What's not there? Another Secret of Life.

On March 15, I shared in a post about one of secrets of Life. Today I will share another nugget of wisdom, I didn't invent it, I didn't discover it.  I believe the origin to be from the Orient, or Eastern Philosophy.  But even of this I am not sure.  I am only passing it on. The most important things in life are those that are not there. The part of a glass we use, is the empty space inside. The part of a bowl you use is the empty space inside it. The part of your home you use is the empty space inside.     The more empty space generally the more valuable it is, concerning houses. The part of a tire that holds the wieght and does all the work, is the empty space inside the tire where the air or nitrogen would go. The really important things are not things you...

Read more »

Posted in: Secret Life Philosophy Japan feelings

American's Live at Madison Avenue.

It dawned on me while listening to the recorded message of a trucking company while waiting on hold for them to find out where my load of tires might be that missed their delivery appointment 45 minutes ago, that American's live in a world of advertising.  We exist and live at Madison Avenue, the home of Advertising.  I can't speak for other countries.  You never hear the truth about companies?  You see their advertising on television, bill boards, on the sides of trucks.  You hear their advertising, either on the radio, or their phone message.  When have you ever heard a truthful ad, or seen one on television.  I deal with trucking companies all day long, 365 days of the year, as the company I work for receives freight from literally every corner of the...

Read more »

Posted in: advertising truth information freight

How much is a month worth?

Ipilimumab.  Don't ask me how to pronounce it? It is a new Drug for the treatment of skin cancer, that was just approved by the FDA. I am not saying I am for or against this.  I am not making a judgement call one way or the other, but after reading the article it begged the Question?  How much is a month worth? If you have cancer and are dying nobody could say how much another day would be worth, a week, or four months.  It is the moments, connections, lasting impressions we leave with those we have touched and leave behind, that truly matter.  In the article it stated that this new drug was not a home run, but maybe a solid base hit, as it only made about a four month extension of life for those treated that had positive results during the clinical trials. ...

Read more »

Wouldn't be Halarious

Woundn't be Halarious is the Spell check on the Compose part of the BLOG didn't work? Wow, thought I was doing awesome!  Yeah it has a glitch, your spelling still sucks. Sorry it just caught me as fun...

Read more »

Writing Coach & Editing

I wish I was posting something fabulous that would shake the world, saying, "Hey wake up, Pay attention!  This is important!" Not so much.  I am busy learning the craft of my new passion, which is writing.  Funny, I say new passion. I have been playing around with it for years.  I just only got serious about it last year when I wrote two books.  Only got Serious about it, not exactly, but that's what I thought. Upon editing my second book and meeting whom I call my literary angel, I am getting more serious about writing.  I truly understand the importance of having your work edited.  I truly believe every author should have somebody read their stuff and critique it before they publish, because by being the author it blinds you certain aspects of...

Read more »

Synchronicity

Synchronicity is .  . .Is the experience of two or more events that are apparently causally unrelated or unlikely to occur together by chance. "meaningful coincidences" a causal connecting principle an apparently meaningful coincidence in time of two or more similar or identical events. Last night I finished my home work for my literary angel, and WOW.SYNCHRONICITY (I wish I could say that word) I sent Chapters one and two of my second book to my angel.  Got on messenger and related I had sent it, I mentioned I started reading the angels newest book and mentioned a part in Chapter one of the story.  Well that part was true!  It had a direct correlation to part of what I related in Chapter two of what I had just sent the angel.  So the angel has a direct, Very Direct...

Read more »

Teaching an old new tricks.

I am an old dog, but I always remember the immortal words of Indiana Jones. "It's not the age, it's the mileage." At 43 I turned a new page in my life.  I began writing, seriously.  I finished my first novel, "Whisper" and my second novel "No Rules of Engagement".  Whisper for good or bad is done, and self published.  It was my first, to prove to myself I could really do it.   Many of the feelings, experiences, steps, discoveries, and lessons learned I have posted about here. Since publishing Whisper, I have taken up writing a blog, trying to self promote Whisper, making connections with other writers and exploring aspects I know I will have problems with later.  I have continued making the changes my editor sent back to me on a printed rough draft of...

