Erwin's Law: The "hidden" story. Waiting for Godot or just Amazon.com?

A paperback version of my detective novel Erwin's Law was published recently. But the book's story description still hasn't shown up on Amazon.com. About all you are told is that it's "An Erwin Tennyson Mystery," has 262 pages, measures 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.6 inches, and weighs 12.3 ounces. Oh, and the list price is $10.99.

So, for those who have asked what it's about, here's the summary:

Erwin Tennyson is an unemployed newspaper writer who made his living reviewing detective novels until he lost his job in the Great Recession. When he stumbles over a woman's body in a park, he reports his find to the budget-challenged Austin, Texas police, and is convinced the woman was murdered. He is appalled when he learns the police have listed her death as a "Jane Doe suicide."

Erwin can't find another paid book reviewer's position, so he decides to become a private investigator to try to earn a living—and track down the woman's killer. But Erwin is no tough guy. He has zero fighting skills, and he hasn't fired a gun in 40 years. Working as a P.I. without a state license is a felony in Texas; only ex-cops, ex-insurance investigators, or university graduates with criminal justice degrees qualify for the permit.

Undaunted, Erwin takes the law into his own hands and risks arrest as he investigates, unaware that he also is setting himself up to be..the killer's next victim.

Erwin's Law: An Erwin Tennyson Mystery

-- Si Dunn

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Warning: Consuming too much information can make you fat, clueless -- and dead

The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption
By Clay A. Johnson
(O’Reilly, hardback, list price $22.99; Kindle edition, list price $19.99)

Book Review

We are sitting down too often and too long while we consume information. It pours into our heads from the Web, from TV, from smart phones, from books, and as blather from our car radios while we drive around.

Much of the information we consume is drivel and crap – the digital equivalent of high-fat junk food and raw sugar. And some of us are driving ourselves to destructive distraction through gluttonous obsessions with tweets, status updates, downloads, videos, instant messages, text messages, emails and restless Web surfing.

In this controversial new book from O’Reilly Media, veteran software developer, open source guru and political advocate Clay A. Johnson makes the forceful argument that our current mania for consuming information is killing us, mentally and physically.

For instance, suppose a tweet just went by mentioning some kind of rumored problem with pig populations in Zambia. You idly read it, process it in your head, waste a few more seconds of your life, take another sip of your latte and another bite of bagel while continuing to sit on your butt much longer than you originally intended.

Now you check your Facebook account on your iPhone or iPad, take another sip of your latte, take another bite of bagel, and go back to Twitter. There, you follow a link to what seemed to be a review of a movie you’ve already seen to see. It turns out to be just a lame blog post about how Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich resemble certain characters in Avatar. Then you take another bite of bagel, another sip of latte and check your email and follow a link to something inane about Lady Gaga.

More wasted time. More attention to generally useless information. And more sedentary life has gone by.

We now spend nearly 11 hours a day consuming – frequently gorging on – information, Johnson’s book points out. And it’s driving us to distraction – and killing us.

First, the physical dangers. Johnson notes: “In 2004, one physician coined the term Sedentary Death Syndrome to classify all the diseases that come from the sedentary state. The effects: heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and yes, obesity. Some researchers are calling it the second largest threat to public health in America. What are we doing when we’re sedentary? Few of us are meditating. We’re consuming information.”

He continues: “New research points to sitting, especially amongst men, as a leading cause of death. Even if you exercise regularly, it turns out that sitting for long periods of time can be deadly.”

It’s also easy to lose track of time and lose control of time management while distracted by the free flow of information. Something unexpected or surprising or outrageous on the Web grabs your attention, and your carefully crafted to-do list for the day is shot to hell. And, relationships can be affected: “Just a quick check of email when we get home can often end up in evenings entirely lost to LCD screens…” instead of talking and paying attention to each other.

Then there’s the problem of “attention fatigue.” Writes Johnson: “About two years ago, I started to wonder: what the heck happened to my short-term memory? And where did my attention span go? I’ve written a little pithy 140-character tweet, sent it into the universe, and in no more than five minutes, I’ve received a reply. The only problem is, I’ve already forgotten what I wrote in the first place. I’ve had to go back, and look at what I said just five minutes ago to understand what the person replying to me is referencing.”

This book offers more dire warnings about consuming too much information. But the author also offers ideas and recommendations for achieving “Attention Fitness.” You can still have your information and consume it, too, in deliberate, conscious doses that are healthier for your mind, body and your participation in American democracy.

If you pay attention to The Information Diet long enough to actually think about what it points out and proposes, you may figure out how to get healthier again, how to regain your focus – and how to better understand the ways you are being duped by some of the misinformation constantly sucked into your head by your addiction.

