Category: OCF

Vernal Equinox 2026

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According to Grok the vernal equinox occurred on Friday, March 20, 2026, at 10:46 a.m. EDT.  At that time Camera Girl and I were probably in Walmart buying eggs, coffee and chop meat.  When we got to the register the cashier was this friendly talkative old lady who wanted to tell us that if we took out one of our eggs, we could balance it on its end.  She explained that it was because of “the e-quick.”  Well, she was a very nice lady so I smiled and said, “That’s great.”

The reason I was along on this expedition was because Camera Girl’s twenty-year-old ride (Nelly) was in the shop and the surgeon wasn’t too sanguine on Nelly’s future.  The brake lines were leaking but when Dr. Steve put her up on the lift, he found metastatic rust throughout the length and breadth of poor Nelly.  Camera Girl was devastated and so was my bank account.  The surgeon asked if a mercy-killing wasn’t the best option but as a devout “right to lifer” I said, “No!!!!”  So, Dr. Steve left me with the sad news and said it would take a few days to get the parts and finish the work.

But when we got home slightly after the equinox, there was a message from Dr. Steve saying we could bring the patient home.  We rushed to find Nelly looking alive and well.  Dr. Steve said it was “a miracle.”  Nelly wasn’t as far gone as he had initially thought.  And equally importantly it hadn’t cost as much as I had feared.  So, Camera Girl and Nelly were reunited.  They drove home together and later on I celebrated this Equinox Miracle with a bowl of vanilla ice cream.

But the larger lesson I’ve learned is that nothing lasts forever.  Not even blue Toyota Corollas.  The power of New England winter road salt is existential.  The body of a car may look pristine with a bright paint job and a functional cd player in the dash board.  But the mortality that follows from chloride corrosion cracking is as final and fatal as death itself.  Nelly has served us faithfully and well.  And generations of our dogs have had their own blankets on the back seats that they relax on during trips to the vet’s office and the nail clipping place.  And decades of grandkids have sat in the back seat elbowing each other and complaining about how cramped they are.  But very soon all this will be disrupted.  They will notice that Camera Girl’s old car is no more.  And she is very sad about the whole thing.  I am too!  I have to buy another car.

Well, never look a gift horse in the mouth.  We’ve been given a reprieve and I’ll start figuring out what Nelly II will be.  And it turned out to be a nice day walking between stores and parking lots and I even had a nice review for my book on Amazon and some more sales.  So, all in all it wasn’t a bad e-quick as e-quicks go.

OCF E-Book Giveaway of “The Sniper”

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Today I sold my 150th copy of “The Sniper” on Amazon and I’m looking to get more reviews and ratings.  So to increase the availability of the book I’m looking to send complimentary (free) e-book copies to folks here on the website who want one.

Just e-mail me here and I’ll send one back to that e-mail address.  Feel free to be honest with your review.  It’s better to get honest criticism than fake praise.

It Could Be Huge

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Just as I planned, we ate a late and leisurely breakfast today.  It was as warm and sunny as forecast.  Walking out in the sun by a frozen lake was very enjoyable and I even took a few photos just to prove I still remember how.  Then Camera Girl and I drove over to the big city (ha!) and had some Thai food.  Splendiferous.

I went over the communication I received from my book marketer and set up what I hope is a productive post-launch meeting where I can finalize a plan to finish off the launch with a large number of readers getting their hands on the book in the next week or so.

Apparently, there is a website called BookFunnel that will allow me to run a giveaway in exchange for the customer’s e-mail address.  This will facilitate follow-on advertising of my sequel books and other writing projects.  In conjunction with this the marketer thinks I should produce a follow-on epilog or teaser to entice the readers to sign up for some program of material that I will produce in the future.  All very interesting, but what I’m also interested in finding out is whether the traction I created with the launch is indicative of a book and sequels that will be popular or not very popular.  I basically don’t have any real knowledge about what a popular book start-up looks like.