Read more »

Posted in: English Skills Angel Writing

Sharing Issues, Ideas and Thoughts

I've spent the majority of the last two days sharing, reading, posting, with people on Linkedin and Writer's Digest Community.  It dawns on m there there are a lot of friendly, helpful an smart people out there.  It is funny how the same concerns, questions, and themes keep showing up.  I started a discussion on a collaborated effort of Artists, Movie Makers, and Authors.  I now want to add a fourth element to this which Professional Editing.  A gentleman by the name of Carter Harkins, says affiliated with both sides of the fence on this issue and he suggested a means by which Artists, Editors, and Movie Makers (for Trailers) could set a price for said work, contribute their portion to the work in question, then they would get a percentage of the book until that...

Read more »

The Review of my Book by OBS

WHISPER BY THOMAS WILSON: BOOK REVIEW16 March 2011 View CommentsThomas WilsonWhisper Review brought to you by OBS staff member Annabell Cadiz    Thank you Annabell, my friend. Book can be purchased here: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/38922 Synopsis: Whisper is the short story of a ships short existence, a Captains last mission, of a life of testing things for the navy. Captain Wiley Randolph is about to retire and has regrets of never settling down, finding a wife, or creating a family. The crew of the USS Whisper tries to get back to their rightful place in time after accidentally being sent into the past over 200 years while testing a device to make the ship invisible. Captain Wiley Randolph and his crew fight against...

Read more »

Increased Gang Activity In Kansas City Area

I keep hearing about Increased gang activity in the Kansas City, MO area.  I have a few thoughts about this, that I feel compelled to share with the world. 1.  Missouri has a neat little law, that provided you take the right classes and get registered you have the right to conceal and carry.  For those of you who don't know what that means.  You have no idea who is secretly carrying a loaded pistol, in public, in this state.       Now originally I grew up in the back woods of the Panhandle, of the State, of Idaho.  Yeah, it's a State!  The panhandle is the skinny part between Montana, and Washington State.  It is mostly Rocky Mountains and forests.  We had to haul water in a 500 gallon tank on a 1950's pick up truck from a...

Read more »

Posted in: Gangs Guns Kansas City MO

Open Book Society Book Review

My book was Reviewed by Open Book Society Today.  Not a Glowing review, but in the words of Donald Trump, "Even bad press is press."  It wasn't all bad.  At some later date they will be posting an Author Interview, of me of course.  http://openbooksociety.com/ They said they would let me know ahead of time so I could alert people, but I didn't know until I saw it on their site today.   I could have an e-mail about it when I get ho...

Read more »

St. Patrick's Day

I have one of those 'This Day in History Calenders' on my desk. The First St. Patrick Day's parade took place this day in 1762 in New York City.  Homesick Irish soldiers serving in the British Colonial Army staged a parade celebrating their heritage at a time in history when "the wearing of green" was banned in Ireland.  The parade participants reveled in the freedom to speak Irish, wear green, sing Irish songs and play the pipes to Irish tunes. I am first generation American.  My father was born in Scotland.  So when a very good friend of mine pinched me for not wearing green today, I exclaimed I am Scottish as I kicked him in the shins really hard.  I work at a tough place.  He later came in to my office, upset that his shins were still hurting and put me...

Read more »

Posted in: St. Patrick's Day Scottish Irish

One Secret of Life

I say one, because there are several, but I feel very generous so I will share one today. God gives everybody certain gifts.  It is your job to find out what they are and what you will do with them. The big secret is different for everybody.  I am Operations Manager at the company I work for.  I do 100% of the hiring at the branch I work for. One question I ask every person I interview. "Disregarding Money, Education, Where you need to live, if you could have your dream job, the one thing in the world you would do even if you didn't get paid for doing it, What would that be?" It's a hard question, if you find the answer for yourself consider yourself blessed.  Immediately plot out what needs to happen to get you from where you are to that point in life.  If...

Read more »

I Have An Idea

I think somebody needs to create a group within Linkedin, Facebook, Writer's Digest, or one of these platforms, to bring together the following: New Beginning Self Published Authors – who need Art work (Book Covers), and short movie clips (Trailers) for their books. Artists wanting to get their name out and get requests for Artwork, doing cover art for books. Budding Film Makers to make short trailers for books. Each in their own right is a creative enterprise.  Everybody wants to make money.  Everybody needs to get established, get their name out into the world. We need a place where these three groups can work together for next to no monetary gain at the outset.Obviously when any member of this group gets somewhat established and some degree of success then they can pay more for...

