The Passive Guy Blog has an excellent post about the Amazon / Hatchett controversy. Amazon sounds so much more reasonable. The people who are complaining about their actions are upset about anything Amazon might do that changes the Publishing world. See the article. Amazon wipes the floor with Hatchett's lunch.

http://www.thepassivevoice.com/

Interviewed by Kristi Rose

The Author Kristi Rose interviewed me for her blog. You can see it here - http://www.kristirose.net/2014/07/chat-g-l-snodgrass/

Kristi's debut novel "The Girl He Knows" is coming at on August 18. It is a great story. A modern love story about a young woman who has to fight to learn what is important in life and fight to get it. I highly recommend it. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KYUNEHM/ref=cm_sw_su_dp

I know that it will do well. Kristi is the type of person who won't let it be otherwise.

Gary

Two Years Before the Mast

My Book Review for Two Years Before the Mast was just posted on Chicago Boyz. It is a History/Political blog.

 http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/44393.html

This is way cool

Self Publishing

My first Self-Published work

 

 

I just submitted my short story "Prom Date" to smash words. It was an experiment to discover how hard it would be. It took me about 2 hours to create the cover and about 3 hours to format the book and 2 minutes to load everything. It got rejected the first time because I made a couple of mistakes. I fixed them and it sailed through the second time. It will be 3 to 5 days before it shows up in Nook, Kobe, Amazon, etc.

It should be a lot faster next time. It was sort of like doing your taxes, hard, but doable.

Lessons learned - Use the Smashwords guide.
- Nuke the book. Covert to Text then back to MS word. Eliminated all the extraneous code
- Create style sheets for each of the different part. Not MS Word Buttons.
- Cover size 1600 x 2400

 You can find it at

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/460092

I wrote it for my daughters Caitlin and Andrea and dedicated it to Shelley

Book Addiction

The signs that you are addicted to Books.

I realized the other day that I am addicted to books. It is a common vice, shared by many but not yet recognized by the American Medical Association. I feel that if they were to look at it they would agree with me. Book Addiction is a serious disease. Here are the common symptoms.

1.      You buy books that you never get around to reading.  You know when you buy it you probably won’t. But you can’t stop yourself.

2.      You are constantly on the lookout for that next great thing. That book that you can fall in love with and recommend to all your friends

3.      You always read the book before going to see the movie. You don’t want the movie to spoil the book.

4.      You have more than one E-Reader. (I have three, I had a Sony, went to Kindle because of the larger selection. Someone gave me an old nook that I can’t through away).

5.      You think bookshelves with paper type books are an important furniture feature in your home.

6.      You give books as gifts, especially to your children and grandchildren. Then are surprised when they don’t love them as much as you did.

7.      You have always thought you could write a novel, maybe even tried it a time or two.

8.      You have been known to read the back of Cereal boxes because you can’t sit still without reading something.  (You know you have it bad when you find yourself editing the back of cereal boxes. “I would have said it like this” or “That is grammatically incorrect.”)

9.      You can cite the difference between a Regency and Victorian Romance, or between a Space Opera and an Epic Fantasy

10.   You think the smell of an old book is better than the smell of a new car.