The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters

Well, I finished another wonderful book. Definitely recommended if you enjoy a good mystery with well-written characters. Here's the plot:

The Earth is doomed. In less than a year, a giant asteroid will slam into our world, extinguishing life as we know it. And there is nothing we can do to change that. So, what would you do? What would you do with your last precious moments? Well, for one rookie detective, he decides to solve his latest case, a suicide by hanging. Henry Palace knows something is wrong with the crime scene and follows his instincts to solve the case, doing the best that he can, even though his fellow officers and most humans have decided to just enjoy life's pleasures, go crazy, find God, or kill themselves.

Ultimately, this is a great book. Very strong writing, believable characters, and an interesting and lively world. According to the book jacket, this will be a trilogy, so I can't wait to read the next one.

Rating: 5/5

http://thelastpoliceman.com/

2012 Holiday Sale

Happy Holidays!

From now until the end of the year, almost all of my books are on sale for $.99 or greatly reduced in price:

$ .99
Bloated Goat
Granny Gruesome: Nursery Rhymes to Terrify Children
Granny Gruesome 2: Thoughts and Observations to Terrify Adults
Just Be Yourself, Zap

$1.99
Simple Series 3-Books-in-1

$2.99
Simple Series Anthology

Any other books not mentioned here are already set at $.99, so you can just click on the appropriate link in the upper-left corner under Books to Purchase and start reading.

The Dog Stars by Peter Heller

Are you looking for a beautiful book? I know that sounds weird, but Peter Heller's The Dog Stars is a wonder to read. The words, sentences, and emotions jump off the page. What a great book! I was sad to finish it. To summarize, there are very few people left in the world. Most were killed by a super flu. The people left have to survive in a new world full of challenges and struggles just to get food and shelter. Hig, the star of the book and one of the few immune humans, is having trouble adapting to his new life. What he finds in the story isn't exactly what he was searching for.

Again, this book was a truly well-written, fun, entertaining, and real. Characters were interesting and plot was fascinating. Definitely a must read for anyone who enjoys a great story about a possible near-future on earth.

Rating: 5/5

http://www.peterheller.net/the-dog-stars/

Sharp PC-3000: The iPad Killer

My daughter will be a teenager soon. Many of her classmates and friends have smartphones and portable media devices like an iPad. Not wanting my daughter to feel left out by her peers, I looked deep within my heart and deep within my wallet and decided to give her the best. I found the answer up in our attic in the bottom of a long-forgotten box.

I couldn’t wait to see my daughter’s happiness, so I surprised her with my early birthday present. She unwrapped the box and her eyes and face said it all. She was speechless. Tears of joy ran down her rosy cheeks. She shrieked with excitement and ran from the room. I heard a long, wailing cry of jubilation coming from her bedroom.

I looked down at the opened box and smiled. Sitting there, in all its pristine condition, was the Sharp PC-3000. It was beautiful. Honestly, I felt a little jealous that my daughter would now be in control of this monster. Chock full of cutting-edge technology, I knew I was staring at an iPad killer.

Let me break this beast down for you:

The outer shell is a charcoal gray and feels strong and heavy. This baby weighs in at a full one and a half pounds...just bursting with bells and whistles. It even has a clickable latch to flip the screen open. The 10 megahertz processor is as speedy as they come, and the 128 kilobytes of RAM has more than enough space to run the most demanding applications.

Easily compatible with other devices, my daughter can work on the PC-3000 while listening to the newest music by using a radio, CD player, or just humming to herself. The Internet is a just simple click away, on separate Internet-ready device.

The PC-3000 is bulging with a total of eight pre-installed applications. Sharp thought of everything that a teenager might want to use on a smartphone and put it in. The clock, calculator, and text editor applications deserve special mentioning here. The clock will keep accurate time to within the hour, provided you manually update it every morning, while the calculator allows my daughter to have all the power of addition and subtraction at her fingertips. The editor allows creation of text documents up to 500 words long, assuming all the words are six letters or shorter. It’ll be months before my daughter discovers all the possibilities.

Another wonderful feature is the battery life. Using the tried and true technology of the 1950’s, the PC-3000 incorporates three AA batteries to provide almost two full hours of use before needing to replace a battery. A word of caution, though—if you attach any external device to the serial or parallel ports, the batteries do tend to wear out faster.

The mono-chromatic screen prevents any unwanted eye strain and the 128,000 pixel resolution will trick my daughter into thinking she’s living in the future. The PC-3000 includes a patented hardware noise, best described as a constant low-level whine that your ears can’t ignore, which forces the user to stay on task.

The last thing worth mentioning is the QWERTY keyboard that comes standard on all PC-3000 devices. The keyboard is mildly responsive and the smooth keys feel cold and lifeless. Amazingly, the keyboard even includes the numbers 0 through 9. Unfortunately, the space bar doesn't come standard, only as a separate add-on. So, I have to recommend buying the small but pricey space bar, since it allows greater freedom when typing.

