A great day for humankind!

By John Brown | March 20, 2016 - 2:14 am |March 23, 2016 News - updates on books, events, appearances, etc.

Today is a great day for humankind! No, it’s not the cure to cancer, the end of politics, or aliens from space being discovered in Albuquerque. No.

It’s the release of Awful Intent. The next book in the Bad Penny series, with more white-knuckle action, crime, humor, and a little something to think about.

Frank’s back. This time he’s traveling through Southeastern Utah, enjoying the miles and miles of red-rock desert and wilderness when a man is murdered where nobody is supposed to see.

Except Frank does see.

He could turn his back, but as you know, turning isn’t in Frank’s nature. . .

The ebook is up on Amazon now.

It should appear on Nook, iTunes, Baen, etc. in the next few days. The paperback should appear on Amazon as well in about a week.

Here’s what the beta readers are saying.

“WOW! Brown has outdone himself on this one. His books are always interesting and entertaining, but this one added a current twist to a captivating plot.”
~SHERIFF GARY OGILVIE, RET.

“An engaging story about law and order in the west, complete with gun battles, aerial stunts and a hero just out for a hike.”
~POLICE SERGEANT LOUISE SPETH

“Grabs you by the throat until the thrilling ending. All too true of what can happen in rural law enforcement.”
~DEPUTY SHERIFF JARED JOHNSON

I had a blast writing this. I think you’re going to enjoy it.

Sincerely,

John

EDIT: Nook and Kobo links are now live.

EDIT: Apple link is now live.

EDIT: Smashwords link is now live.

Runts, widows, and orphans

By John Brown | March 1, 2016 - 10:00 am |March 14, 2018 On Writing

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A typesetting mystery solved–Runts!

And now for something for your typesetting hearts.

You know what orphans are–A short line appearing at the bottom of a page. Sometimes the first line of paragraph appearing at the bottom of a page.

You know what widows are–A short, paragraph-ending line appearing at the top of a page.

But what’s the last word or part of a word of a paragraph stranded by itself on a line?

I went to the store, looking for
Paul.

I could never find an answer. Some called it an orphan as well.

But David Blatner revealed the name in the comments of his post What Are Your Favorite Word and Character Space Settings for H&Js?

He actually coined the term years ago when he couldn’t find a name, and I love what he came up with and am going to use it forever.

He calls them “runts.”

Ha!

Hyphen Control

BTW, those settings he mentions in that article are awesome. Drastically reduced weird hyphens, which reduced time formatting.

What do the big boys control for?

Furthermore, I noticed something in the big time author Stuart Woods volume I happen to be reading. And then I checked it against a James Patterson and a Lee Child.

1) They don’t care about most runts. As Blatner said, there’s a runt zone, but the zone where they control for runts appears to be less than 5 characters if that includes the end punctuation.

For example, I just opened a random page of the Woods book and see the following runts:

a) results.”

b) entry.”

I flipped to another page and saw:

a) said.

b) trunk.

c) them.

And the thing is that I DIDN’T notice them in the least while I was reading. Only when I started looking for them.

Of course, there were no runts that were smaller than those. Nothing like “tie.” or “do.” or “for.”

2) They don’t control for orphans either.

3) They DO control for widows. However, when you’re not controlling for orphans and most runts, controlling for widows is easy. And sometimes the control is just to increase the tracking just a tiny bit to make it span the whole line.

I spent a number of hours on Saturday formatting my book only to find when I finished that I had set the leading at 18pt instead of 16pt. That meant I had to reformat the whole bleeping thing.

But I adopted the Big Boy rule, allowing all runts that end at or beyond the first line indent of the paragraph. I ignored orphans. And I controlled for widows. And it took me a fraction of the time and still looks great.

Here’s to runts and orphans!

Good Stuff! The winning Lady Rebels and Lady Tigers

By John Brown | February 29, 2016 - 10:07 am |February 29, 2016 John's Reviews - books, movies, whatever

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Cody Lundgren, Jesse Calder, and Louie Stewart led our Lady Rebel basketball team to a 10- 10 record in the regular season and a 2-2 performance at the state tournament that earned our girls second place in our region and sixth at state.

