O-Dark-Thirty

I wrote this letter to my children years ago. I forgot it. They probably forgot it. Yet I still draw upon the premise: sometimes there are no answers. I can draw upon the ancient sources, including the Bible, for the names of men of great knowledge. Josephus says this of Abram: Berosus mentions our father Abram without naming him, when he says thus: "In the tenth generation after the Flood, there was among the Chaldeans a man righteous and great, and skillful in the celestial science." But Hecatseus does more than barely mention him; for he composed, and left behind him, a book concerning him. And Nicolaus of Damascus, in the fourth book of his History, says thus: "Abram reigned at Damascus, being a foreigner, who came with an army out of the land above Babylon, called the land of the Chaldeans: but, after a long time, he got him up, and removed from that country also, with his people, and went into the land then called the land of Canaan, but now the land of J...

Except for me, my family is a military family. My Grandma Jen and Grandpa Mac served in WWII (that's where they met) as well as most of their brothers and sisters, my great Aunts and Uncles. My Grandpa Comfort served in Korea. My mother and father met while both were stationed in Virginia. My father served in Viet Nam as a medical corpsman. Each of my younger brothers served in the military. My youngest brother met his wife when they were both stationed in Panama. My thanks to each of them, and my remembrance of what they've done for me. Freedom is not free. Over the centuries the freedoms we enjoy in this country were won by the blood and the innocence of our youngest, our best and our brightest. We will never know the true cost of the conflicts; those who died might have been otherwise destined to cure cancer, compose symphonies and write great literature. Thank you. You are all my heroes. Our Pastor said that our WWII vets are now in their eighties and few rema...

My newest book,   My Mother-in-law Misadventures  is   now available on Smashwords ! With a download from Smashwords, you don't even need a reader like a Kindle or a Nook. You can download a simple PDF or a document file, or any of a bunch of formats that you can read directly on your computer! Smashwords accounts are free, so jump right in and get the book. Okay, on Smashwords, use the coupon code  QC33S to get a free download of the book until June 1, 2013! Yeah, Darling thinks I lost my mind. Please leave a review, though.  It's also available on Amazon . That promotion will have to wait a bit! Go ahead and grab the book. If you read it and like it, please leave some positive feedback. Our first book is FREE on Smashwords, too, but you don't need a coupon for that! Who knew this publishing thing could be so complicated? (Well, a lot of people, I guess, but it certainly is an adventure!) About Smashwords Founded in 2008, Smashword...

There is fable about dogs and cats. A puppy wags its tail when the master approaches. The puppy thinks "You feed me and love me and take care of everything for me. You must be some sort of god." A kitten licks its paw when the master approaches. The kitten thinks "You feed me and love me and take care of everything for me. I must be some sort of god." In my experience, that's the difference between cats and dogs. From Wikipedia I like dogs. Not little yippy dogs, but dogs that are at least medium size. I have a preference for Norwegian Elkhounds, but my favorite dog in my entire life was an Elkhound. Smokey and I did everything together. Mom didn't let him in the house, but she didn't let her four boys come in the house either, except in bad weather. So Smokey and I often sat in the back yard and discussed the weighty things of the world of a teenage boy. Smokey was a good listener. I had two dogs when I first got married, a young m...

I owe everyone an update on my adventures in getting this book finished.  In the last post I mentioned that a cover is a hard thing to put together, and it is. However, a cover is vital to the success of the book. It is, along with the title, the first thing the prospective buyer sees. In some cases, it is all they look at. What you want is for the person browsing the book section to be intrigued by the title, hooked by the cover and reeled in by the description. I couldn't do a cover for the new book myself. The one I managed to put together by myself was a nice cover if I actually wrote a biography of Darling's mother, but my book is a collection of (mostly) funny stories about her mother living with us for ten years. The last chapter deals a bit with Frau's life as a young woman, with pictures of documents from WWII that she kept in a lock box in her closet for fifty years. (Just to be clear, not all the documents are included - there were a lot of them.) N...

Steps to Self-Publishing 1. Write a great book, or at least a good book. This is critical. Of course, if it is really a great book and you can find an established publisher to publish it, then I'd opt for that route. Really. Save yourself the headaches. The problem is that it is pretty easy to write a book; it is a much harder task to write a good one, and pretty difficult to write a great one. This is why there are so many self-published mediocre books available. You can do better, though. Okay, your book is written and you want to publish it. 2. Edit your book. Please. I spent weeks (of writing time) writing my second book. I spent   months   editing it. My buddy   James Altucher said recently  " When you write, don’t think about money. Don’t think about who the reader is. Don’t worry about what people will say." I agree with the statement, but grammar and spelling still count - a lot. 3. Format your book properly for e-books. Yes, the converters...

I just finished publishing the   Smashwords   edition of   Preparing for the Fiscal Cliff . Smashwords allows you to download books in multiple formats, including the Kindle format and PDF. If you didn't get the book that Darling and I wrote back in October, now's a good time. It's free, and according to my research, Amazon will eventually match the price, so it will become free on that site as well (though I have no time frame for that). So far about thirty people viewed the book and a half dozen downloaded it. Although I wanted to make the book free for quite a while, the impetus was really a learning step for my second book. I need to bring you up to date on my second book, right? I mean, I've babbled about it for a half dozen posts, so you should at least be able to follow my exploits. I'll go through the self-publishing steps in the next post, but let's talk about   FEAR . I've been writing for decades, literally since I was about five...

Romans 12:18 KJV "If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men." I had my two youngest children memorize Romans 12 years ago. I think they can still recite the verse. I get stuck with a few parts of it. I didn't make them do this as punishment. I chose this chapter from the Bible because I heard an old woman speak once and she said this chapter provided her guidelines for interacting with people. I remember thinking how powerful that statement was and I wanted my children to have the same advantage. When I told them we would all memorize the chapter, they didn't even blink, but simply asked what version of the Bible we would use. The King James version is a little rough for my tastes, so I chose the New American Standard Bible version, which I read was a more modern, yet accurate rendition of the original texts. Romans 12:18 NASB " If possible,   so far as it depends on you,   be at peace with all men." The entire chap...

Young Frau - a 1940s glamour shot? I'm putting the finishing touches on the book. I finished all major edits, with Darling's sweet help identifying some spots where I needed to be more ... nice. All the pictures are in place that I plan to add. I am, in fact, not including the British papers mentioned in my previous post . I am actively trying to keep the file size down for the book. The pictures view well on the Kindle (my test file) but you can't zoom in and see great detail on any of them. I'll need to post them closer to their original scan size and provide readers a link to them. So all that is left is administrative stuff (the LCCN and ISBN) which entails spending a little money, getting a good cover design (a little more money) and the technical aspects of generating a very clean and crisp e-book version. {UPDATE} After a bit of discussion with Darling and some more reading, we decided to take a shot at the cover ourselves. If we make any money on the b...

Darling's mother took her US citizenship seriously. She considered voting a right, a privilege and a duty. Among the many papers she left behind was a copy of a telegram she sent to Senator John F. Kennedy in 1960. This will make it into The Frau Chronicles , near the final part of the bits about Young Hertha. July 14, 1960 Senator John F. Kennedy Washington, D.C. Dear Senator: If you are man enough to take on the great responsibility for our nation, you should be big enough to make your own decisions without the Pope and fall on your knees to thank God for the honor placed upon you by your fellow Democrats and the favorite sons of our Nation. The Pope cannot help you, but God can. I am a friend of Lyndon Johnson and if you are elected in November I will support you - provided you don't ask for help from the Pope. Let me know right away where you expect to get your help. May God bless you and I hope you will make the right decision. During all the years liv...