Keratoconus and I…

So, I had a visit with a specialist about my worsening eyesight, and it turns out I need corneal replacement surgery on my right eye due to Keratoconus. The procedure will be done on January 5th.

I’ve sort of known this day would come for quite a while now, but it was always comfortably somewhere out in the future. Now that it’s happening, I’m not quite sure what to think about it.

It’s not like the procedure is really optional, because the condition will only get worse, not better, but there are risks associated with it. Permanent loss of sight in that eye, rejection of the donor tissue, etcetera.

The left eye isn’t much better, but he seems to think that corneal cross-linking might work. If so, I should be able to avoid surgery.

The worst part of this situation is that it can take up to two years to completely heal. TWO YEARS.  And for six months or so my vision will be even worse than it is now.

Don’t get me started on the cost (hopefully insurance covers the bulk of that), but I’ll also need to use several kinds of eye drops for at least a year. Fun times.

I’ll be put under for the surgery, and never once in 58 years has this been necessary. Hopefully no one is looking to upload a funny video to Youtube… I suspect that I am going to be uncomfortable for quite some time after, but there is one up-side…I’ve already started shopping for an eye-patch.

ARRGGHH, matey’s…..

Almost there…

Well, its neither been easy, nor without its share of bumps along the way, but I am almost there. I’ve approved the final covers for Dire Circumstances and Dire Straits, have been provided what will be the final formatted eBook and print files for them both, and can actually visualize having the entire trilogy up for sale on Amazon by the end of the year. Whew! Tell me again why I do this to myself?

Also, being the nerd that I am, I have posters of book 1 and 2 hanging in my office at work, and as soon as the third is ready it will join its partners on the wall. I don’t know why, but being able to see them gives me a boost when the urge to write is flagging.

There is definitely more work to do, but I can see the finish line now. I’ve been working on some short stories that will most likely be a part of the collection I plan to release in the Feb/Mar timeframe, and after that I am nearly certain that I will dive into the anti-superhero book I started some time ago. Should be fun.

In the meantime (because Amazon is being bitchy) I am including the links to both versions of Dire Consequences below. And hey, books make great gifts for Xmas…I’m just sayin’.

Amazon.com: Dire Consequences: The Alexander Matthews Chronicles Book 1 eBook : Albano, L. D. : Kindle Store

Amazon.com: Dire Consequences: The Alexander Matthews Chronicles Book 1: 9781736279113: Albano, L. D.: Books

 

Latest news

The new Kindle cover has gone live for Dire Consequences, and I started running an ad campaign for it on Amazon. I guess we’ll see how that goes.

I’m starting to get nervous about the likelihood of all three books hitting the end of year deadline. The cover artists are rocking it, so they aren’t the problem, but the formatter is super slow. So far all I have gotten from him is the Kindle for book one, and I really need the print version….like now.

As a matter of fact the cover team has already wrapped up the work on Dire Circumstances, and I’ll be sending them the brief for Dire Straits either today or Monday.

The problem is they can’t finalize the print covers until I have total page count from the formatter, and….sigh. Anyway, a little frustrating, but I was really happy with the Kindle format, and I want the same vendor to do all three books in the trilogy.

I’ll leave you with a sneak peak of book two:

New book cover

I signed off on the replacement cover for Dire Consequences today, and I cannot express how much more I like this version. It is night and day, and Milo at Deranged Doctor Design knocked it out of the park.

Also, I sent the cover brief for book 2 Dire Circumstances to him, and hopefully in the next month book 3 Dire Straits will follow.

Once I have the finalized print cover I will post the new stuff on Amazon. I can’t wait. The goal is to have the entire trilogy up for sale by the end of the year…:)

So…here it is, version 2.0:

Busy few months

Just finalized the editing on Dire Straits and started looking at all of the things I need to do to stay on schedule. It’s going to be a busy few months leading to the end of the year.

In order to have all three novels published by January I will have to meet several milestones along the way. I have mapped out the timelines and this is what I’ve come up with:

DDD: Covers (eBook, Print, animated cover, poster)
SEPT 02 2021- Dire Consequences $475
SEPT 20 2021- Dire Circumstances $475
NOV 04 2021-   Dire Straits $475

Polgarus: Formatting
SEPT 10 2021- Dire Consequences $115
SEPT 26 2021- Dire Circumstances $115
NOV 10 2021-   Dire Straits $115

Of course, this doesn’t include the advertising costs I will incur on Amazon. Unlike last time I am going to leverage this option when I publish, hopefully it will result in a sales increase. Only time will tell.

 

Book thieves

So, an interesting thing happened yesterday., book thieves  put themselves on my radar. I noticed a post on Twitter talking about a rogue company that was offering their books for free. On the off chance that I might be impacted, I went to the website and did a search.

Lo and behold, my book was listed as available for free…and it had a 4 star rating. WTF? I was shocked because I can’t get ANYONE who’s read it to actually do a review.

This is definitely some kind of scam website, but it does bring up a problem that plagues authors. If you read a book that you haven’t paid for (unless it was a legitimate offer from the writer), then we receive no royalties on that transaction. Zero. Zip. Nada.

