We're an iPhone home now

We're an iPhone home now. Gina upgraded her phone this weekend and got an iPhone. So, welcome Apple products to the Rush home. Keep your feet off the furniture, and take your dishes back to the kitchen when you're done with them.

We had an iPad for a while thanks to my former employer. It was surprising how quickly we adjusted to having that little piece of tech in our lives. Was a sad day when I had to turn it in. I say that so you'll know that we're a little bit familiar with the app store and some of what's there. But, I'm curious about one thing. For you iPhone veterans, what's an app you've discovered that is something you can't live without now. And I'm not talking Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or other social media sites. Other than that it's wide open. Games, productivity, life management. Let's hear them.

It's Reunion Sunday

Happy Reunion Sunday, everyone. What? This holiday's not on your calendar? Ridiculous. Unacceptable.

Well, it is Reunion Sunday. And you celebrate by asking me for a free copy of my ebook Reunion. I celebrate by giving you one. All you have to do is promise me a fair review of the book at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Goodreads. Or any combination of the three.

We are celebrating this year because the second Jackson Cane story is getting ready for release. The plan, right now, is that Scouts will be available by the middle of March. Ahead of that release I'd like to see Reunion with a few more reviews. Sort of prime the pump, if you will. You can help me do that by celebrating Reunion Sunday. Ask me for whatever version you need and I'll email you one. I've got the mobi files for your Kindle and the epub files for your Nook or other ereader.

I will say that I'm not asking you for a big investment in time. This is an 8,000-word story. You can read it in an afternoon. You can read it in an hour.

What am I asking you to read? Here's the description.

Jackson Cane is a cop. Well, sort of. Cane and his coworkers call themselves the Freak Police. They chase certain undesirables back to where they belong. Cane's the best of the bunch, but his latest case is going to bring him face to face with someone that he's not sure he wants to see again. 

So help me celebrate. Ask for a copy of Reunion. Leave a comment on this post with your email address and the version you'd like. I'll get it to you.

Or if that makes you uncomfortable, email me at jarrettrush@yahoo.com. Let me know which version you need, and I'll get it to you.

Thanks in advance. And Happy Reunion Sunday, everyone.

A quick freebie update

I haven't done one of these in a while. My free short story, Consider Us Even, is within 100 downloads of breaking the 2,000 barrier. A more specific number is 67 downloads.

For those that don't know, it takes place in the same world as Chasing Filthy Lucre. It features fist fights and data addicts.

Want to give it a try? You can find it at Barnes and Noble, the Sony E-Reader Store and Smashwords.

Trying a new routine

I'm up at 5 a.m. this morning. I never get up at 5 a.m. But with this being my first day at my new job, I thought that getting up at 5 a.m. would give me an hour to write before I needed to start getting ready for work.

I've been fairly productive, which is nice. There were some things I needed to add to the second Jackson Cane story. I did that. I wrote this blog post.I'm going to look at another piece I've been working on.

Still not sure, though, how long this routine will last. Even if I am a morning person, 5 a.m. comes early.

Back among the employed

Yesterday I accepted a position with a local marketing firm. I'm back among the employed. I can't tell you all how much of a relief it is to have a job again. With a baby coming, Gina and I are about to have some expenses that her salary and my unemployment check just weren't going to be able to cover.

I go in for a little bit of training today, but my first official day is Monday. That's February 6. I was laid off September 6. I will have been out of work 5 months exactly.

We'd been praying about me finding a job. We knew that our timing wasn't necessarily God's timing. We would have loved for me to find a job right away, but I didn't. It got frustrating at times. Especially those times when it seemed like something was right around the corner. I had a couple of very promising interviews with one company early on. I was sure that I was going to get that job. Then we didn't hear from them for more than a month. Finally, around Christmas they called to tell me that, while they liked me and thought I interviewed well, they went with someone else. That crushed us. Well, me for sure. I think Gina had already written that job off.

