The SoapBoxers

If you haven’t read the first part of the story, you’ll definitely want to read it first (it’s here).

Miranda paced back and forth and the stage and wrung her hands, obviously unsure of what to do next. Finally, she spoke again.

“Well, folks, I guess the show must go on. The next part of the act calls for me to push the box back together and have Sarah pop out of he box unharmed. I’m afraid it is too late for Sarah, but we can at least honor her memory by finishing the trick.”

Miranda moved slowly toward the two halves of the box. She pushed them together and halfheartedly uttered some magic words. She barely glanced at the box as she opened the door.

Miranda had already turned her back to the box and was walking toward the front of the stage when, to the amazement of everyone in the theater, Sarah popped out of the box and onto the stage. The crowd went absolutely wild – Miranda and Sarah received several curtain calls before finally retreating backstage.

After the crowd had left for the evening, there was a meeting in a back room at the Riverview Theatre. In attendance were Marcus, Miranda, and the three male members of the entourage.

Marcus immediately tried to take control of the meeting.

“I don’t know what you’re trying to prove with your stunt tonight – “ he began.

“Oh, shut up,” responded Miranda. “You don’t call the shots any more. I’m in charge.”

“How do you come to that illogical conclusion?”

“I’ve put up with a lot from you over the years. The verbal abuse, the condescension, and now the affair. You have no friends in this room. It’s the end of the line for you.”

Marcus laughed. “The end of the line? What are you going to do – kill me?”

“Oh, even better than that,” replied Miranda. “I know how fascinated you are with the Amazon. I’ve decided to give you the gift of a long vacation there.”

Marcus was now ever more confused. “And this is some sort of punishment?”

“It’s a rather remote spot. In fact, it’s my belief that this area has never experienced human contact.”

Marcus was still a bit slow to understand.

Miranda explained further. “Did I mention that this is a trip for two? We’re going to drop you and your mistress into the middle of the rainforest. If you and Sarah ever want to see other human beings, you’d be well advised to start breeding like those stupid rabbits you use in your tricks. Maybe you can start an entire race of sub humans.”

The next day, a plane flew over the Amazon and pushed Marcus and Sarah out the door. Their parachutes slowed their descent until finally they disappeared below the canopy of the rain forest and were never heard from again.

Weeks later, Marcus’ PR firm sent out a press release informing the media that Marcus the Magnificent would be taking a long sabbatical to re-discover himself. In the interim, his wife would be taking over his show. The media and the public had become jaded to Marcus’ antics over the years, and this news was barely a blip on the radar.

Thousands of miles away, one of the greatest magicians in the world was failing at some of the most basic tasks of a hunter and gatherer. The raw meat made him nauseous, but he had not yet mastered the ancient art of creating fire.

If you noticed the theme of scorned women taking revenge carrying over from last week’s story, The Proxy, don’t worry – it’s not the sole theme of my stories.  The two stories simply originated from the same brainstorming session.

Editor’s note: I’d like to welcome all my friends from Man Vs. Debt to The Soap Boxers.  Sit down in a comfy chair, kick off your shoes, and enjoy today’s story.

The third rabbit hopped out of the hat, looked around for a moment, and then quickly joined his friends. The three rabbits hopped off the stage, into the hands of the assistants.

“Those suckers multiply faster than a math teacher,” boomed the voice from the middle of the stage. The large crowd responded to the bad joke with a combination of laughter and good-natured boos.

Marcus the Magnificent was on his game on this hot August night. He was playing at the Fairview Theatre – his normal venue. The massive theatre was filled to the rafters with adoring fans.

The master showman guided the crowd through his act, starting with small tricks and gradually building to two big illusions at the end of the evening.

As the evening came to a close, Marcus called his assistant, Miranda, to the stage. He had Miranda step into a box, closed the door, and told the audience that he would make the women vanish.

“Look now – the lovely Miss Miranda has completely disappeared!” With that, Marcus yanked on the door of the box. To his surprise, he was greeted by an enormous plume of smoke, and then he felt himself falling. This was most certainly not a part of the act.

When the smoke disappeared, Miss Miranda was standing on the stage, but the magician was nowhere to be seen. The crowd was puzzled at this turn of events.

