Dear Vacation Rental Owner,
have you forgotten why you ever started with vacation rentals? Is all getting you down? You imagined interesting guests and a healthy second income. You’ve got endless chores and piles of bills.
Momentum is a cruel fact of life. When people do well, they are buoyed by their own success, and go on to greater achievements. When things go wrong, they seem to keep going wrong relentlessly. Eventually, the knocks can wear you down. You lose your spark, everything is a drag. You’re certainly not projecting holiday spirit to your guests!
You can escape from the cycle. To start with you need to ‘step outside of yourself’. Take an objective look at the situation. If you’ve got enough awareness to recognise you have a problem, then you’ve just taken the first step to making things better.
Use external resources to help give you clarity on where you might be going wrong. A book like “100 Tips For Successful Renting” will give you lots of good ideas, without overwhelming you.
Start taking a regular afternoon coffee break with your “100 Tips For Successful Renting” book. It’s never wasted time to let your mind relax and become more open to the bigger picture.
Take three sheets of paper. Write one of your goals in a bubble in the centre of each sheet. Every time you come across a tip or an idea that would help to achieve you goal, write it on the piece of paper like a spider diagram. Don’t be afraid of writing in your own ideas, drawing lines to link ideas together even putting in some color. You’ll amaze yourself with your own creativity - and very soon you’ll have drawn your own route map out of your rut.
Don’t try to fix everything at once. With all your ideas on paper, pick one or two that you think would make the most difference. Then book some regular time in your diary to make it happen. 15 minutes every day is perfect. 12 hours straight once a year is not so good.
Keep your book by your bedside, and your diagram prominently displayed. Keep your eye firmly on the goal. Become defined by your dreams, not by your chores
Wish you successful renting!
Sincerely yours
Milan Matchev
(1 votes, average: 10 out of 10)
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Becoming a zombie is definitely a life-changing (or even unlife-changing) event. For Bob, Bob the Zombie, it’s an opportunity to discover his true self. Bob discovers he’s become one of the few intelligent zombies in the midst of a zombie infestation. It’s up to him to help his people escape from a Detroit surrounded by fully-human soldiers. Along the way, though, there have to be some chances for good eats.
Motor City Shambler is a charming first-person account of one zombie’s unlife and struggles. It’s only $3.99, but discounted to $1.00 between now and July 16 to celebrate its release.
$3.99, or $1.00 until 16/07
166 pages
(1 votes, average: 10 out of 10)
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I don’t expect you to believe this story, but it is the truth. My name is Alexander Ashton….
Mysteriously Transported to the artificial world of Ecos, Earth man Alexander Ashton struggles to understand the society of his new friends, the humanoid Amatharians. As he does so, he finds himself falling in love with their princess and being thrust into a millennium-long war with their mortal foes the reptilian Zoasians. As Alexander crosses the endless landscape of a fantastic hollow world to rescue the woman he loves but does not know, he encounters alien life forms and strange cultures, bizarre monsters and ancient ruins that point to the mystery of the artificial world.
She drew her long sword and I followed suit. We nodded respectfully to one another. Then with a skill and speed born of battle, Vena Remontar charged at me, bringing her blade down directly toward my face. I raised my own to block the stroke, and just as quickly she swung two more blows. The only thing I could do was take the offensive, so as I blocked the third blow, I swung my weapon on around in a great arc toward her side. The woman was off balance from her attack, so the only way she could block the arc of weapon, was to turn her back on me, and swing her blade outward to meet mine. I expected that this would offer me a chance to attack her back, but it didn’t. As soon as she had done so, she tucked and rolled forward, spinning as she rose to face me. This was a brilliant maneuver and would have put several yards between us, but I wasn’t ready to let up. Using my gravity-enhanced strength, I jumped forward, almost landing on top of her. Vena Remontar thrust quickly several times. I blocked those attacks and countered.
Princess of Amathar is a sword-swinging novel of high adventure in the tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs.
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Discover the secrets of reverse aging and turn back the hands of time. Using the correct combinations of supplements, super-foods, exercise, and holistic treatments, you can learn how to become younger, and live longer. All the years of your life will be years of health and vitality. This book doesn’t just prevent aging; it can help reverse the damage brought on by years of sedentary living and poor nutritional choices.
Following the Stop Growing Older, Grow Younger plan, you can expect greater energy, a leaner, pain-free body, and increased sexual vitality. Don’t settle for your current state of health and fitness. You can STOP growing older and grow younger with this great resource book.
All of us grow older, but it’s a medically proven fact that how we age is a choice. J Collin Tower’s extensively researched Stop Growing Older, Grow YOUNGER empowers readers to make educated decisions about the latest reverse aging products and protocols. Easy to follow dietary guidelines, exercise, supplements, superfoods, detoxification and lifestyle approaches are provided, along with a clear understanding of the biological processes involved in aging. This book is not only an indispensable resource—it is a clarion call for action.