You can become a more conscious and proactive consumer of information and not just another wasted – and life-wasting -- data junkie.


– Si Dunn‘s latest book is a detective novel, Erwin’s Law. His other published works include Jump, a novella, and a book of poetry, plus several short stories, including The 7th Mars Cavalry, all available on Kindle. He is a screenwriter, a freelance book reviewer, and a former technical writer and software/hardware QA test specialist.

Need to do a big presentation? There’s a book for that: slide:ology #bookreview

slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations
By Nancy Duarte
(O’Reilly, paperback, list price $34.99; Kindle edition, list price $27.99)

Bet you were thinking I was about to say: "Need to do a big presentation? There's an app for that!"

There probably is, or soon will be. Meanwhile, consider this book.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could just phone in your PowerPoint slides and audio and stay comfortably ensconced at a Starbucks in Waterloo, Iowa, while 50 managers and executives in Boston huddled in a poorly ventilated conference room and sweated while they marveled at your presentation?

Some of you already have developed and honed an iPhone-it-in or iPad-it-in capability. But most of the world’s drafted or “volunteered” presenters have not. They show up at work one day and are told they will have to prepare a presentation by next Tuesday that could make or break their job – or a whole department’s jobs.

“No pressure. You know how to do this, right? Everyone else is tied up with projects and deadlines. So we’re counting on you. Have fun with it. Get creative! And have it ready for review and comments by 4 p.m. tomorrow.”

Published in 2008 and still attracting readers, slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations has gathered an array of pleased fans and good reviews, as well as some scathing reviews from a few detractors.

This is not a 1-2-3 how-to book that can help you throw together a slide show by tomorrow morning. Instead, it lives up, quite colorfully, to its subtitle: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations. It delves carefully into a wide array of topics related to the process of preparing slides that can connect with their intended audience. And it is nicely illustrated with many examples.

If you are starting a new job or a new position where you will be expected to make presentations, you should consider spending some quality learning time with this book and keeping it handy. Get a jump now on developing the skills and knowledge you will need when crunch time suddenly hits.

This also applies if you are under increasing obligation to wow the bosses with charts and graphs and bullet points – or if you are thinking of becoming a presentations teacher or consultant.

Developed by Nancy Duarte, a “widely recognized…leader in presentation development and design,” slide:ology is divided into 12 chapters: 

• Chapter 1: Creating a New Slide Ideology
• Chapter 2: Creating Ideas, Not Slides
• Chapter 3: Creating Diagrams
• Chapter 4: Displaying Data
• Chapter 5: Thinking Like a Designer
• Chapter 6: Arranging Elements
• Chapter 7: Using Visual Elements: Background, Color, and Text
• Chapter 8: Using Visual Elements: Images
• Chapter 9: Creating Movement
• Chapter 10: Governing with Templates
• Chapter 11: Interacting with Slides
• Chapter 12: Manifesto: The Five Theses of the Power of a Presentation

The author cautions that “presentations all too often reflect the agenda of the presenter rather than build a connection with the audience.”

And, if your job includes meeting with customers: “In many instances, presentations are the last impression a customer has of a company before closing a business deal.”

Indeed, elaborate hundred-million-dollar advertising and branding campaigns can be neutralized by a single lame presentation on a laptop computer right at the critical moment, she warns.

You will not want to be the one who created that dud slide show.

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– Si Dunn‘s latest book is a detective novel, Erwin’s Law. His other published works include Jump, a novella, and a book of poetry, plus several short stories, including The 7th Mars Cavalry, all available on Kindle. He is a screenwriter, a freelance book reviewer and a former technical writer and software/hardware QA test specialist.

Starting (or revamping) a small business? Three good books

I have operated a small (very small) business for more than 30 years. I am now in the process of revamping some of what I do and sell.

The three books listed below are proving very helpful to my ongoing efforts. If you are starting or restructing a small business, you may find them useful, too.

Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinmeir Hansson - A refreshingly snarky alternative to those how-to biz books that have you start out with market studies, mission statements, business plans and rounds of meetings.

The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott - The recently issued third edition covers digital trends in marketing and public relations. Even if your business will be run from a single laptop or smartphone, you will find good and useful information in this book.

The Long Tail by Chris Anderson - Yeah, everyone and his dog mentions this one. But have you actually read it and considered how and what it means to "Make everything available" and "Help me find it"? within the context of your enterprise? Do you agree with him that "the future of business is selling less of more"? How could you make that concept work in your business?


– Si Dunn‘s latest book is a detective novel, Erwin’s Law. His other published works include Jump, a novella, and a book of poetry, plus several short stories, including The 7th Mars Cavalry, all available on Kindle. He is a screenwriter, a freelance book reviewer, a manuscript editor, and a former technical writer and software/hardware QA test specialist.

