Category: humor

Radio Commercials

Radio commercials have a story to tell. And it seems to be the same story for a lot of them.

During the work week, I spend a decent amount of time driving around each day. I have to check on job sites, crews, inspect properties, etc. My driving time is usually occupied in three different ways: silence, talk radio, or listening to music.

Both the music and the talk radio stations have very similar commercials. Off the top of my head, I estimate half of the commercials use fear as the main sales motivator. Precious metals, emergency food, vaccines (so many vaccine commercials), real estate, health products. The list is long and tedious.

As for the commercials that don’t use fear as a motivator, I wonder if they’re missing out on potential sales? There’s a commercial for Babel, the language learning app, that might want to rethink its approach. The current Babel commercial has the usual patter about learning typical tourist phrases, such as “My name is Fred,” “I will order the hamburger,” and “Where is the bathroom?”

A fear-based Babel commercial could tout learning phrases like “There’s no point kidnapping me, as my family is poor,” or “Only a nitwit would want to harvest my kidneys, as I have advanced cirrhosis.” I bet a lot of people planning on overseas travel would appreciate knowing some phrases like that.

Sorry. Sometimes my humor goes a bit dark.

The Fury Clock free

…because it needs to be read. The Fury Clock was the most enjoyable writing experience I’ve ever had with a book. Probably because I could, for the most part, write whatever I wanted without the constraints of propriety, common sense, or logic. While I wouldn’t want to live that way, such lack makes the writing process much more interesting than it usually is.

Anyway, this link will take you to various free forms of The Fury Clock. Pass it around.

The Beginner’s Guide to Escaping Dangerous Dates

BeginnersGuideCoverFinalAmznI have not worked much on stories for quite some time now. Various reasons. Anyway, I recently wrote a humorous non-fiction book called The Beginner’s Guide to Escaping Dangerous Dates. Mostly to check if I could still write. Jury remains out on that question.

You can find self-help books on pretty much any topic under the sun. Escaping dangerous dates, however, has been neglected. Until now.

If you do use the methods described in this book, you do so at your own risk. Please consult a lawyer first. By reading the book, you agree to not sue me if one of the methods has adverse results.

How To Write Enough Novels to Maintain Amazon Visibility

So, you wanna be a writer and make a living at it? Piece of cake. All you have to do is maintain high visibility on Amazon. To do that, you need to churn out a lot of novels every year.

I recommend 24 novels a year. All in the same series. How do you pull off such a Herculean task? Coffee. Lots of coffee.

A novel should clock in at 60,000 words minimum, depending on genre. If you’re writing epic fantasy, go higher. Anyway, for sake of discussion, we’ll go easy on you and say 60,000 words is your novel-length goal. That means you need to write only 4,000 words a day.

Let’s figure you’re drinking about a gallon of coffee a day to avoid excessive sleep. Figure 4 hours for sleep, 4 hours for random stuff (such as going to the bathroom, eating, walking the dog, paying bills, voting, patting your kids on the head, kissing your wife, etc), that leaves you with 16 hours a day for writing. That works out to only 250 words an hour.

You can do it!

30 days X 4,000 words/day = 120,0000 words, which equals 2 novels.

And there’s your novel every 15 days.

Once you get into the rhythm of churning that out, you’re good to go. Of course, you’ll need the first month to get those first two novels written, sent off to your editor, get your cover artist going. Then, in the second month, you write the third and fourth novels but also get the first two novels back from your editor, final polish, publish. Repeat repeat repeat.

This is a sure-fire way to achieve visibility on Amazon, always have a couple titles in the 30-day new release window, snowball sales, etc. If you find this method is not working, you should consider upping the ante: go for 48 novels a year, or something like that.

Of course, your marriage might suffer a bit. You might develop some coffee-related diseases, and your cat might take a strange dislike to you. But those are the fortunes of authorship.