Sacrifices! What we do for art! More archery research

Posted on May 21, 2010 by dave

Bruise

I figured if I'm going to write about longbows I ought to shoot one. Well, there's a right way and a wrong way.

They say (whoever ‘they’ are) that one should write about what one knows about. Okay, fair enough. My new fantasy novel, The Unexpected Traveler, involves longbows. I’d never shot a longbow. As can be seen in another post (here) I borrowed a modern compound bow and shot it off a few times. But a compound bow is a precision machine. The parts being flexed are made of modern materials. There’s a front sight and a rear sight to help with repeatability. The draw weight is precise.
 
In other words, a compound bow is nothing like a traditional longbow. Continue reading →

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Sneffles or Sneffels?

Posted on May 8, 2010 by dave

Sneffels

Mt. Sneffels, not Mt. Sneffles!

Well, actually, the correct spelling is Sneffels. That’s f-e-l-s. But apparently people are having trouble finding the website because Sneffels just has to be spelled Sneffles! So, I bit the bullet today. www.mtsnefflespress.com now redirects to www.mtsneffelspress.com. Hopefully that helps!

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E-Books Workshop April 24, 2010

Posted on April 23, 2010 by dave

Title page

I gave a workshop on August 24, 2010 on e-book publishing. Click on the image to see the charts (takes you away from mtsneffelspress.com)

I had a great time at a workshop hosted by the Montrose Library and Carole London of London Publishing. I was asked to speak on e-books. Those wishing to see the slides I presented at the ebook workshop can find them here.

To prepare for the conference, I put my first broom book up on Smashwords. That’s a feeder site for Barnes and Noble, Sony, and the new Apple bookstore. You can see the details in the charts.

UPDATE: Here are two questions posed by Cheryl:

Question: Hi Dave,
I enjoyed your workshop at the library yesterday. I have questions! When preparing my book as an e-book, do the various ‘stores’ have a preference for number of pages in the book. In an 81/2×11, single-space format, my book has about 108 pages, including the cover. In 5.5×8.5, single-space pocketbook format, it has 218 pages. Does length of book matter? Does page size matter? Also, I’m still looking for a POD company. Do you offer that service? Thanks, Cheryl Continue reading →

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Archery Research for The Unexpected Traveler

Posted on April 22, 2010 by dave

It’s hard to write about something I’ve never tried. The Unexpected Traveler, my new fantasy, uses archery and swordplay as primary weapons of war. Not having fired a bow before, I borrowed this one and got 30 minutes of instruction. Randy Cassingham, of This is True fame, handled the camera.

Yes, this is the one shot that hit the target! We managed to break the nocks off three arrows, and given this is borrowed equipment, we thought we ought to stop while we were ahead!

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The American Flying Broomstick Web Pages Moved

Posted on March 20, 2010 by dave

Logo for American Flying Broomstick

The AmericanFlyingBroomstick.com Web Pages Consolidated into MSP

As part of an ongoing “look and feel” consolidation, the web pages for www.americanflyingbroomstick.com have been placed onto the Mt. Sneffels Press server. All the information is intact, including the videos. You can go to the AFB pages directly or you can navigate by using the menu bar at the top of the page. Hover the mouse over “Projects” and you can click on “Flying Broomstick,” which has all the links. As usual, you can order any of the three books in the series via our catalog page.

The “Technology” page has been bumped up a notch to be its own “Project” page. I get questions all the time about doing this and that. You’ll find the answers on the Technology page.

And the “Weather Station” is also its own project. It took several hours of work Continue reading →

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Cool Little Utility: Wordle

Posted on February 23, 2010 by dave

Cool utility called Wordle. You feed it text, it makes the map.

Here’s a fun one for you to play with. It’s a little utility called Wordle, and it’s available at www.wordle.net. You feed it text and it spits back these cool maps, much like tag clouds. The most common words get the biggest font; it goes down from there. Options abound, including fonts, color scheme, and shape. The main photo is what happened when I pointed Wordle at this site. I find it rather interesting that I can tell a lot about the site simply by looking at the map.