Miss Miranda quickly took the reins. She stepped back toward the box and peered inside.

“Marcus?” she called. “Marcus? Where have you gone?”

Miranda turned back to the crowd. “I’m afraid that Marcus the Magnificent must have used the wrong magic words – as he himself has disappeared! Perhaps we should continue with the act and try to make him reappear.”

The crowd murmured as Miranda closed the door of the box.

“Great magic box, I command you – bring Marcus back to us!” There was another plume of smoke. A moment later, Miranda yanked open the door to the box.

“Marcus, step forth!” she shouted.

But Marcus did not step forth. Miranda was still alone on the stage.

“I apologize for the inconvenience, folks. This has never happened before. I’m really not sure where to go from here. Should I send you home for the night – or do you want to stay and watch me perform a few tricks I have learned from Marcus?”

“Stay, stay, stay!” shouted the crowd.

“OK, OK,” she acquiesced. “The show must go on! I’m afraid I’m not very familiar with the schedule for tonight’s show. Johnny, can you bring me Marcus’ notes for this performance?”

Marcus’ assistant Johnny crossed the stage and handed several sheets of paper to Miranda. She took a moment to glance through the itinerary for the evening. She pondered aloud, allowing the crowd to hear her thoughts.

“Boring, boring, too hard for me, boring, stupid rabbit trick … ah, here we go. This is a trick I can perform.”

Miranda strode to the center of the stage.

“Ladies and gentleman, the next trick has amazed and astounded crowds for decades. In front of your very eyes tonight, I will saw a woman in half.”

As the crowed focused on Miranda and waited for her to perform the best illusion of the entire evening, Marcus the Magnificent began to regain his consciousness. To his great surprised, he found himself bound, gagged, and in the captivity of three rather mean looking men.

Miranda finished sawing through the box and pushed the two halves of the box away from her. The crowd could clearly see the woman’s head sticking out of the top half of the box and her feet sticking out the bottom half of the box.

The crowd gasped when the spotlight focused on a small pool of blood on the stage.

“Oh dear,” cried out Miranda. “I’m afraid this is the first time I have tried this trick with an actual person. Perhaps I should have practiced it first.”

How will this story turn out?  Come back tomorrow to read the conclusion!  (Or just subscribe via RSS or email to catch all future editions of The Soap Boxers)

Butler – Duke

I was on the phone with DirecTV diagnosing why, exactly, my receivers were not picking up the MLB Extra Inning package (despite being signed up several weeks ago) and managed to miss much of the NCAA championship game.

I did manage to catch the last 12 minutes or so of the game.  I was pulling for underdog Butler.   When they missed a shot with less than 5 seconds remaining, I thought that they were finished.  I was stunned at how close Gordon Hayward’s desperation shot came.  Had he made the shot, I would have ranked it as the best moment in the history of the NCAA tournament.

It’s time to close the door on another basketball season and transition to baseball.

Is There an Editor in the House?

Earlier in the week, USA Today announced that their annual survey of baseball salaries indicated a 17% drop – saying that the average player’s salary dropped from $3.2 million in 2009 to $2.7 million in 2010.  A number of sites reported this news, only to later print news of a correction.  Player salaries actually ticked slightly upward (less than 1%).

I can understand some Mom and Pop sites believing this news, but struggle with how a big organization (ESPN, I’m looking at you) fell for it.

There are a number of ways to calculate this, but if we assume simply the 25 man rosters of each team, a $500,000 decrease per player would have been a $375 million decrease across baseball.

This really should have begged the question – where did this money come from?  Sure, there were some players taking pay cuts, but others signed contracts that paid them more money.  A few notable players retired, but they didn’t take hundreds of millions of dollars in salary with them.

I think one thing that may have made this believable was that the crop of free agents didn’t sign for as much money as last year’s crop.  However, that doesn’t mean that salaries declined – it’s a completely apples to oranges comparison.  The fact that Matt Holliday signed for less money this year than Mark Teixeira did last year doesn’t mean that this negatively impacted salaries.  Holliday isn’t making as much as Teixeira, but he is still exceeding his own 2009 salary.  That’s what we should be looking at.

Much of the blame should go to USA Today, of course.  They’ve been generating these reports for many years, and yet nobody realized that there was no basis for the reported decline.  The amount was large enough that it should have caused raised eyebrows and verification of the data.

