As I write this on Thursday evening, I’m too tired to think. The last two nights included sleeplessness. Tuesday night after around 3:15 a.m., Wednesday night after 2:30 a.m. The reasons are complicated and don’t need to be stated in detail.
Wednesday morning, I tried to go back to sleep but couldn’t. I finally got up around 4:30 and went to The Dungeon and got to work. I was reasonably productive, writing over 2,000 words in my work-in-progress before I was too tired to go on. Last night, I got up around 3:20, got shoes and a shirt on, and went outside to complete a task—yes, outside in the dark. Then I went to my chair instead of back to bed and tried to sleep there. I may have slept some, but not much. About 6:15 I gave up trying, got fully dressed, and went to The Dungeon.
I got some writing done, but not much. I ate breakfast as usual around 9:00, met with the contractors doing work on my house, then was back in The Dungeon at 10. The writing was simply too difficult to concentrate on in my weakened condition. I gave up around 11, went to the sunroom to read, and fell asleep. I managed a 30 to 45 minute nap in the blissful coolness of the rainy day.
At 12:30 p.m., an e-mail arrived announcing some good news. That kept me going through my afternoon meeting of the Scribblers & Scribes, my writing critique group.
But, alas, I have no mind for a post other than this one telling you why I have no mind for a post. So I’ll click “publish” without proofreading. I’ll proofread tomorrow, early I hope, and make any edits required.
Here’s to hoping I’ll be able to post more intelligently on Monday.
Book 4 in the “Documenting America series—or Book 5 if you include the homeschool edition of the first one.
Saturday morning I awoke around 3:45 a.m. with a need which, unfortunately, happens about every night. When I went back to bed, I could not fall asleep. I laid there until about 4:30 a.m., then decided to just get up and start my day. I went down to The Dungeon to work on the computer.
I decided the best thing to do was the publishing tasks of Documenting America: Run-Up To Revolution. The e-book I had published March 1st, but there are more steps to the print book than the e-book, so I didn’t jump right into print book tasks.
But a very quiet Saturday morning, long before daylight, seemed a good time to concentrate on that. I first took 20 minutes or so to wrap up my stock trading accounting for the week, then plunged into my Word print book file. It all went pretty easy. It helped that I had just done this for another book and thus it was fresh on my mind. I made one or two minor errors in entering headers but they were easily fixed. By 8:45 I had the book interior finished.
After breakfast, I went back to tackle the cover. Any regular reader of this blog knows I had making covers, though I haven’t posted about that for a while. This cover was easy, however. Calculate the book size based on the number of pages. Upload the e-book cover, resize it to the print book size. Add a text box to the back cover with the already-written text. Add a text box for the spine, rotate it 90°, center it two ways on the background. Export as a PDF file. Upload to Amazon.
It really as that simple. I had a little trouble aligning layers relative to the background, and accidentally moved the background a little. I thought no big deal. I clicked “publish” on the print book, and went on to another task, writing a letter to my granddaughter. Amazon needs a little time to review the files before they are published.
Yesterday, during Sunday school, an e-mail from Amazon came in. The book was not acceptable. The only problem was with the cover, something about the back of the book not being acceptable. I knew right what is was: that accidentally moved background. In the afternoon, after a good Sunday school class, worship service, Subway lunch, and pleasurable reading time in the sunroom, I went back to The Dungeon to make adjustments.
Except I found the adjustments too difficult and decided to start over. It was much easier the second time. All layers were properly created again and aligned. It took less than 30 minutes to create, check, export the PDF, and upload to Amazon.
Using the online book viewer, I checked the cover. Something appeared that I hadn’t noticed. Some of the back cover text overlapped onto the spine. That took two minutes to fix, and soon I had to book re-uploaded. This time all items on the cover were in the right place and within the guidelines. I clicked “approve” then “publish”. And now I wait.
Here’s the link. Hopefully both the print book and e-book will be available by the time you read this. Hopefully too, this is something some of you will want to read.
It didn’t work as a Kindle Vella book. Maybe it will as an e-book and paperback.
