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Baby You Can Drive My Car, If You Can Find It

 I kept a secret for the last year, but now it's time to let that secret escape.

In September of 2016, our beloved Ford Focus fell victim to a guy trying to turn into traffic with the setting sun in his eyes. We replaced it with what became equally beloved, a 2014 Ford Escape, which I call burgundy but which is technically ruby red.


I cannot conceive of why there have to be fifty shades of red. When I became a volunteer firefighter, we had several fire trucks that were red. We had one that was burgundy. That's it. The names of colors never made us hungry.

Anyway, this car had a backup camera and a computer screen, neither of which I saw any use for, both of which I now wouldn't do without. We drove that car all over everywhere. Well, four states, anyway, and about two dozen state parks, not to mention Chicago. Don't get me started on Chicago.

It always amused me, how many ruby red SUVs we noticed on the road after that. Probably just the bias of us having one, but it seemed like we saw them everywhere.

"You get a ruby SUV, you get a ruby SUV--you all get a ruby SUV!"

When it developed a very small radiator leak I wasn't too concerned, until nobody could find the leak. I mean nobody, including mechanics and the dealer. Then one of the spark plugs started acting up. Then everything started acting up.

We drove it a LOT, mind you.

But estimates for fixing the problem, assuming we could figure out what the problem was, brought us into the "nickle and diming us" phase of car ownership. We needed a new car. Emily started researching, and I looked around.

Do you see Emily? I didn't--I almost got into the wrong car.

We found a car that was a heck of a deal, if we were willing to drive some distance to look at it. We did. We looked. We fell in love.

Much to our surprise, we drove back home in a different car than the one we'd left in. Having learned my lessons, I embraced the changes that came with a vehicle five years newer. It has so much extra safety equipment that the insurance cost actually went down.

It also has heated seats, and a heated steering wheel, two things I used to make fun of. No more. The screen showed us where we were and where we were going, and the computer could connect our phones (audio book, yay!), make us hot tea, warn us if we were approaching a politician with his hand out, and even play the radio.

And it had remote start.

Whoever invented the remote start needs to win the Nobel Prize For Awesome.

As we headed home, I suggested to Emily that we play a little game. "Let's not tell anyone we bought a car, and see how long before anyone notices."



You see, we replaced the ruby red 2014 Ford Escape with a ruby red 2019 Ford Escape.

The photo above shows them together--the new one's on the right. We took the front license plate off, but there's still a considerable difference in the front. In the back, not so much.

A few of my family members noticed right away--nobody else did unless I pointed it out to them. After all, someone else's car is not something the average person pays close attention to. Still, it was a lot of fun having the secret.

It was also a lot of fun seeing my speed in kilometers per hour: The car comes from Canada.


 

Remember, you don't have to drive somewhere to buy our books ... although if you want to, why not?

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Assassination Is Always Wrong

I'm going to delay my normal weekly blog due to everyone's minds being somewhere else, with good reason.

Now, before I go on, I want to make something very clear: I don't like Donald Trump. He's a bully and an a**hole.

That's not a political statement, because I also don't like Joe Biden. He's an idiot savant, a dumb person with a genius for getting elected. (A conclusion I came to years ago, and unrelated to his current troubles.)

Neither opinion is related to their political views. I do not talk politics online except in humor pieces, for the same reason I don't try to reason with brick walls. Don't bother. You have your opinions, and I respect that, and I don't dump friends because I disagree with them.

However, if you're happy that someone tried to kill a Presidential candidate, unfriend me. Right now.

I'm not talking about conspiracy theories or questions about what happened and who was involved. I'm talking about people who think it's okay to take out politicians, on either side. I'm talking about people who wish it had succeeded. I don't care who the victim is, it's not okay. It wasn't okay when Reagan was targeted. It wasn't okay with Kennedy, or Lincoln. It's never okay.

Don't bother coming back at me with who caused all the hatred, because there's plenty of blame to go around. If you think your side should win by killing candidates on the other side, you've gone over the edge, and you're now part of the problem. We have nothing more to talk about.

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How Much Is An Author Worth?

 Never mind how much a book is worth to you; how much is an author worth to you?

After all, a book is only a shaving off a tree, or a little blip of electricity. An author, on the other hand, is a living being who needs not only reviews and sales, but also coffee (or in my case tea), food, electricity, and occasionally a new laptop. My wife bought me a keyboard that feels and sounds just like a typewriter: It brings me great joy, but also cost about a month's worth of book sales.

Not that it was expensive, I just don't sell that many books.

Desks, computers, chairs, swords ... writing can be expensive.

 

How much a reader should pay for a book is a question that's been debated since Gutenberg bought too much ink and ran his first Black Friday sale. Among other things, it depends on your level of fame. The ebook edition of Stephen King's newest book is priced at $14.99, more than some of my print books. Our traditional publisher has our photo-heavy history book Images of America: Albion and Noble County priced at $12.99, and another publisher has my romantic comedy Radio Red at $3.99.

Guess how many books King sells, compared to me? Yep: The answer is "lots".

We do better with our self-published books, which run from 99 cents to $2.99 as ebooks. Fun fact: Some readers refuse to buy 99 cent books, assuming at that price they can't be any good. This assumption is both foolish and wrong. I suspect that price is often an act of desperation by good writers.

On the other end of it, Hoosier Hysterical has lots of pictures, and we can't sell it at less than $2.99 without losing money. That's the best we can do without just giving it away. Hold that thought.

No matter what the price, it's hard for lesser known authors to get into brick and mortar stores.

 

So, ten or twelve bucks for an electronic book. Crazy expensive, right? I mean, we don't have to pay for paper, ink, shipping ... how greedy can we be?

But how much is an author worth?

Three times I've written the rough draft of a book in thirty days. That's great, but it took a few weeks to prepare for the writing, then a month or two after to revise it before the story was decent enough for my wife to read. Then there's the revision after she returns it to me. The month of actual writing, when I push it hard, consists of working my full time job, writing, eating while writing, and nothing else. Some people can get books out the door faster, but I have to think they don't have full time jobs.

The old joke: An author can't make enough money to write full time until he's written and sold enough books, which he can't do until he writes full time.

So it goes.

So, a dollar for something it took me at least three months to produce, not including all the time spent on promotion and advertising? Writers are worth more than that. Even me.

Which brings us to giving books away for free.


Some authors swear that giving their ebooks away gets them so much attention that people come back and buy their other books, thus advancing their career in the long run. That seems to work for them, but it's not been my experience. Just the same, every July for the last few years I've entered the one novel I have up on Smashwords, Coming Attractions, into the Smashwords Summer/Winter sale.

Has it resulted in more readers for the other books? Not that I've noticed. It doesn't even lead to that many readers picking it up for free. Smashwords has a lot of authors, so my deal has to fight for attention with all those other deals. On the other hand, my sales aren't great in July to begin with, and it doesn't seem to be doing me any harm, either.

I'm curious how you, both the reader and the writer, feel on the subject. Maybe I'll try other giveaways at some point, even though I don't think authors should have to do that. I also don't think authors should have to spend so much time promoting and advertising, but welcome to the real world. How do you feel on the subject?

Oh, and Coming Attractions is free here:

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/ozma914

But you already knew that.

Summer themed. Well, kinda.

 

 

Remember, every time you get a free book, you get a book for free.



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