Yesterday I attended my first author expo at the public library in Birmingham, AL. (where I live). It was a 5 hour event and 100 local authors signed up to display their works and mingle with fellow authors. My neice Beth Shelnutt was there with her books of poetry and my father-in-law J.D. Weeks was there as well with about 5 of his many books on geneology and postcards. You can find their books on Amazon and also here: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/jdweeks?searchTerms=&pageOffset=2
I brought along my two paperback books that are available on Amazon-the first two books of the Andy Brighton and the Dragons of Wyrme trilogy. The collection of works available on Amazon (both paperbacks and Kindles) can be found here: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=james+shelnutt
I spoke with a good number of people at the event, about my books & other books and it was an entertaining opportunity to participate with other authors and book readers.

 

 

Additional information about the expo held at the Birmingham Public Library can be found here: http://www.bplonline.org/programs/LocalAuthors/

 

Occupy Conan An Interesting Experiment

Last night the Conan show (the late-night comedy talk show starring Conan O'Brien and Andy Richter) was just a bit different as it was the Occupy Conan Episode, where viewers sent in their own clips of a previous episode in hopes that these would be chosen & aired in the show. There were ~ 60 total clips (or segments) of air-time available and hundreds of clips were submitted by the viewers. I have to say that watching the show was quite an experience & something unlike what most other shows would dare to do. Conan is I think brave to try something like this & I applaud him for it. As usual I enjoyed watching the show & some of the clips were very well done. I personally submitted a clip of my own in hopes that it would be aired & was eagerly anticipating seeing it as the time came. Unfortunately, they chose to show a couple clips from other viewers, ones involving live actors, and that's okay. I did see, however, at least one image from my clip. It was the opening image of Conan sitting at his desk. You can see it pictured below. (At the end of the show many clips were rerun as well as clips and images from clips such as mine that they'd not used in the first viewing). Also, at the end of the show a list of credits was displayed-affectionally named Conan's Occupiers-that told who created the clips. I saw my name listed amongst them, so that gave me some measure of happiness. Here are both the image shown from the Conan show and the full-length video I created and submitted for your enjoyment:

        
 

You Can Find These Books On Amazon

Using a Carosel Widget:

Catfish Tales

    What it is about relationships these days? Somehow people are finding one another online, texting, emailing, sending photos, etc., but not actually talking or ever meeting in person. There's even an MTV reality show about it (appropriately called Catfish). Manti Te'o, linebacker at Notre Dame from 2009-2012, is the latest and probably most well-known personality to have been pulled into this type of phenomenon, and it has blown up into quite the scandal for him.
    Either done as a joke, or to lure someone through social media by pretending to be someone else, it has become prevelent in this day and age where it is so easy to connect with others far away who you might never actually meet.
    If I had to categorize who is doing this I would say that they might be lumped into the hacker community. There are a variety of hacker classifications--or specializations if you will--of hackers. The hacking done in this case being that of deception where the target of the catfish scam is deceived by the other/originator. The reasons for doing this again can be many; as a prank, to elicit information, to con money from the victim, etc. In some cases maybe the instigator wishes they were someone else and through social media can live vicariously through their fantasy persona.
    I myself enjoy playing games (such as World of Warcraft) where I get to create characters and take them into an alternate world and in a way live another life through them. I know that it is a virtual existence, just a game and just fantasy, however, and when I turn off the computer they cease to exist. Playing the game for me is an enjoyable pasttime, a way for me to relieve stress and explore the worlds that game programmers have created.
    A lot of people enjoy losing themselves in activities outside their real lives, be it in books, movies, games, what have you. Perhaps catfishing is just one of the latest forms of such expression, and as more and more people find out about it its prevalence has also grown.

Happy End of the Year

This is my last post of 2012. It's been another year full of work (as a delivery driver for O'Reilly Auto Parts-my full-time job & working on my second book of the Andy Brighton and the Dragons of Wyrme trilogy in my spare time). As far as my writing goes I've finished the book & the cover. All I have left to do is finish the map of Wyrme for inside the book. This should take me a few more days I suspect & then I'll be able to turn it into a PDF file & send it off to Amazon.com for publication. During the year I've also had time to play (Wow for one game, WoT for another. World of Tanks the latter, which my brother is addicted to atm. It's an okay game & I can see the attraction-it's basically like battlegrounds wars in WoW but with about 15 tanks vs. 15 other tanks of equal strength. I've seen about 5 or so different maps so far including Mines, Ensk, Province, Prokhorovka, & Malinovka. The game takes getting used to (very different from playing WoW) and there's a lot to learn if you wanna get good at it. Here's the cover of book 2, The Magic of Dragons, which should be on sale on Amazon by mid January (paperback) & late January for Kindle:

Life Goes On

   Yesterday was suppossedly the end of the world, some had said, but we're still here, so I guess that prediction was wrong. I've heard some also say that it was just the end of one age and the beginning of a new age. Well, maybe. Who can say for sure? Unless something remarkable happens that has never occured before we'll never know.

The Ending of the Season

  Well, the years almost over. Christmas is just around the corner and it's getting colder. I've been working the last couple weeks on putting book 2 together & am just over half-way thru formatting and editing. I'd hoped to finish it by Christmas so that I could have it for sale on Amazon by then, but it's looking more like mid January now. The last 3 days I had off work & that helped get several of the chapters finished, but I still have like 8 more to go. (plus doing the cover page graphics & making a 2-page map illustration of the world of Wyrme for inside the book).
   Besides all that I've also been spending my time watching this season's episodes of both Dexter and Homeland. Yesterday's episodes were the last of the season's shows until next year (seasons 7 & 2 respectfully). I'm more into Dexter, but I've gotten into watching Homeland as well & found it to be pretty good--although the story lines are worlds apart the writing style is not that dissimilar--they love to leave the watchers hanging on the edge of a cliff at the end of each show, and/or greatly wondering what will happen next.
   Both shows ended, not unexpectedly, with me wanting to see more. So, just as they did last year around this time, I will be waiting again for them to return next year (I think probably about in September or so. I know it's a long time to wait, but what can we do?) At least they will be showing reruns of this year's episodes next year, probably sometime in the summer, before season 8 & 3 begin for both shows.
   I'll be working on book 3 next year too at any rate, so that should keep me busy. (no title for that one yet)