Meet Orphan Andy, 4 Books Now Published
Early winter snow put emphasis on finding forage. And tracking my least little ones, as well as my more headstrong ones. And -- I published everything sitting around.
Hi,
Thanks again for being here and opening this. For being part of this community.
Too many emails? Too few? Go here to adjust your settings.
Farming News - Snow the day after Thanksgiving forced adjustments
Writing News - Now four more books are published as both ebooks and paperbacks.
Fiction News - The Hooman Saga continues its serial. And it’s popularity grows.
Expectancy Factor - The love of workable truths drives progress.
Farming News
Meet Little Orphan Andy:
His story is that his mother passed when he was about four months old. At least he already had enough ability to survive without mother’s milk by then, but that doesn’t necessarily give him all the nutrients a growing boy should have. So I’ve been keeping a lookout for him.
You may remember I had to pull him out of a mudhole where he was looking for water some months back. Today, I realized he wasn’t with the rest of the herd, so went down to find him. There he was browsing off the still green leaves of the honey-suckle bushes. So I brought him an armful of hay from the bales the other cows were busy wrecking.
I put that hay in a dry area of mostly leaves, where it looked like he had been overnighting.
The next day, I found him up in the barn. apparently he remembered from when I was feeding him up there, right after the mud-stuck incident, and also for a month or so while that gimp-cow was being pampered. Regardless, there he was, so I fed him some more hay and he’s been up there for the last couple of days so I can keep track of him.
Yes, he looked a bit gaunt, but by the end of that day, he was a tubby little guy. And I’d like to keep him that way. So today, he got more hay and some corn-mix to hopefully put some fat on him against the worst weather upcoming. But he’s got shelter, and I can ensure he has water there.
My wife came up with that name for him yesterday. I have to admit it’s better that “Orphan” - more positive.
Here’s what cows do to a wrapped bale they like:
They generally work as a herd. So when one of them finds a particularly tasty hay bale, they all pile on. Once that wrap can’t hold them off anymore, then it starts laying down on the ground. Which isn’t that bad, except they manure on it and then won’t eat it - and there’s a lot of waste.
So we keep bale rings around to keep waste to a minimum. That long-handled thing stuck over to the left is a pitch fork, which I use to try to gather up all that outside the ring and put it back inside again. Meanwhile, the herd is kept out by a reinforced fence of electrified polywire.
I have another pasture I can put them in for December, then another one for January, where I should be able to keep them satisfied until the worst winter storms come in. (February, as we’ve discussed here.)
Tiny Home News
Thought you’d like to see how this new cabin looks in a 3D mock-up.
This shows you how I started designing my original Tiny Home On Wheels. The above design is about twice as big. Mainly it gives us the ability to have a farm kitchen and process our garden. There is also room for a shower, some storage and a stacked washer-dryer. Two windows, two doors, based on a pole barn construction. And that second door is for when we get our next addition, which we have planned to stretch out 16x40, about five times bigger than our current THOW.
Again, the point is to get a shed up there on concrete so we can get electrical in there.
Once this shed is insulated and sheathed, with electrical run and water piped, then we’ll be simply moving most of the kitchen inside that shed, expanding what we need in order to wind up with the necessities of a real kitchen, plus other amenities. (If you look close, you can make out a love-seat facing a TV screen - that’s so my wife can listen into her favorite shows while cooking - or cooking videos…
On that GoFundMe - I’m thinking to run another weekly newsletter just about the whole idea behind “5 Acres and Independence” by Maurice Kains. This is a 1935 classic that has enough chapters to give me a chance to update it every week. It needs to be reorganized, but will do quite well to help people get started on their journey. I’ll commit to this over the next month and be working this over one day per chapter per week and so get it done while I also rehash my Campbell books above.
There is a lot of work to be done on this book, and I’ll try to parallel the seasons in it, using the intemperate times to tackle financing, planning, and spreadsheet work. Then the other chapters will more or less be aligned to things you can do while things are growing.
(And there is a parallel process of showing how I built my THOW and the planning that had to go into it. Those would be valuable chapters on their own - and might become a how-to course with examples. Videos might be a better way to educate than a picture book. )
By doing this, I can attract kindred spirits who would like to contribute to our funding on a regular basis. The story is how a retired couple can set up a small working farm with limited resources, and achieve the good life in their golden years.
The idea here is to see how to get funding for our expansion by giving a lot of our own experiences as we go (and grow.)
Even though it makes my time quite budgeted, this is a worthy operation - particularly where I collaborate with other farmers locally and through Substack.
Writing News
Now all my two years of research are paying off over to commercial outlets. Both ebook and Print On Demand distributors.
It will take a few days for most, and a week or so for others.
I’ve been publishing through Draft2Digital for years as they provide a good and sensible set of services to get my books out.
