Stock Trading

I've always been curious about stock trading. In the back of my mind over the years I thought it would be cool to start to learn about the stock market. In high school I had an economics class where we did paper trading for a few weeks. Paper trading is where you buy and sell stocks virtually by looking at stock prices and writing down your purchases and sales. So it's like trading in the stock market but with fake money so there's no real risk involved.

I finally found a podcast and an app and I've started "paper trading" in the app with $20,000 of fake money. At first I got lucky and make over $300 over the course of a couple weeks. Then I lost it all and more by keeping a ton of shares of Yahoo. I kept waiting for it to climb above my purchase price again but it never happened. Eventually I cut my loses and sold off all my shares.

Since then I've just now made all my money back plus about $20. I did more research and learned about different patterns to look for in stock charts to try and guess if they're going to rise or fall. It's worked well. Now instead of buying stocks and then selling them days later I spend just a few minutes combing through stock charts, finding some that look like they're about to go up or continue to go up, and buying them. Then I wait for them to go up which often happens right away, and I sell them off. All of this happens within a few minutes and I usually only make a few bucks. So I'm day trading now instead of swing trading. A lot can happen to a stock overnight and I'm not willing to let my stocks take a plunge as I sleep. I'd rather look at a five minute window and get in low and sell off high. 

A few times I've made more than a few bucks at around $40 and one time I made over $400 in a few minutes. There's also many times where I lose money too, but I'm learning to just dump those before they lose big and get the money I can back to put into another trade. I still barely know what I'm doing and it's all with fake money, but I'm having a blast and I'm hoping that after I've been doing it for a few years with fake money that I'll know what I'm doing and I can start to trade real stocks.

Do you trade stocks? Are you interested in the stock market? It's not something that really relates to fiction, writing, or audiobooks but it is kind of like the physical trading that takes place in Science Fiction novels with cargo vessels :) Also, if you are interested, here's the podcast I love. It's called The Trading Podcast with Rob Booker and they just released their 300th episode! Thanks for stopping by.

Meet My Character Blog Tour!

Catbeard the Pirate!

My friend Matt Nelson who writes and draws the amazing comic Catbeard the Pirate tagged me to participate in a Meet My Character Blog Tour. I LOVE his comic.

Matt Nelson was born in 1976. That means he's super old. He lives in Spokane, WA with his cat, Jiji and draws comics all the time when he's not messing around with video games or stupid stuff on the internet. So basically, just like every other cartoonist ever. Isn't that embarrassing? Not very unique at ALL. You can view his work at catbeardthepirate.com and mattnelsonart.com

His Catbeard books one through three will all be available soon on his website through the Store tab on the top menu, but you can read all of Catbeard’s current adventures for free on catbeardthepirate.com! All of the books contain more adventures not found on the site.

Okay so, here’s the gist of the project:
“This tour highlights a main character from your WIP (work in progress), recently published work, or soon to be published work. The person who invites you will have a set day to post. You will post one (or two) week(s) after that, the authors you tag will post one/two week(s) after you, and so on.”

The Questions & My Answers

1) What is the name of your character? Is he/she fictional or a historic person?

Longclaw is a fictional character.

2) When and where is the story set?

The story is set in modern times during the winter. It starts at an arcade where Longclaw, a stuffed animal monster, lived in a claw machine. Then the setting changes to the house of Longclaw's new human Zach. Then the tale takes a scary turn as Longclaw is forced into the cold and snowy park across the street from Zach's house at night.

3) What should we know about him/her?

Longclaw is an ugly stuffed animal monster won from a claw machine by a boy named Zach. He is a nice monster, however, and is thrilled to be taken home to live with other stuffed animals in Zach's home.

4) What is the main conflict? What messes up his/her life?

The main conflict is that Zach's cat Thompson finds Longclaw and takes him away to the garage as a play thing. He tortures Longclaw, toying with him and ripping holes into him.

5) What is the personal goal of the character?

The main goal of the character is to be loved. In order to do this he must find a way back to his human Zach and hope he'll take him back in his ripped and slashed state.

6) Is there a working title for this novel if it is a WIP, and can we read more about it? OR what is the title of this novel and where can it be found?

This is a short story titled "Stuffed Monster" which you can find in my anthology of short stories called "Danthology." It can be found on Amazon, BarnesandNoble.com, iBooks in iTunes, Smashwords, Kobo, and many other fine eBook publishers.

If a WIP: 7) When can we expect the book to be published?