But this job that I accepted came up quickly. I heard about it and sent my resume to them on a Wednesday morning. Talked with the woman who will be my boss that afternoon. Interviewed for a few hours on Friday. And less than a week later I got hired. I have to think that it was pretty divine timing. When it's the right job there aren't any roadblocks in the process.

As for what I'll be doing in the position, it's mostly editing. There will be some writing and some coordinating of freelancers. This seems like the ideal job for me. Much better than the one that got away early on. It lets me take the skills that I spent 15 years building at the newspaper and use them. Plus I get to do some things that are new. New challenges were part of what I was looking for when I was searching. I really am very excited about how it all came about and about the new job.

For those of you who were keeping me and Gina in your thoughts, we thank you. It was tough, but we know that we're much better off than many people out there.

A quick diversion: JC Penney

Can you give me a minute to be design guy again? I haven't been able to be that guy since I lost my news design job in September. I'd thought that side of me was slowly withering away. But something came in the mail the other day that caused him to rear his head once again.

We got the new February JC Penney catalog in the mail. And let me say "Wow!" You've no doubt seen the commercials about the new pricing structure that JCP is introducing. Judging by my Twitter feed, many of you have seen more than enough about it, especially the commercials.

As a business story, that's interesting. And good luck with that, JCP. As a Dallas-based company, I hope that's wildly successful.

What I liked, though, was the look of the new catalog. It's sparse. It's spare. It's simple. The copy that's there is quirky. It's very much like what you see from Apple and Target and Ikea. And I like it. Simple photos of products on a white background. Simple pricing strategy. All of this seems to be geared toward sending a clear message. This isn't your mother's JCP anymore.

These kind of moves shouldn't be a surprise, really. The new CEO, Ron Johnson, was an executive at both Target and Apple. His charge at JCP is to make it more hip and cool. Have to say, he's heading in the right direction.

I'm not the only person who is impressed either. Those in the creative world like the look and feel as well. Check this link. Something I learned. The former top marketing guy at Target was hired by JCP recently. That actually explains a lot.

I'll be interested to see how well the new strategy works for JCP. Because, like I said, it's a local company. What's good for them is, by extension, good for the economy here. And, more importantly, Gina are Penneys people. I'd love to see the company succeed. I like their pants.

Some thoughts on Alcatraz

We are three hours into the new Fox TV series Alcatraz. So far, I'm a fan. I like the show. I'm enjoying the action. The acting's not bad. I actually like Jorge Garcia as Dr. Diego Soto, and I was concerned about seeing him as anyone other than Hurley.

The third hour devoted to inmate Kit Carson had a pretty creepy moment in a prison exchange between Carson and the warden.

This is a good show. Worth the time investment. But I do have concerns. Two, actually.

The premise of the show has all of the inmates held at Alcatraz disappearing in 1963. Now they are coming back to present day the same age they were when they disappeared. And this is where my first concern comes in. I posted it on Twitter the other night. None of these guys are freaked out or baffled by the new technology they're seeing. No one is baffled by the way things look. Not the fashion. Not the cars. Not the TVs. Not people around them looking at their cell phones.

My cousin says he noticed the same thing, but he feels confident that there is a logical explanation for it, and that it will be explained in the end. I'm not so sure.

And that brings me to the second concern. I want to say again that I like the show. I'm a fan. But I'm afraid that with the pedigree this show has we won't get the explanation. Or at least one that's satisfactory. This is a JJ Abrams show. He's not a creator, but he is a producer. I've liked other Abrams shows. I really liked Alias. I was a fan of Lost. But there was a problem with each of the shows. The big mystery overtook the story. I'm afraid that's what could happen here.

It's natural. It's understandable. It's the way of TV. You have these stories planned. You can have explanations. You can have endings. But if your show is a success then all of that likely goes out the window. You have to stretch the story out longer than you planned. On the creative end things get forgotten. Not everything gets explained. And that's my worry. Too much here will go unexplained if the show runs for a few years.

