Adventures in (Create)Space!

Posted on 22 June 2009 | 3 responses

Disclaimer: Let it be known that I work for Audible.com which is owned by Amazon.com which in turn owns Createspace.com . So you are free to take all my glowing praise as more kissing up to my Amazon overlords. It’s not, but I understand why you would feel that way.

So you want to be a writer? No? Not interested? Well, ok, then I want to be a writer. No, not as a full time job, I have one of those, and it keeps me plenty busy. This would be just for fun on the weekends and the nights when there is nothing good on the telly. Over the last year or so, I’ve tried to take it up a notch and really practice my (other) craft. Of course to be a real writer you need to be published. This is a tricky thing. It takes time, money, contacts, and talent. Sadly I have none of those things. That’s where the site www.createspace.com comes in.

CreateSpace is a self publishing company. You can use the site to create your own music, movies, and books, and then sell them on www.amazon.com (you may have heard of them). Now I can only vouch for the book creation aspect, but that is pretty impressive. The tools are free; you need only to be able to provide your book in a PDF format. They give you a cover creation application, but you can also upload your own cover as a separate PDF file. For books they will provide you with your own ISBN as well as review your PDFs and let you know if they will actually print correctly. For actually printing size, they cover the basics pretty well, and let you have a choice of seven sizes. You can apparently do others, but they are not supported by the cover creator.

The actual printing process for me actually took a few tries to get right. This was mostly due to my own massive incompetence. However with the review process in place I didn’t waste any trees (or money) printing out books with one word per page or upside down covers. As you can see from the pictures, the end result is a book, just like you would find at your book store of choice.

Money wise you can expect to bring home about 40% of the price of your book (before taxes). Pretty fair I think for a free site. You are also welcome to just print your book out though the service without sharing it with the rest of the world.

So far my experience with the site has been great. My own book, Ancient Awakening, goes on sale in September. I think at that point I will have to give a part two of this review and let you know how that side of the experience goes. But for folks looking to get their work out there, www.createspace.com looks like a great place to start.

Bye Bye Blue Beetle

Posted on 25 May 2009 | 1 response

The first hint that it might be time to look for a new car literally struck one day on the way to work. A large piece of the Beetle’s sun roof suddenly freed itself mid transit and bounced off my head. This was not the first thing to go on our 10 year old beetle, but it was personally the most painful. By the end of our time with car the glove compartment had fallen off, no cup holders remained, the driver side door sometimes refused to close, and of course I was now a bit scared to try and open the sun roof. The thing still ran though, and for the 12 miles back and forth to Newark everyday that was enough. It had only broken down once, a pretty impressive run for any car. A few weeks ago though, it became obvious that old Blue beetle was not long for this world. It had been burning a little oil for a long time, but one day while driving home, I noticed the car felt off. I checked the oil a found there was none, not a drop left in the engine. It had gone from burning a little oil to burning A LOT of oil.
Enough was enough; it was time to go car shopping.
Car shopping , while fun in a way, is also a massive time suck. So it wasn’t until the day I was to drive the beetle to trade it in that I really noticed that I was going to miss the old blue bug. We had that car for 10 years. It was the first grown up thing Dee and I did as a couple. We had stuffed more friends, family, and camping gear into that little car than I had thought possible. I can’t tell you how many times my head smacked against that rear window when someone closed the trunk and didn’t warn me (you know who are!). Well ok, I wasn’t going to miss that last part. But there was a history there.
Dee tried to give the car one last big hug. It was her first new car after all. I had been worried about Josh, he had always loved riding in the back of the beetle. But Josh far more practical than the rest of us just gave the car a “bye beetle” and a wave. Then asked when the new car was coming. At least one of us got it right.

Review: X-men Origins: Wolverine

Posted on 3 May 2009 | No responses

 

Note: This comic was stolen from my brother.  Cause I’m just evil like that.

You will enjoy the Wolverine movie more if you

1.have never read any Marvel comics

2.have yet to see the X-men movies

3.don’t think that hard about it (most important of all)

Its not that Wolverine is bad movie. It’s not. It’s just completely ignores everything from the source material. So it’s hard as a long time X-men fan to watch the movie and not notice all the things they do wrong in the plot. It is acceptable that movies don’t follow the comics exactly, but here its harder to swallow, cause it’s just SO different. However, at times they really nail the characters. Sabertooth and Wolverine are pretty much perfect. That’s actually enjoyable to watch, and the high point of the film. Gambit is passable. The rest … meh. Overall Wolverine is a solid start to the Summer movie season and not a bad comic movie. However it’s safe to wait till it’s on DVD.

Other opinions:

http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/wolverine

« go back — keep looking »