The Resin Bag

I’m going to call this section – with short blurbs – The Resin Bag.  Welcome aboard, Resin Bag.

Tiger Woods fielded some questions from reporters and once again apologized for his actions.  OK, at this point, you either believe that he is contrite, or you don’t.  Is repetition going to change your mind?  Let’s move on.

Kurt Warner threw out the first pitch before the Diamondbacks game on Opening Day.  It was a bit to the third base side of the plate, but not a bad effort compared to the typical first pitches we see.

Marc Bulger – who replaced the “injured and washed-up” Warner as quarterback of the St. Louis Rams and was expected to lead them back to the Super Bowl – was cut loose by the team after a 1-15 season.  The consensus thought is that the Rams are paving the way to select Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford with the #1 pick in the draft.

Fantasy baseball heartburn began early this year, with the Youra Peeins third baseman Ian Stewart teeing off of Peeins teammate Yovani Gallardo.  It’s always a bittersweet moment when one fantasy player succeeds at the expense of someone else on your team.  In this case, Stewie is not only a Peein, but also a member of the real life Colorado Rockies – making it easier to cheer for him to succeed.

I also got roped into a “straight” league (as opposed to my Alphabet Soup League) as a last minute spot filler.  I haven’t even had a chance to take a close look at the rules, so the other teams will probably chew up Bats in the Belfry.  On the plus side, it’s an opportunity to compete in a CBS league – which I’ve heard good things about.

[Note: this article is from 2010 and refers to Lisa by her maiden name throughout.  I have changed the title to include her married name in an effort to make it easier for fans to find this article.]

I am an alumnus of Iowa State University and a former high school track athlete (albeit a slow one).  Thus,  I am  following the career of Iowa State runner Lisa Koll with considerable interest.

Koll won exactly zero state titles in high school.  She has made up for this by adding several NCAA titles to her resume.

The most recent record breaking performance by Koll was on March 26 at the Stanford Invitational (outdoor meet).  Koll posted a time of 31:18:07 for the 10,000 meters.  She won the race by 28 seconds.  If you don’t think this is impressive, stare at your watch for 28 seconds.  That’s quite the lag time between first and second place.  She broke the collegiate record by more than 8 seconds.

The NCAA also keeps a record of the fastest collegiate performances by Americans.  Many of the elite NCAA track performers are athletes from other countries who are attending college in the U.S.  Koll’s time was more than 59 seconds faster than the previous record for an American collegiate performer – 32:17.10 by Christine McMiken in 1986.

Koll was battling an injury last year and finished a mere 9^th in the 10,000 meter run at the NCAA outdoor championships.  In 2008, she won the title with a time of 32:44.95.  In other words, she has sliced 86 seconds off a time that was already good enough to win a national title!

Koll is not a one trick pony, though.  She recently won the women’s 5000 meters at the NCAA indoor meet.  In the Big 12 conference indoor meet, Koll set a new collegiate record in the 5000 meters.  Her time of 15:41.57 was more than 17 seconds faster than the previous record.

Koll also finished second in the 3000 meters at the NCAA indoor meet.  She had run the 5000 meters the prior day; her main rival had not (and was thus fresh for the 3000 race).  Koll was edged by 0.12 seconds in the race.  She had dominated the event at the conference meet.  Her time in the 3000 meters at the Big 12 meet was “just” the third fastest collegiate time for that event.  At the conference meet, she finished more than 22 seconds ahead of her nearest competitor.  This is an enormous margin for a relatively short race.

Distance runners tend improve after their collegiate years, so it’s likely that we haven’t yet seen the best of Koll.  As a point of comparison, the current national record of 30:22.22 for the 10,000 meters was set by Shalane Flanagan when she was 27 years old (that record is an impressive 28 seconds faster than the 2^nd best runner).  At this point, Koll is “only” the sixth fastest American woman ever.  If she can improve her time by 5 seconds, she would jump into the 4^th spot.  A half dozen years of improvement after college, and perhaps she’ll grab the national record.   The current world record is 29:31.78 – could this possibly be in play?

Watch for Lisa Koll in the 2012 Olympics and beyond!

