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Author: angryoldfatman

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Hey guys. Mary Anne's busy with work on top of work, so she asked me to write a blog entry. Everyone always says to write what you know, and I'm a technology guy, so this is going to be about my take on digital publishing technology and some of the changes in store for books because of it.

First off, I don't think paper books are going to completely go away. There's something comforting about the physicality of a book. The smell and feel of the pages, the easy-to-see contrast of the ink on the paper, the order of the vertical lines on a filled bookshelf - it all adds up to an experience you can't get from any digital device. At least, not yet.

A good model that we can use to see where books are headed is music. Saying that the e-book will eliminate paper books is like saying the MP3 song has eliminated concerts. Obviously, that hasn't happened. There are sights, sounds, and other stimuli you get at concerts that you just can't get from iTunes.

...continue reading "An Angry Old Fat View of E-Book Technology"

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Hi kiddies, AOFM again. Just wanted to inform you all that Griffin's Law is now available in both paperback and e-book from Amazon, Smashwords, and CreateSpace. Once a few other e-tailers' systems get finished digesting it, it should be out for the Nook and Barnes & Noble as well. Keep watching our book list page for updates on where all of Mary Anne's books can be obtained.

Have a great Sunday, and talk atcha laters. AOFM out.

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Published on 1 Comment on Creating a Book Cover, Seriously This Time

The not-so-jolly fat man here again, peeps. Apparently Mary Anne had wanted a serious post, even though she knows I hate serious. I think everything should be fun and funny, especially for an audience. I'm not so different from my wife in that aspect; she's trying to provide her readers an escape from their humdrum everyday lives through fantastic love stories, where I try to lighten everyone's mood via humor.

But she wants serious, so now I'll take you there.

...continue reading "Creating a Book Cover, Seriously This Time"

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Published on 3 Comments on How AOFM Creates a Romance Novel Book Cover

Hello everyone, it's Mary Anne's husband, Angry Old Fat Man (AOFM for short).

If you're a regular reader of this site, you probably know that I, AOFM, create all of Mary Anne's book covers for her. She expressed her desire to let you, the reader, have a peek behind the scenes of the creative process I go through to make nebulous clouds of thought into solid color images on thick cover stock paper.

So come along with me while I indulge her.

...continue reading "How AOFM Creates a Romance Novel Book Cover"

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Hello again chiljens, it's me the angry old fat dude. Just popping in to tell you Mary Anne has been very busy not working on one book, but two books. Her muse is working overtime, swinging her back and forth between two time periods. Hell, I have trouble keeping up with what year it is in real life, much less numerous crazy fantasy worlds.

Anyways, Mr. Brick has not been seen recently, so we suspect Muse is working like a maniac to avoid him. She is alive and well, though, unlike many others who've had run-ins with His Brickness.

In the meantime, I present Mr. Brick's premiere video, The Bricks-For-Me Challenge, which was his answer to the infamous Blasphemy Challenge. Enjoy, and until later, kiddies, AOFM out.

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Hello again kiddies! Now that we've moved to a fully-functional website, the big, old, and ugly AOFM has been busy putting little things up here and there in our little abode on the webbernets.

I can't show you what I've done behind the scenes, because really those things are boringly technogeek and hair-tearingly frustrating. What I can show you, though, is over in the sidebar. You will now find Google News headlines about e-books, publishers, and the literary industry in general.

Try it out and see what you think!

As usual, I am open to suggestions that you, the reader and our customer, may have about improving the website, so by all means e-mail us if that's the case. Or even if you want to just shoot the breeze or ask about Mr. Brick's humble origins or whatevs, we'd be happy to hear from you.

Peace, AOFM.

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Howdy chitlins, it's me again, the husband.

I finally got the paperback cover completed for E-Mail Enticement, the text formatted, and the whole thing uploaded to CreateSpace. The e-store page for it is up, but the book itself won't be available until we approve the proof copy currently on its way to the humble Graham abode.

Also, be on the lookout for it to appear on Amazon's site. I will, as usual, update the links on Quacking Alone when Amazon does all of its voodoo to get the book up there.

In the meantime, please enjoy an image of the full paperback cover here (also accessible via the sidebar and the complete list of books page). And buy it on your Kindle or other favorite e-book reader if you don't need a 5" x 8" projectile with which to smack a beloved cranium.

Until next time, chitterlings, be good and if you see me approaching, DUCK!!

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Greetings and salutations, kiddies. One of the many reasons I haven't got Mary Anne's E-mail Enticement into paperback form yet (besides being an enormous slacker) is a little project she assigned me.

It seems the newest thing in publishing is the book trailer - essentially a short video to whet your appetite for a book. It's much like a movie trailer, except more of a pain in the gluteus maximus because you don't have any video footage to begin with and you do them for authors who just looooove words, words, and more words.

At any rate, with much fury, frustration, and cursing with Windows Movie Maker, I have finally completed Quacking Alone's very first book trailer.

Behold, A Faerie Fated Forever, the book trailer:

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Mary Anne's husband here.

I've made a few tweaks to the website so that your visits here will be more enjoyable.

  • Disabled the Snapshot feature.

You know that little cartoon speech bubble thing that would pop up when you hovered your mouse pointer on a link and show you a preview of the page being linked? I personally found it entirely too sensitive and annoying. It also took up precious bandwidth and memory. So whoosh! out the door it goes. I can put it back if enough people want it back, but I don't see that happening.

  • Added paperback book cover images and created special "large cover image" pages.

Mary Anne wanted me to show off my paperback book covers as well as the full-sized e-book covers already on the site. Doing this necessitated changing the way cover images were displayed, because I was just linking the raw large-sized e-book cover before. I decided to create a page for each book's covers, which can be accessed from the side bar under Sections or from the individual thumbnail images on the Complete List of Books page.

Who knows, you might even want to buy a paperback after seeing one of my covers or want me to design a book cover for you. E-mail Mary Anne if you would like to arrange for me to design a book cover for you. I'm sure we can negotiate a great deal in exchange for a testimonial or inclusion in a future portfolio.

  • Assigned categories to blog posts.

It's been a long time coming, but it's finally here. I had to wait awhile to see what kind of things Mary Anne would blog about so I could create categories and assign them. Now, if you want to see just stuff about the trashy TV shows she watches or about Michael Jackson or Donny Osmond, you don't have to wade through stuff about her personal life. You can just go to the sidebar, scroll down to Filter by Category, select Other Entertainment in the drop down list and VICHYSSOISE! you have all of her posts about the abominable Durrrrrrrr & Murrrrrrrrrr from Grey's Anatomy (or as I have titled it, Young Doctors Who Like To Screw So Much That Their Patients Croak and They Have Nervous Breakdowns), or whatevs. So try that out and see how you like it.

Let me wrap this up with two last things.

I wanted to make sure you knew that Sixth Sense is now out in paperback on Amazon, so click on the link and check that out.

Finally, I'm working on getting E-mail Enticement ready for paperback, which includes redoing the cover, formatting the book using our old & busted copy of MS Word, et cetera, et cetera. So you should be able to get a molecular copy of it fairly soon to launch at a loved one's head and put a romance-novel-shaped dent in a much adored skull.

Until next time... AOFM signing off.