Read more »

Posted in: Artists movie makers authors

Japan update

Just heard form our friends at TOYO Tire.  For those that are new here, my day job I move tires for a living.  LOTS AND LOTS of tires.  Our friends at TOYO Tire have said that all industry is shut down in Japan right now, the the TOYO Tire plant is intact and not damaged and has no water damage from the flooding.  They will keep us posted as to when things might be up and running again.  The entire nation of Japan and it's people are in my prayers, and I am very worried about the continued reports that our coming out about the power plant problems in the country.  I posted a bit ago on Twitter, that the only thing these poor people have not had to contend with is Godzilla showing up in the last week. I do not intend to be mean or insensitive, but I am Scottish,...

Read more »

It's a small world and get smaller everyday.

In my parents day if you heard something on the news that was somewhere else on the globe, chance were it would never directly effect you, and you didn't know anybody actually involved in the situation.  Today, with the earthquake in Japan last week, I know a kid my younger brother went to school with in High School, who was a foreign exchange student from Japan.  He is alright, my brother checked in with him.  But I asked about him because I remembered him.  My daughter is attending William Jewell College, in Liberty, MO and in her second year of taking Japanese as a language and consequently through taking the class knows several people from Japan already.  She has heard from a couple of them, and a couple the word is still out, we're waiting to hear if they are...

Read more »

Posted in: brothers Japan Real people

Weather

I mentioned Friday about the weather in Kansas City, while discussing riding my motorcycle.  Saturday I rolled my bike out of the garage and started it and let it run for a while.  I upset my oldest son who is almost three, because he was convinced if Daddy started the bike, he was going for a ride.  I did run it around for a couple of blocks, it was chilly, but I wanted to blow carbon out of it that might have built up idleing, and let the battery get charged up good.  Anyway, it's monday morning and it is snowing!  Winter advisory out.  I told you so.&nb...

Read more »

Virtual Book Shelves

As of yesterday my First Novel "Whisper" was distributed through Smashwords Distribution via their Premium Distribution Catalog!!! It Went out to SONY                       APPLE                       BARNES & NOBLE                       DIESEL I have actually been able to pull it up on Sony's Ereader Site and Diesel's. Have not found it on APPLES or Barnes & Nobles yet, but they say it could take up to a week to show up on the actual site it is distributed to. ...

Read more »

100 Downloads

Whisper, my first Novel, an E-book, which I published this January on Smashwords, and later on Amazon, HIT 100 DOWNLOADS TODAY!! I couldn't give it away for people to read and give me feed back on while still in the editing phase of writing. Today it hit hit 100 Downloads on Smashwords.  I know it is a small milestone but for me it is a milestone.  In the times in between books when doubt and dread seep into your subconscious, and they will.  You celebrate every little victory and keep right on trudging along editing the next book to be published, and writing the next book to be edited.  Now honestly it's 100 downloads, mostly because it has been free on Smashwords all week for the Read an E-Book Week Promotion.  I started the week at 40 something downloads. ...

Read more »

Posted in: milestone buzz 100 downloads

Riding Motorcycles

Today is going to be near 60 degrees in Kansas City, feels closer to summer than spring today.  As the weather turns warmer it gets me thinking about riding my bike again.  I am not a die hard biker, a fair weather biker at best.  Riding my motorcycle scares the living shit out of me.  The day it doesn't scare me anymore I will sell it.  I am not afraid of me wrecking the bike as much as I am somebody in their car, mini-van, or truck not paying attention and running over me while I am out just trying to enjoy myself.  I hope to be riding when I am an old man.  So I have rules I follow as closely as I can.1.  I Never use my bike as a primary means of transportation.  I never want to be in a hurry to get anywhere while riding.  When I ride my...

Read more »

Update on First Novel

For those of you following along concerning my first novel, I posted a week ago that my novel finally made it into Smashwords dot com's Premium Distribution Catalog.  Starting Sunday March 6th, 2011 Started Smashwords promotion for Read an E-book week, which I opted into, in order to help get noticed I made my book free for the entire week promotion.  My sales ( people downloading the book for FREE have been steady since Sunday.  Nothing Earth shattering, but for a completely unknown author to have people choosing to download my book and try it amongst the literally thousands of books out there to pick from, I feel grateful and honored.  I truly hope that many of the people who are giving it a try will be entertained and add me to the list of authors whose stuff they...

Read more »

Posted in: Apple Smashwords premium distribution

The Internet, Blog, and Ideas.