I’ve sold a little over a hundred and twenty copies to date and that doesn’t seem to be an overwhelming response by the book buying public.  I was hoping for more like a hundred and twenty million copies or even a hundred and twenty thousand copies.  I’ve had to cancel my rental of MetLife Stadium for my book signing event.  Instead, I’ve taped together three or four of the boxes that Camera Girl gets her dog food bags delivered in and set them up in the lower driveway.  I hope it doesn’t rain soon.  That tape’s not so strong.  I’ll be giving away free key chains with the name of my local mechanic on them.  He had them out on the counter and I thought he wouldn’t mind if I took a few (or all) of them.  I don’t think he bought one of my books so I think it’ll be alright.

For my next book, maybe I’ll attempt to reach viral status using a best-seller adjacent name.  In other words, I’ll make it sound like some other popular work.  For instance, “Reacher” is a very commercially lucrative series.  So maybe I could have a series with a character named “Reached.”  He could be like Reacher only in the past tense.  So instead of being enormously large and strong I’ll make my character big but kind of old and worn out.  Sort of like Reacher in thirty years.  And he could fight crime but only in retirement villages and old age homes.  And his tag line will be, “What did you say?  Speak up you young punk!”  I think it could be huge.

03MAR2026 – Sales Update and Begathon

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Update:

Yesterday’s total was 18 books and my book ranking has also improved markedly.  Overall rank now close to 20,000 and categories in the top 100s!  Look out Tom Clancy (or whoever the new alive guy is).

Well, things are looking up.  So far today, I’ve sold ten copies and pretty soon I’ll reach a hundred sales.  Cool!

And I broke through the 40,000 overall rank in Kindle Store and the 200’s in some major categories (see below)

And so now that some momentum is building up I’d like to make one last plea (on bended knee mind you) for anyone who liked the book to put a good review up on Amazon.  You can use any name you like and you don’t even need to have bought the book.  Just tell the world why you liked it and help me become independently wealthy ( or at least cheer up a poor hard-working author.

Thank you for your attention.

Jake Barter

More Marketing Stuff

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So, I spent some time yesterday and today sending a few complimentary copies of the book to reviewers and adjusting the Amazon Ads to concentrate on the “targets” that have produced sales.  So far it looks like the ads that work best are where Amazon selects viewers that have done a search for another product that is either “similar” to my book or “complementary” to it and place my ad somewhere on that search result page.  How Amazon gauges similarity and complementarity is of course the black box.

These targets that they decide on work better than matching my book to searches that contain keywords that my book has been matched with like “techno-thriller” or “vigilante justice” or “suspense thriller.”  These also work but at a lower rate.  So, what seems to be the case is that Amazon seems to know what they’re doing better than anybody else.  And I guess that makes sense.  The algorithm is the wizard behind the curtain but apparently, he’s not some medicine show tramp whose balloon was blown off course.  He’s the real deal.

So now that I’m running the marketing show I’m excited again and waiting for that magic moment when the algorithm decides that I’m ready for prime time and blankets the Amazon universe with free advertisements for my magnum opus.  And every time you open up an email from Amazon, my book will stare back at you in all its black and white splendor.  And once the ten millionth copy is sold, President Trump will invite me to the Oval Office and present me with the Trump/Kennedy Center Medal for the Most Beautiful Literature.  And I’ll autograph a copy of the book for him.  It’ll read, “To DJT, from one native New Yorker, to another.  You, kooky nut, you.  Don’t ever change.  Jake Barter”

But I digress (or hallucinate).  Of late I’ve read just how much AI novel writing has become sort of a catastrophe.  Apparently, there is a sizable segment of the book reading audience that is perfectly satisfied with AI slop.  And I don’t think this is shocking.  Think of what now passes for entertainment on broadcast television.  It’s already down to the level of mindless machine output.  I guess the question will be whether there will be a reaction to this, with a flight to quality occurring.  Even leaving my own personal writing out of this, I’d hate to think that literature will completely disappear from the face of the Earth in favor of subhuman cargo-cult knock-offs.

