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I am a Creator

So, I went to Africa

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(I realized I wrote this up and never posted it)

Elephant, very close to us

And saw lots of elephants. Lots of lions, cheetahs, zebras (So many zebras), giraffes, wildbeests, warthogs, hyenas, and more.

This was one of those ‘once in a lifetime’ kind of trips. I’m always leery of that type of statement, often making fun of the people who say, “I went to Costa Rica and it was life-changing.” But honestly, it was one of those trips that open your eyes to things you likely only understood in the abstract.

Nicole and our friend Suman decided to climb Kilimanjaro (She summited!!). I was in no way interested in that, so Suman’s mom and sister and I joined them for post mountain safari and mini beach vacation on Zanzibar.

The three of us arrived a week after Nicole and Suman. That was the day they were heading back down the mountain so we’d see them the following day. It was cool to be there when they climbed out of the van at the lodge. Also, the lodge was dope and it was pretty cool to just hang out and get some writing done, to play with my loaner camera, etc.

Safari was truly awe-inspiring. It sounds goofy, but it’s gonna be hard to see a zoo the same way after this. Watching lions walk within a foot of the car and keep going, makes seeing them behind a fence not as appealing. Seeing a cheetah and her cubs eating their kill just ten feet away, fantastic. Also gross and full of flies, but awesome.

Lazy lion taking a nap

There’s no way to share all the pictures, I took over a thousand and that’s not the point of this post. Side note, I’m a fan of DSLRs now! Man i got some great shots that my iPhone couldn’t have done. I was bummed to give it back.

We spent the entire trip in Tanzania (Outside our layovers in Frankfurt and Addis Ababa) and if time and money had not been factors I’d have loved to visit other countries. There’s so much history and culture to explore.

Tanzania has only been free of the British since the 1960s. Let that sink in, barely 60 years of freedom.

Eastern Africa is home to tremendous archeological finds. Americans like to bask in our excellence, it’s so easy to forget that not only are we not native to this country, but also that we came from the same place as everyone else, and it wasn’t Europe.

I wish more Americans were lucky enough to be able to afford to leave our country and explore (though sometimes I’m glad to not see so many of us, LOL) the world. There’s so much to see, so many cultures to explore. Being a visitor in a country (to me) really helps drive home that we’re all struggling to do the same things; put food on the table, keep or get a roof over our heads, etc.

An art piece outside the East African Slavery museum

Learning about the East African slave trade was also eye-opening. If you’re able to visit Zanzibar, do it. I had no idea about the depth of the slave trade in that part of the continent.

Nicole and I and a lion
Yup, that’s a lion

This was by far our longest trip both in terms of how long we were away from home (3 weeks for Nicole) and how long it took to get there and back.

Since I forgot to post this, and am doing so now in November… We got home mid-late February… A few weeks later at most and things would have been a lot harder to get home I’m sure. As we moved through airports and spent hours killing time, the reports were beginning to trickle in around the virus. Addis Ababa had some seriously strict enforcement going on. This could have been a very different trip.

Our Lodge had lots of neighbors

An Update on Audio

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You’d think ACX (the back end of audible, owned by Amazon) would be solid, fast, reliable, somewhat user friendly, etc. You’d be wrong. It’s a bit of a mess, and with everything going on this year, has more or less ground to a halt.

Space Rogues 1 has been live on audible since mid-April 2019.

We finally got everything done for Space Rogues 2 only to realize I had set it up against a version of Space Rogues 2 that I pulled from production, replacing it with a new edition. Think ACX could just move the audio production from one entry to another? Nope, I’d have to re-submit and re-contract with my narrator. Because, you know, why have a system that works well?

That was the final straw.

I’ve been eyeing taking my audio wide for a while. Until recently Audible was it, they were on Amazon and iTunes. Now there’s a lot of other options.

So I pulled the trigger. I’ve bought out my Narrator, the awesome KC Johnston for Space Rogues 1 & 2 and we’ll be producing the rest of the series free of Amazon/Audible nonsense and making the series available on all audiobook platforms!

I’m STOKED!

Space Rogues 2 Audio cover

Space Rogues 1 and 2 are now in Findaway voices system, working through quality control.

Sadly, in the end I had pull Space Rogues 1 from Audible to re-upload because they don’t have a clause to get out of exclusivity early if you did royalty share. All reviews lost :(

Such is life and lesson learned (again), Amazon is not your friend if you’re a business person. I cannot wait! to share the wide availability of Space Rogues 1 &2 with everyone!

Cons in the time of COVID

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I’ve now finished all of my 360|Conferences events for the year, and have participated/watched two writer events.

This past weekend I attended my second MileHiCon, overall it was better than my first.

MileHiCon 52 was this past weekend, and October 2-3 was… I’m honestly blanking and all I have are Zoom links in my calendar, shrug.

Anyhow, many events just threw in the towel (Starfest, Rocky mtn Con, 20booksto50k, etc) so it’s nice that a few gave it their best shot to provide the community something to do. Here are some takeaways I gleaned.

