounds pretty good right? 260 searches GLOBALLY, ok so maybe not a great term. “Guitar Doctor” had 22,400 searches and “Building a guitar” shows 74,000 global searches. SO maybe a good title would be: “The Guitar Doctor’s Black Bag” with a subtitle of “Building and Repairing Guitars for fun and profit”

    Now there are six dozen other tools we can use to really refine this, and some of these we will go over when we talk about your website (what you didn’t READ the schedule?). But I think that you now have a really good idea of how you can develop your title and or core idea for your book. Next we will go into your website, and I’ll give you a really good reason to get one, how would you like having folks waiting for your book to come out, so they can buy it.

     

    UNTIL THEN:

    Facebook/writeyourbookin21days

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    On twitter @BOOKIN21DAYS…

     

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  6. Darkness in the Details:

    July 5, 2011 by dbo355446115

    It sounded like someone was screaming, but no, that wasn’t right either, maybe it was, yes that’s it, it sounded more like a tearing. And he could just feel some water on his nose before, he decided to just go back to sleep.

    EMS had worked for over an hour to fish the car from the river, all the while doing their best to keep as much water OUT of the car as possible. But once a car goes into the water, only the occupants can tell you how much water came into the car, and this guy didn’t look like he was ready to talk to anyone. As they started up the ‘buzzsaws’ some folks still referred to them as “the jaws of life” , Harry guessed it made for better press. But good night those things made a racket. His boss had described it as 20 old ladies screaming rape all at the same time. Tonight, Harry was tempted to agree with him. The ear pads that the couty issues were barely any help.

    Suddenly a wind whipped up, almost like a hurricane, but Harry knew it was just Lifeflight taking a low “look see” to find out if it was safe enough to land.  After all these years of working together, those chopper jockeys still didn’t trust the guys on the ground to be able to steer them through the wreckage and the power lines. But after what had happened last time, Harry guessed he wouldn’t trust his life to anyone else either.

    Harry was working as fast as the saw would let him, he figured he’d have the roof and the door off by the time the pilot had found a place to land. That was a-ok with him. It meant the paramedics got to deal with the occupants. Twenty years on the job and Harry still preferred to deal with folks in trouble, than people left after the trouble was over. Truth was, no one saw this happen, Highway Patrol just happened along, but even they were estimating that the car had been down for 3 hours, then another hour to get a tow rig big enough to bring it up, and then his part.

    From what he had seen in the past, Harry figured that the occupant in the car, probably didn’t care about the noise. He wasn’t hoping that the guy was gone of course, but since no one was screaming for help, Harry figured at the very least he was out of it, and the worse case, well he just wanted to get this over because tomorrow after he got up…

     

     

    John could hear something trying to wake him up, but he just wanted to sleep. Wow this was so nice, and after that weird dream last night, man he needed to stop eating so late. He rolled over and tried to throw his leg over Julie, and missed. Oh well, he thought, she must already be up, after all its Saturday and the kids wanted to watch TV at some unhealthy hour. John just wanted to sleep some more, he could remember when he had felt so refreshed after a sleep.

    As a matter of fact, he could remember his bed being this comfortable in a long time, and the house, it was so quiet. Usually he could here some cartoon show blaring through the house, if the kids were already up. John started to roll over again, and that’s when he heard the strangest sound, “Why that almost sounded like water, but Julie and I don’t have a water bed, I mean we had one when we first got married, but she said she always got bounced around, so he’d gotten rid of it, finally bought a ‘grown ups’ bed.

    But there was no mistake, that sounded just like water. Then it hit him, he couldn’t remember coming home last night. Had he actually gone home with someone else? Oh No, he thought, What have I done, he squeezed his eyes tighter, not wanting to see what could be waiting for him, once he was fully awake. Awake and aware, and responsible for his actions.