It’s interesting that the wins and losses were split right down the middle, which means it wasn’t a losing season, but it wasn’t a winning season either.

Or was it?

Now, I love it when our kids win. But I’ve never believed that winning should be the ultimate measurement or objective of high school sports. In fact, I will go so far as to say that it’s possible to win every game and become the state champion and utterly fail. Because, for me, high school sports are not about winning games. They are about the lessons that can only be learned by striving for excellence through competition.

Lessons such as learning to:

Work hard
Work smart
Push yourself over a long period to obtain something you desire
Not give up in the face of adversity
Not give up even when you’re behind or the odds are against you
Play on a team, including supporting other team members in their roles, especially during the bad times
See mistakes and losses as feedback and triggers for learning instead of labels
Exert control over your future instead of feeling nothing you do makes a difference
Deal with both success and defeat
Deal with competitors who haven’t quite yet caught the vision

I could list many more. The opportunities for learning key lessons about winning in life litter the ground in our gyms and on our fields and on our mats.

The question is: did our coaches help our kids seize those opportunities? Did they help them learn what really matters and have a good time doing it?

I’m pleased to report from what I and others observed that the three amigos listed above helped our girls do just that.

They built positive and fun relationships.

They asked the girls to meet high standards of performance and kept the girls busy in practice with useful drills that built skills.

They taught them instead of yelled at them, and they praised them when they did well and when they attempted to do well but weren’t yet able to execute the skills right.

They taught them to play with skill, not with cheap shots, as was displayed by one team at the state tournament that had learned to punch the opposing team’s stomachs when they went up for shots.

They demonstrated, by example, how to deal with losses and mistakes.

Coach Lundgren also worked in a demonstration of how tricky the lines on the court can be for old guys, tripping them and causing them to slide across the floor (grin).

This was a winning season for me. Coaches are really just a certain type of teacher, and I’m sure they have things they want to improve in their curriculum. But this was a fabulous season full of opportunities to learn the things that really matter in life.

And it wasn’t just the Lady Rebels learning these kinds of lessons. For those of you that didn’t go to the tournament, you should know about the Lady Tigers from Tabiona. They’re one of our region opponents. One that we beat both times we met them in the regular season.

In our second game of the tournament, one of our girls, one of our top rebounders, a demon under the basket, broke her hand. She knew it hurt like heck, enough to bring tears to her eyes, but didn’t know she’d broken it, and so she played the last quarter and a half with a broken hand. (Is there a lesson there?) Well, Tabiona was our next game.

Now stop and think about this. We beat Tabiona both times this season. I think we’ve probably beaten them a lot more than they’ve beaten us these last few years. You know what you feel when a team keeps beating you.

So the Lady Tigers found out that one of our starters, one of the players that was supposed to have played them the next day, had broken her hand. And the girls, not their coaches, decided to get her . . . flowers.

Flowers. For a player on their region opponent’s team.

Who does that?

Well, the Lady Tigers do. I talked to their coach, and he said it was all the girls’ idea.

They’re learning things down in Tabiona that go far beyond basketball.

And they’re learning things that go far beyond basketball here, thanks to Lundgren, Calder, and Stuart.

That’s good stuff, baby. That’s excellent stuff.

Awful Intent: copy edit finished

By John Brown | February 16, 2016 - 5:01 pm |February 16, 2016 News - updates on books, events, appearances, etc.

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I finished the updates for the copy edit today. Now it’s time to finish the cover, format the ebook and paperback, and then publish. I thought folks might be interested to see the blurbs I received for the book.

“An engaging story about law and order in the west, complete with gun battles, aerial stunts and a hero just out for a hike.” ~ Police Sergeant Louise Speth

“Grabs you by the throat until the thrilling ending. All too true of what can happen in rural law-enforcement.” ~ Deputy Sheriff Jared Johnson

“WOW! Brown has outdone himself on this one. His books are always interesting and entertaining, but this one added a current twist to a captivating plot.” ~ Sheriff Gary Ogilvie, Ret.