The van screeched to a halt.  The rear doors flew open, and a half dozen girls jumped out.  They quickly seized their prey, carried him back to the van, and threw him inside.  A moment later, the nondescript white van raced off.

Chip Morgan was laying in the back on the van, in complete shock.  A moment later, he had been jogging around the lake, listening to some tunes on his iPod.  He couldn’t begin to fathom why he had been abducted.  Chip wondered if it was really such a bad thing to be kidnapped by a gang of attractive girls.

Chip entertained that thought for about a half second.  One of the girls flipped him roughly onto his back.  Another shoved her knee into his back, causing enough pain to subdue him while other girls securely tied his hands behind him.  His ankles were bound to each other to complete the job.

At this point, Chip began to realize that this probably wasn’t just a harmless sorority prank. 

Several minutes later, the van turned off the highway onto a gravel road.  Chip bounced around in the back of the van, and he was able to feel every bump in the road. The interior of the van was complete silence – not a word had been uttered since he had been abducted.

After his body has endured much abuse, the van pulled to a stop.  Chip was yanked roughly out of the van and forced to march forward.  In his hobbled state, Chip was unable to move very quickly, and his captors were quite impatient.  Chip fell onto his face twice as the girls urged him to move faster.

When he was finally told to stop, Chip took a moment to absorb his surroundings.  There were perhaps two hundred girls in a circle around him, each wielding a flaming torch which allowed the empty field to be bathed in light.  Ahead of him was small wooden stage, and in the middle of the stage was a low table.

The girl on the stage made a motion with her hand, and the dull roar of the crowd dissipated into complete silence.

“He has arrived.  It is time for the ceremony to begin.  Bring forth the man.”

Chip was forced to ascend the stairs.  When he arrived on the stage, his binds were removed for a moment.  Then the girls fastened him securely to the table at the center of the stage.

When Chip was secured, the leader of the group approached him and spoke loudly, so that the entire crowd could hear her.

“For thousands of years, men have viewed women as mere sex objects.  Today is the day of reckoning for men.  Man, I give you the kiss of death.”

At this, she moved very close to Chip and kissed him firmly on the mouth.  An increasingly confused Chip allowed himself to enjoy the pleasure of the moment.  When she pulled away, Chip was shocked to realize that he was bleeding. 

Before he could make any sense of the proceedings, the next girl approached him and gave him the kiss of death – making a quick slice with a scalpel as she kissed him.  Then the next girl, and another, and another.  Chip quickly realized that the kisses were intended as a mockery of men’s treatment of women as sex objects.

After the final girl made her cut, she followed the others in procession out of the field.  Chip was left alone with his thoughts, dripping from the hundreds of cuts on his body.

After the girls had left, the location once again reverted to nature.  A short while later, the wolves began to approach and the buzzards circled overhead.

Less than a year after media magnate Sam Zell sold the Chicago Cubs to the Ricketts family, the lovable losers are reported to be on the block again.  This according to a source close to the family.  The Soap Boxers made a call to Ricketts family spokesperson April Sloof.  When Sloof finally returned our call, she said that she could neither confirm nor deny the rumor.

Our anonymous source, however, was quite willing to spill the beans.  It seems that there was a great deal of buyer’s remorse after the sale was finalized.

The Ricketts era got off to a rough start when the family discovered that the Zell group had stripped the facilities of all tangible assets.  Uniforms, bats, balls, and gloves had all been packed into boxes and removed from Wrigley Field before the sale was completed – likely headed to eBay for sale to collectors.  The theft was not limited to baseball equipment, however.  Office chairs were removed, carpets ripped up, copper wire stolen, and light bulbs taken from the outlets.  Tom Ricketts expressed great dismay:

“When you spend nearly a billion dollars on a team, you expect to buy it lock, stock, and barrel.  This isn’t like buying a house, in that you need to buy the stove and refrigerator.  When you buy a baseball team, you should be able to step in on day one and continue operations without interruption.  It’s completely ridiculous to send the general manager to Home Depot in search of compact flourescent bulbs.”

The Ricketts family also suggested that false statements were made about the recent history of the Cubs.  Tom Ricketts has accused Sam Zell of showing him an altered version of the Cubs’ 1907 World Series trophy.  Our inside source says that Zell hired an engraver to change the inscription from “1907” to “2007”.  Ricketts was reported to be “livid” when he discovered the deceit.

