Ladies and gentlemen, meet the Douglas Dolphin! I found the below video on YouTube some time ago and can't believe I hadn't posted it sooner. Anyway, the plane in this video belonged to a man named Coke Darden (a surefire protagonist's name if I've ever heard one), and now resides at the Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, FL, where it was ultimately retired.
The video provides an extremely rare opportunity to hear and see an actual Douglas Dolphin in flight - the same aircraft flown by Jack Halloway in The Missionary Position - from the interior of the cabin. Filmed in 1998, the video reflects the quality of the cameras in use back then, but it still provides a good sense of what it was like to be in the Dolphin when landing and taking off from water, the sounds of the hydraulics at work as the gear was retracted and lowered, and the roar of its twin engines when the Dolphin took flight.
A beautiful spectacle to behold if you're into that sort of thing. So, without further ado, may I present to you "The Last Flight of Coke Darden's Douglas Dolphin."
P.S.: Many thanks to w4joy for posting and keeping this video going on YouTube!
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Counterintuitive pricing
It's been brought to my attention that there may be a demographic of readers who will not chance purchasing books they deem "cheap". Apparently the assumption goes that a book priced too low is priced this way because it is a bad book. The recommendation, therefore, was to bring the price of my book up from the 99 cents I had the eBook version listed for to a more "prestigious" price point.
As those of you who've kept up with my previous blog postings may recall, the reason I priced the book so low in the first place was because this isn't about the money now so much as it is about attracting readers and establishing an audience. I figured a well-priced book would entice readers who have never heard of me to give my book a chance. After all, what's 99 cents, right?
Well, if I'm missing out on potential readers because they think all 99 cent books are crap then those are potential audience members lost. So, for now I'm going to try a slight price increase to see if it affects sales. Considering my limited attempts at marketing so far the book has done modestly well at 99 cents. Time to see if the marketing gurus are correct. I'll give it a few weeks at $1.99 but if I don't see any bump in sales I'm going to go back to my original plan and list it at the 99 cent mark.
Transparency in action.
As those of you who've kept up with my previous blog postings may recall, the reason I priced the book so low in the first place was because this isn't about the money now so much as it is about attracting readers and establishing an audience. I figured a well-priced book would entice readers who have never heard of me to give my book a chance. After all, what's 99 cents, right?
Well, if I'm missing out on potential readers because they think all 99 cent books are crap then those are potential audience members lost. So, for now I'm going to try a slight price increase to see if it affects sales. Considering my limited attempts at marketing so far the book has done modestly well at 99 cents. Time to see if the marketing gurus are correct. I'll give it a few weeks at $1.99 but if I don't see any bump in sales I'm going to go back to my original plan and list it at the 99 cent mark.
Transparency in action.
Sunday, January 13, 2013
The best things in life...
...aren't things.
When I look back on life fifty years hence, it's not going to be the big flat screen t.v. in my living room, the number of DVDs in my video library, the nic-nacs cluttering every flat surface in my house, or the watch on my wrist that come to mind. It'll be the friends I've hung from cliffs with, the rush of adrenaline I felt the first time I leapt into the rapids of a wickedly flowing river, the remembrances of flying low over the deserts of the Middle East, of seeing the bedouins with Mercedes SUVs parked outside their tents, the loves and the losses and then finally the look in my wife's eyes when she said "I do" at sunset. I'll remember my motorcycle tour through Europe and those exquisitely seductive roads curving through the French, Swiss and Austrian Alps, the silence of a ship with failed boilers in the middle of the Indian Ocean, the taste of a blood orange on a tortuously hot day in the Gulf and the first time I felt the skyscrapers of New York towering above me. I'll remember my first flight in an airplane and the view of the clouds from their topsides. I'll remember my first taste of a good scotch, the satisfaction of completing my first story, the euphoria after finishing a triathlon and a marathon, and especially the pain I'd feel the day after a marathon. I'll remember the sensation of "floating" through space as I looked into a bottomless abyss SCUBA diving in the Pacific, the jungle waterfalls I rappelled down with friends in Guam, the goosebumps on the back of my neck the first time I felt the true power of the wind at sea, the love of my animals and mine for them, and the loss I felt at their passings. I'll remember the barbecues with my friends and family, the backpacking trips into the backcountry of America, the beers over campfires, and the last moments I've spent with loved ones.
I'll remember a lot of things in life when I'm at the end of mine, but I'll be hard pressed to remember the furniture I had when I was twenty-six, or the clothes I wore when I was thirty-two.
When I look back on life it is those meaningful experiences and interactions that I'll remember most dearly, and not my material possessions. Buying something nice might put a bandaid over whatever void you're feeling in your life for a minute, but bandaids fall off with time. A good experience lasts a lifetime.