End of one month, beginning of a new one. Time to record my progress and goals. First, February progress.
Blog twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays. I managed to do this, despite the stroke. It helped that I had written one post early. Alas, I did a poor job responding to comments made. I hope to rectify that today.
Attend two writers meetings. I only made one of the two. One was the Thursday after the stroke, and though I could have gone, our leader strongly suggested (i.e. forbade me) to attend so close to the stroke.
Make major progress on Volume 8 of A Walk Through Holy Week. Based on January progress, I might be able to complete the first draft in February. UPDATE: Probably only 60 percent. I did make progress, but not near as much as I wanted. I would say I’m a little over 50 percent done. I lost two full weeks of writing while waiting for my touch-typing ability to return closer to normal.
Finish all publishing tasks for Vol. 1 of AWTHW, both e-book and print version. Just missed getting this done. I finished editing on Wednesday. Publishing tasks remain. Also waiting on a beta reader, but I was late getting it to him. That won’t hold up the publishing.
Make a couple of new ads on Amazon. Maybe one for There’s No Such Thing As Time Travel and one for A Walk Through Holy Week, Volume 1. Did not get this done. Just seemed too hard to do and do well with other things going on.
Continue transcribing our letters from Saudi Arabia. I did this, albeit significantly slower than I’d hoped.
Continue reading in some source for the next Documenting America book. I did this, but not as much as I thought I would. More on that in another post.
I’m looking to tweak the covers for this series some.
Now, time for March goals. I’m a little hesitant to make them, given that I have home repairs to superintend and medical appointments to keep, but here’s a stab at them.
Blog twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays.
Attend three writing group meetings.
Make major progress on A Walk Through Holy Week, Vol. 8. I hope to be about 90 percent done with it by month’s end.
Publish Documenting America: Run-Up To Revolution. Very doable by early in the month.
Make website changes as a result to the new publication.
More source reading for the Documenting America series.
Consider changes to the covers for the AWTHW series, though still encompassing my granddaughter’s artwork.
I feel like there’s a couple of things missing, but will conclude this post for now. I can always add to it if all goes well through the month.
Here’s what I track on my spreadsheet. Click to enlarge it if you’re interested.
Blog day tomorrow, and here I am on Sunday afternoon without anything planned. I did a thoughts-along-the-way post for last Friday. This coming Friday will be end-of-month progress and goals for next month. But what about today?
Something I haven’t spoken of recently is book sales. That might be a good topic. I think many people believe authors have lots of book sales. Not true. Or at least not true for most self-published authors.
Most of my sales come from Amazon. Fortunately, Amazon has a good book sales tracking system. Alas, that means it’s easy to see just how many sales I don’t have. I transfer those sales to a spreadsheet, along with any sales from Smashwords (now merged with Draft2Digital), Barnes & Noble, or others. I just did a check of those sales last year and added them to the spreadsheet.
So, what are my sales. Here they are. Promise not to laugh.
2023 – 151
2024 – 23 through Feb 25
Lifetime – 1483
Several times over the years I saw sales ramped up, only to crash after a few months. It seems that Amazon constantly changing their algorithms. Sales start to increase a little each month, then they go down to fairly low. They were growing last summer, then plummeted to single digits in each of Sept, Oct, Nov.
Since last December, they’ve been in double digits, with February being best of those a few days before the end of the month.
I suppose I should take the advice of other writers and just ignore sales, but I’m a stat man. I have to keep on top of sales. It may be an obsession, justifying counselling.
My highest selling series is, by far, my Documenting America books. This keeps me working on them. Hopefully I’m just a couple of weeks away from having the next one finished. I should be rushing it, I guess. I’ve been running ads on Amazon, and am staying ahead on royalties vs. ad cost. Possibly I should be running a few more.
In February I’ve sold 12 books: 8 e-books, 3 paperbacks, and 1 Kindle Unlimited borrow. They are six separate titles. That’s out of 41 published titles. I know, kind of pathetic.
