Getting Results with MediaStudioPro 8

For nigh on a decade I spent all of my free literary time working on eight editions of two books on video editing. For a while I actually thought that this just might be my true literary calling. But over time, as the project slowly degraded from “exhilarating and thrilling” to “tedious and painful”, I wanted nothing more than to just get it over with. The book pictured here was the final edition and crown jewel of the series. It sold eight copies.

Writing technical books is indeed a treadmill. Just when you pop the champagne upon the completion of a new edition, a new version of the software comes out a month later and you start all over. I therefore finally decided to write a book with significantly more shelf-life (and hopefully a broader audience): the “diet” book listed below (which sold twelve copies).

Why Your Last Diet Failed You and
How This Book Won’t Help You on Your Next One

This is my last published book. It looks like a diet book. It’s not. You should buy it. It costs only a little more than a movie and it lasts a lot longer. It’s the heartwarming story of how one man (namely me) lost seventeen thousand pounds in just 192 months and then gained it all back last Thanksgiving. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll put it in your next garage sale.

The book is part memoir, part informational, and all good fun. Plenty of people^{[citation needed]} who’ve never been on a diet in their whole lucky lives have enjoyed reading this self- deprecating, feel-good romp. If you’d like to know more about it, I won’t ramble on about it here. Instead, I recommend visiting the official web site. Click here to buy a copy from Amazon.com. Or click here to buy a signed copy directly from me.

The Celdaran Tales

When I first realized I wanted to write, way back in 1993, I had one minor problem: I didn’t actually have an idea for a story. But after I spent fifteen long years building worlds, devising languages, and creating whole new civilizations, I found I still didn’t have an idea for a story. On the upside, I did have a name: The Celdaran Tales and a working title for the first volume, shown here.

Fortunately I’m not the type of person to let a little thing like “no idea for a story” stop me from writing this epic fantasy novel of epicness. That’s right. I’ve officially joined the ranks of thousands who’ve read one good book and thought, “Now I’m gonna write one! How hard can it be?”

Tenner Heed

Since the epic fantasy novel was going nowhere slow, I decided to change gears. With the release of my diet book and the other blog, I found I had a pretty good voice as a humor writer. So in the summer of 2008, I decided to combine these forces and create a light, humorous, and entertaining fantasy novel. It wouldn’t try to avoid clichés, it would embrace them.

But a funny thing happened to me on the way to the manuscript. The story wasn’t funny. And I don’t mean that like, “I was trying to be funny and it wasn’t.” No, for some strange reason, it suddenly turned serious again. But in a good way. Unfortunately, like so many other books-to-be, it hit a wall and I just couldn’t get past the fact that it was boring. (I’ve heard that’s the kind of thing that can hurt sales.)

Winter’s Gate

In August 2010, fed up with Tenner Heed, I decided to try something completely different. I’m not ready to talk about all the details, but in short, the basic plot line goes something like this: a guy named Frodo finds out he’s a wizard at the tender age of eleven. So his father, who is actually Darth Vader, decides to teach him how to be a Jedi. But just as he’s about to graduate, he realizes he’s lived his entire life in a computer-generated simulation. You’ll love the twist ending which has nearly nothing to do with him waking up in his bed at his farmhouse in warm sepia tones.

Elsewhither

In August 2011, fed up with Winter’s Gate, I decided to try something completely different. (See a pattern yet?) The astute reader might also notice that the name of this book exactly matches the name of this blog. But the blog came first, so what gives? Well, I first came up with the name Elsewhither as a placeholder for another failed project, but then decided to use it for this blog. However, shortly after this particular book idea came up, it suddenly hit me: THIS is the project that gets that name. Trust me, it will work. And the book’s premise? Well, what if a kid really did dig a hole all the way to China?