"The Pen is mightier than the sword." was used by English author Edward Bulwer-Lytton in his play "Richelieu; Or the Conspiracy" in 1839.  What makes me think of this is by looking at the STATS category on my blog dash board and with whats been happening in the world in the first two months of this year. I made my first post to this blog on January 17, 2011, of this year.  Granted, this is by no means the Blog of Blogs, with stunning graphics, witty writing, or life changing ideas.  I am truly amazed that in the short time I have been posting to this blog there have been 265 views of this humble rambling little blog; 228 from the United States of America      8 from the United Kingdom 8     from...

Read more »

Posted in: Blog Internet Freedom

Editing FIND and Replace

Editing sucks, at it's finest.  In Micro Soft Word, the program, word processor I use to write my books with has a function FIND which will search your document and Find specific words or groups of words.  What I found interesting was when I had to correct a misspelled word I could use Find and Replace With to search the document from top to bottom and correct every place I miss spelled the word.  It also works with instance's of punctuation!  It is an extremely valuable tool.  Writer beware, practice first on some other piece of work, or make a back up copy of your manuscript before you start using this editing tool.  As fast as it can fix things, it can massively screw things up also. Careful, creative, and practiced using of this tool is best.  Also...

Read more »

Let's Win One For The Gipper.

Today in history March 4th, 1888 was the birthday of Knute Rockne, legendary Notre Dame football coach. I will never forget watching the Movie 'RUDY' where he hops up on the stool and reenacts part of the famous lines from this coach!  Anybody (Especially Writers) who wants a lesson in persistence should watch the movie RUDY!  What always stuck with me through the years, was when he would go talk with the priest about trying to get into Notre Dame, so he could play on the football team.  The priest would ask him, "Have you done everything you can possibly do?"  "Have you done everything you possibly could do for your book?"  Polished it, corrected spelling, punctuation, used proper English (as much as you can.) Have you formatted it properly, and have you self published...

Read more »

Smashwords Premium Ditribution Catalog

TODAY MY NOVEL WAS ACCEPTED! Why is that a big deal, becuase NOW my book will be included in the E-book catalogs of Barnes & Noble Sony Kobo Apple Diesel Already on Amazon, but also soon to the list will be Amazon Potential market of people who can stunmble across my book while looking for their next great escape in literature will soon be measured in the MILLIONS!  This is about the same as when a traditional book would be shipped to chain book stores the world over!  It will be on tons (virtually not literally) of book shelves very shortly.  I have it out to be reviewed by several book sites, who will be helping spread the word when they do the review of my book.  As I have said all along, it is a process and what has up until 4:00PM Central Time in Kansas City,...

Read more »

Posted in: Process Writing published

Revolution in the air

Mark Coker of Smashwords dot com has lifted the flag of revolution.  Please see Smashwords Blog at http://blog.smashwords.com/2011/03/nietzsche-and-downfall-of-big.html I am e-published at Smashwords, someday, maybe I will be traditionally published but this was quick, easy, and FREE to self publish my first novel on Smashwords.  I agree with Mr. Coker that Readers determine what sells and what will not.  Readers decide what the future of publishing will be.  Readers Decide who the next Great Authors are going to be, by what they purchase and where and how they purchase it. AMEN.  My father was born in Scotland, I was raised with traditional Scottish Values.  He always told me growing up, "A little Revolution every now and again is a good thin...

Read more »

Still figuring stuff out . . .

My first Novel "Whisper" went past 60 downloads today on Smashwords dot com.  Now as that is a milestone for my novel, it is still what I would call 'Un noticed.'  That is considering the number of people on the Internet, buying and downloading e-books.  My account balance is still at the $7.82 cents, which translates to two people have actually paid for the book, and I know one of the two is my best friend and biggest Fan Mr. Phillip T. Woody.  Thank you again Phillip! (You still need to write a review of my book on Smashwords.  No I will not clean the crayon marks off your computer screen when your done.) I still have only one sale on Amazon dot com.  I keep track of the number of downloads my book has received each day when I check the dashboard on Smashwords,...

Read more »

Dandelions for your car!

My day job is Operations Manager of a large tire wholesaler in the middle of the United States of America.  While I spend every evening and spare moments Writing, Editing, and Formatting my next books for E-Publication, I pay for my families existence with trying to move tires in and out of our facility, day in and day out,  as efficiently as possible.  In the tire industry it is just as crazy and topsy turvy as the publishing industry seems to be.  First a bit of history concerning the economy of tires, the world market, and the Chinese.Over the last 11 years as tire sizes have changed and newer tread designs have emerged, tire companies worldwide would sell their older tread design molds to factories in China to manufacturer the older designs as cheaper tires to place...

Read more »

Posted in: Dandelions Tires Natural Rubber