Day: April 11, 2013

The Cockroach Games

“I believe that once we are all gone, Keith Richards will still be here… with five cockroaches saying ‘you know I smoked your uncle, did you know that?'” – Robin Williams

My last author blog post on Indies Unlimited was about being born and raised in the state of New Jersey.

I truly love living in my adopted state of Florida, and as I read the comments from my readers I decided to write about one of my first Floridian encounters with the king of Darwinian theory, the American Cockroach.

There are thousands of types of cockroaches. The oldest cockroach fossil dates back 350 million years. It is believed that our modern day pests are quite similar to their ancestors.

The first time I ever saw a cockroach was in Newark Airport as an adult. The cold northern winters kill off most of the bigger specimens. I was raised to believe that if you had cockroaches you were a poor housekeeper. In the south this is not necessarily the case. Without a freezing winter to kill them off these hardy insects thrive and grow to spectacular sizes. Continue reading “The Cockroach Games”

Changing Your Book Cover

Guest post
by Shoshanna Evers

So let’s say you’ve written an amazing book. You’ve had it edited, proofed, formatted it perfectly (or paid someone to do so), and your blurb is stellar.

The book gets some 5 and 4 star reviews. Readers like it! It’s good! So why isn’t it selling?

Look closely. Assess your book cover. Does your cover honestly, without a doubt, sit on the virtual shelf with all those Big 6 covers and shine?

Maybe it does. Maybe your cover is perfect. But maybe, just maybe, the cover you made yourself—or that your friend who knows how to work Photoshop or whatever made for you—isn’t working.

Here are some suggestions for your book cover: Continue reading “Changing Your Book Cover”

Exploiting the Subcognitive Brain

In my last post, I discussed the concepts of unconscious or subcognitive influence on the decisions people make. The hard-wired brain appears to be involved in a much wider array of skills and decision-making than science had previously thought.

People can catch a ball without consciously doing the complex trigonometry required to calculate angle, arc, and rate of speed. When the person fails to make the catch, it is more likely a result of the conscious mind intruding on the process—i.e., fear of being hit by the ball. If we don’t get in our own way, our brains work all that out lightning-fast without any fancy book-learnin’. Continue reading “Exploiting the Subcognitive Brain”