Wendy Bower, Freelance Medical Writer, MA English, University of Chicago, BA English, Princeton University
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For thousands of years, more than 3300 words printed in the Bible remained untranslated. Find out what Moses, Jesus and the prophets really said to the people of their time.
Biblical Symbolism, Part I: Application (ISBN 978-0-9780267-4-5), explains why and how the Dictionary works. Part I: Application, is offered as a free download at http://inhousepress.ca/#ebooks
The second part (Dictionary), an “Indispensible Tool for the Understanding of the Hidden Meaning
of Scriptures”, can be ordered and downloaded directly from INHOUSEPRESS (URL above) for $8.50 US, payable through PayPal.
The eBook is the result of extensive study of a considerable number of scholarly volumes, the inspired writings of Emmet Fox, and many months of long days at the Library of Religious Studies at the University of McGill, in Montreal. The author created the Method of Application of the Dictionary of Biblical Symbolism to unravel the mysteries of the past. His system enables us to discover the original meaning, which Moses, the Prophets and the Evangelists intended for us to hear.
Stanislaw Kapuscinski has written several other books on esoteric topics such as “Key to Immortality” (Commentary on the Gospel of Thomas), “Visualization - Creating Your own Universe” and three volumes of Essays entitled “Beyond Religion”, which will soon appear as eBooks.
Under the penname Stan I.S. Law, has authored more than a dozen novels, all exploring human potential. His books are available on Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.co.uk, Barns and Noble, Froogle, AuthorsDen, Chapters.indigo.ca, and directly from INHOUSEPRESS.
Excerpts can be read at http://stanlaw.ca/dic.html
(3 votes, average: 7 out of 10)
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Joe Tompkins was having a bad day at the office: boring meetings, pointless assignments, and this feeling that he was being watched. When he could take no more, he did what anyone would do. He knocked out his co-worker with a keyboard and escaped. From cube-dwelling author Josh McMains comes a dark comedy that brings conspiracy back to corporate America. Uncubicled follows the drastic series of events that would take one man from his mid-level desk job to an elaborate getaway from the long arm of the law-and perhaps something even more sinister. Along the way, Joe crosses paths with former friends whose destinies have been intertwined from the start. Joe encounters mystery, adventure, and car trouble as he struggles to find out what he was always meant to do and who, exactly, wants him dead. And you thought your job sucked.
It took a chapter or two to familiarize myself with the authors writing style, but after that was accomplished, this book was fantastic. There are many plot twists and turns that keep you intrigued the entire book. This is not meant to be a life changing book, but is perfect for a little time away from everything so you can really be entertained. If you are thinking about purchasing Uncubicled for the Kindle, it is money WELL spent. Kudos to Mr. McMains on a well written book….I am looking forward to the sequel.
By VarangianGuard, Amazon.com
No, “Techno Thriller” isn’t the only category in which you can file Josh McMains’ novel Uncubicled, but it’s fairly accurate. The initial information I first received lead me to believe it would be more focused on the Office Worker life. It’s true that it starts off that way, and, for me, it was the the initial hook that helped me relate to the characters and situations. From there, though, it became a wild ride of plot twists, high-tech espionage, and enough edge-of-your-seat storylines to keep you saying “Ok, one more chapter, THEN I’ll go to sleep.”
For a debut novel, I’ve gotta say that this is one of the best I’ve read in a long time. There is a fantastic balance of dialogue mixed with rich and description from the third-person narrative. On it’s surface, you easily become invested in the characters and there is enough action to keep even the most casual reader interested. Dig deeper, though, and you’ll really uncover some fantastic and complex twists, turns, and cloak and dagger situations.
Did you ever watch the movie The Usual Suspects — and at the end thing “Holy Crap! That’s awesome — now I have to rewind the movie and watch it again!” That’s very much how I felt after reading Uncubicled.
If you’re Dilbert-style Cube Dweller, and you’re hoping that there is something greater going on, you just may be right. Let’s just remain happy that this is a book of fiction…or is it? Let’s hope so.
By Adam Lawson, Amazon.com
www.uncubicled.com
(1 votes, average: 10 out of 10)
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Recently I’ve been working on an ePub reader prototype. Once I’ve created a robust ePub ebook reader, I’m going to move this functionality into my text to speech application, Text2Go. My goal is provide a system that will convert an ebook to speech and transfer it to your iPod in a single click. This will allow any ePub formatted ebook to be turned into an audio book which can then be listened to while driving, walking, working out at the gym or any other activity where reading is impractical.