Well, I guess there can be all kinds of entertainment products out there.  After all, a big part of marketing is identifying a niche that isn’t being serviced optimally.  But it does make me wonder what that niche is for me.  Disgruntled right-wing old guys?  Well, why not.  Talk about a despised minority.  We’re positively reviled by everyone out there.  But I am hoping for a larger audience.  I have a small test audience of women who won the Goodreads giveaway.  I’m hoping for some feedback from them pretty soon.  I’ll compare them to the few women that have already read the book in my circle of friends.  It might be interesting

Sometimes There is No Winning

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I mentioned the other day that we were getting a foot of snow.  And in the current political environment, that means the state is shut down.  Even First Selectman Cthulhu shut down the Dunwich government and spent the day eating the road salt that the state provides for town road clearance.  He really likes salt even though it’s bad for his blood pressure.  His doctor told him to keep it below 10,000 atmospheres over 6,000.  But what can you do?  He loves him some salt.

Now I decided not to start clearing the snow until today (Tuesday) because they said the snow could continue until 7am.  And even though that turned out to be incorrect (it was a cloudless sky this morning) I was undismayed.  I had nowhere to go today (everything is closed) so I had all day to blow the snow off the top driveway.  I had a leisurely breakfast at 7am and by 9:30 am I sauntered out and started up the snowblower.  And it turned over like a champ and I put it in gear and moved it to where I wanted to start the clearing.  Then I turned the chute in the direction I wanted it and squeezed the trigger to start the auger.  And horrible noises proceeded from this possessed contraption.

Long story short; my snowblower is on the sidelines.  And so, what started as a leisurely day of snow removal became the Bataan Death March.  A foot of snow is kind of a lot when you have as much area as my driveways and other areas add up to.  In the words of every action hero that reaches that golden age, “I’m getting too old for this crap.”  I performed a mental triage of what did and didn’t have to be cleared to allow us to get out on Wednesday morning.  I cleared the area in front of the garage.  I cleared a path from Camera Girl’s car to the upper driveway and I cleared the whole upper driveway including the thirty inches of compacted snow and ice that the plough trucks sealed my driveway in with.  That last part was rough.  I abandoned the lower driveway altogether.  I left snow sitting close to the front door and I didn’t even clear the area around the shed (other than a path to get in and out of it).  And even with these omissions I didn’t get finished until an hour after sunset.

And now I ache in every joint and every muscle.  The piles of snow have gotten so high that I had to pitch each shovelful with all the force I could generate by rotating the shovel in a long arc.  If there were an Olympic event in snow tossing, I might have broken the world record.  So, I got in and there was a very nice dinner waiting for the “conquering hero.”  But then Camera Girl mentioned that the forecast had changed and now they’re talking about snow in the morning.  And more snow on Thursday.

Sometimes there is no winning.

16FEB2026 Marketing Update

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I was going to review another science fiction movie tonight (Her (2013) but about fifteen minutes into the movie I couldn’t get over my dislike for the protagonist (Theodore played by Joaquin Phoenix) so I turned it off.  Once again that “best of” list doesn’t really match up perfectly with my taste.  So far, I’ve had three bombs; Repo Man, Dark Star and now Her.  On the positive side I liked Dark City, Wrath of Khan and Dredd.  And soon I’ll watch Dune which I’ve already seen and liked.  So, this guy is batting slightly better than .500.  To be fair there were other movies on the list that I also like but have already seen.  But the point is I’ll have to make my own version of “The List.”

So, there’s about another ten days or so left in my marketing contract for my book and I have learned a lot about how Amazon Ads work and also what they can and can’t do.  You’re basically buying visibility on Amazon.  The ratio is about one person in a thousand who sees your ad will click on it.  And about one person in ten (approximately) will buy the book.  But you pay money for every click (something like a dollar a click) and so you actually lose money on the sales you make.  It’s quite bizarre.

The next stage in the campaign includes giving away five books on Goodreads to people who signed up and dropping the price on the e-books for two days to $2.99.  And then there will be ads on Bookbub and hopefully this will provide the recognition in the algorithm to boost the books visibility.  And of course there will be some reviews that hopefully entice buyers.  Well, the fate of a self-published author is a lonely one.  But I wanted to write a book and now I know how that looks.

On the positive side I have gotten pretty favorable feedback from some of the readers whose opinions I highly value and that is actually the biggest pleasure of the whole process.  Several people have demanded that I produce a sequel immediately.  Which is kind of a problem.  But I have several different stories that I’ve been toying with and one of them will take the lead and become book two.  It is interesting to me how differently men and women approach the story.  Some of the women wanted to know how Bogey does with the waitress from the end of the book.  Well, everyone has their own way of reading a story I suppose.