Well, of course, there’s more. I couldn’t help myself, in fact. Next comes a Wordle word cloud from a section of the first Broom book, The Story of the Great American Flying Broomstick Book 1: Genesis. Here it is: Continue reading →

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Experiment: New Broom Intro Video

Posted on January 26, 2010 by dave

This is an experiment. Randy Cassingham made a very nice video introduction for me to put on the www.americanflyingbroomstick.com home page. And he did a great job! But I did it on a day that my bipolar illness had taken me way, way down. So, I thought I’d try something a little different:

The production values stink, but I would like some feedback on the concept. The video is much shorter and hopefully more entertaining. So, compare it with the old one here: Continue reading →

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Diehard Fan Loves Flying Broomstick Series

Posted on January 25, 2010 by dave

Reader Chelsey, shown here in a Facebook photo, loves the American Flying Broomstick series

It’s nice to get fan mail. I guess it’s the best part of being an author—learning that other people get as much fun out of the books as I had writing them. Here’s a comment from Chelsey, a young man who lives in Denver:

“Bravo again! I just finished book 2 and can’t wait to snag book 3! I just can’t put them down once I start reading! The books not only make me wish I could fly a broomstick, but as a life-long resident of Ridgway that has since moved away, it is like taking a trip home. It is especially enjoyable to personally know the characters; it often makes all the laughs that much more enjoyable! I spent a large amount of my reading time laughing or chuckling. I think my girlfriend thought I was a little nuts at first because I would just randomly break the silence of the room in tear-jerking laughter! Thanks for all the hard work Dave! Great books! Now its on to book 3! Any plans for a book 4? Best Regards, and Safe Brooming, Chelsey”

I remember Chelsey when he was in high school several years back. He led the team from our tiny little high school that entered a solar-powered car in a national race. He’s a ham radio operator, too. Sharp guy!

Well, regarding Book 4, I have the idea—see the chapters in Book 3 that take place in Manchester, England and you’ll see what it’ll involve. But right now I’ve decided to try my hand at a full-blown fantasy with the working title of The Unexpected Traveler, so Book 4 will be put off a bit.

Find out what Chelsey’s enjoying so much—buy your copy of The Story of the Great American Flying Broomstick today!

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Our Catalog Now Has a Shopping Cart in Addition to Buy-Now Buttons

Posted on January 15, 2010 by dave

view cart

Both our Catalog and our Extended Catalog now feature a shopping cart. That means weight is used to compute postage, saving you money!

It’s overdue, but it’s here! Up until now, all the items in our catalog were intended to be ordered one item at a time. The “Buy Now” button takes you directly to PayPal’s checkout feature. If you want to buy several different books, up until now you had to pay shipping for each on an individual basis.

No more! I thrust my way through the tangled thicket on PayPal’s website and figured out how to use the shopping cart feature. So, you can add an item to the cart, continue to peruse the site and add more items, and when you’re done you just click on any “View Cart” button and you’re whisked to your shopping cart, where you can finalize your order. Of course, you can remove items or change quantities at any time, simply via the “View Cart” button. All “View Cart” buttons take you to the same place: your shopping cart.

The cool thing is that the shipping is calculated on the weight of the total order. That can represent significant savings. The starting point for shipping is $2.75, but if you order, say, the Railroad book plus Mary Ann Dismant’s memoirs, the total shipping is just $3.00. What a cool way to save money!

I’ve got the cart up for the Mt. Sneffels Press catalog and will update the extended catalog soon so that it has this feature also.

UPDATE Jan 22, 2010: The Extended Catalog has been upgraded to add the shopping cart feature.

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Railroad Magnate Otto Mears Had a Liberty Ship Named After Him

Posted on January 14, 2010 by dave

This is a picture from Wikipedia of the SS John W. Brown, one of the two surviving out of over 2000 Liberty Ships built during WWII. One of the Liberty Ships was named after Otto Mears, a key railroading figure in Colorado

Reader Norm Delucchi sent this comment:

“Reading my copy of Narrow Gauge Railroading in the San Juan Triangle – I questioned an item – going to my reference library I found that the SS Otto Mears (Hull # 2157) was built by Permanente Metals Corporation, Richmond #2 Yard, Richmond, CA, not Matson Navigation of San Francisco as stated on page 90.”

Norm is correct. I might also note that in researching this, Wikipedia states that 2710 of these handy, easy-to-build cargo ships were built during the war years, not quite measuring up to the “over 3000″ on page 90. That still a lot of ships! Out of all these ships, only two are still seaworthy, the SS John W. Brown (pictured) and the SS Jeremiah O’Brien, the latter being preserved as a memorial in San Francisco with occasional trips at sea. The SS Otto Mears itself was launched in 1943, sold private in 1947, and wrecked and scrapped in 1967.

How’s that for information in a book about railroads! Check out Narrow Gauge Railroading in the San Juan Triangle: The Rio Grande Southern, the Ouray Branch of the D&RG and Otto Mears’ Silverton RR, in our catalog for $19.95 + shipping. You can be assured that Otto Mears was a railroad guy; it’s interesting to learn of the ship built twelve years after his death that was finally scrapped when Mears would have been 128 years old.

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