    So slowly, ever so slowly he started to lift one eyelid a little, the room was pretty dark, but over on the other side of the room was something very large and very , well strange looking, was the word that came to mind. It had bars and things sticking out from it at strange angles. John started to prop himself up on his elbow, and suddenly remembered that, that was his ‘bad’ arm. He’d broken his elbow after college, and even though they’d plated and wired everything, it never quite felt the same afterwards. Yet this morning, it didn’t seem to hurt. Hmm, maybe a little “extra curricular activity” will do that for you, he thought.

    As he propped himself up to his full height his mind, and vision started to clear a little, slowly the ‘thing’ on the other side of the room came into focus. Why that looked like a Wing Chun dummy. Bruce Lee had imported a very esoteric form of Karate/Kung Fu into America in the early 1970’s and this was the kind of ‘practice dummy’ that most of the exercises used, when working alone. Amazing he thought, “I had one just like that when I has in High School.”

    Suddenly his mind started to rapidly become very clear, and what seemed like a dream, started seeming all to real, as his vision swept the room, he could see the door outside, and then the bookshelf, and over in the other corner the drafting desk with the computer on it. His head started spinning and he realized that beyond the next door was a bathroom, then beyond that was, a cold sweat broke out, suddenly the room started spinning and John thought, “I really need to lay back down for a minute.”

     

    Can you guess? It was a tie. I don’t know how long I can ‘keep it up’ but I’ll do my best. As things get more complicated, we may need to alternate chapters instead of just back and forth within the chapters.

    UNTIL THEN:

    Facebook/writeyourbookin21days

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    On twitter @BOOKIN21DAYS…

     

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  7. I love Democracy…

    July 1, 2011 by dbo355446115

    I love the fact that each person can have a vote and everyone’s voice is heard, and everyone gets to express an opinion, even if it does disagree with mine! Of course, I also love a parade. I used the live in New Orleans and Mardi Gras was just amazing, and this was before I was old enough to drink.

    Of course what I really love are Twinkies, I mean really, can you get any better than a fresh straight from the factory, the cake is so spongy and soft and the filling OH the filling, so creamy, there is ALMOST nothing in this world that’s better. I say almost because as a youngster my dad was in the Navy, so every year we moved, and so I have had the opportunity to try some snacks that may not have the global exposure of a Twinkie.

    Apparently, celebrating its 40th birthday this year, and from the same folks who brought us the Twinkie, Hostess, would be the Suzy Q. Now if you’ve never had one, they come in 2 flavors Chocolate and Banana Cream. I don’t care if you would give your left arm for a Hershey’s bar, if given the choice go for the Banana Cream. The chocolate is good but the Banana Cream is amazing. As with all snacks you need to find a store that gets the truck in daily. There is nothing worse than a stale snack. But imagine this.  Not one, but two Twinkies flattened out and joined together, so its not as high as a Twinkie, but is more than twice as wide, filled not with some non descript vanilla cream, but instead accented with the flavor of Banana, now DOUBLE that, because they come two to a package, and you have just a little bit of Heaven here on earth.

    What was I talking about? Oh yeah, voting, and democracy, and everyone getting one vote!

    As mentioned previously, I’m going to let you the reader determine what direction we are about to take in our fictional odyssey with Clarence and porter and Gabriel. So if you haven’t done so yet, I’m going to stretch it over the 3 day weekend, and allow you the time to vote:

    If you think I should open up the secret, then shoot me an email to INFO@writeyourbookin21days.com and in the subject just put SECRET. If however, you would like to see me explore a little bit more about what’s happening at home while he’s having all this ‘quality’ time with Clarence, send me an email to INFO@writeyourbookin21days.com and in the subject line just put EXPLORE.

    I do have to say that right now, with the votes that have come in already, it’s looking like we may be writing for a split decision!

    Until then, I’m headed for the C-store, who’s with me?

    UNTIL THEN:

    Facebook/writeyourbookin21days

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    On twitter @BOOKIN21DAYS…

     

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