So there you have it. Not a great report, but better than nothing.
Sometimes a partial sun, sometimes darker clouds on my Wednesday walk.
I just got back from an afternoon walk, the first since last Sunday. Various circumstances prevented me from going on Monday and Tuesday. I hoped to get in 1.5 miles, which would be the longest since my stroke.
But before I could walk, I had to figure out how to dress. The temperature was 72º with a 10 mph wind plus gusts. Should I put on a long sleeve shirt over my t-shirt? Change out of the t-shirt into a long sleeve shirt? Or just go as I was? I decided the breeze wasn’t all that strong, and a t-shirt was enough.
Step by step, I made my goal distance.
I didn’t bother with a warm-up since my normal pace these days is really at warm-up speed. Out the front door, up our steep driveway and to the left, uphill to where the flatter roads are. After passing three unbuilt lots on both sides of the street, the first thing I noticed was that my neighbor’s trash can was out, and it had been emptied! I hadn’t put mine out since I figured trash was delayed a day due to the Presidents’ Day holiday on Monday. I obviously didn’t get the memo that the trash company did honor Presidents’ Day.
I made it uphill without any angina. It’s not all that steep, but last summer and fall even a gentle walk up this hill brought the pain on. I checked my speed on my phone app, and it was 2.5 to 2.6 mph. That’s about where I wanted to be so, since there was no angina, I decided to push it just a little. Or at least keep pushing myself at that speed.
Trash day, and I missed it. Next week will be overflowing.
Out onto the main road, I turned west, intending to go to the top of the next hill—a fairly gentle slope—go down a little and around a circle, coming up to the same top of hill. I checked my watch, and was surprised to find a screen showing with my heart rate. This is a new watch, synced to my new phone. My cardiologist suggested I get one that did EKGs and tracked the heart rate. I didn’t realize that if I opened the Samsung walking app the phone heartrate tracker would also open. My heartrate rate 93 at that moment. I decided to keep pushing.
My thoughts wandered to the many things on my to-do list, some fairly major things. It is similar to a storm. Some of those things are:
Keep pushing contractors to finish the water remediation work in three places in our house, and do some repairs in another place that involves some remodeling.
Keep pushing the contractor for our gutter replacement to come back and finish the temporary solution he put in while I was in the hospital because the proposed solution wouldn’t work.
Push my proposed flooring contractor to call back so he can come out and give me an estimate for replacing our 38 year old carpet with flooring. I’m about to go to someone else.
Continue with PT for my injured shoulder from last June. Twice a week at the clinic, every day at home and now added exercises twice a day.
Get ready for a heart valve replacement, probably in July. Hopefully this won’t involve open-heart surgery.
Plan a road trip back east to see our son and do other things. Hopefully it will be before the valve replacement.
Short on sleep for the second night in a row; not sure why.
Donate our ancient minivan; it’s no longer road worthy.
Keep pushing forward with my book, which is drawing close to halfway done.
Keep pushing on my two special projects.
Keep pushing on dis-accumulation, which does indeed require constant pushing.
Make a major financial decision that will take some research.
Yes, all these make up a storm. As I walked, I remembered a post here about turning into the storm when the storms of life beset you. That’s what I’m going through, and I decided I would do that when I got home. First thing would be to pull out the vehicle title and call the Salvation Army. Alas, their phone system didn’t work either locally or nationally. I may have to find a different place.
Gotta call that contractor and have this temporary solution changed to a permanent one.
I rounded the circle and made the uphill leg, without stopping for breath. Normally I have to do that, so maybe this indicates I’m in better physical shape than five months ago. Or maybe it’s just that warmer weather brings on the angina more than cold weather.
As I headed up to the next leg of the walk, I heard a loud sound like thunder. Impossible, I thought. The thin clouds all around barely hid the sun, the disc being clearly visible. It must have been one of those empty trash cans blowing over and echoing.
My next thought was how much I love this walk in winter, mainly because I can see through the woods. Houses show on side streets and even across the valley. Hollows are not just opaque with undergrowth, but you can actually see down them. Evergreens are visible scattered within the naked hardwood forest, and how I enjoy seeing them.