Revisiting the Classics with a Kindle

Owning a Kindle has made it easier for me to revisit some of the so-called “classic books.” And, this time, I am actually reading them all the way through to the end.

For more than 30 years, I have collected and stuffed my bookcases with hardback and paperback copies of many old and ancient books. These have ranged from Aesop’s Fables and Aristotle’s Poetics to Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, Shakespeare’s plays and poems, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles, to name just a few.

The volumes have looked very good and very scholarly up on my shelves. Sometimes they have even provided handy sources of quotes for some of my writing. But I have not actually read most of the books, at least not completely. Most of them I bought and promptly shelved with every intention to read them someday, later, maybe, when I had the time.

My wife gave me a Kindle as an anniversary present recently. When I discovered (1) that Kindle editions of many of the “classics” are available for free and (2) that a Kindle will hold more than 3,000 books, I made three decisions.

First, I downloaded a few of the $0.00 public domain classics and read them. The first ones I finished included John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress and Aristotle’s Poetics, books I had long ago started in hardback but never completed. Somehow, they just seemed easier to stick with on the Kindle screen.

Then, I downloaded another dozen or so free classics. And I pulled the corresponding hardbacks and paperbacks from my book shelves. I gave away some of the books and sold a few of them to a used book store.

Now, suddenly, there are a few open spaces on my once-crammed bookshelves – spaces for some photographs, plants and curios, as well as esteemed books.

Owning too many things, I believe, can drain away valuable psychic energy. This includes owning too many physical books that spend most of their time gathering dust and cobwebs in my office.

Of course, many of the books I treasure do not have Kindle editions. So those I will keep, read and continue to display in hardback or paperback editions.

But I intend to replace most of the classics I own with free or inexpensive Kindle editions and gravitate toward buying Kindle editions of new books, when possible.

My Kindle could hold nearly ten times as many books as I currently own. But it is not the size of the digital library or physical library that matters.

What matters is that I actually read the books I possess.

I really can’t explain why I now enjoy reading some of the world’s oldest books on some of the world’s newest digital reading technology.

I just do.

Now excuse me. I hear my free copy of The Divine Comedy calling.

-- Si Dunn

Poetry Book "Anchoring" Now Available from Lulu.com

Anchoring, my second book of poetry, is now available through Lulu.com. Anchoring is a collection of poems that previously appeared in a wide range of publications, such as Rolling Stone, the Texas Observer, the Denver Post and several literary magazines. My first book of poetry, Waiting for Water, is still available on Amazon.com.

-- Si Dunn

A True (and Truly Good) Tale of Newsprint and Murder

WAR OF WORDS: A True Tale of Newsprint and Murder
By Simon Read
(Union Square Press, $24.95)

You think the newspaper business is tough now? Competing newspapers in mid-19th-century San Francisco sometimes fought each other—literally—for circulation and advertising supremacy in a rough-and-tumble city fueled by Gold Rush money, whiskey and gambling and ruled by corruption, vigilantes, violence and scandal. Publishers were beaten or murdered. Editors sometimes faced off with dueling pistols. Mobs angry at articles or editorials surged into newspaper offices and destroyed everything in sight. And, notes author Simon Read in War of Words, “Reporters roamed the streets like rival gang members, many with the reassuring weight of a sidearm against the hip.”

At times, a half dozen or more newspapers battled each other for readers, and there was plenty to write about—or gossip about—in mid-19th-century San Francisco.

“Murder was the news industry’s bread and butter in those early days,” the author writes. “A tale of killing always received priority coverage and was seldom cut or held to make room for copy of a less dramatic nature….In the 1800s, much like today, sex and violence sold newspapers.”

Right in the middle of this newsprint melee, the famed (and recently financially imperiled) San Francisco Chronicle was born “as a throwaway vehicle for theater advertisements and drama critiques” known as the Daily Dramatic Chronicle. It was founded by two brothers, Charles and Michael de Young, members of “a family with an obscure history draped in sordid rumor.”

The de Youngs, however, proved to be adept and lucky businessmen, Simon Read points out in this engaging, entertaining and enlightening historical portrait of San Francisco journalism and the controversial personalities behind it. The de Young brothers paid back their publication’s startup loan just one week after their debut issue on Jan. 16, 1865. They also kept costs low by doing all of the newsgathering, typesetting and publishing themselves. They even gathered up and recycled old issues in clever ways that brought in a little extra money and helped build up their publication’s reputation.