The straw that might break the camel’s back, however, are the zoning restrictions of Wrigley Field.  Ricketts, a devoted environmentalist, had planned to turn the field into a common grazing area for goats during Cubs road trips.  However, the area surrounding Wrigley Field is zoned in a manner that precludes it from being used for agricultural purposes.

If the Cubs are to be sold, who will be the next buyer?  There are rumblings that Portland Trailblazers owner Paul Allen is forming an ownership group.  It is believed that Allen, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, and Beaverton sports apparel company Nike would be the largest investors in the group.  Allen has long been connected to proposals to bring Major League Baseball to Oregon.  Allen is reported to favor a stadium in suburban Tigard because of its closeness to Interstate 5.

We will continue to follow this story as it develops.

Two young pitchers signed big deals last year. The Nationals signed highly touted Stephen Strasburg to a deal that will pay $15.1 million between 2009 and 2012. The Reds signed Cuban defector Aroldis Chapman to a six year deal worth at least $30.25 million (if Chapman is arbitration-eligible after the 2012 or 2013 seasons, he can convert subsequent salary amounts into bonus and go through arbitration – a great deal for him).

The Reds are seriously considering bring Chapman to Cincinnati with them to start the season (although it has become increasingly likely that Chappy will also start the season in the minors). The Nationals are sending Strasburg to AA Harrisburg to start the season (not even AAA, but AA!). Does this mean that Chapman is better than Strasburg?

First of all, why is Strasburg being sent to AA instead of AAA? One reason is that Harrisburg’s average April temperatures (average high 61; average low 41) are a bit higher than those of Syracuse (high 56, low 35). Low temperatures can contribute to injuries.

The bigger question you may be asking is this – why send Strasburg to the minor leagues at all? Why not have him start the season with the Nationals?

As with many things in life, the short answer is easy: money.

Baseball players become eligible for free agency when they have accumulated 6.00 or more years of Major League service with a team. This is based on the number of days on the major league roster (or disabled list). You can accumulate six years of service in a six years span, or you can bounce up and down for twenty years and never reach this threshold.

There is one wrinkle to this – if you send a player to the minor for less than 20 days, he still gets credit for the entire season. Send him to the minors for 21 days, and he gets credit only for his actual time served.

If you aren’t grasping the significance yet, it’s this: if you can keep a guy’s service time at 5.9 years instead of 6.0 years, you delay his free agency by a year – saving quite a bit of money on the 7th year.

The point of having Strasburg start the season in the minors, then, is to delay his free agency eligibility until after the 2016 season.

A smaller issue is whether the Nationals can delay Strasburg’s arbitration eligibility. All players are eligible for binding salary arbitration after they have 3.00 or more years of service. Additionally, amongst players with more than 2 but less than 3 years of service, the top 17% (in terms of service time) are also eligible for arbitration. These players are referred to as “Super Twos”. The cutoff for Super Twos has historically been between 2 years, 128 days and 2 years, 140 days (but it’s a moving target, since it’s based on the current year’s group of players). In recent years, many teams attempt to game the system by giving a player slightly less than 128 days of service their rookie year, in an effort to have them fall short of Super Two status. If the Nationals can manage to do this, this would make Strasburg arbitration eligible after the 2013 season instead of after the 2012 season.

So, what does this all mean for Strasburg’s salary?

Note: Strasburg also got a $7.5 million signing bonus.

• 2010: $2M (per contract)
• 2011: $2.5M (per contract)
• 2012: $3M (per contract)
• 2013: If a Super Two, salary determined by arbitration. If not, the team can impose a salary (must be at least 80% of the previous year’s salary).
• 2014: Salary determined by arbitration
• 2015: Salary determined by arbitration
• 2016: If Strasburg has six years of service, he becomes a free agent following the 2015 season. If he has less than six years of service, his salary is determined by arbitration.

At any point in this path, Strasburg and the Nationals can sign a new contract that would remove him from the arbitration process. This is quite likely, since arbitration can be quite adversarial and tends to hurt some feelings. However, if Strasburg’s arbitration year is pushed back to 2014 and his free agency pushed back until after the 2016 season, these years are worth less money, and this will be reflected in any long term contract offered by the Nationals.