On the return leg, just as I passed the street before the street I turn on before I turn onto our street (is that clear?), I heard another thunderclap. No mistaking it this time. It seemed to come from the south, so I made a note to check radar when I got home.
As I walked the homeward leg, every empty trash can laughed at me. The sky continued to belie any thunderstorm approaching, and my watch told me my pulse was 105. I stopped at the mailbox and retrieved one lousy little piece of junk mail that would go straight into recycling.
Just at I turned down the drive my app announced I passed the 1.5 mile mark. Goal met. No angina. Heartrate about where it should be. Just a slight sweat on my t-shirt. Thirteen cars passed me during the walk (yes, I count the cars)—no fourteen. That delivery truck on the street before ours. I have turned into the storm.
Oh, when I got home, the “all clear” report came from the mold specialist. One hurdle in remediation cleared. Now, if only the Salvation Army would either answer their phone or fix their website.
Genealogy papers on the left, Saudi letters (from 1982) on the right.
With the after-effects of the stoke having slowed my typing, I’ve now for just under a week been back to writing. Typing is still slow, but improving. It’s good to be back in the saddle. That doesn’t mean just on writing, but also on two special projects.
One of those is continuing to scan my genealogy research papers and safe them electronically. I’ve blogged about this before.More than half of my notebooks are culled and the contents either digitized or discarded. But all the easy parts are done. Most of what’s left are for the four family lines I spent the most time on in my research. I’m having to go through them more carefully. Some of the papers, mainly original documents I obtained, I’ll still save after scanning.
I worked on this last Friday and Saturday. I found that my electronic file saving system works, but also that I had a lot more folders to add. Saturday, beginning work on a new notebook, I realized I had in it mainly ancestors for whom I had no electronic folders. Since my folders are alphabetized first on Ahnentafel number, and also indicate the generation of the ancestor, it takes some time to get the folders properly created. Most of my time Saturday was spent on folder creation and organization, but did get some papers scanned, saved, and discarded. I also managed to scoop up about a half-dozen sheets that needed filing elsewhere (i.e. not in a genealogy notebook that’s a keeper) and got them filed. It’s those stragglers that are always a hindrance to keeping my work area clean.
The other special project is transcribing the letters from our years in Saudi Arabia, 1981-1983. I did this for the Kuwait years, 1988-1990 (and some after that) and put them in a book for family members. I blogged about that several times.
Now I’m on the Saudi letters. It’s quite different. No displacement due to war; the kids were little so no letters by them; no phone so we wrote more letters; but no computer so they were all handwritten.
I collected the letters into one bin and collated them some time ago. In early January (I think it was), I began transcribing 1981 letters. They were all done except for the two Christmas letters we sent that year, and one or two more, when I had my stroke. So, before I started back on my writing work, I knuckled down and, with my right hand still typing-impaired, got them done about a week and a half ago.
The total count for the seven months in 1981 was 53 unique letters. There were other items in the bind, but mainly empty envelopes and duplicate letters, where we photocopied a letter and sent it to several people, usually with a personal note attached.
I pulled out the box of letters for 1982 in preparation for the next phase of this task. I counted 75 letters, I think it was (some of them postcards), and some possibly duplicates. A few envelopes felt like they might have been empty. The stack for 1983 looks about the same size.
I don’t have a deadline for either of these projects. The end of 2024 is sort of a loose goal, and, I think, very doable so long as I don’t get lazy. And so long as my regular writing and home upkeep doesn’t overpower my time.
As I mentioned in a very short post on Jan 29, I had a stroke on Jan 27, at 10:08 in the morning. I got to the Urgent Care ER in about 45 minutes, had the clot-buster shot in less than 2 hrs. Was transported to hospital for the mandatory 24 hr observation after receiving the shot.
Here’s the cover for the e-book of “To Jerusalem”.
