Blogger Stories

  Cover photo for the new book It's December 31, 2022 and I wanted to end the year on a high note. After 5½ years, I have published a new book! Sunrise Sunset is a collection of 26 of my favorite sunrise and sunset photographs. Most of them were taken at the San Lorenzo Ruiz Church. It's a great place to take these kinds of photographs because the place is on top of a small hill. I call it the San Lorenzo Ruiz Hill but that's a misnomer because the church is not really the highest point. This was the work of a few hours in just one afternoon. After pasting the pictures on the Word document, I created the cover using Powerpoint and uploaded the two files onto the Smashwords website. It was literally that simple. I needed this so that I can get the inspiration to finish the books I have on the pipeline. It's been so long.

So, my family and I live in an 84 square meter lot that had a pre-built house on it. It's our first house (and, so far, our only house) and we've been living in it since 1998. Fig. 1  Original layout of the house. The house had two bedrooms, one toilet and bath, and a space that combined the kitchen, dining, and living room. It had 36 square meters floor space, which was enough for Loida and me, and our four-year-old daughter. There was a generous space around the front, side, and back of the house that was planted with grass and served as our washing and drying area. A small parking space (so small, you can hardly open the car door to get in or out) completed the package. The biggest disadvantage of the house was the small kitchen, so small it would be more appropriate to call it, the cooking nook. So, one of the improvements we thought about was using the back space as the kitchen. Fig. 2  Planned extension We thought of using the two meter by five meter space at the back for

Sometimes, as I'm walking around in malls, on the streets, or in offices, I spot a face that I don't give a second glance to. He or she may be looking at me, maybe even smiling at me, but I continue on, unmindful. A few seconds later, the face suddenly registers and a memory is tickled. I look back to check but often the owner of that face has gone and I am left wondering if I knew him or her. There are times when the tickled memory lets out a giggle and vague scenes play out in my mind. The face seems to fit one of those persons in the memory but I can't be sure. Sometimes, the memory laughs out loud and I'm sure I know the person but the name escapes me. There is a tinge of embarrassment that I might have snubbed the person and maybe even ruined a friendship. But occasionally, the memory bursts out in a guffaw and I remember both face and name. I turn around and hope he is looking my way so I can greet him. Often, he is and we may exchange smiles, a wave, a handsh

I have been a fan of the Peanuts comic strip since the 1970's. I bought the comic books by saving the leftovers from my school allowance and read them over and over. Sadly, those comic books disappeared as the family moved residences and I lost track of them. The internet, however, has enabled me to see the gang any time I wanted to. My favorite happens to be Snoopy. Now, I used to be a fairly decent artist, drawing with pen and pencil. My artistry, unfortunately, is limited to copying photographs or other drawings. I also avoid coloring my drawings because adding color ruined the drawing. I'm still a kid who can't keep the colors inside the lines. So, all my drawings were either black and white or gray-scale and one of my favorite drawing topics is, of course, Snoopy. Most of my Snoopy drawings were personal, handmade greeting cards, sent to my friends, which means, I don't have them anymore. I made other drawings but one of my favorites was made back in the summer of

  Mom and Dad at their wedding / Mom back in 2014 @ 79 years old. Just before I got married, I had a little conversation with Mom and Dad regarding how to handle pregnancy, not how to get my future wife pregnant but what to do after. Among the questions I asked was, were there any things I needed to know besides the medical sides of things. Dad smiled and told me to watch out for women's peculiarities during pregnancy. Some women, he warned, seem to do weird stuff when they get pregnant. Mom laughed and began telling me this story: * * * During one of Mom's pregnancies (they didn't say which one among the seven children), Mom told Dad that she wanted an orange. Dad said that, sometimes, preggies look for food that is either difficult or impossible to get. Compounding the problem is that you really have to find what she wants or there'll be big problems usually characterized by crying sessions, silent treatments, and, sometimes, physical harm.  He was, however, relieved

This was back in high school or thereabouts. I was in my room, getting dressed for school. I had just slipped into my pants when I spied a cockroach on the table. I have no fear of roaches so I took one of my slippers and approached it to smash it to a pulp. As I got closer, I slowed down so that it won't be spooked into running away. I kept my eye on it, with the slipper held up to around head level, ready to swing as soon as I got into range. But the roach was smart. It turned around to face me and launched itself into the air...toward me. Taken by surprise, I tried to swat it in midair but it was too close. I felt it land on my undershirt so I dropped the slipper and tried to brush it off. It was too quick, however, and my movements failed to connect with it. Suddenly, it disappeared. I swung left and right, trying to find it but it was nowhere in sight. It had escaped but I thought, "I'll get you yet." I put my slippers on and went to the closet to get my uniform

 

  When you read a professional newspaper or magazine, it's not often that you find errors whether it be in spelling or grammar. That's because they have proofreaders, people who are paid to apply the their knowledge of words and the rules of grammar. Typically, bloggers like me do not have the luxury of having these experts. It, therefore, falls on our shoulders to ensure that such errors do not creep into the text undetected. Of course, the main defense against these kinds of gaffes is knowledge of the language. If you know the rules, it's possible to write correctly and do it right the first time. If you know the rules, even if you make a mistake, you'll be able to catch them during the proofreading stage. Now, I'm not an English writing expert. I make mistakes from time to time, mostly due to fatigue. After writing for the better part of the day, it's possible for me to commit a faux pas and miss them when I go back over the article. That's why I recommen

U-1215 was published in August 20, 2016. For two years, it hardly moved. No one was buying it and I even thought of taking it out and rewriting it to make it interesting. Then, one day, I read an article about one author whose book also wasn't selling very well. She had someone make another cover and she republished it. Thereafter, the book's sales soared and continues to sell very well. So, it got me to thinking. Could my book benefit from an improved cover as well? I set out to try. First, I changed the color to blue. Blue represents the color of the sea so that seemed appropriate. Then, I made the color darker towards the bottom since that's what happens the deeper into the sea you go. Second, I made the text larger so as to be more visible without overdoing it. I changed the subtitle to all caps to also make it a bit more visible. I decided to enlarge my name and change the font because I read that you should advertise yourself but don't shout it out by making your

I've been neglecting my blog. When Facebook removed the Notes feature, I told myself to use Blogger in place of the Notes feature. Sorry to say, I haven't been doing it. So, hoping to get things started again, I'll post a few figures I got from my sales from my books in Smashwords . So, according to the numbers, I sold 578.3 books from 2011 to 2022. What's with the 0.3? How can you sell one-third of a book? Those sales came from Scribd. They offer a partial sale (a small percentage of a book) for $0.10 with an option to buy the whole book if you liked it. Out of those 578.3 books, I made $279.87 (USD). Why so little for the quantity of books? Did each book cost $0.48? No, a large part of those books were sold for free. Yes, free. One of the advice from other authors, as well as Smashwords, was to offer books for free from time to time so that readers would get to know the author on the premise that, if they found the books interesting, they would later buy the author

I'm not going to start with how to speak, how to use gestures, how to use words, etc. You can't speak in front of people if you don't have anything to say, so, the first installment of this series is techniques for finding speech fodder or speech topics. Probably the two most common complaints I hear from people is: I don't know what to say, and I don't have anything interesting to say. The two, I believe, are related, maybe first cousins. What they might really be saying is, "I don't know what to say that will interest people." That's fine. You're new to public speaking and struggling to come up with a speech that will keep your audience awake. It's a valid concern. I've seen speakers who got flustered when they saw one of the audience yawning during their speech. Don't worry, we'll get to tips to address those in future posts. If someone asks you to deliver a speech, one of the things you have to know first is, what is the occ