My Year in Reading

This year I read more books than ever before! It was my first time doing the Goodreads reading challenge and I'm so glad I did! I looked to years past and saw that the most books I had ever read in a year was 27 so I set my goal to 35 books this year. As you can see below I ended up reading 41! If you see some short ones and think that doesn't count, just wander over a couple titles like "The Way of Kings" or "It" and you'll see all is in order. Way of Kings is as long as 5 normal books and It is crazy long as well. I had an excellent year of reading and I'm going to try for 50 book this year. Wish me luck! Words of Radiance, 400,000 words, is one on my to-read list for this year. :) Check out the graphic below compliments of Goodreads to see all the titles I read. If you're not already my friend on Goodreads you should be! It's easy - just click on the golden button with a brown lower case g on the upper right hand side of my website to go to my Goodreads page and become my friend. I love the site. You can see everything I've read there, how many stars out of 5 I've given the books, and many of them have reviews on them. It is from these that I get my scripts for my books reviews podcast. So thanks for stopping by and happy reading in 2015!

A Re-posting of my Christmas Story

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Now available as a free eBook at Smashwords in all the formats you could want.


Alfred Thompson can't wait to get his V.R. SuperCube game system this year for Christmas, but there's a problem. He overhears the school bully talking with his mom in the game shop and comes to a realization. He may have just found a way to never be bullied again.

Short Stories of DanDanTheArtMan 14 - A Dark Climb

Welcome to episode 14 of Short Stories of Dan Dan The Art Man! This episode is a narrated short story for Halloween about a new kid in town discovering just how real the local ghost story is when he's dared to climb up an old creepy tower that sits behind a mansion. Have a listen and I'd love to hear what you think in the comments below. Thanks for stopping by!

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Attributions:
Music used: "Tempting Fate" and "Beginning" by Audionautix.com.
Sound effects used were all Public Domain and came from Freesound.org

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Now available in eBook formats here:
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/489419

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.