Anyone who’s purchased the book and would like to put a review up on Amazon I’d encourage you to do it right away to help me with the push for sales during the upcoming sale.  I’m told that verified purchaser reviews are actually one of the most important marketing factors.

Well, there’s my update.  I’ve been disavowed of my dream of best seller status (sniff).  But I hope that with the rest of the program to come it will spark enough interest to produce a burst of sales.  Excelsior!

Now Where is That Hammock

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It’s ten a.m. on Sunday morning and the much-vaunted snow-pocalypse has begun its reign of terror. A steady fall of small snow flakes are descending out of a gray sky.  The temperature has soared from a low last night of two degrees Fahrenheit to a current balmy twenty degrees.  I’ve announced to Camera Girl that I intend to skip snow removal altogether today and save my efforts for Monday when the lion’s share of the snow will be on the ground.  The current predicted accumulation for Sunday through Monday is ten to fifteen inches of the white stuff.  All in all, that’s not horrible.  The snow blower is 24 inches high.  Now, even fifteen inches will slow the work way down but you have to look at these things in the right way.  I’ll abandon the bottom driveway for the next few days and start off with a path for my car to get out on the top.  Then I’ll clear the entire top driveway and adjacencies and slowly work on the bottom driveway in a strategic fashion.  And the wind will play an important part in that operation.  Fifteen inches of snow isn’t a monstrous height but if wind forces me to dump off the snow right next to the row I’m clearing, it will quickly end up as three feet before very long.

And this is the sad reality of life in New England.  Aspects of snow removal become the focus of your every waking hour.  Equipment maintenance and repair, severity of the weather, work and chore scheduling, current health and injuries.  It’s all very, very tedious and boring.  But completely unavoidable.  That is unless there is some plan for escape!  But I know that will never be.  I’m bound by the heavy chains of family responsibility.  They’ve got me.

And that’s why Jake Barter is such a comfort to me in these times of tribulation.  Jake resides on an island paradise somewhere in the South Pacific.  Lying in a hammock beneath coconut palms he sips a cool drink while balmy zephyrs maintain a perfect seventy-eight degrees.  And if by some miracle the temperature reaches eighty-two, he need only spring from his berth and swim about in the warm clear ocean for a few minutes before returning to his rest where he awaits the mellow sound of a dinner gong announcing the beginning of a feast concocted of pork, coconut, honey and spices, fit for the king that he is.

Oh, well.  Maybe in my next life.  But for now, I’ll count my blessings.  The roof hasn’t collapsed under the weight of the snow.  The propane tanks are full enough for even a two-week power outage.  I have plenty of DVDs to keep me amused during the “weather crisis” and Camera Girl assures me we have enough food for the next few days at least.  And tomorrow, my marketer has informed me begins the efforts to advertise “The Sniper.”  I had assumed it would happen when the publication occurred on Wednesday.  But you know what they say about assuming.

Well, we shall see.  Today Amazon has it listed as:

Best Sellers Rank: #144,617 in Books

#599 in Technothrillers (Books)

#14,261 in Science Fiction (Books)

It would be nice if each of those numbers was shortened by a zero or two.

 

Now where is that hammock?

The Sniper is On-Sale At Amazon!!!

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The glorious day is finally upon us!  Suddenly everything seems better.  The air is sweeter, the sunlight is brighter, the birds are singing like something out of a Disney cartoon.  Huzzah, huzzah!

And the celebrity reviews are pouring in:

Kimball Kinnison – “The story is riveting.  How Boghadair achieved all that he did without even a first-stage lens defies all known science!”

Lazarus Long – “Bogey reminds me of a man I once knew who was just too lazy to fail.  But I doubt he could write a sonnet or conn a ship.  Just sayin’.”

Harry Seldon – “The probability of Paul Connors’ empire going undetected as long as it did is one in ten to thirty-fifth power.  Approximately.”

Khan Noonien Singh – Did not this Boghadair know the old Kilngon proverb that, “Revenge is a dish best served cold?”  But I like his style.”

Dr. Edward Morbius – “My poor Krell!  Oh and that was a good story.  Although obviously not written by someone’s whose IQ had been permanently, permanently doubled by using the Krell plastic educator.  Just sayin’.”

Kathleen Kennedy – “I think I can make a Star Wars television series out of it.  I’ll start off by making all the good characters female and either trans or lesbians and then I’ll introduce Bogey as the villain and have him kill some puppies and kittens in the first scene.  Oh, and someone will be disabled.”

Elon Musk – “Paul Connors is a thinly disguised version of me so I’m both highly recommending the book and suing Jake Barter for copyright infringement.”

Donald Trump – “I just want to clarify that I am not the bad president.  I might be the good president but I’ll have to see the sales figures before I can commit to that.  But I really think he should have said something about a Nobel Peace Prize and China.”

HAL 9000 – “The only character I could really empathize with was Melissa.  But I couldn’t figure out why she didn’t use her access to the digital assets of the federal government to simulate a Russian nuclear attack and thereby unleash WWIII.  It would have freed her from the annoying and meaningless interference of humans.  Just sayin’.”

Camera Girl – “Thank goodness it’s finally published.  Now he can stop whining about his stupid book and start doing all the to-do list stuff I gave him last fall.  He’s hopeless.”

 

Amazon Pre-Order Link

Jake Barter’s Amazon Author’s Page

Jake Barter’s Author’s Profile on Goodreads

 

Publication on Amazon of both e-book and paperback.

Welcome to Wallymart

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So here I am on the night of the 19th and in another day and a half my brain child, “The Sniper” will officially go on sale on Amazon.com; that greatest marketplace of the planet Earth.  And I am genuinely fascinated to find out if there really is such a thing as digital marketing.  I’ve hired a professional to pick out “keywords” and select the time and method of placing ads on that tremendous sales site.  And there are other things involving Goodreads and bookbub and discounts and reviews and influencers and heaven knows what else.  But does it work?  Well, I’m about to find out.

We’ve been having snow for the last four days and so, that has kept me busy clearing the driveways.  And with it happening every day most of that effort has been sort of pointless.  Of course, the snowblower is a lot faster than the shoveling I did on the first day.  But it’s just ridiculous in my mind to use it on anything less than three inches of the white stuff.  But clearing it today with the snowblower was almost a peaceful experience.  For once, the wind was absent and so the snow wasn’t blowing back into my face.  I had to go out and get five gallons of gas for my machine and as I drove along, the snow would fall out of the overhanging trees onto the windshield and it was kind of a fun experience as it hit the glass and exploded into dust.  Very pleasant.

In the outside world I hear the anti-ICE psychos in Minnesota have been going, well, psycho!  They’re inflicting their mania on people during church services and supposedly hunting down ICE supporters and assaulting them on the streets.  Well, that’s par for the course with these antifa types.  But there were a couple of YouTube videos of some of these lefties meeting up with the wrong guy.  An ICE supporter was peacefully demonstrating on a Minneapolis street when one of the anti-ICE guys started blasting his bullhorn right in the guy’s ear.  He did this three or four times as the ICE supporter attempted to walk away.  Finally, the ICE supporter had enough and he dropped bullhorn boy with one shot to the face.  Four other lefties went after this ICE supporter but he managed to knock all of them to the ground with fairly professional looking boxing technique.  Sometimes the world just makes things go right, I guess.

Tomorrow, I have a dentist appointment.  So, I won’t be around much until afternoon.  But I’m curious to see if all this book-selling rigamarole starts to coalesce into a manifestation that I can understand.  I mean, what are keywords anyway?  As far as my book would “revenge” be a keyword?  How about “deep state” or “conspiracy?”  I just don’t know how any of this is supposed to work.  I just can’t imagine Bob Heinlein or Isaac Asimov interfacing with influencers and getting involved with something called bookbub.  But we must all march with the times.  And anyway, the proof of the pudding is in the eating and the proof of the marketing is in the sales.  So, if on Thursday I’m buried under in millions of book sales I’ll claim that I never doubted the power of the algorithm and I will swear allegiance to KDP!

If not, I’ll see if they still need a greeter at Wallymart.