Colorado is Ablaze!

Above is a map (made by Theoretican on Reddit and posted to /r/Colorado) of the newly-developed Waldo Canyon Fire near Colorado Springs. I'm not in Colorado Springs right now, but I grew up there, and I've seen pictures, and it looks like it's pretty visible from pretty much everywhere in the city. It looks like mandatory evacuations were put into place for Manitou Springs, which is about a half hour drive from where I grew up.

Most everybody I know lives in either the north or the east of the city, though, so I have no worries there. Though I do hope that this fire doesn't spread too much. Though it has been pretty hot, and coupled with the fact that we had a pretty mild and dry winter, things aren't boding well for these fires in general.

Meanwhile, closer to where I live, the second largest fire in Colorado history is burning near Fort Collins. I was actually in Fort Collins last Friday, and it's pretty hazy down there (and also much warmer - I think it got to about 100 yesterday). This one has affected us more, though again, we're not in any danger. Below is a photo of the fire I took on June 4th - obviously, it's gotten a bit worse since then.


For those interested, here are a few relevant articles to check out:

http://www.dailycamera.com/news/ci_20929068/waldo-canyon-fire-forces-evacuation-manitou-springs

http://www.9news.com/news/article/273899/339/High-Park-Fire-grows-to-75537-acres

Why Do Commercials Need to Emphasize Makeup and "Girl Stuff" To Appeal to Women?

I really don't understand this. I'm a female in science, and I've never needed lipstick and blush to make it better.

Sales Thus Far; Some Thoughts

I don't know why, but I really like talking about sales numbers and money made.

The irony is that, if I were actually doing well (as in, enough to actually live off of), I would probably never talk about this stuff. Nobody wants to read about me bragging about how awesome I'm doing as a writer living the dream.

However, as you can see from the chart above, I've made less than $150 in five months. Actually, I think that's pretty brag-worthy, because it's $150 more than I expected to make.

[Also, for the record, it's 17 days into June, and I've sold nothing this month.]

Why are some months better than others? With January, at least, you have the fact that many people had just received Kindles, AND KDP Select was pretty awesome, since not everybody had yet jumped on the bandwagon. I actually did quite well with free promotions (the best being my very first, a one day promotion with The Dowry getting over 800 downloads).

March, on the other hand, was due to a fluke in the system - shortly after a botched free promotion (where it ended up lasting about half a day longer than it should have), I received about 14 total purchases of both Family History: Part 1 and Part 2.


Here's another interesting tidbit: I gave up seriously advertising my books sometime in March. I assumed that this was why I got so few purchases in April; however, I actually did fairly well in May without any advertising or free promotion days. I'm still not sure what happened in May, though if I remember right, every purchase occurred in the first half of the month.

On the other hand, I've had literally no sales thus far for June. Again, I've done very little advertising. Perhaps people are spending less time browsing Amazon in the summertime? I would be interested to hear what experiences other people have with this (if any).

Funny, I Thought Everyone Hated Internet Explorer

All-Time Pageviews by Browser for Predicted Hindsight

Nothing to Blog About

I've apparently become so boring that I've run out of things to blog about.

I think that I need to learn how to create something out of nothing - create stories from mundane, every day life events. That, or I just need to make it so that my life is more exciting.

Honestly, though, the most exciting thing that has happened today, was that I received an unexpected Skype call, from somebody I've been actively avoiding (and actively telling everybody to avoid). I was listening to music, and my laptop was plugged in to my speakers. Some people were sitting in the room, and the unexpected Skype music started blaring through the speakers. I was confused, because I don't even know what Skype music sounds like. I still don't remember it exactly.

The first time it happened, I walked over to my computer, saw who the call was from, and pressed DECLINE as I shouted "NOOOOO."

My boyfriend, who saw the identity of the caller, muttered "Prick," under his breath.

When I received a second call not two minutes later from the same person, I repeated the same action - I once again shouted "NOOOOO" at my computer while pressing "Decline".

I really enjoy animating my actions.

Ad Sense

I seem to have gotten a large jump in page views recently, though I'm not really sure why.

Sadly, they're not helping my book sales.

YROTSIH YLIMAF YUB

(For those who don't know, it's somewhat of a reference to an old Simpson's episode, where they subliminally try to convince people to join the Navy with a song that says JOIN THE NAVY backwards.)

Anyways, I've decided to put adsense in, if I'm getting all of these unsolicited page views anyways.

I still have no clue where they're coming from.

Took a Picture of the Full Moon Tonight.

The cropping job was done terribly, but oh well.