Category: photog’s Corner

Here you will find the stuff that shouldn’t be mixed in the other categories but interest me. caveat emptor.

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.

Ah, That Was a Proper 2026

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So today it got up to 66οF and tonight it’s only going to get down to 38οF.  Tomorrow I’m off from work and it’s gonna be 67 οF and sunny all day, with no wind.  So, tomorrow is the official first day of un-winter.  Camera Girl and I will officially get up a half hour later, eat a leisurely breakfast, stroll around the devastated grounds and then go for a ride and walk around a lake, take a few photographs then go into town and have something special for lunch; maybe Chinese or Thai.  Life begins again.

Except for the north side of the garage roof, all the roof snow is practically gone.  And some areas of vegetation (mangled and brown) have reappeared behind the retreating snow.  Obviously, the absurdly high piles of snow I created over the course of the last few weeks will be there well into April (and in places into May) but those will just be there as a cautionary tale about the folly of living in New England.

The west field will be soggy for weeks while the snow retreats there last.  But within a week or two I intend to go there and cut down all of the raspberry canes and spread fertilizer on that bed.  Last year that program provided a bonanza of berries and I intend to duplicate that procedure this spring.  But the truly awful production we got out of the squash, eggplants and cucumbers over there has convinced me to move all of these beds to the south field.  I’m going to dig up a good chunk of lawn over there and plant vegetables and transplant some flowers that have languished too close to the forest shade.

So, there is a plan going forward and plenty of work to do.  But it’s just so good to finally be freed from sitting around in the house staring out at a world of snow.  They talk about cabin fever and I know exactly what they mean.  It’s a depressing, nervous state where you have to invent things to do to keep your mind off of your imprisonment.  It’s a time when you try to stick to exercise regimens just to avoid becoming a pile of mush over the inactivity of the winter.  And the short days just makes it worse because darkness makes you sleepy.

Okay, I’ll put all that behind me.  Winter 2025/2026 is officially dead and buried.  Even if we have that stupid April Fools’ Day nor’easter this year, it’s just there to provide “poor man’s fertilizer” for the vegetation.  I predict 2026 will be a very productive year with interesting scientific and technological news and improvements on the economic front.  But most important I predict that summer 2026 will provide the most memorable cookouts, barbecues and grilling that will be talked about for the next decade and will become a byword for successful outdoor parties.  Like some Shire gaffer, in the future you’ll see me eating a cheeseburger smothered in onions and relish and here me declare, “Ah, that was a proper 2026!”

08MAR2026 – This’N’That

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Today I spent a chunk of time with a roof rake pulling snow off the lower roofs.  These roofs have heavy plastic cleats glued to the metal to keep the snow from sliding into the gutters but there was so much snow that the weight cracked the glue and so these enormously heavy blocks of ice and snow were falling down onto the upper and lower driveways and blocking the routes we use to reach the road.  So, I forced the issue and pulled down all (most) of the snow with the rake and then spent a few hours moving the snow away with a shovel and wheelbarrow.  I was planning to use the snowblower to move the snow but all those plastic cleats would be bad for the rotating parts and it would have taken me so long to separate them out using a garden rake that I said, “to hell with it” and just used the wheelbarrow and shovel.  Well, they say work develops character and Camera Girl says I’m a character so it must be working.

I’ve had some interesting conversations on X with another author and he seemed genuinely interested in how my characters would advance in a sequel so I told him I should send him the e-book and then he could see the challenges I’m going to face deciding how I’ll clean up the mess I’ve created in the first book.  Also, I’m hoping to get a review out of him.  Of course, he’s not a genre fiction author so it may not be his cup of tea so I may not get a highly positive review but honest feedback is valuable so I’m interested.

Tomorrow, third grandson is coming over to spend time with us and absorb mass quantities of spaghetti and meatballs followed by mint chocolate chip ice cream.  He’s starting high school next year so I’ll have to try and up my game.  I wonder what form of entertainment he’ll favor.  I know this year his whole family has been on a hockey kick.  While hockey is far from my favorite form of entertainment, I feel I must try to adapt myself to the grandkids as best I can.  After all they’re the future and I’m practically extinct.

I got in touch with my marketer and said I wanted to discuss strategies to maximize numbers of readers by minimizing cost to the reader (up to and including giveaways).  She said I should make a point to collect e-mail addresses to allow for follow up advertising for sequels.  I will study her message and formulate some specific questions to facilitate getting answers at the meeting.  I’ve found marketing a book is an onerous task that’s far from fun.  At this point I want a strategy that sustains itself with minimal demands on my time.  But I may not get the answers I’m hoping for.

Alright, that’s enough for now.  I’m trying to stay away from the news of wars and scandals and elections and other tawdry concerns.  The world is certainly a messy place.

A Big Crazy Idea

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I have this crazy idea.  I want to get my book into the hands of an enormous number of people.  I heard of a guy whose book was given out to a hundred thousand people by some corporation for some reason unknown to me.  And after that it became very popular and sold millions of copies.  Now obviously that’s a crazy thing.  I think this was a hundred thousand physical copies not e-books.  Why a corporation would pay for a hundred thousand copies of a book to then give them away doesn’t make any sense unless it’s the Gideons giving away the Bible at hotels.

But for whatever reason it intrigues me.  Now theoretically I can give away a hundred thousand copies of my e-book by emailing them.  Of course, an e-mail provider will charge some fee for that much bandwidth.  But in terms of the files they’re free.  The trick would be to interest a hundred thousand people to request the book and actually read it.  There are book sale sites (e.g., Smashwords) that allow you to lower the sale price to zero.  But the trick would be to attract the right audience for the book.

I admit it’s kind of a goofy idea.  The whole reason for writing a book is to get people to pay you money for the privilege of reading it.  This stands that concept on its head.  But I think it’d get more satisfaction from knowing that a huge number of people had read my story than having a few hundred pay me for buying it.

I have a lot more research to do to figure out all the details of how doing something like this would work.  I want to target a right-leaning audience and so I’m looking at advertising on one of the right-leaning sites like Red State or something like it.  But one of the things is making sure it doesn’t cost me too much money.  After all I’m not a trillionaire.  I’m just a regular old multi-billionaire you know.

My book sales on Amazon reached one hundred tonight.  Maybe that was what triggered this megalomania.  After all it’s only a few orders of magnitude between a hundred and a hundred thousand.  What’s that between friends after all?  But I have learned a little bit about how difficult it is to reach across the “digital barrier” and communicate with the mass of humanity out there.  It requires you to master the secrets of the “algorithm” and “search engine optimization.”  Either that or you have to shell out a lot of dough.

But I’ll have to say it must have been more fun in the old days when a writer could sell a short story to Analog for a few hundred bucks and have a hundred thousand people read that story and give their feedback in just days or weeks.  I know there are now digital equivalents.  There’s a site called Royal Road where free content is uploaded and people vote with their eyeballs.  And maybe I’ll go that route.  Of course, I understand that most of the content is sort of video game fan fiction which is completely impenetrable to me.  And maybe an audience for my stuff would never show up there.  But I should look into it.  Well anyway, enough about this.  I’ll figure it out and see if it can be done and if it’s worth it to me or not.  Ah, the trials and tribulations of a great literary artist.  Oh, the pain, the pain.

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

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.