A Return to Africa

Some years back, I went on safari in Africa, mainly to Kenya but also to Botswana and Zambia.  While there, I amassed many memories, a number of stories and about 5,000 photos.  I've longed to share these ever since.  Finally, with the ability to publish eBooks, I've decided to convert my work into publishable form.

A newborn elephant begins walking only hours after birth, keeping pace with the herd, which must move on to new feeding sites.

The text is written, pending some edits.  I'm now in the process of selecting the photos that will accompany it, after which I'll edit them for final publication.  Then will come the challenge of laying out the final publication using Adobe InDesign.  This software holds great promise, but I am not yet fully conversant with all its features so there is on-the-job learning to complete.

My target for publication is April 1.  When it's been released, it will be available on my web site at http://positives.biz.

A New Writing Project

I've been a semi-professional photographer for over 30 years.  Though I've published many photos during my career and written many articles illustrated with my shots, I've never ventured to write about the craft of photography.  Until now, that is.

What I'm about now is a book about landscape photography.  It will be a short work, perhaps 30-40 pages, with brief tips for making better landscape photos.  The intended audience is the amateur photographer with minimal experience who wants to achieve more professional-looking photos.  I'll illustrate the book with photos that underscore the tips.

My plan at the moment is to market the book myself, at least initially.  I'll first release it in a pdf version.  Later, after I've learned to use InDesign, I'll publish an ePub version that can be read on iPads and Nooks.

The principal points I'm making are that great and inspiring photos must be made, not merely taken, and that they depend more on the photographer's vision than on his or her equipment.  I'll give tips on how to go about making photos that inspire.  That, in fact, is what my tentative title states--Making Landscapes That Inspire.

I've already drafted the text and I'm now in the process of selecting and editing the photos I'll use to underscore my points.  I will soon set up a web site that I'll use for marketing the book.  At the same time, I'm practicing with InDesign to see how I can build great-looking layouts so the book will look its best.

I've not yet decided whether to include dynamic content in the ePub version of the book.  Frankly, I'm not sure what I would want that to look like.  I think dynamic content could be a very effective way of teaching photography, but given what I still need to learn about InDesign, I think it is something I'll take up after I've released the static versions.

If anybody has any suggestions for how to approach dynamic content, or has good examples to recommend, I'm all ears.  Please leave a comment.

Facing the Truth of Climate Change

The Hero of Gucci Gulch is a murder mystery set in the world of lobbyists, corporate representatives and members of Congress and their staffs.  It takes place on Capitol Hill--sometimes known as Gucci Gulch--for the prized brand of Italian leather often worn by the well-paid corporate lobbyists who patrol its halls. 

But the novel is much more than the story of murder, muggings and mayhem, though it has plenty of these.  It is set against the backdrop of the global challenge of climate change and the need for meaningful U.S. policy to address out-of-control carbon emissions into the environment.  It revolves around the struggles of environmental lobbyists to persuade a reluctant Congress to cap and trade legislation as a way to curb those emissions and bring the U.S. into better alignment with environmental actions being taken in much of the rest of the world.

The protagonist, Henry Wright, is an environmental lobbyist for a public interest organization.  He coordinates his work with Alicia Cummings, a pretty young intern.  But the impetuous intern gets too close to the nefarious secrets of the anti-environmental opposition.  When Henry finds her body in a lonely Washington garden, the investigation begins.

While the police slowly follow up false leads, Henry tries to assuage his grief by working members of Congress to support environmental legislation.  At the same time, he is drawn deeper and deeper into the murder investigation until at last his own life is put in danger.

Throughout, the story follows Henry's attempts to get a cap and trade bill passed over the objections of industry's heaviest polluters.  In the end, the book not only traces the chase to find the guilty but also the difficult path of facing up to global environmental challenges.

The book is available from Amazon.com and the CreateSpace eStore.  A Kindle edition is also available.