Well, it’s been three days since my daughter received her early birthday gift. She’s been so infatuated with the PC-3000 that she hasn’t had time to say one word to me or even look me in the eye. She’s been holed up in her room, probably writing letters to her friends with pencil and paper. Well, that's just fine with me, since I get more time with this perfect machine.

I thought kids these days loved technology...

Night at the Nursing Home

Night at the Nursing Home is a children's horror short story similar to the Goosebumps book series. Ann and Jason are going trick-or-treating at a nursing home on Halloween. Will they get all the candy they want, or will they bite off more than they can chew?

Available on Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords.

Beware the Blue Hubbard

Beware the Blue Hubbard is a children's horror short story similar to the Goosebumps book series by R.L. Stine.

Will Danny heed the crazy old lady's warning about the mysterious Blue Hubbard squash?

Available on Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords.

Camp Chin-up

Camp Chin-up is a children's horror short story similar to the Goosebumps book series. Eddie isn't looking forward to the last day of summer camp. Will he be able to do enough chin-ups to satisfy Mr. Payne, the unbearable Camp Director?

Available on Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords.

Henry Sloan

Driven by past memories, Henry returns to his old church to make things right. Henry Sloan is a short story of 4,300 words written for adults.

Available on Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords.

Incubators

Incubators is a horror short story of 3,200 words. Stranded in space, three astronauts struggle to accept their fate aboard a crippled ship. Could a last-minute rescue be all they hoped for?

Available on Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords.

Simple Series Anthology

Simple Series Anthology is an awesome collection of six children's books. It combines all the wonderful pictures and basic concepts of Simple Animals, Simple Numbers, Simple Shapes, Simple Fruits, Simple Monsters, and Simple Opposites into one easy to use book to share with young children.

Book 1: Simple Animals features sixteen drawings of animals such as a cow, a bat, and a squid along with rhyming phrases.

Book 2: Simple Numbers has eleven drawings of the numbers zero through ten along with cute comments.

Book 3: Simple Shapes has sixteen drawings of a variety of shapes including a circle, square, and pyramid along with easy facts.

Book 4: Simple Fruits has twelve original drawings of a variety of familiar fruits including an apple, banana, and pear, along with some fun facts.

Book 5: Simple Monsters has twelve original illustrations of silly monsters and each is accompanied by a funny verse similar to the literary nonsense of Lewis Carroll.

Book 6: Simple Opposites has twenty beautiful photographs depicting ten pairs of opposite words.

It is almost 100 pages full of beautiful and interesting illustrations and photographs to help teach your children about animals, fruits, numbers, monsters, shapes, and opposites. Simple Series Anthology is available on Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords.

Simple Opposites

Simple Opposites is a colorful children's picture book for ages 0 to 5. It has twenty beautiful photographs depicting ten pairs of opposite words. Simple Opposites is available on Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords.

Granny Gruesome 2

Granny Gruesome 2: Thoughts and Observations to Terrify Adults is another humorous collection of twisted thoughts and observations about life, careers, and barn yard animals. This time, with only adults in the room, she won’t pull her punches. Be prepared to laugh, cringe, and scream out in horror. Recommended for older teens and adults. Granny Gruesome 2 is available on Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords.

Book length is about 3,200 words.

Kindle Select Books for Free

Just Be Yourself, Zap and Simple Series 3-Books-in-1 are both enrolled in Amazon's Kindle Select program.

What does that mean to you? Starting on August 4th, both books will be free for five days. Go get them.

Just Be Yourself, Zap - 32 illustrations, good message for kids, cute characters - FREE

Simple Series 3-Books-in-1 - 3 different books for young kids who like simple illustrations - FREE

Still Alive - Just Not Writing...Much...

Thanks for looking at my bookshelf and sorry for the shortage of posts and news. But the truth is, I haven't really had anything new or interesting to report. I haven't written any stories lately, because I've been creating and programming computer games with my children. We have been using BlitzMax, GameMaker, and Construct 2 tools.

I hope to get back to writing soon when it feels right, but in the mean time, please poke around and look at my past works. Have a good day.

Bloated Goat in Amazon Select

Bloated Goat will be free for Amazon Prime members over the next five days. You can get your copy here: Bloated Goat's Kindle Page.

Sales Average for Last 18 months

Well, I've sold over 600 books during the last 18 months, which actually meets my original goal of selling an average of one book per day. Obviously, these numbers don't equal fame or riches, but I still think it is pretty cool. Also, there seems to be a trend of promising growth over the past six months as I've had monthly sales of 24, 30, 25, 45, 53, and 40.

Hope springs eternal for the rest of the year.

Just Be Yourself, Zap

Just Be Yourself, Zap is a delightful children's book about Zap trying to make some friends at a new school. Will Zap regret ignoring his mother's advice of "just be yourself" or will the school children be impressed when Zap pretends to be someone he's not? There are 32 illustrations and over 450 words. Just Be Yourself, Zap is available on Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords.