Category: Life in Dunwich

My Adventures in the Mythical New England Town of Dunwich

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

Must Be Global Warming Again

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I was looking at the Accu-weather forecast for Dunwich.  There was a special miasmal ectoplasm alert on for the area (as usual).  But the temperature forecast was eye-catching:

Tonight: Clear and bitterly cold.  Lo: 4°F

Tomorrow: Mostly sunny and cold; the coldest day until next winter.

That was an interesting statement.  Now don’t get me wrong.  Hearing that it would get down to 4°F was in no way cheery.  Single digits and below is a special part of the “charm” of New England.  Camera Girl and I prepare for this by stacking two hundred pounds of blankets on top of ourselves in bed and use snorkels to get air.  So, no, I’m not looking forward to tonight.  But to hear that from now on until next year it will not be getting horribly cold again is like being someone trapped in a flooded building where the water line is only inches from the ceiling and you’ve been dog paddling for dear life and breathing the last few inches of air for hours praying you wouldn’t drown and finally the tide begins to recede.  You experience a sense of relief and victory over a horrible enemy.

It snowed today but I waited until about 2pm and the sun came out and melted the dusting on the driveway.  I went around trimming back the ten foot piles of snow along the edge of the driveway just to show them who’s boss and how limited their remaining time would be.  I think as I struck with my shovel I taunted the snow in a somewhat insane manner.  It’s been a long winter.  The other day I was able to get the snowblower working.  I poured warm water down the chute and like magic it was completely functional.  So, all of the horror from last week was unnecessary.  But uncertainty ruled and I didn’t want to use up any time fiddling with the machine when I knew I barely had enough daylight to shovel myself out from a foot of snow.

But all of that is behind me.  From now on melting snow will be the reality and preparations will begin for spring.  Already we are preparing for the next milestone.  St. Patrick’s Day is coming up and Camera Girl will prepare her version of corned beef and cabbage.  Lately she hasn’t been boiling it.  The cabbage is sauteed and the beef is pan fried but it still connects us with the patron saint of the city of our birth (before Mamdani installed the minarets on St Patrick’s Cathedral).  After that Easter is right around the corner and dare I hope some lamb could be on the menu?  Camera Girl despises lamb.  She prefers ham or pork for Easter but every once in a while, she’ll provide a lamb alternative for lepers such as myself who enjoy a little flavor at Easter.

But all of this is premature.  Tonight, I’ll add another hundred pounds of blankets to the pile and we’ll hunker down to 4°F one last time.  And who knows, in a few weeks I might even start saying, “Boy I hope it cools a little, I’m stifling.  Must be global warming.”

One Month In

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So today was the last day of my marketer’s book launch service.  And as of now we sold sixty books.  Thirty-four were e-books and twenty-six were paperbacks.  And today I noticed that one sale (an e-book) was sold in Germany.  Well, well.

Owing to the fact that book sales have not topped one million copies, as of yet, I’ve decided to turn the whole thing into a network marketing exercise.  I intend to find ten people and have each of them buy ten copies and then each force ten people to each buy ten copies and then so on and so forth until by level ten we have ten billion copies sold!  By the way that math may be off a little but you get the idea.  After all if it worked for Amway and Communism how can it possibly fail?  Why didn’t I think of this earlier?  All I have to do is buy a white board and some dry erase products and maybe combine this with a Tupperware item or two and before you know it I’ll be a huge success.

All in all, it’s been very educational.  I guess the takeaway is that price-point and ads on Amazon are what sell books.  As soon as I dropped the price of the e-book from $5.99 to $2.99 there was an immediate surge in sales.  Since I have very few reviews, I’ve decided to drop the price of the e-book to $0.99 and try to get a bunch of sales right away in the hopes that it will generate some reviews.  Of course, that’s just my idea but it seems to make sense to me.

The marketer has additional services to extend the launch but I’ve decided to try it myself.  Now that I’m running the campaign on my own, I’ll depend on Amazon’s automatic key word selection to attract the attention of the techno-thriller/vigilante justice readers out there.  It should be very interesting to see how this change affects sales.

I will say that becoming a “best selling author” is harder than I imagined.  I assumed that with my incredible writing skills the publishers and the reading public would beat a path to my door and shower me with riches.  So far, no path.  So far, more like a trickle of riches.  But I am undismayed.  My acquaintances who’ve read the book report enjoying it a lot.  Now of course they may be just saying nice things because they like me.  But I will say it is very nice to receive accolades even from friends.  If instead they had told me, it was awful I think I’d be pretty discouraged.  So currently I’m buoyed by the minor success I’ve enjoyed and hopeful that with further exposure the book will find an audience (possibly in Germany!).

So, let’s just see how the next stage in this odyssey goes.  As always feel free to add a review to Amazon and hopefully the word will get out that a new classic has appeared on the horizon for discerning readers.

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.

My Own Take on Super Sunday

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I had to postpone my trip to see “Iron Lung” with my grandson.  We got another six inches of snow between yesterday and today and had to spend the day clearing it.  And I really think the meteorological profession is retrogressing.  A couple of days ago they said we would get a “dusting.”  Some dusting!  And unfortunately for me the wind was wild.  I ended up with an ice beard and a frozen face.  But it’s done and tomorrow morning we’ll see what cosmic horror lurks at the bottom of an ocean of human blood!  I’ve read a bunch of reviews and what I’ve gleaned is that this is an homage to the video game of the same name and anyone who isn’t a fan of the game will find it a bit long (maybe quite a bit too long).  But that’s okay.  It will give me a chance to hang out with my grandson afterward and find out what he especially liked about it.

Basically, this movie is sort of the “Star Wars” of his generation.  Because it’s for them.  It’s a nerdy touchstone that they bond over.  So, I want to show deference to their choice of insider totem.  I want to get a sense of what they enjoy.  Should be interesting.

Going through the news is becoming goofier every day.  Apparently, Trump called the Obamas monkeys in some kind of video meme.  I think CBS was angry that Trump hadn’t apologized.  Well, calling Obama a monkey is kind of insensitive to monkeys.  As far as I know monkeys treat all humans equally.  Whereas the Obamas are anti-white racists, which I consider much worse than monkeys.  They’re awful human beings.  I hope Trump apologizes to monkeys for comparing them to the Obamas.

There was another article stating that Starlink has been shut off in Ukraine and now the Russians can’t control their drones.  The article made it sound like the Russians were cut off because they didn’t have legitimate accounts with Starlink.  So, does that mean that Putin was doing what most people’s young adult children do when they use their parents’ Netflix and Disney Plus accounts?  The idea that this war in which hundreds of thousands of men have been killed is being run on pirated GPS usage just seems a bridge too far.  Is this really what’s going on?  What’s next?  Will we find out that ChatGPT has been drafted by Putin and is running the battlefield strategy?

And of course, tomorrow is Super Bowl Sunday.  I guess it must be at least seven years since I’ve watched a Super Bowl.  And honestly, I can’t imagine why I’ll ever bother watching it again.  And that goes for all of professional sports.  All the virtue signaling over race and homosexual identity have made all of it nauseating and I’d rather watch a test pattern than endure their nonsense.  I did see that Anheuser-Bush has put together some commercial for the Super Bowl that involves a Clydesdale horse befriending a bald eagle.  Well, the only thing I could think of was, “Which one is a stand-in for Dylan Mulvaney?”  I don’t think horses and eagles are going to get Bud Light their customer base back.  Enjoy your Sunday.

Goodreads Book Giveaway February 7 – 19 of “The Sniper”

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Huzzah!  The chance to win a free paperback copy of this desperately sought after literary jewel.  Did I say jewel?  Nay!  Miracle!!!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The Sniper by Jake Barter

The Sniper

by Jake Barter

Giveaway ends February 19, 2026.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

With Extra Butter

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Oldest Grandson is a fan of video games and of video game adjacent internet personalities.  There is a guy named Markiplier (well, technically that’s an alias) who has made a fortune playing video games on his YouTube channel and currently has something like thirty-seven million followers.  I’ve only ever watched a couple of minutes of his content and must confess I don’t see the attraction.  I guess it’s because I’m old.

Anyway, this guy decided to make a horror movie using his own money and then put it on 3,000 movie screens.  It cost him about $3 million to make.  And on its first weekend it’s made more than $18 million.

Now here’s the thing.  In Hollywood the catering budget for a movie that makes $18 million on its first weekend would cost more than $3 million.  Anyone who would be employed to open a movie of that size would make at least $5 million in Hollywood.  So just based on scale any movie made for less than $3 million is in a completely different league from Hollywood.  This movie couldn’t fail with the built in audience it has and almost any Hollywood movie can’t help but fail.  Even Forbes magazine is touting the new entertainment model that “influencers” like Markiplier has pioneered with his movie success.

So, this is the third movie I’ve heard of that made a bunch of money because someone with tens of millions of followers on line self-financed it and got his people to buy tickets.  Does this show us the future or is this just a blip while the streaming giants kill off or buy up Hollywood?  Maybe it’s a little bit of both.  Markiplier would never get his movie made by a Hollywood studio.  And Netflix and Amazon are frantically looking for content that won’t be ignored by the Zoomers.  I think what we’re beginning to see is a realization that creative types and Silicon Valley are going to have to blow up the Hollywood model with its bloated budgets and maniacal dependence on poorly written sequels of old intellectual properties.  They’re going to have to forget about making crap like “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” or “Star Wars 37: Search for Obi Wan’s Lesbian Aunt.”

The kids around today want to watch stuff that speaks to them.  Some of it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to old people like myself.  But it doesn’t have to.  What they don’t want is corporate slop disguised as sequels to movies that their grandparents watched as kids.  And you really can’t blame them.  So next Saturday I’ll be going with Oldest Grandson to see “Iron Lung.”  And I’ll leave my expectations at the door and watch it with an open mind.  Maybe I’ll love it or hate it or just feel kind of confused.  But I’ll get a chance to see what the future looks like.  And at the very least I know there won’t be a girl-boss character.  Apparently, Markiplier Has 90% of the character face time in the movie.  And I’ve decided I’m going to splurge on the large popcorn.  With extra butter.

But With a Whimper

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All week we’ve been living in existential dread of an empty oil tank.  Right before the snowstorm on Sunday and Monday we got an email from our oil company saying they would be delivering a shipment on Tuesday.  Looking at the tank gauge I could see we had less than a quarter tank.  And for the last few weeks the temperature had been well below normal and the forecasts said this week would be skirting with sub-zero temperatures almost every night.  Well, no problem.  I planned to spend all of Monday clearing the top driveway and there wasn’t any snow due again for days so all would be well.

Of course, when I woke up Tuesday morning another inch or two of snow had fallen and since I was headed off to work, I got up early and shoveled it down to the pavement.  Of course, I was grumbling the whole time about the usual crummy weather forecasting in the area but what can you do.  When I got home that afternoon the fuel truck had still not arrived but they often came later.  At about four, a truck showed up.  But instead of backing down the driveway he parked in the street in front of the curb cut and after five or ten minutes he left.

So, Camera Girl called up the oil company and reported this oddity.  After speaking to several flunkies who knew nothing, she spoke to a flunky who claimed to know something.  The knowledgeable flunky said (repeatedly) that the driver noted that there were snow and ice on the driveway and due to fear of the truck sliding and even rolling over he declined to come down the driveway.

Now this was pure nonsense.  Every driver in their fleet had come down this driveway many times when there was more residual snow and ice than what was there that afternoon.  The only thing I could think of was that the driver was a temporary hire unfamiliar with the route and didn’t want to back up the long narrow driveway.  Camera Girl complained to the flunky and assured her that the driveway was clear of ice.  The flunky said that the photos from the driver would be evaluated the next day and things would be resolved.

Seeing that she was dealing with idiots she resolved to be proactive.  She told them to send a truck the next day and the driveway would certainly be passable.  I treated the driveway with 200 pounds of sand and convinced myself that no one could claim the driveway was impassable.  But I hadn’t reckoned with the fecklessness of my oil company.  When no one showed up by 3pm she called them up and was told that since they hadn’t heard from us, they hadn’t sent a truck.  She argued that the day before we told them to send a truck.  They claimed they had sent a text message asking us if we wanted a delivery.  She informed them that we don’t have a cell phone so no text message was possible.  They stuck by their story.  She once more asked them if we would be getting a shipment the next day (Thursday).  They assured her they would.  But by 3pm on Thursday when there was no truck, I knew what she would hear.  The same story.  Once again, they claimed to have left a text message.  It was maddening.

So yesterday I stepped back and thought what kind of operation I was dealing with.  Apparently, they only hired idiots that couldn’t be held accountable for their poor performance.  They thought they were leaving me messages.  Now the tank was down around an eighth of the tank and I was worried that in the cold weather the small outlet line might not provide enough suction pressure for the fuel pump.  I was worried we really wouldn’t have fuel after Friday.  I reckoned if they failed me again, I’d go out and buy ten gallons of diesel oil and pour it in the tank just to keep things going.

But I resolved to call them at 6:30 am and tell them to make a delivery today.  And by golly it worked.  They must have thought I was answering the imaginary text message and they sent a truck that got here at 10 am.  As I imagined the driver was a newbie.  He was a young middle eastern man and he confessed he had a hard time finding me because he put the wrong address in his GPS.  I was so relieved that I just smiled and showed him where the tank inlet line was.  Well, civilization will die not with a bang but with a whimper.  Incompetence is the rule now not the exception.  But tonight, the temperature is supposed to reach ten below zero.  I am comforted that Abdul filled the tank.  Oh well.  Grateful for small favors.

Where is the Good Stuff

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The crazies are coming out of the woodwork everywhere you look.  The Left has fired up the bat signal only it’s the bat-crap-crazy signal they’re flashing.  Honestly, we need a vacation from this.  We need something good to think about instead.  In normal times maybe we’d be excited to watch the Super Bowl.  But of course, these are not normal times.  I read somewhere that the half-time entertainment is someone calling him(?)self Bad Bunny.  And not knowing anything one way or another about said bunny I’d say, “Okay, why not?”  But then it said that in honor of all the “queers” he’s going to wear a dress.  So that’s the end of the Super Bowl.

I guess that means it’s up to me to figure out a way to cheer up normal America.  So I looked around and saw an article that said Sydney Sweeney was marketing a line of lingerie by wearing lingerie.  Well, that sounded hopeful but on further reflection I thought, “You know, she’s really better off doing the jeans commercials with her clothes on.”  Plus, Camera Girl will think I’ve become a dirty old man so that’s not so good.  So back to the drawing board.

So, I turned on the tv.  Holy cow.  All there was were police shows.  There were “COPS” style reality police shows and cold case shows and then there were tv series about make believe police.  Camera Girl watches a couple of these, one of which is Chicago PD.  But based on what I could see most of the Chicago police department is made up of women with a few men thrown in for the sake of romance with the few non-lesbian members of the force.  After watching a few minutes of this hyper-realistic police drama, I started mocking Camera Girl for watching this show.  I said, “Doesn’t it seem odd that five foot nothing women are arresting six foot something men who weigh three times what they do?  And how do they manage to keep their hair, make-up and fingernails looking so good during that knock down brawl on the mean streets of Chicago?”  Her only rebuttal was a really nasty scowl.  So, then tv wasn’t the answer.  At least not what’s on today.

Maybe that’s the clue.  We’re currently living in a happiness desert.  TV, the movies and books are in awful shape.  The only way to find amusement is to carefully curate (what a pretentious word!) your sources of entertainment.  Luckily for me, that’s always been something I did.  Currently in my movie rotation are a few very unusual films.  I have a 1958 movie called the “The High Cost of Loving” that starred and was directed by Jose Ferrer.  It’s about a fellow in middle management at an American company that is simultaneously dealing with his wife having a baby, the company being bought by a larger company and several signs that he’s about to be fired.  Small roles for Jim Backus, Edward Platt and Richard Deacon give the whole production a very familiar, late fifties, early sixties tv feel.  Watching Ferrer play a very decent man panicking over his comfortable life falling apart is excellent stuff.  And to round out my happiness quest I added two other movies I felt like watching; “A Man for All Seasons” and “This Happy Breed.”  These two are both based on English plays and despite the amount of disaster that both stories delve into, both leave me feeling very optimistic about the world.  Apparently, the movies don’t have to be upbeat or comedic to make me happy.  They need to be about people I can admire or at least relate to.

And sure enough, after partaking of these movies over the last few days I’ve forced myself into a good mood.  This despite the massive quantities of snow removal I’ve been subjected to.  So that’s the answer.  Find a vision of the world where good people do good things and you feel better.

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?