While in the hospital, my impairment symptoms improved. After the 24 hrs, I passed all the tests, including the final CTscan and physical, occupational, and speech therapy, and they let me go. I spent the rest of that day and the next going from bed to recliner to couch. I slept much. From Saturday morning to Monday I lost 4 pounds as my body fought the trauma. No snacks might have helped too.
As of now, my symptoms are greatly reduced. My speech is back nearly 100%. I can tell I still have a little trouble forming some words. My right hand is much improved. I can now touch-type normally, though not as fast. I’m doing maybe 40 words per minute instead of my normal 60 or so. A sticky keyboard is adding to the difficulty.
And my drooping right eyelids seems better. When people looked at me, they couldn’t see the droop, but it was there. It affected my reading a lot at first. Slowly it’s been better. Yesterday’s reading, of an 11 pt font, I was able to do without much trouble. I can still tell it’s not quite back to normal, however.
Through all of this, my writing tasks have been few. I was within a couple of hours before the stroke hit of publishing To Jerusalem, which is Volume 1 in my A Walk Through Holy Week Bible study series. As my strength, energy, and desire came back, I was able to finally get to the publishing tasks remaining. I published the ebook on Feb 8 and the paperback on Feb 11. So far I have one sale.
I returned to working on another volume in that series, Vol. 8, on Tuesday of this week. It felt good to be back in the saddle. My typing is more or less at the speed my mind is working to put words together. I’m getting less written in a typical writing session than I did before the stroke, but perhaps my productivity will return with a little more time.
So, that’s my story. I have more health items yet to come, but they will be the subject of later posts.
It seems a long time since I published anything. My last book was The Key To Time Travel, published in June last year. Since then, I worked on three different books, two in my Bible study series and one in my Documenting America series. I published the latter one on Kindle Vella, and recently began the work to publish it as a stand-alone book. Hopefully that will be ready for publishing before the end of February. After that, I have a completed short story to release soon, maybe in March.
But, right now, I completed the publishing tasks for To Jerusalem, which is Volume 1 of 8 in my Bible study series, A Walk Through Holy Week. It covers the period from the banquet in Bethany, six days before the Passover, to some of the teaching did on Tuesday of Holy Week.
My granddaughter, Elise, did the artwork for the cover series. Her work is acknowledged in the book. This was version one of the art.
The book is organized into ten chapters, with the idea that this could a series of ten small group lessons leading up to and perhaps going a few week after Easter. Our own adult Sunday School class has been going through this series for several years, one volume at a time (though is six parts rather than the eight volumes of the final series). The class seems to have enjoyed it.
The book is available, both as an ebook and paperback, at Amazon.
The book was republished with a new cover in 2008, and may have been updated from the 1994 edition I read.
Due to the current remediation work taking place at our house, we had to take all the books off the built-in bookshelves in the living room. The workmen then took the bookshelves out to get at the damaged areas. As I pulled books off the shelves, I saw some I didn’t realize were there. Most of the books went into boxes temporarily. They currently decorate our dining room floor, with no end in sight.
One such book was Guard Your Heart by Dr. Gary Rosberg. Published in 1994, this book came out in the midst of several men’s ministries, including Promise Keepers. Rosberg wasn’t part of that, but he was the founder of a different movement called CrossTrainers.
The book is excellent. You would think a book now 30 years old might be a little dated. Perhaps it is, but I found it to be excellent. Dr. Rosberg, a practicing counsellor (well, he was at the time; could be retired for all I know, though his website doesn’t indicate that) points out many things that men struggle with: juggling work and home; workplace difficulties; allocating time; maintaining spiritual vitality.
The book looks at what Rosberg calls “frontal attacks” and “sneak attacks that men he surveyed say are what they experience in their Christian life. Each of several of these attacks are covered in separate chapters. I found the advice given useful to me, even though the book was written for younger men who are still in their careers.
I rate the book 4-stars. It loses one star simply due to its age—there are probably slightly better books written in the last five years dealing with the same issues. But don’t get me wrong: this is very good and well worth the read. Alas, however, it is not a keeper. To the donation pile it will go.
