Tag: Kindle

Phone it in Friday XXXV: My Second Book is Live on Kindle!

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

In case the daily reminders at the top of every post this week weren’t reminder enough, I’ve released my second book, Arizonan Sojourn, South Carolinian Dreams: And Other Adventures.  It’s a collection of travel essays I’ve accumulated over the last four years, and it’s available now on Amazon.  The Kindle version went live today, so if you pre-ordered, you can now read the book!

I’ve been eager to release a second book ever since I published The One-Minute Mysteries of Inspector Gerard: The Ultimate Flatfoot back in March 2021, but various time constraints always seemed to interfere.  Ironically, maintaining the blog—even with help from good friends—is one such hinderance, while also serving as the source material for this book!

Blogging daily (today marks the 1545th consecutive day of blogging) is great fun, but it takes time.  Longtime readers will probably have noticed the increase in guest posts (especially from Audre Myers and Ponty), as well as lighter posts from yours portly.  Those lighter posts are partially out of necessity—in order to maintain my busy work and private music lessons schedule, I have to write some fluffier posts here from time to time.

No worries—I have not given up on political writing entirely, nor have I abandoned writing seriously about music, faith, art, etc.  Sometimes, I just need to upload some pictures of a LEGO set I built and call it a day.

That said, blogging daily is also the source of Arizonan Sojourn, as blogging daily will likely be the source of my next book (topic to be determined).  Pulled from four years of travel essays, with a particular focus on the six-part trip my older brother and I took to Arizona in December 2022, the book regales readers with tales of my not-so-outrageous exploits.

So, I found myself last week with a modicum of extra time because Middle School students were taking some horrendous standardized test, after which they were dismissed for the day.  That removed my duty to teach Middle Music Ensemble for a few days, and that extra fifty-six minutes each day, along with the lack of private music lessons with Middle Schoolers, enabled me to complete the compiling, organizing, and edition of Arizonan Sojourn.

Unlike Inspector Gerard, I also made sure to proofread and revise Arizonan Sojourn much more carefully this time.  I cannot guarantee it is free of grammatical errors—I found one as soon as I published the book (it is now fixed)—but it should be substantially less embarrassing in this regard than Gerard was.

That’s all to say that you should buy it.  I’ll also be uploading a PDF manuscript of the entire work to my Subscribe Star page for $5 and up subscribers tomorrow.

Of course, it’s much better to have a physical copy, no?

Here’s where you can pick it up:

Happy Reading!

—TPP

July Self-Promotion Bonanza

The Portly Politico3 Comments

It’s definitely not Bandcamp Friday, but it is the first Friday of the month during the slowest blogging time of the year and the start of a major holiday weekend, so why not hard sell my various products and services?

It’s a TPP total liquidation sale!  Everything in stock must go!

Here are the goods:

  • The One-Minute Mysteries of Inspector Gerard: The Ultimate Flatfoot Kindle edition is available for just $0.99 through Independence Day!  That’s 81% off the usual list price of five bucks.
  • MAGAWeek2022 starts on Monday, the Fourth of July!  It’s a week of posts celebrating the people, places, things, events, and ideas that made America great!  For just $1 a month, you get access to every post over at my SubscribeStar Page—plus posts every Saturday year-round!
  • For a limited time, all of my releases on Bandcamp are $1 each—including Contest Winner EP!  The full discography is available for $6.50—35% off.  That’s on top of the $1 per release sale.  The full discography usually retails for around $26.48, so that’s a total savings of around 74.5%!
  • I’ve got a bunch of paintings waiting for good homes with good walls.  They’re all $10!

That’s it for now!  I’ve got some projects in the works, so stay tuned for some more updates.

Remember, buying stuff—especially from your friendly neighborhood blogger—is the American thing to do.

Happy Independence Day!

—TPP

Lazy Sunday CXLV: Friends, Part VIII

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

The cavalcade of friendship continues this Sunday with three more posts.  Apparently, I’ve given musician, actor, and international playboy Frederick Ingram a lot of screen time in Supporting Friends Friday, but all of this weekend’s friends have enjoyed two or more Friday shout-outs:

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

Reflections on Self-Publishing

The Portly Politico15 Comments

I’ve released my first book, The One-Minute Mysteries of Inspector Gerard: The Ultimate Flatfoot (available now in paperback, pre-order for Kindle).  For years I’ve wanted to dip my toes into the self-publishing space, but I finally had time to do so a couple of weeks ago.  I decided collecting my absurdist, postmodern detective stories from high school and college into one volume would be a relatively easy and fun way to learn the ropes of self-publishing on Amazon.

If anyone else is thinking of publishing your works this way, I would definitely encourage it.  I don’t expect to make tons of money off of my silly short stories (although that would, of course, be nice), but the process was quite easy overall, although slightly more involved than I anticipated.  Still, it’s an effective way to get your work out there.

To that end, I thought I’d share some of my experiences using kdp.amazon.com—Kindle Direct Publishing.

Read More »