My New Year

My last post pretty much left off at XMas.  Didn't read it?  You're probably not alone, so go read it.  Not that you have to read much, since most of it is pictures of Graceland and airplanes.

Anyway, New Year's I didn't do a lot.  Hotwire let me down (again) and gave me an Extended Stay America in Novi.  This is like the 3rd time they've given me one of that type of motel and it's always like, "Those aren't real motels!  They're studio apartments!"  I mean if you don't get maid service or a pool or anything then it's not a freaking motel.  But I digress.  No one in my family was really doing anything for New Year's Eve.  None of us really give a shit about it.  I wasn't about to drive to New York and freeze my ass off in Times Square or anything like that just to watch a stupid ball drop.  I just watched it on TV and drank some apple juice spiked with Big K Coke Zero because I forgot to buy any sparkling cider and didn't feel like going to the grocery store.

So now I'm back in the Detroit area, applying for jobs, filing for unemployment, and other assorted crap you don't care about.  Boring crap really.

I did find out something interesting the other day.  When I went west and southwest I couldn't watch Netflix, etc most of the time unless I wanted to watch it on my laptop or tablet because most motels use an internet portal and the Roku doesn't have a browser.  I don't think the Chromecast does either and Amazon's is "Coming soon!"  Which is no help.  Anyway, I got the idea when I went to my storage unit the other day to try my Nintendo Wii because it has WiFi with a Netflix app and it has a browser.  Surprisingly it did actually work with a little finagling like finding the right site address to put into the browser.  The only disappointing thing is that all the Wii has is Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu Plus.  That is almost literally all the channels they have anymore, I guess since they stopped making these years ago, about the time I stopped using the Wii too.

Writing wise I found a new way to wring more money out of the unsuspecting reading public.  All of my Transformed novels were on Amazon, so I hadn't been getting anything from Smashwords or B&N or anything.  Since they're on the KDP thing I couldn't publish them through there.  Then I found a way that I could bring them to those platforms, with the ultimate omnibus!

So for $14.99 you can buy all 22 books of the series (to date).  The good thing about Smashwords is you still get the 70%-ish of the profits even at $14.99, whereas with Amazon anything over $9.99 is only 35%.  If you're wondering whether $14.99 is fair or unfair, it's over 500,000 words!  That's like almost the size of Stephen King's The Stand.

I've been doing some other similar books that aren't part of that series.  When I bought cover images from Fotolia, I usually bought 3-4 since you have to buy so many credits at a time.  So I ended up with some extra pictures I hadn't used and thus thought I might as well use them for something.  And since I wasn't using the same series, I made up some wackier titles.  I've finished 4 of these so far.

Unlike my other ones they only have one story so they're shorter--some more than others.  And I have a bunch more that I may or may not get around to writing. Or I might come up with wackier or less wacky titles.  You can probably guess the stories from the titles:

 At some point maybe I should do a PT Dilloway book again just so people remember that guy exists.

This being the new year, a lot of people do posts about what was the best whatever of 2014.  I looked at the list of 260 books I read on Goodreads last year and I couldn't really decide what was the best.  I can't even think of which book of mine I like the best.  As for movies, I liked "Captain America 2" a little more than "Guardians of the Galaxy."  For artier movies I'm not really sure; I watched so many it's hard to remember them all.  Don't even ask me about music as I stopped caring about that a long time ago.

In case you're wondering, my most viewed post on this blog and Indie Writers Monthly was the same entry:  Pro Tips From "Authors Anonymous."  The comments on the IWM blog were better as the writer of the movie actually commented whereas on my blog there was only Offutt making a generic comment.  Surprisingly (or not) most of my Grumpy Bulldog Does America entries barely cracked 25 views.  This entry will probably barely crack that too.

I hope your new year was more exciting than mine and that you have lots of cool shit planned for 2015.