When I look back on life fifty years hence, it's not going to be the big flat screen t.v. in my living room, the number of DVDs in my video library, the nic-nacs cluttering every flat surface in my house, or the watch on my wrist that come to mind. It'll be the friends I've hung from cliffs with, the rush of adrenaline I felt the first time I leapt into the rapids of a wickedly flowing river, the remembrances of flying low over the deserts of the Middle East, of seeing the bedouins with Mercedes SUVs parked outside their tents, the loves and the losses and then finally the look in my wife's eyes when she said "I do" at sunset. I'll remember my motorcycle tour through Europe and those exquisitely seductive roads curving through the French, Swiss and Austrian Alps, the silence of a ship with failed boilers in the middle of the Indian Ocean, the taste of a blood orange on a tortuously hot day in the Gulf and the first time I felt the skyscrapers of New York towering above me. I'll remember my first flight in an airplane and the view of the clouds from their topsides. I'll remember my first taste of a good scotch, the satisfaction of completing my first story, the euphoria after finishing a triathlon and a marathon, and especially the pain I'd feel the day after a marathon. I'll remember the sensation of "floating" through space as I looked into a bottomless abyss SCUBA diving in the Pacific, the jungle waterfalls I rappelled down with friends in Guam, the goosebumps on the back of my neck the first time I felt the true power of the wind at sea, the love of my animals and mine for them, and the loss I felt at their passings. I'll remember the barbecues with my friends and family, the backpacking trips into the backcountry of America, the beers over campfires, and the last moments I've spent with loved ones.
I'll remember a lot of things in life when I'm at the end of mine, but I'll be hard pressed to remember the furniture I had when I was twenty-six, or the clothes I wore when I was thirty-two.
When I look back on life it is those meaningful experiences and interactions that I'll remember most dearly, and not my material possessions. Buying something nice might put a bandaid over whatever void you're feeling in your life for a minute, but bandaids fall off with time. A good experience lasts a lifetime.
Monday, December 10, 2012
Ho! Ho! Ho!
This holiday season, why not show your significant someone how much you love them with the gift of a crass-speaking, hard-drinking
anti-hero. Buy them The Missionary Position: A Tale of
Adventure on the South Seas today on Amazon or Barnes and Noble. You can find it on iTunes too!
Ho! Ho! Ho!
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Thanksgiving Haters
After a visit to the local big-block hardware store, I was moved to re-post a blog I'd written around this time last year...
Thanksgiving. It’s the ‘lost’ holiday.
It was the end of October when it hit me. I walked into a home improvement store and what did I see? Christmas-topia…Fake lighted Christmas trees, ten foot inflatable Santa’s and Frosty the Snowmen, animatronic talking reindeer, and ornaments galore. But not even a paper cutout of a turkey to decorate the yard with (not that I would).
And then there’s the retail angle where stores are effectively erasing Thanksgiving by starting Black Friday ON Thanksgiving. Sure, maybe it’s great for some shoppers, but what about the employees who work for these companies? Shouldn’t they get some holiday time with their families too? Apparently over 190,000 people think they should, according to this petition.
The last straw for me though was laid down by a local radio station that began playing 24-hour Christmas music in early November, with another station advertising they’ll start doing the same thing tomorrow.
Are you kidding?
We haven’t even hit Thanksgiving for crying out loud, but all I hear or see that’s holiday related is about Christmas. When I was a kid I didn’t see Christmas decor until after the big turkey day, and you could forget about Christmas music until December rolled around.
Thanksgiving has gotten the royal shaft.
Thanksgiving. It’s the ‘lost’ holiday.
It was the end of October when it hit me. I walked into a home improvement store and what did I see? Christmas-topia…Fake lighted Christmas trees, ten foot inflatable Santa’s and Frosty the Snowmen, animatronic talking reindeer, and ornaments galore. But not even a paper cutout of a turkey to decorate the yard with (not that I would).
And then there’s the retail angle where stores are effectively erasing Thanksgiving by starting Black Friday ON Thanksgiving. Sure, maybe it’s great for some shoppers, but what about the employees who work for these companies? Shouldn’t they get some holiday time with their families too? Apparently over 190,000 people think they should, according to this petition.
The last straw for me though was laid down by a local radio station that began playing 24-hour Christmas music in early November, with another station advertising they’ll start doing the same thing tomorrow.
Are you kidding?
We haven’t even hit Thanksgiving for crying out loud, but all I hear or see that’s holiday related is about Christmas. When I was a kid I didn’t see Christmas decor until after the big turkey day, and you could forget about Christmas music until December rolled around.
Thanksgiving has gotten the royal shaft.
-J.M. Park
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Social media marketing and writing
So, a little thought on the social media aspect of the game when it comes to writers and writing. Frequent updates to one's blog draws more attention to your website from the search engines. This, in turn, allows the writer more chances to captivate potential readers with alluring blog tales (okay, so mine aren't really that alluring), and then hopefully engage them to the point that they want to purchase your book.
But here's the dirty little secret. The more time a writer spends writing blog posts the less time they spend actually writing. But the less time spent on marketing, which social media represents a big chunk of these days, the less sales and thus less of an audience writers have for their publications.
The sword cuts both ways. So, why am I mentioning this? It's a long and roundabout way of apologizing for the time between my posts over the last month. Wish I had the big marketing teams to do the dirty work for me that the King's and Koontz's and Patterson's have. Then again, they didn't have them in the beginning either.
Think I just shut myself down. Bummer.
But here's the dirty little secret. The more time a writer spends writing blog posts the less time they spend actually writing. But the less time spent on marketing, which social media represents a big chunk of these days, the less sales and thus less of an audience writers have for their publications.
The sword cuts both ways. So, why am I mentioning this? It's a long and roundabout way of apologizing for the time between my posts over the last month. Wish I had the big marketing teams to do the dirty work for me that the King's and Koontz's and Patterson's have. Then again, they didn't have them in the beginning either.
Think I just shut myself down. Bummer.
Friday, October 5, 2012
Explanation!
Finally, a chart and a quote that, when put together, explain my existence.
“The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves.”
| — | Logan Pearsall Smith, Afterthoughts, 1931 |
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