The Daily Dramatic Chronicle soon became a magnet for writers such as Mark Twain, Bret Harte and others who later would become famous. It also got an unexpected circulation boost from a tragic event in Washington, D.C., when President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. The brothers’ newspaper normally went to press after the city’s morning papers had published and long before the afternoon papers appeared. The Daily Dramatic Chronicle was able to hit the streets with fresh headlines and quickly follow up with extra editions as stunned people scrambled to get the latest news about Lincoln’s death. Meanwhile, mobs attacked and destroyed some of San Francisco’s newspapers that had taken pro-Southern or anti-Lincoln stances.

After these dramatic events, and now with fewer competitors, the newspaper kept growing and later was renamed the San Francisco Chronicleon Aug. 16, 1869.

But new troubles and controversies were just beginning for what would become San Francisco’s premiere daily newspaper. Simon Read’s new book takes the reader deep inside the turmoil of the San Francisco Chronicle’s early history as a war of words spirals out of control between Charles de Young and Isaac Kalloch, a mayoral candidate and well-known “hellfire preacher” with a scandalous reputation. One man soon would shoot and almost kill the other, and a son of the survivor later would retaliate by shooting and killing his father’s assailant.

The author, a former Bay Area reporter who has written three other books, has done an excellent job of mining colorful quotes and details from newspaper articles, periodicals, magazine articles, and court transcripts from “the time in question.”

WAR OF WORDS: A True Tale of Newsprint and Murder definitely lives up to its title and subtitle.

-- Si Dunn

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New Blog: Third-Chance Book Reviews

Why third-chance book reviews? Well, why not? Authors work hard to create their books -- sometimes one, two, three, or even more years. Then their books are published, put on display in bookstores, only to be unceremoniously yanked from the shelves a few weeks later to make way for newer books.

Meanwhile, newspapers and magazines are eliminating book reviews or tightening up on the number of reviews they publish, on paper or online, to try to cut costs as they struggle to survive. Thus, it is getting tougher and tougher for authors to get their books reviewed anywhere.

If your book doesn't get reviewed right away, it rarely gets a second chance. And after it has been on the market for a year or two, it has almost zero chance of getting reviewed, except on a book-review blog. These days, the shelf life of a book is much shorter than the time it takes to create it.

Hence, Third-Chance Book Reviews. It offers one more opportunity for a few books to get reviewed.

To be honest, I am an old-fashioned book reviewer who is now in mortal danger of becoming unemployed in the dwindling world of print media. After many years of reviewing books in newspapers, magazines and literary journals, I have started this book review blog as a means of self-defense. It also reflects my longtime desire to help keep books -- words printed on actual paper -- in front of readers.

Much of my bias, initially, will be on books about the American West and Southwest or written by authors who live in the American West or Southwest. These types of books have been my speciality for about 25 years.

But I intend to expand my coverage to any and all types of books that interest me and entertain me.

I will not review books that I dislike. I will only post brief reviews of books that I have found interesting and entertaining and think others might like, too.

Likewise, I won't post "paid" reviews. If a particular book grabs your interest, I hope you will click on the link posted in the blog. It will take you to Amazon.com. If you buy the book via that link, I will make a few cents from the transaction. If you don't like that arrangement, just go to Amazon.com, search for the title and make your best deal.

Thank you in advance for visiting Third-Chance Book Reviews, and thank you for considering some of the books I have chosen to review.

Si Dunn
Third-Chance Book Reviews
Sagecreek Productions LLC

Have You Read a Book…This Year?

By Si Dunn

Be honest: Have you read a book…this century?

A new study from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) once again highlights a disturbing trend: Americans seem to be doing less reading than ever, and reading skills in most age groups continue to plunge.

Indeed, the new study, titled "To Read or Not to Read: A Question of National Consequence," echoes and amplifies the findings of an earlier NEA survey, “Reading at Risk.” According to CBS News, that 2004 survey “found an increasing number of adult Americans were not even reading one book a year.”

Think about it. In a nation in which we are free to read virtually any book ever printed, we now are choosing to read almost no books at all. We are letting vast quantities of knowledge, experience, imagination and entertainment go to waste while we stare slack-jawed at reruns of America’s Hottest Super Slobs on wall-sized TV screens or hang out online at social websites, exchanging “OMG! LOL! 2 HOT!” messages with digital strangers.

Okay, I’ll confess: Sometimes, I get paid to read. I earn part of my income by reviewing books for a major daily newspaper. And, I read books for research while writing articles, books and screenplays.

But, at the end of each day, when the computer, the TV, the cell phone and the radio are all powered off, and when I can at last enjoy some quiet time, I often grab a book.

To turn it on and boot it up, I simply have to open its front cover. After that, I can be transported to almost any time or any place in the imaginable universe, just by reading a few words. On paper. (Remember paper?)

Have you read a book this year? Have you read a book yet this century?

Would it really hurt you to read two books this next year and maybe help turn the disheartening trend line upward for a change?

You can start by turning off this blog. I won't mind. I'll be reading, too.

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