The focus of my ePub reader is quite different from the norm due to the fact that the recipient is not a human reader but a machine reader or computerized voice. A computerized voice cares nothing for fancy layouts, font selection or images. This makes my job a lot easier in many ways. However a computerized voice lacks one important skill a human reader uses frequently, often at a subconscious level. A computerized voice has no way of skimming over a section of text. For example, human readers will never read the same footer at the bottom of every page or meticulously read every page number. If this text is mixed in with the actual body of the story (usually as a result of some blind conversion process from a different ebook format to ePub), then the computerized voice will read this text in full on every page. This becomes incredibly irritating for the human listener.
The ePub standard provides direct support for structured documents that include footnotes, sidebars, annotations, page numbers, etc. This is achieved using an alternative xml document format know as DTBook. The ePub standard recommends this format be used for educational publications and publications that are highly structured - for example when it’s important that the page layout of the original printed document is maintained. DTBook actually stands for Digital Talking Book and is a standard developed by the Daisy Consortium for blind, visually-impaired, physically handicapped, learning-disabled or otherwise print-disabled readers. Although originally designed for talking books, the extra information (i.e. the metadata) the DTBook format contains about the ebook text makes it a great choice for any ebook and will greatly assist in applications such as my text to speech application.
Which brings me to the fact that not all ePub titles are created equal. Those that have been lovingly hand-crafted by someone who understands the ePub format will never suffer these problems. Those that have been blindly converted using an automated tool from a source document format that doesn’t make any distinction between the various roles of text within a document will be plagued by such problems. This seems similar to differences in quality between different editions of a print title. Unfortunately you can’t heft an ebook, feel the quality of the paper between your fingers, flex the binding or quickly thumb through the pages of an ebook prior to purchase. The ability to view a sample goes a long way to solving this but it would also be worthwhile for reviewers to comment on how well the ePub book has been put together, what underlying format is used to represent the text and does it have a table of contents to make navigation easy.
My ePub reader has three tasks to complete in decreasing order of importance.
- Extract the text from document, converting it from html to plain text ready for text to speech conversion.
- Organize the content into chapters. Each chapter will become its own audio track. This will make it easier to navigate than a single huge audio track.
- Extract the cover image and use it as the album art for each audio track.
Although all ePub documents conform to a standard, there is a lot of variability possible within the standard. In order to make my reader as robust as possible, I’ve been trying to find ePub titles from a wide range of sources. I’m particularly interested in those that have been created with different tools or even hand-crafted.
An edition of White Fang by Jack London illustrates this variability nicely. It had a couple of unique features I needed to handle. Firstly it didn’t have a standard ePub table of contents. All it contained was a single html file. However this html file had its own table of contents embedded at the top of the file. It was implemented as an html table, with each entry containing a link to the relevant section further down in the document. Those familiar with html markup will know that you can use the anchor tag to name a specific point in a document. You can then link to this named anchor so your browser (or reader) will position you at this exact point in the document when the link is clicked. You can use this technique when linking to an external document or within the same document.
I had noticed the ePub authoring tool, Calibre, uses named anchor points when creating links for its table of contents. However because each chapter was stored in a separate file (within the ePub file, which is actually just a zip archive), the anchor points were a bit superfluous - each chapter just had a single anchor point at the top of the page. Although this was how Calibre organised its chapters, I imagined that it was quite possible to store an entire book in a single html file and use named anchor points to link to the relevant sections from the table of contents.
Therefore I added the ability for my ePub reader to split a book into sections based on where the named anchor points lay in the document. This had an unexpected benefit when I came to read the White Fang title. Although it didn’t contain a standard ePub table of contents, my reader was able to find the named anchor points it had used to implement its own in-page table of contents and correctly split it into chapters.
The other interesting feature of the White Fang title also centred around the table of contents. As I said before, this was implemented using an html table. However when my reader extracted the text from the table, all the text was run together. This would have been disastrous when it came time to convert it to speech. Unlike human readers, computerized voices don’t recognise an unusually long word as being a number of words run together.
When extracting text from a table, I needed to understand that a table cell acts as natural boundary for text and should be punctuated accordingly.
What is clear is that it’s really beneficial to gather as many ePub format ebooks from as many varied sources as possible to test my reader with. You can imagine my delight then when the new ePub ebook site, ePubBooks.com was announced recently on Teleread.org. Here is another source of ePub books, generated using their own tool. From the sample of titles I’ve downloaded, these seem to be very well formatted. My young and naive ePub reader had no trouble loading and splitting them into chapters. For interests sake, I downloaded their version of White Fang. This version had an ePub table of contents. The end result was the same the first version I had found. My only complaint with the titles at ePubBooks.org is they have no cover image. This obviously doesn’t detract from the reading experience but it does make organising and browsing through your library of ebooks a lot less fun if they don’t have cover images.
Finally if anyone knows of other ePub sources or have ePub format ebooks that have been hand-crafted or created with other tools, then I’d love the chance to run them through my ePub reader. Please drop me a line at markgladding at ebooks just published dot com.