The Story Line of Gucci Gulch

The Hero of Gucci Gulch features Henry Wright, a milk-loathing dairy promoter turned environmentalist, who is naïve, unsure of himself, sometimes quirky.  Now he is caught in the political fight of his life—to get a climate change bill passed by a Congress riddled with the scheming pals of polluters.  But this test of his political skills is no match for his fight to escape his own seemingly inevitable death. The Hero of Gucci Gulch is set in the halls of Congress, where anti-environmental skullduggery mixes with mayhem to create exciting twists and turns sure to entice any fan of mysteries.  

Henry befriends Alicia Cummings, a pretty young intern whose passion for environmental justice matches his own. But youthful impetuosity leads her to ignore Henry’s warnings and she digs too deeply into the nefarious plans of the powerful opposition.  When Henry finds her strangled body in a lonely Washington garden, he becomes the number one murder suspect.  He tries to plow his anguish into his legislative campaign, but the unsolved murder weighs heavily on him and he can’t leave it alone.  He stumbles onto clues that point to his anti-environmental enemies, and when the police are slow to act he takes matters into his own hands.  His increasingly daring amateur investigation gets him crosswise with the police but he persists until violence and still more death force him to live on the run. Henry faces both personal threats and political challenges as he claws his way toward the surprising conclusion. 

The first novel in a series featuring the lobbyist amateur sleuth is rich with Washington and political insider details and explorations of environmental policy and the need for climate change legislation . It will appeal to mystery fans, environmentalists and lovers of political intrigue alike.  But climate change-deniers should probably not apply!

The Hero of Gucci Gulch is available at Amazon.com and in the CreateSpace eStore.  A Kindle edition is in the works.  I'll announce it here when it becomes available.

And Now Available on Amazon.com!

Today I discovered that The Hero of Gucci Gulch, my murder mystery novel set on Capitol Hill, is available for sale on Amazon.com.  They had promised it would become available in five to seven days; they made it in one!   It is even available for free shipping by Prime, if you subscribe to that service, so you can have a copy by Monday if you order today.

As I said in my last post, the book will also be available in a Kindle version, but converting the file will take me a while so I can't yet predict when that edition will be ready.

At Last I'm Published

My murder mystery, The Hero of Gucci Gulch, passed all of CreateSpace's hoops as well as my own critical review (for the umpteenth time) and I approved it for release yesterday.  So now it's published!

Copies can be purchased immediately at the CreateSpace eStore.  It takes CreateSpace another week to release it on the Amazon.com web site, where it will be more readily available to the buying public.  A Kindle edition is also in the works, but that involves a fair bit of reworking of the text to make it readable in the scalable Kindle format.  However, because Kindle reaches a different audience--and a large one at that--I will make the necessary changes and get it posted there as soon as possible.

You can read the synopsis and my bio statement at the CreateSpace site.

On Ice

Today I'm in a holding pattern.  I've submitted The Hero of Gucci Gulch, my murder mystery novel, to CreateSpace for review and it passed all their tests.  Then I ordered a review copy, paying extra to have it delivered quickly.  It is due to come today.

But will it come?  Yesterday we caught the tail end of a major snowstorm that afflicted much of the east coast.  We did not get the predicted 10" of snow--at least, not so I can tell with it blowing around in the high winds.  But we did get maybe 5".  Why is this important?  Because it will disrupt package deliveries. 

The book is coming via UPS.  I live atop a fairly steep hill and have an unplowed, gravel driveway.  UPS will not come up my driveway when it has snowed any amount and certainly not through the drifts that have accumulated in the driveway.  Instead, they will fling my packages at the foot of my mailbox.  That is, if they come at all.

And if my book does arrive today, as expected, then the issue is whether it will pass muster.  The small  photo of the cover I viewed on-line suggested that the book title may be shifted somewhat to the left of the page.  If so, I'll want to repair the cover and send the book back through the review and reprinting process, something I would be very unhappy to do because of the delays it will entail.

But until the book arrives, I don't really know what I'm faced with.  I want to release it for publication so I can start marketing it and--I hope--generating royalties.  But I also want it to look right.  So, until the physical copy arrives, I'm literally on ice.