Booths

Don’t bother with author alley/vendor areas. Thankfully MileHiCon wasn’t overly expensive, but it was all a waste. Zero sales that I can link to the event. No “came to my table” that I know of.

I saw this with 360|Conferences events as well. Our sponsors (gods bless ’em) didn’t get much traffic. It just doesn’t work the same as in-person.

Assuming 2021 is likely to still be virtual, I won’t be offering booths at 360 Events. I’ll find someting else to offer sponsors that gets them engagement.

panels/sessions

There are a lot of things to not like about online events. Being able to do the laundry, mow the lawn, etc. WHILE watching (or at least listening to) a session is not one of them IMO. I love the freedom that comes with virtual events.

It’s great to not be stuck in a ballroom, etc while still enjoying the amazing content.

As a panelist, it’s certainly nice to be in the comfort of my home office. To have notes, etc available if needed. MileHiCon specifically, it was nice to have a moderator, LOL. I need to work on my getting on panels game as there were several i felt I could have contributed to.

Overall

As an organizer, while I missed going out for drinks with folks, etc. I didn’t miss having to get up early and be at the venue from 7a to 8p. I was able to still work out, do stuff around the house, actually eat lunch, etc.

Also, from an organizer standpoint, the overhead is next to zero. No overpriced internet, food, etc. No swag. That was nice from a budget perspective.

As an attendee those are all negatives to a degree. While I haven’t made a ton of inroads in the writing community yet, being in the room is a must so from the networking perspective, MileHiCon and the other (Still can’t remember the name!) were for not.

So, you know one more feather in 2020’s fuck you cap for sure are events. There are plusses and minuses of on-line vs. in-person, to be sure but in any model things were just… ‘off’

I’m not overly hopeful that 2021 will see many in-person events, but here’s hopin’.

Finish a Book, Get Free Beer

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Space Rogues 8 WIP – Done

So, this is a new one, and I have ZERO objections :)

Given that we’re moving into winter, and that Denver (and CO, and most of America) are racing towards new COVID-19 surges, Nicole and I went to one of our favorite breweries to do some “work from a patio, with beer,” work.

I was almost done with the first draft of “Here There Be Monsters” the 8th book in the Space Rogues series. An hour or so after we sat down, I typed “The End” and so took the above picture to celebrate, posting it to my instagram feed. Of course, being the good social media citizen I was I tagged my location, Empourium Brewing.

A few minutes later one of the staff comes out to offer virtual high fives and elbow bumps. It took me a second to realize she’d already seen my post!

We hung out for a bit more (hours and beers) then headed to our next stop (another brewery that was doing a sushi pairing!).

When the crew brought our bill out, they also gifted us a 4-pack of the beer Nicole and I were drinking!

A first for sure, and a trend I have no complaints with continuing forever. Might have to have the crew visit if they make it back to Earth again.

So anyway, that made my weekend!

Scrivener for iOS (NOT iPadOS) needs some love

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I get it. Software is hard and takes time. I’ve never begrudged developers taking the time to release good software and good updates.

Scrivener might be the exception to my “Don’t complain” policy.

Scrivener is still an iOS app, with an iPad interface. We’ve had iPadOS now for over a year. iPadOS 14 came out last month. In that time, Literature & Latte has released 2 updates to Scrivener iOS, the last being 9 months ago.

I get it, Scrivener isn’t the only application they have, and I don’t know if it’s even their most lucrative. I also don’t know if it’s trivial or not to recompile as an iPadOS app. Maybe if L&L was a bit more transparent I’d know.

What I also know is that now that I’ve moved to a more iPad Pro centered workflow, for my writing, Scrivener is becoming more annoying than not. Especially it’s antiquated way of viewing files in your project.

Have a document in your research folder? You have to back all the way up to the top level of your project, then go down from there to your research file. Find what you need, then reverse those steps to get back to the scene you’re writing.

The pain of looking up your research when writing in Scrivener

I’m normally very very pro Scrivener. If someone asked me today, I wouldn’t recommend the iOS version. The Mac version, yes, it’s great.

I use it daily. There have been times where I’ve needed to move things around and rather than deal with the clunky mobile interface, I come back to my office, wake up my computer, open scrivener after Dropbox has synced, and move things. Then I close it all down and go back to my iPad. It’s tedious, to say the least.

More and more DabbleWriter which I love overall, is looking more attractive as my main writing project app for iPad and desktop. I tend to move back and forth right now between the two tools, but maybe I’ll take a break on Scrivener and go all-in on Dabble for a bit.

Oh, by the way, I write Thrillers too.

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Island of Secrets Cover

Lesson learned, release two books really close to each other, while also running conferences, means something will not get the love it deserves.

In this case, it’s my action/adventure thriller ‘Island of Secrets‘

I decided to branch out a bit from science fiction to write something a little more down to Earth. A team of treasure hunters going where they’re paid to go to find treasures and secrets long lost.

It came out last week, go grab it if you’re a can of Clive Cussler style adventures

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