And this process has gradually helped me push away and replace the “Amazon Conventional Wisdom” that are so very common out there.
I did the fast release model on fiction for some three years, and got the typical results. Without paying the additional Amazon tax of advertising, my fiction ebooks didn’t produce much in income. I did have a huge amount of fun improving my craft, though.
And all along, I’ve been publishing the best-selling ebooks as paperbacks. This started out on Lulu, but when D2D came out with their own POD, then I moved everything over there. Now, the bulk of my book income comes from non-fiction paperback editions.
Which is why I decided to do this update of all my earlier books on self-publishing into a single volume. That then also gave me an update to my Breakthrough Copywriter bestseller, by adding a second volume.
It also led to producing two additional books in addition. I still have some editing and tweaking to the last book, “Writerpreneur: The Lost Books Anthology” But that is planned to roll out this week.
Four books are now available in both ebook and paperback (or will show up shortly). That copywriting book will show up in two editions, one for Writerpreneurs and the other for Breakthrough Copywriter fans.
With this journey done, I’m moving onto recovering the long out of print books by W. S. Campbell so this data is again available to writers. It’s a review of his four books, which will then be condensed to three volumes. This is also my own study of his materials, and utilizing them to bring new versions out into print. The real object is to popularize them enough that demand will make them profitable enough to republish again in their original formats.
Meanwhile, we can all access the data.
Once I got copies of these in my hands, on loan from some Oklahoma library, I started finding data which has literally disappeared from any modern author training. What Campbell and his assistants discovered was rooted in the earlier classics back to Aristotle and his Poetics. That data then explained the success of Shakespeare, Sir Walter Raleigh, and others.
And the list of acclaimed students included Louis L’Amour, Mary Higgins Clark, Fred Grove, Tony Hillerman, Bill Gulick, William R. Scott, Ed Montgomery, Neal Barrett, and Bill Burchardt, among many others. Look those names up and you’ll see the authors who were able to make a decent living from just writing and publishing books. Which was the original itching problem I had to solve at the outset.
As I said, one last book to produce of the original four, then 3 more coming out in the next few months. 7 total in this series. Then we’ll look at a Kickstarter to promote the completed series.
The Hooman Saga serial is now consistently getting more readers than the other two newsletters as far as opens. Which is nice to see. Looks like I’ve found a good format. And with some 30+ chapters, we’ll have a nice run…
WriterpreneurOS Posts
This second lesson continues an 8-part mini-course now tells how to improve your attitude and expectations in order to succeed as a writer.
Fiction Posts
Sue and Tig now take the offense, and start fighting back. Their tactics are different, and we start seeing where the fantasy points start entering this otherwise mostly science fiction beginning.
If you can’t wait, Here’s the book link to get your copy.
Expectancy Tips
Workable truths drive us all to improve our lives, and expect more.
It came to me recently, that the most common search ongoing is philosophy.
Philosophy, in its roots, is “love of truth”. And truth can be defined by that ancient Huna principle: “Effectiveness is the measure of truth.” We are always testing and refining what we consider to be true. What works out for us routinely — that which supports our chosen world view — is true to the degree that is effective, that it gets results, that it works.
All through our studies and even our entertainment is the search for better ways to do things, to learn things, to adopt models others find workable.
We then surround ourselves with trinkets and reminders of those most workable truths.
And is why it used to be common for families to have at least one Bible in the house, because it has so many stories and so much advice of what has worked through the last few thousand years, at least.
Those with the most proved and viable world views tend to win the biggest, and have the most generally successful lives. Their days are filled with struggles, true — but there are far more successful outcomes than unsuccessful. When you meet these people, they will treat you as they’d like to be treated.
Because the most successful patterns and models have achieved the status of Law — not man’s law, but a higher, divinely inspired law. Like the Golden Rule. Everytime you test that statement, that advice, you prove it to be true. It’s a very workable truth.
Throughout our culture’s history, back through our long records, philosophers have been looked for and listened to.
What we haven’t each decided to do is to causatively do this daily through our lives.
Consider taking some time daily just to look over what worked for you in each day. Compile these, and win more. And let go of those others. Love truth.Truth is as valuable as it is workable
Thanks for being there, opening this.
Sharing is caring. You’re who I do this all for. I value your input.
Leave a comment if something strikes your fancy.
I hope your life is not too interesting to be overwhelming, but sufficiently engaging to keep you amused. (Like some of us here...)
Robert
PS. Again, you can always email me about anything.
PPS. Again, do upgrade to the paid newsletter version. That helps me keep the lights on - so I can keep all this coming to you. As much or little as you want…
Coming soon…
My books are found under: Robert C. Worstell, S. H. Marpel, C. C. Brower, J. R. Kruze, R. L. Saunders