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Dr. Jim Sagacity is a Marriage and Family Therapist that has the special ability to see deep inside other people. He can see their souls. He volunteers at a Philadelphia hospital in order to be as close to death as possible, for during most fatalities, he watches the spirit of the recently deceased depart this world in a display of pure joyous wonder. Throughout his life, he celebrates his ability in secret, focusing on the sheer elation of these transitions, until one day he is shown that not all souls are willing or able to take that all important step to the next realm. Weaker souls, small and dim to Jim’s eyes, face a darker fate.
With a new understanding of what death might mean, Dr. Sagacity joins a group of other specially gifted people in hopes of assisting those spirits he believes lack the strength to move on to a new existence. Pooling their incredible and supernatural talents, they pinpoint those individuals that are facing death in the very near future. Jim Sagacity experiences the complexities of working with others focused beyond the constraints of this physical realm, but within a society attentive to the normal realities of death, despair and even murder. He finds that not everyone shares his views, that the truth can often be distorted, and that the world he lives in can be a very difficult and dangerous place.
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The sequel to the bestselling memoir Blood, Sweat & Tea. Tom Reynolds is an ambulance worker. On any given day he can be attacked by strangers, sworn at by motorists, puked on, covered in blood and other much more unpleasant substances. He could help to deliver a baby in the morning and witness the last moments of a dying man in the afternoon. He deals with road accidents, knife attacks, domestic violence, drug overdoses, neglect and suffering. And you think you’re having a bad day at work? Tom blogs about his experiences at the end of each shift. His Random Acts of Reality website has a huge following with over 30,000 visitors every day. He is an internet legend and a remarkable writer. His first book, Blood, Sweat & Tea came out of nowhere to be a surprise bestseller in 2006. Readers were stunned by the stories he had to tell and impressed by the sheer quality of his writing. Critics who sneer at blogs-to-books have never read this one. More Blood, More Sweat and Another Cup of Tea charts the past two years of Tom’s life as an ambulance worker. He is tired, he is frustrated and he is more pissed off than ever but he still manages to capture the more moving, heartwarming and inspirational moments alongside the chaos.
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‘We finished the rocketbelt, and from then on there was murder, kidnapping, and all kinds of other stuff’ - Brad Barker
When three friends set out on a quest to build a real-life Buck Rogers-style flying machine, their obsession with the Rocketbelt 2000, or ‘Pretty Bird’, shattered their friendship and set in motion an astonishing chain of events involving theft, deception, a bizarre kidnapping, a ten million dollar lawsuit and a horrifically brutal murder. This gripping book also reveals the secret history of the flying jetpack, involving Nazi scientists, James Bond, and the US Army. From sci-fi to reality, this is the true story of the amazing rocketbelt.
‘A delight to read. Genuinely stranger than fiction. Recommended.’ - Popular Science UK
‘A can’t-put-it-down murder mystery that shows how obsession and betrayal can lead people to commit dastardly deeds.’ - General Aviation News
‘Begins with a brief history of rocketbelts that’s probably the best ever in print.’ - Beam Jockey
‘The story has all the markings of a Hollywood blockbuster, and is a bizarrely unforgettable read.’ - The Crack
‘Reads like good movie material.’ - BBC Focus
‘There’s probably a Tarantino movie in this somewhere.’ - Fortean Times
‘This book is a must have.’ - Airwalker Society of Rocketbelt Enthusiasts
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Allow me to introduce myself. I am Eaglethorpe Buxton, famed world traveler and story-teller. Of course you have heard of me, for my tales of the great heroes and their adventures have been repeated far and wide across the land. In truth I am probably better known in any case as an adventurer in my own right than as a teller of the adventures of others. From storied Aerithraine, where I once had the pleasure of spending a fortnight in the company of the Queen, to distant Holland, I have wondered the world being a friend to those in need of a friend, a protector to those in need of a protector, and a guardian to those in need of a guardian.
Eaglethorpe Buxton is a fool and a hack. You couldn’t find a writer of less wit and style.
- Dextius Winterborn, Story-teller’s Guild.
Without a doubt, the biggest liar that ever walked the world.
- Sir Roderick Bairn, Adventurer
That boy will never amount to anything. Mark my words, he was born to hang.
- Margram Buxton, Father
Who? I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of him. Yes. No, I’m sure I haven’t.
-Queen Elleena I of Aerithraine
Join Eaglethorpe Buxton as he adventures across a magical world to help… a poor orphan child? An elven princess? Who can know for sure, when it is Eaglethorpe himself who tells the tale?
Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Elven Princess is a short book by Wesley Allison, author of His Robot Girlfriend, and Princess of Amathar. Available now as a free ebook.
(1 votes, average: 5 out of 10)
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