Books – Page 25

Digging Up the Past

While setting up shop in Bangkok, I unearthed some travel stories and photos from a six-month tour I took through Europe and parts of Asia in 1994. I found over 60 pages of never-before published material that I had written to document the journey. I also found a box of still photos taken before the digital age with great shots of my trip. For a writer, this is akin to an archaeologist finding a misplaced artifact or detective uncovering vital evidence in a cold case. I was excited to bring these media together for the first time since I took that tour, which was my first in Europe and Asia. A trip like that for someone who enjoys traveling as much as I do is like falling in love.

The stories detail at length the adventures of a poor college student who wended his way through 19 countries in Europe, Russia, and the People’s Republic of China. From touching down in Europe for the first time in Frankfurt, Germany, to meeting my then-fiancée and her parents in Shanghai, China, to traveling thousands of miles to city after city, these stories chronicle an unforgettable journey. Anyone who’s spent weeks or months traveling by rail through Europe can relate to their vignettes.

Over the next few months, I plan to publish these stories on this blog and highlight them with photos. I will not revise facts overcome by events (such as pre-euro currencies or prices) because they reflect the situation as it was in 1994. I will intersperse the stories with new ones about our travels in Southeast Asia, and previous entries about Africa, South America, Korea, and China updated with photos.

So stay tuned, or the stories will go write past you.

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Alexander in the Amazon

When my family and I visited the Amazon River Basin in 2008, we were struck by the immense greenness that enveloped us. The serpentine network of rivers known as the Amazon cut through the rainforest, delivering life-sustaining water to thirsty foliage. We stayed several days at a beautiful resort accessible only by boat on one tributary of the river, far removed from the hustle and bustle of the urban jungle.

Exploring the surrounding rainforest on foot and by boat, we visited a monkey sanctuary, met indigenous villagers, fished for piranha, took a walking tour through the dense forest, and went on a day river cruise to see the confluence of the black and brown branches of the Amazon as well as on a night cruise to spot nocturnal wildlife.

Spending time with my son Alex, who marveled at a new world he had never seen before in his young life, inspired me to capture our experience in a story that brings the rainforest to life for children like him. “Alexander the Salamander” is an illustrated children’s story about a salamander named Alexander who moves to a new home in the Amazon and meets new friends who take him on an unforgettable adventure. It is a reflection of our own Amazon experience that I hope young children will enjoy and find educational.

Alex co-authored the book and drew the illustrations. The photos were taken by my wife Jing and me. If you would like to purchase a copy in Kindle’s e-book format, click here. To read other books and stories by M.G. Edwards, visit www.mgedwards.com.

Putting Yourself Online

I spent much of the weekend experimenting with online media to determine my optimal mix. As I alluded to in some of my earlier posts, I am making the shift to full-time writing and investing, and this is a project that will set me up to transition smoothly. I haven’t fully launched my online presence yet but am now working on setting up the channels I want to use to publish my books and stories. It’s been an interesting learning process. Here are some friendly tidbits to pass along to you in case you’re planning to boost your online presence:

Web site: My site is hosted by a large web business solutions company that I know won’t go out of business anytime soon. The web site registered three domains for me, www.mgedwards.com, www.worldadventurers.com, and www.brillianceequity.com. Why did I choose three domains? Each has a specific purpose. M.G. Edwards is my author’s web site, World Adventurers is my personal web site focused on our journeys around the world, and Brilliance Equity is my investment firm. The web development tool I’m using to build web pages is Adobe Dreamweaver, considered by some to be the gold standard of web design software. I have an older version that I’m going to update.
Photos: Adding photos to a web page can be tedious work unless you use a dedicated web site designed to make batch publishing photos easy. I use Google Picasa to host my photos. I tried Yahoo’s Flickr but don’t like the space limitations. Google offers one gigabyte of free storage space – plenty of space for public photos. Picasa Web Albums has a nifty feature that will let you embed photo albums and slideshows into your web site. Simply copy the HTML code into your web page.
Videos: Google YouTube is a great site for hosting video clips. You can upload video footage in a variety of formats (MP4 recommended) and then embed the HTML code into your web page a la Picasa. The embed feature is hidden in the “Share” option on YouTube (it took a while to find).
e-Books: There are several e-book formats to choose from depending on which e-reader you use. Basic HTML web script, PDFs, Kindle (PRC or AZW) and Nook (PubIt) are options. You can post books or stories on your web page using HTML; Dreamweaver does this with ease. MediaFire (or Ziddu) offer free document hosting. I chose MediaFire for its slick, easy-to-use design. You can also embed HTML code from MediaFire into a web page to send readers directly to the site to download PDFs, Kindle, or Nook e-books. To sell e-books, try self-publishing on Kindle Digital Publisher. KDP converts PDFs into Kindle-compatible e-books and sells them on Amazon’s web site. Note that Amazon will add an additional charge of about $2.00 per book, so if you list the book at $2.99 it will cost the reader $4.99. To sell print versions of the books, try Amazon’s Createspace. While there are literally dozens of self-publishing options, Amazon is the proverbial 800-pound gorilla that has the most sales and marketing clout. To create PDF files, use Adobe Acrobat software or a free version called PDF Creator. To create e-book formats compatible with Kindle, use the Mobipocket Creator, which can convert both Word documents and PDFs to e-books). It’s a very cool free program.
Blogging: I have blogs on both WordPress and Blogger (Blogspot), and both are excellent. I use WordPress more and am happy with its format. A link on my web site sends the reader directly to the blog.
Audiobooks/podcasts: To create a rudimentary audiobook or podcast, you need a device to capture your voice. The Sony IC Recorder is a great compact voice recorder that costs about $40. It captures your voice in MP3 format that you can download to your computer and upload to any web site that hosts podcasts or audiobooks. At the moment I’m experimenting with Podbean using a demo MP3 I recorded of one of my short stories. The MP3 I produced is no frills and is not re-mastered.
Social networking: Almost everyone on the planet who uses the Internet is familiar with Facebook and Twitter. These are good for driving traffic to the site; Facebook will let you set up a profile dedicated to whatever you want to publicize. I have a Facebook Author page. Other options in this category include MySpace and LinkedIn.

I just started experimenting with these media using some stories that I wrote. So far, so good. It’s been a bit of trial and error, and I wanted to pass along some of my lessons learned so you can check them out if you want to increase your web presence. It should save you some time.