The Davidic Chronicles is just one of Greg Baker’s series.
Most of the authors I interview on the blog are like me: struggling self-published authors hoping to somehow find an audience, trying to sell a book here and there. But today we’ll hear about a successful author, Greg S. Baker. A prolific author, much of his work is self-published. But he seems to have found the formula for getting sales.
So I thought I’d like to hear from him on the blog, and that you might too.
Q: In a couple of paragraphs, tell us about your journey to being an author.
Greg: I’ve always wanted to write, ever since I was a teenager. I even made an attempt at writing a fantasy novel with a friend in high school. We mailed the manuscript off to a big-name publisher and received a very nice rejection letter some months later. Discouraged, I set it aside to follow a different plan that God had put on my heart: pastoring. I pastored a church in Colorado for 13 years, but the passion for writing never went away.
While pastoring, I began writing again, and even landed several contracts with smaller publishers. This eventually led to a passion for writing that would honor God more so than my first attempt as a teenager did, so I stepped down from pastoring and began a ministry in Christian literature. While writing my own books, I also began a ministry specifically to help other Christian authors: Affordable Christian Editing Services. And since then, I’ve published over 20 books myself and our small service has helped thousands of authors with editing and publishing services.
Q: The Davidic Chronicles seem to be the mainstay of your published books. Tell us a little about the series, and specifically about Book 1, Anointed. It has over 450 ratings and a high ranking on Amazon. Is this your highest selling book?
Author Greg S. Baker is a good author to know about if you like Bible-era fiction,
Greg: The Davidic Chronicles is by far my most popular series. It is a set of biblical fiction novels revolving around the life of King David from when he is anointed by Samuel to when he was again anointed king in Hebron. To honor the Scriptures, I did not change any of the facts we are given from his life. But I fictionally filled in what might have happened between those facts. The goal was to create an interesting and entertaining read that would create wonder and excitement for the Scriptures. I wanted people to think, “Is that really in the Bible?” And then I wanted them to go and look for themselves. I tied together many of the facts that people overlook, such as the fact that Joab was David’s nephew or that Abner was Saul’s cousin. I wanted people to see that there is more to the Bible than they think with a casual read.
I also incorporated a tremendous amount of research into the time period, including the culture of the Philistines (Israel’s main rival during David’s life). I flushed out the characters with the personalities that the Scriptures hint about where possible and insert aspects of the wider culture that are often overlooked.
I really did enjoy writing them.
Q: Is the Davidic Chronicles series complete, or are more volumes coming? Perhaps you’ve moved on to a new biblical fiction series.
Greg: I have no plans on expanding the Davidic Chronicles at this time. I wrote another series of four novels on the lives of Daniel, Jeremiah, and Nebuchadnezzar, which I call the Rise of Daniel series. I also intend to write an antediluvian series of 9 novels that focus on three men: Seth, Enoch, and Noah.
Q: One of my problems is a writer is a malady I’ve named “Genre Focus Disorder”. I can’t concentrate on any one thing. I see you have books in both fiction and non-fiction, but fiction—specifically biblical fiction—seems to dominate. Why does this appeal to you as a writer?
Greg: I love biblical fiction for many reasons. First, I love to write, and they say that you should write about what you love and what you know. Well, I know the Bible—at least a little bit—and I love the Scriptures. So writing biblical fiction helps me to get excited about the research, the process of writing itself, and helping others make connections in Scriptures they would not normally make.
Jesus taught in parables. These stories resonated with people and taught them truths they might otherwise dismiss or not apply. I would like to do something similar.
Q: Apart from biblical fiction, what do you write most?
Greg: That depends. I have a set of Christian fantasy/adventure novels that I love writing, but I also enjoy writing non-fiction books. Last year, I published a book that is meant to help first generation Christians with the very specific and particular battles they fight. I write what I’m passionate about, and for many authors, such passion is derived from experience, enjoyment, need, and purpose.
I’m looking forward reading some of Greg’s books. You can find his books most easily through his website, https://gregsbaker.com/.