How to Get Your Guest Post Submission Accepted

Over the course of the past few months, I have had guest articles on six different blogs.  The blogs have been in the fields of personal finance (Lazy Man and Money and The Digerati Life), technology (40 Tech), blogging (ProBlogger) and blogs that defy categorization (Life, Laughs, and Lemmings and World’s Strongest Librarian).  I suspect that I will be the only person to land articles on this specific mix of blogs.  Interestingly, despite being first and foremost a fiction writer, I haven’t been a guest author on any fiction-oriented blogs.

My recent guest article on ProBlogger was related to the multi-author aspect of The Soap Boxers.  Not surprisingly, this spurred many comments related to guest posting.  Some of the commenters were frustrated at their lack of success in landing guest spots.

I’m hardly the most successful guest poster in the history of the blogosphere, but I may have a few tips for those who are in the beginning stages of trying to build their brand.

Build relationships

I’d like to say that everyone submitting a guest article has an equal chance of being accepted.  In reality, this isn’t the case.  If a blogger is comparing two articles of similar quality, it’s only natural they lean toward someone they know.  I’ve known Lazy Man for several years.  On the other side of the spectrum, I was less familiar with Josh at World’s Strongest Librarian, but had commented on an article of his at ProBlogger.  The other sites are ones where I had established myself as a frequent commenter.

This doesn’t mean that you need to stalk your favorite bloggers as a way to get to know them better.  Please, don’t.  Many of us carry pepper spray.  However, do take the time to comment on other people’s articles – the comments that are relevant and insightful.  This will raise your profile a bit.

Try, try again

You’re not going to get every article accepted.  Rejection is part of the process of being a writer.  In addition to the articles I had published, I had many others rejected.

Just because one site isn’t interested in a particular article doesn’t mean that it’s dead.  A couple of articles that landed as guest posts on one blog had been previously rejected by another site.  Do some blogs have high standards than others?  That’s possible – the New York Times probably has higher standards for submissions than the Hometown News.

Equally possible is the fact that each blogger just has a different taste.  Quite often, when a blogger rejects your submission, they will give you feedback on WHY they rejected it.  A few weeks ago, I was trying to peddle some fiction stories based on the theme of personal finance to blogs that specialized in personal finance.  This is admittedly a bit of a square peg/round hole situation – these blogs didn’t usually run fiction pieces.  The response from The Digerati Life was that she simply wasn’t interested in fiction – but would be interested in a non-fiction piece.  A short time later, I had an article on the etiquette of tipping (waiters, not cows) on her site.

Always be respectful during the process.  Never go down the road of “You’ll regret it when this article appears on your competitor’s site!”  You can spend years building a bridge and just a moment burning it.

Give them a quality, finished product

First of all, give away your top shelf work.  Don’t use your guest articles as a dumping ground for substandard work.  Darren @ ProBlogger made reference to this in one of his articles.  This seems completely counter-intuitive to me.  You’re introducing yourself to a room full of strangers – put your best foot forward!

Make sure that your article fits into their niche, if the blog is a niche blog.  If it’s a baseball blog, don’t submit an article about football.  I’ve bent this rule on occasion with some things that were a bit outside the box.  However, I knew that this could work against me.  Even in those cases, the articles were a half twist away from the true focus of the target blogs.  Sure, I was pitching fiction to personal finance bloggers – but finance played a significant role in those stories.

Give them a finished, polished product.  A blogger wants to be able to turn your content into an article quickly, with minimal fuss.  Proofread your article carefully.  Nobody wants to spend time cleaning up typos.  Even worse, poor grammar reflects poorly on the blog.

Add a short biography for inclusion in the article.  This avoids having the blogger contact your for additional details.  I have developed a standard short bio for myself that will now be appearing wherever my guest articles appear.  The consistency may also help trigger familiarity amongst readers who stumble across your articles on several different blogs.

Most sites are going to want exclusive use of the article you submit.  If you truly value the experience of being a guest on that blog, give them the exclusivity.

Last, but not least, include a link to your blog – you want to make sure to reap the benefits of your work!

