Gone Forever! (Thank you, God!)

Finally, after two years of sitting idle - the White Elephant is gone.

While the identical twin of this bike was a lot of fun, this one has been nothing but a chrome-plated money pit.

I'm glad it's gone...taking all the assorted junk with it.

Now I have room in the shed to store stuff.

I hope the people who bought it enjoy it as much as we enjoyed the first one.

Good riddence!

The Honda is gone now, too. I used the money to pay off the storage unit it was supposed to be stored in. Grrrrr...even sold the ordeal continues. 

I hate motorcycles, they've brought endless chaos into my life.

Finished - At Last

The renovation of Chicken World is complete, there are 8 nest boxes, and twice as much roosting space now. There are still quite a few small details that need to be worked out. Some small spaces that need to be filled in, a few bits of paneling that need to be covered.

The crates are removable, for easy cleaning. Hopefully I'll be able to give the walls a coat of white wash before too long. If the weather EVER warms up.

The number of eggs has already gone up from five a day to nine. It might be because I'm not in there messing around while they're trying to lay.

I look at those photos with a very profound sense of satisfaction. There are many, many hours of work on those walls. I haven't found a single frozen chicken egg since I put the crates against the wooden walls. The eggs are also very clean. They hardly need any cleaning, just a quick swipe.

Now, I need the duck hens to find the hidden nests and get busy.

Now, back to the shakeup in the publishing industry.

Trade vs Self-Publishing -> Real Data

The last few weeks have seen a great deal of chest-beating by members of the Trade Publishing Industry. There were some references made to 'cattle,' 'culling herds' and 'easy pickings' that nearly had me foaming at the mouth.

Since I felt so strongly about it, I didn't post anything here. I was too outraged for words...which takes quite a bit of outrage.

I feel that Joe Konrath wrote a great reply. Joe is one of those people who doesn't mince words. It makes him come off hot-headed, but this time, he hit one out of the park.

Then, Dean Westly Smith chimed in, with his learned opinion.

Even the well-mannered and witty crowd at the Passive Voice was fuming. The blog was awash in cow jokes.

However, I'm all a twitter -- with good reason. Huge Howey and an unknown Data Cruncher have sent out a spider to mine the web of TRUE SALE'S DATA.

The results are stunning, beyond stunning - they're... atomic. I have no idea what (beyond a horrendous sh!t storm) will come of these revelations. One website has already 'poo-pooed' the numbers as 'bad math' and locked the thread down.

Of all the graphs - I chose this one because it shows that those who say that e-books are a mere 30% of Amazon genre fiction sales are ever so very wrong.

IMO - there is going to be conciderable backlash from the Publishing Industry. This shows that Indie authors are making more money and selling more books than anyone on the Trade side ever suspected.

With contracts being so one-sided, it appears this report is going to make a lot of authors think twice before they offer up their work to the Publishing Industry. Not all of them, of course, because so many will never give up the dream of that (godawful) Publishing Contract.

Bless them, they don't know what they're up against.

Take a look, this will blow your mind.

Quick Renovation Update

I've got the nest box part of the project started.

That means I'm sorting through the scrap pile to pick out dividers. I'm going for a triple decker set up. The hens want nest boxes up high, the ducks want something cozy.

I don't have photos yet. But I will.

Stay tuned!