An even swap

Chasing Filthy Lucre is stuck. It's been out for almost a year now and the reviews it's received have been good. Really good, actually. But I could use more. When you are doing the publishing yourself you could always use more reviews. Can never have enough.

Back to being stuck. Over at Amazon.com, Chasing Filthy Lucre has had nine reviews for a few months now. They are all 4 and 5 stars. But it's killing me to see it stuck at nine. I want that tenth review. Heck, I want 20 reviews. I want 30.

Same goes for my newest story, Reunion. That story needs more than the one review it has right now.

I don't know how to get more reviews other than offering a free book to anyone who agrees to read either book and then provide an honest review at Amazon and/or Barnes & Noble.

Interested? Email me at jarrettrush@yahoo.com and I'll send you a copy of either book in whatever format you need. 

Or leave a comment here with a way to get in touch with you and which format you need.

Thanks in advance.

Prioritizing priorities

Yesterday I posted this on Twitter. (What? You didn't know I was on Twitter? I am. I'm here: http://www.twitter.com/JarrettRush. You should follow me. I'm much more active there than I am here, even though that's not something I'm proud of. Just what it is.)

Just got an idea for a novel. Bigger and more complex than anything I've ever tried before, but it could be AWWWE-SUUUM.

You were supposed to read that last part in a sing-song voice. No matter how you read it, though, the idea is awesome. I know that I probably shouldn't call my own ideas awesome. I should call it an idea with potential. I should call it something I'm excited about pursuing. But I'm not calling it any of those things. I'm calling it an awesome idea, because it is.

Now, making sure the awesome idea becomes and awesome story is completely up to me. Like I said on Twitter, it'll be a bigger, more complex book than anything I've ever attempted. It'll have more settings, more characters, more action, but I think I can pull it off.

This all got me thinking, though, about priorities and where to stack projects. I have the follow-up to Chasing Filthy Lucre that I've been working on and really need to finish. I have the rest of the Jackson Cane stories to write. I have another story that I've started and want to finish. And it could become another Jackson Cane-type series of shorts. I have a short story that I need to write to submit to an anthology. It's due in April.

So where do I work in this new story? Do I move it to the top of my list? Do I just jot down the idea with enough detail that when I can get to it I won't forget it?

I know that the professional thing to do is just stick the awesome idea at the end of the list. Finish everything as it comes up next and get to the new story when it's its turn. I don't know that I have a point to this post. I guess I'm just venting here.

I know that it's a horrible problem to have. Too many good ideas. Oh, poor Jarrett. His wallet's so full of hundreds that it makes him sit lopsided. Who knows? Maybe these aren't good ideas.  I like them, though. They have potential. They're fun. But which do I tackle first?

The second Jackson Cane story is coming soon

Last week I put the finishing touches on the second Jackson Cane story. It's been sent off to my writers group for them to look at it. I've got a copy I'm hacking up right now. Then Gina gets her turn with it. Hopefully, though, I can get the editing done on this one pretty quick and make it available.

It came in at 13,000 words, or pretty close to it. So it's 5,000 words longer than the original. At least for now it's longer. Who knows what it will be after editing. Longer for sure, but maybe not 5,000 words longer. And I know longer doesn't mean better, but it does mean more involved in this case.

If you think of the Jackson cane series like a TV series, and I am, then this is Episode 2. It's the episode that follows the pilot and the one that gets the story going. In the first episode you establish characters and relationships. In episode 2 is where you start telling your story. That's what happens here. I'm happy with Reunion, the first episode in Jackson Cane's story, but this is where the story that will carry us through the whole first season of the Jackson Cane saga gets started. Right now there are four more stories planned in this first series of tales. At the end of it things will look much different than they did at the beginning. It'll be a bigger world that we are dealing with, and some of the restrictions established early on should be gone. Should open up the stories creatively, which will be good for me and for the reader.

The story is called Scouts. Here's the cover. Look for it soon.