Like musicians and other artists we rely on book sales for at least some of our income. Such activities impact our livelihood in a negative fashion. Please keep this in mind and help a brother out…

Another Honorable mention…

My 2nd Quarter submission to the Writers of the Future contest picked up another Silver Honorable mention.  I’m quite proud of the short story Six-gun Apotheosis, and this is the second time it has garnered this mention. I just wish it would earn some money…:)

I haven’t sent a story for consideration in the 3rd Quarter, and probably won’t since the deadline is June 30th, but I imagine that I will do so for the next.

I also did not submit for the PNWA contest this year, and have let my membership lapse. I just wasn’t utilizing the membership enough to justify paying the dues, not to mention how difficult I found it to stay within the 3000 word limit for submission to their contest.

The one major thing preventing me for spamming out shorts to every contest I can find is…I am most likely going to gather them all into a volume that I will release toward the end of the year, and I don’t want to have to set any aside just in case they were to win. Publishing rules preclude doing so.

I’ll keep you posted here when the book becomes available.

Social media and me

Those who know me understand just how painful the thought of being on social media actually is. When I was hired at my last job they did the usual scan the Interweb for my presence thing and found almost nothing. This seemed to shock them, but I felt nothing but a deep sense of contentment.

I’m a private person, who wants to stay that way, and the mere thought of sharing my activities and such is immensely distasteful. Nor do I find myself all that interesting…/shrug

I’ve had to get over that, of course, as evidenced by this blog. Still, when I started to write seriously I was told that you have to be on FaceBook, Twitter, etcetera if you want to be effective at marketing and interacting with potential fans. Meh.

I still hate FB and almost never use it, but for the last couple of weeks I have been dipping my toes into the Twitterverse. I still don’t love it, and being limited to 250 characters at a time is a PITD (Pain In The DIck), but I also don’t hate it. Like anything else it has its share of ass-hats, but there are also some genuinely funny individuals as well.

The writing community seems to have a strong presence there and it is nice to get other perspectives once in a while, or a kick in the ass if needed, or even some encouragement for those who have hit a breaking point. You can find almost anything you may be looking for there.

But it is also a huge time-sink. Time spent on Twitter is time not spent being productive. I have a full-time job, a family, and I still need to squeeze in time to write. That time available now has to be sub-divided so I can stay active on Twitter. There are algorithms that track your participation and if you don’t meet minimums you will become invisible. And no one wants that.

So…I find myself torn. Do I sacrifice to the Social Media gods in the hopes of selling more books? Or do I climb back into my hole and pull the cover over it? I guess time will tell.

Getting tired of this shit…

Yet another mass shooting in the news, and folks, I’m getting really tired of this shit. When did peoples best option become gunning down as many innocents as possible before committing suicide? Or even worse, killing indiscriminately then allowing yourself to be arrested?

If you expect some long-winded anti-gun rant, then you should just move along. This ain’t it.

If you think this is going to be a frothing at the mouth pry it from my cold dead fingers manifesto, then you should go away, too.

What it IS is me wondering what the ever-living fuck is wrong with people?

Hey, you want to commit suicide? Knock yourself out, bro. As far as I’m concerned that is your right, your call, and no one can tell you otherwise. Where I draw the line is when you decide that taking five, ten, or even fifteen other people with you is the bestest idea EVER. Fuck you.

When did suicide become a participatory event? One where innocent bystanders become part of the game, even unknowingly? Evidently sitting in the basement and blowing your brains out just doesn’t cut it anymore. Oh no, you need a body-count to go along with it. Speaking for myself, and I’m sure all other sane people, no thanks.

Life sucks and you just can’t take it anymore? Please exit this reality quietly…and alone. We’ve all got issues, dude, but we don’t all take them out on random people (or family members).  That five year old girl bleeding out next to her mother never did you any harm. The woman loading groceries into her car? The same. The seven folks you slammed your car into? Pretty sure they didn’t even know who the fuck you are.

My point is… Why is this now the norm? I’m 59 years old and I can honestly say that I don’t remember activity such as this when I was in my teens and twenties. Certainly not this frequently, nor so prevalently. Has society changed so much that we barely even blink an eye when these things happen, and keep on happening? It boggles my mind.

To be honest, my wife and I seriously considered Home-schooling our daughter, but it just wasn’t feasible for us. My parents never had to wonder if we would come home alive at the end of the day…but I do. This is so much bullshit, and we all know it, but somehow we have let things get out of control as a society.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-gun. That doesn’t mean I don’t think that the act of purchasing one shouldn’t have more built-in safeguards. I do. I’m all for making it harder for unstable individuals to get their hands on weapons. Hell, I don’t even hunt (too much an animal lover), my time is spent on the range. I enjoy using firearms, just not in destructive ways.

I served five years in the US Army, fired many different types of weapon, and played with all sorts of other explosive goodies. I owned weapons before I enlisted, and I own one now. And yet I don’t have uncontrollable urges to hurt people.

That being said, not everyone should be allowed to do so, and if at any point you become a danger to others, that right should be stripped from you…post haste. No question about it.

This isn’t a Red state/Blue state issue. Its just common fucking sense. Jesus Christ, not everything has to be a liberty or death scenario. We have the ability to make this better…what we lack is the will. And politicians on both sides will milk it for all its worth, never actually doing anything about it. Don’t get me started on those ass-hats…/rant off

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