OK, I surely missed some good tips.  For those of you who have landed guest posts – what are some of your secrets?

Troy Peterson secured the two gas cans into the trunk of the car and slammed the trunk lid.  A few minutes later, he was on the road.  The hunt had commenced.

Troy pointed his Impala in the direction of – well, of nowhere in particular, actually.  He just drove.  Mile after mile of interstate zoomed by.  Troy locked the cruise control in at 65 miles per hour and listened to the radio as faster cars zoomed by him in the left hand lane.  On this day, Troy could not risk a speeding ticket.

A bit after dusk, Troy pulled off the interstate and quickly found himself on a deserted road.  He refueled the gas tank with one of the cans, urinated in the ditch, and then jumped back in the car to continue his journey.  As he drove, he grabbed one of the ham sandwiches he had packaged for the trip.  He wolfed down the sandwich and chased it down with a can of Pepsi.

At 10 PM, Troy parked his car outside a large grocery store.  He grabbed his Cubs hat and pulled it down over his face.  He also grabbed another very important item from the car.

Troy began to walk away from the grocery store, deeper into the heart of the neighborhood.  At this time of night, there was very little activity.

After twenty minutes of walking the streets, he saw a light come on.  A door opened, and a young woman stepped out of her house.  She turned onto the sidewalk and began to walk directly toward Troy.  It appeared that she, too, was out for a walk on this peaceful evening.

As the woman approached Troy, she gave him a friendly smile.  Troy responded by pulling his gun and firing two shots into her head.  The woman was dead before she hit the ground.

Troy immediately began to run.  Soon, he was several blocks away from the crime scene and slowed his pace to a walk.  He returned to the parking lot, got back into the car, and pointed the Impala toward home.  He made another pit stop on the way home, once again filling the tank an emptying his bladder.

Troy returned home just in time to stop by Denny’s for breakfast.  He visited the bathroom first, scrubbing off the residue of any gasoline smell that remained.  His hands now smelled of soap.  Troy exited the bathroom and took his seat at a table nearly the window.  As he waited for the waitress to bring his grand slam, Troy greeted several friends, firmly establishing his whereabouts early that morning.

Hundreds of miles away, a woman lie in the morgue.  The police could find no obvious motive for her murder.  Nor would they ever find one.  She had been cut down in the prime on her life by a stranger looking for a cheap thrill.  The randomness of the attack and her killer’s effort to avoid a paper trail would make it virtually impossible to solve the crime.

Back at the Denny’s, Troy Peterson smiled to himself as he sipped his orange juice.  He loved his monthly field trips.

This is the story of the little audio book that could – struggling through adversity to final lay down 4 tracks for consumption by the public.  Not just any audio book, but the audio book of The Cell Window.

Writing

Let’s start at the beginning.  This audio book, like all audio books, began its life as a written story.  When I released The Fiction of Kosmo, Volume 1, I included the 10,000 word story Key Relationships.  Key Relationships basically poured out of my brain and onto the keyboard thousands of words at a time.  Even with many competing priorities, I was able to finish the story in ten days.

The Cell Window was a completely different beast.  I struggled to gain traction with story.  Despite the fact that it is nearly identical in length to Key Relationships, it took six weeks to complete!  In the process, it delayed the release of The Fiction of Kosmo, Volume 2.

That’s not to say that the process of writing the story was entirely negative.  When I was finished, I was very pleased with the story.  The mature tone of the story caused me to lose one loyal readers, but it got very positive reviews from many others.

The store

At some point along the way, I decided that I wanted to sell some of my content online in an effort to break even on my blogging.  I wanted to avoid sites that would charge me fees, in order to keep costs low, allowing me to keep prices low.  I ended up going with Zen Cart (see review here), a product that installed on my web server.

While Zen Cart has the benefit of being free, it has the drawback of having a much steeper learning curve than a site where you simply drop your files, set a price, and wait for the cash to roll in.  I’ve tinkered quite a bit with it, taking time away from my writing.  At this point, the Hyrax Publications store is probably in a fairly stable form.  Other than adding new content, I don’t foresee any major changes.

Headset woes

What would an audio book be without the audio?

