A first...

No great roaring success as of yet, but I've sold the first murder book on Kindle. Hasn't been live there long, so maybe things will kick into gear. Good royalty, 70-percent of the purchase price in fact.

Got couple more things to put on there when they're ready, then move over and format some stuff for B&N's similar download service. Hell, a guy could screw around with this shit and make beer money.

Course, he'd probably be someone who drinks a hell of a lot less beer than I can hold.

One with my sweetie

I damned sure don't deserve this fine woman. She's as sweet and kind as she looks, too, got a heart of gold.

Jazzbo w/Visitors

Ric Taylor, Liz Kilgo and me. These musicians/singers/songwriters came from Nashville yesterday for a visit.

New project

Started the process yesterday to convert my books for Kindle. Not terribly difficult, but a bunch of little hoops to jump through to get them in an acceptable format. Several programs to download for use in such as well. I do them in Word.doc to begin with, which is a necessary part of the process. The saving them to filtered HTML was something of a surprise, though, unlike the PDF required for the paper versions.

I"m in no big hurry because most of them won't sell in that format either, but it's just another opportunity. And, the writer gets 70-percent of the revenue in that market, which is better than the conventional route.

I'll have five or six books in that format when I'm done, including two that are very near finished. One a book of short stories and the other poems written since Smoke & Thunder. Not sure I'll bother converting the new poetry book, probably be a waste of time. Maybe not, S&T is still selling a few copies along and it's 8 years old now. Freaking royalty is miniscule, however.

Chilly this morning, but it's supposed to get up in the lower 70s again by Sunday. West Tennessee weather is always a mystery, never know what it's going to do here. I saw some predictions where we may have a warmer/stormier winter than normal.

Hope that's true--the warmer part anyway, though I don't want any of those severe winter tornadoes to come tearing through town again. Can't recall exactly, but the last one we had was either in late February or early March. Very unsettling to see all that debris whirling around a couple hundred feet in the air two blocks from one's house.

Winter arrives just ahead of a visitor

Winter seems to be making a bit of an appearance here on the rolling plains of northwestern Tennessee. Not brutal, but when that thermometer dips below freezing my old ass begins to suffer in serious fashion. And, to complicate things, if I turn up enough heat to keep the bod warm, I can't breathe worth a damn. Catch 22 for damned certain, but what can you do.

Have a visitor coming to see me this weekend after four years of conversing on the Internet and by phone. Liz Kilgo, a singer/songwriter, is coming down from Nashville with her manager to meet up with me. Liz is a good singer/songwriter and a lovely person. I've also done some conversing with Ric, her manager, who's a hell of a nice guy and good musician...he's her guitar man as well. Should be a fun time.

A friend recently tipped me off to a good, but cheap, bourbon he discovered, "Benchmark." Being on SS, I no longer drink the Johnnie Black and more expensive shit I used to buy without thinking twice. Lately, I've been drinking Kentucky Tavern, which is OK but not quite as smooth as it could be.

I bought some Benchmark in Paris Friday and damned it was everything Mike said it was; I wound up drinking half a 1.75 bottle Friday night, all in shots with no mixer. Had a little bit of a head problem Saturday morning, but nothing an Advil couldn't kick. At $15 a big bottle, can't beat it.

HOPE & CHANGE!

Life goes on (barely)

Got the cleanup project done, or at least enough of it to suit my purposes. Threw away some things, but a little judicious rearranging also helped. Still some clutter, but the floor is basically clear. Soon I'll have to start filling up the cleared space with some "organized" clutter. Sorta self defeating, eh? Oh well.

Got my annual bill from NoMonthlyFees (HA!) for jc.net this morning, due by next February. Bastards have almost doubled the annual fee, so I'll probably drop the domain when it comes up for renewal. Same with TS, which is due in April. They started out as a good deal back a decade or so ago, but have tacked on all sorts of "maintenance fees" and bullshit until now it's a rip-off. All my shit on there is old and hasn't been updated in ages anyway. Just hate to lose my domain names, but what the hell, doesn't really matter in the long haul. I have the whole Thunder Sandwich archive on a disc anyway and I'll do the same with my personal site. TS still gets several hundred visits a day even if it hasn't been updated in about 5 years. Well over 8 million total from all over the world. It was a good run, but all things pass finally.

Haven't done any writing in some time. Keep thinking I'll finish one of these projects underway or start a new one. Then I think how little the effort amounts to in the long haul. Shit, of late I've done well to get enough oxygen to keep me going.

Saw Dr. Holancin at the grocery the other day. I was telling him about my breathing problems. He said he was having knee replacement surgery, but for me to call in January and get an appointment. Said he might be able to give me something to help with the breathing. Told him I might do that, and I might. Shit, at some point I'll have to have oxygen and I'll need medical shit for that. I recall chatting with Ben Hiatt, who had COPD bad and was on oxygen. Don't think old Ben beat me out of the barn by much.

Truth is, it's all been fun. But you have to pay the piper at some point.

Sometimes, I feel like the payment is overdue.