I am also working on the paperback and audiobook versions. The paperback will be available this 2014 holiday season through Amazon.com, and the audiobook will be made available for free as a serialized podcast novel at www.Podiobooks.com by the end of the year.


That's it! I'm tagging my new friend who's awesome novel I had the pleasure to create the cover art for - Philip Carroll.

His bio:
Philip is an Army trained Certified Orthotist, husband of 30+ years, father of 3, and grandfather of 2, currently living in the Central Valley of California. He has always been a story telling, if only telling himself stories to keep himself awake while driving, entertaining his children as he was driving, or just to entertain himself as he went to sleep. In October of 2008 he decided to start putting some of these stories on digital paper.

Twas the Bite Before Christmas by Drac Von StollerAn Audiobook I Narrated and Produced is Live!

"Twas the Bite Before Christmas" is now available as an audiobook with me as the narrator. This creepy tale is about Santa coming down a certain chimney of a castle to find that it belongs to Dracula. Dracula isn't pleased to see the jolly fat man, but takes advantage of the encounter. Listen to this fully produced audiobook complete with sound effects and background music that draw you into the story and enrich the listening experience. Find a quiet place and your nice headphones then go listen to Twas the Bite Before Christmas available at Audible.com, in iTunes, and at Amazon.com. You'll be supporting the indie author Drac Von Stoller, and me an indie audiobook narrator. Thanks for stopping by!

Dan Dan The Art Man's Book Review Podcast

So, I've noticed that my blog has become a bit of a book review website. I started reviewing every book I read quite a while ago and then I post my review here, on Amazon, on Audible if it was an audiobook, and on Goodreads. I often get emails from Amazon telling me that my review helped someone purchase the book. I also get likes on my book reviews on Goodreads. I try just to brush over the things I liked and/or disliked in the book. I don't summarize it because those can be found elsewhere online and I feel like putting that in the review is a waste of time.

The reason most of the posts on my site are book reviews is that I'm working two jobs so I haven't had much time for anything else. I do a lot of my reading via audiobooks while I commute 2 hours a day. So even though I'm busy I still get a lot of reading in. I'm reading more books this year than I ever have and I'm sure it's all thanks to the Goodreads Reading Challenge I discovered at the beginning of the year. I set my goal for 35 books and I've been a few books ahead the whole year. I've read a couple of shorter books but it all evens out because I've also read The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson (47.5 hour audiobook, over 1,000 pages in paper) and IT by Stephen King (a whopping 45 hours of audio). So I'm cool with counting novellas and even the occasional short story or novelette. 

Photo by PJ Hudson
http://www.morguefile.com/creative/pjhudson

Anyway, it seems that I'm doing something right in my reviews, so I thought that eventually I would start to podcast my book reviews. I've already picked out a theme song for the intro and outro and I have a lot of book reviews piled up. I'm working two jobs and around 60 hours a week at the moment so it might be a while before I can get some reviews recorded, but they're usually only a few paragraphs so they'll be short. I bet I'll be able to knock out quite a few reviews in one short recording session, then I'll start releasing one every week until I finally get to the current book I just finished reading. At that point I'll release them as I finish books. I might throw in a little chatty banter after reading my book review too adding any more thoughts about the book or author that come to me, then close it out. 

It will be a nice little repository for people looking to find something to read - especially if they find that their taste matches mine. That will be easy to tell after listening to a few short podcast episodes. So look for Dan Dan The Art Man's Book Review to hit the interwebs in the near future. That's all I've got for now. Thanks for stopping by!

UPDATE 8/1/14

Today I recorded 11 episodes of this new Book Review podcast. I'll drop episode zero sometime this week, and then one a week for the foreseeable future!

The Christmas CaveAn Audiobook I Narrated & Produced is live!

I had the pleasure of narrating author David R. Beshear's audiobook The Christmas Cave. You can find it for sale at Audible.com, in iTunes, and at Amazon. I'm very proud of this audiobook. A lot of what makes it great is of course the writing the author did that creates the story, but I had a blast figuring out all the different character's voices and personalities. There's an old woman, an old man, a few teenagers and two sets of parents. Not a huge cast, but sometimes I was very glad that I had made distinctions between narrating their voices so that the listener can easily tell who is talking. I think the story came out wonderfully in audio and is a really great listen. I'm expecting to get some promo codes soon for the audiobook from audible which will allow me to give copies away to people who will review it. Please send me a line and I'd be happy to send a promo code your way making the audiobook free with your Audible account. Head on over to the audiobook's page on Audible and listen to the sample. I hope it makes you click the buy button. Thanks for stopping by.