When it came time to record, I went in search of the headset microphone I had used with my old copy of Via Voice speech recognition software.  It wasn’t in my drawer of computer stuff.  I pulled out the large tote from the closet – it wasn’t in there, either.

Oops.  It seems that I had bundled Via Voice – and the accompanying headset microphone – with an old computer when I sold it.  I’m guessing that this is because Via Voice was for OS9 and I had replaced that computer with an OS X machine.  In any case, no headset microphone.

OK, so I went out and bought a headset microphone.  No problem.

Well, actually, problem.  When I went to use Audacity to record the audio, it didn’t pick up any sound at all.  What was going on?  I’m not an expert on recording audio, so I searched Google in hopes of finding out what was at the heart of the problem.

It seems that Macs require actually “line level” audio input, whereas PCs do not, because of some additional component on the motherboard of PCs.  Thus, the headset intended for a PC was not going to work.  Curses.  I abandoned the headset microphone.  As a last ditch effort, I recorded audio to my microcassette recorder and tried to feed that in.  The computer DID recognize the input – but the sound quality was pretty crappy.

I went back to eBay and ordered a USB headset that should work with my Mac.  A few days later, the headset arrived in the mail.  I was ready to roll – I wanted to start recording immediately.

There was only one problem – there was no USB adapter.  I took a careful look inside the case and couldn’t find anything.  I carefully re-read the eBay description.  Yep, it was supposed to have a USB adapter.  I looked at the image in the auction – it clearly showed the USB adapter.  It was quite obvious that the adapter had been left out of my package.

I communicated the problem to the company, and they quickly shipped out the adapter.  I made a few quick test recordings, and I was ready to roll.

Recorded

The first thing I recorded was The Tale of the Wolf.  Honestly, I was a bit underwhelmed by the audio version.  In particular, I notice some idiosyncrasies that I didn’t like.  (No, I’m not going to point them out.  If I did, they would jump front and center for you. )

Tale of the Wolf was a mere 2 minutes in length.  The Cell Window was clearly going to be much longer.  Since the story contains about 20 times as many words as Tale of the Wolf, I estimated that it would be 40+ minutes long.

Clearly, a 40 minute audio book should be broken into some tracks.  I had a few things to consider.  I could choose to zip up all the MP3s into a compressed file and have the customer download just one file.  Alternately, I could have the customers download each file separately, as MPs.  I decided to go the route of the multiple downloads because I didn’t like the extra step of extracting the MP3s from the compressed file after download.  This seems like a minor issue to a lot of people – but one of my computers does not have any native tool to expand a ZIP file, and it took some time to find the proper tool.  It wasn’t a big deal for me, but I felt it might be problematic for some customers.  Better to leave the files as MP3.

How many tracks?  I founded that breaking the story into chunks of about 2500 words would allow me to end each track at the end of a story section.  The audio book would have 4 tracks (for a total length of about 48 minutes).

I was very self-conscious during the recording.  I’m not a professional reader, and knew that the audio book was not going to have the slickness of something by an audio master such as Scott Brick.  The goal was for the audio performance to be neutral – not adding significantly to the value of the original story, but also not detracting from the value.

When I was finished, I popped the files into iTunes and gave them a listen.  Surprisingly, I thought the MP3s came out sounding OK – better than they had sounded to me when I was recording.  Certainly, there are a few awkward spots where I momentarily lose my place when reading.  Overall, though, my biased opinion was that I had done a somewhat competent job, considering my amateur status.

I burned the files to CD and listened one more time the next morning.  After listening a second time, I was still happy with the performance, and deemed it ready for the store.

You can download the audio version of The Cell Window at the Hyrax Publications store.  You can purchase it separately for $3.99.  It is also included in the Annual Kosmo Pass (regular price $18, currently on sale for $9), along with all of Kosmo’s eBooks and audio book, including those scheduled for release in the future.  We expect to add a few eBooks each year, and plan to record nearly all of the 50 existing fiction stories to audio in the next few months.  The annual pass is currently good for 14 months, rather than 12.

As a special bonus, the first person to buy a copy of the audio version of The Cell Window today, will get it for FREE – and I’ll upgrade you to the Annual Kosmo Pass!  What’s the catch?  Well, you won’t know if you’re the first person until later (the charge will be processed, then I will refund the money later in the day).