Category Archives: Blogbook

Tosh on blogging

Geronimo’s Bones Kirkus Review

Kirkus Reviews has just published their review of Darrell Bryant’s debut novel Geronimo’s Bones. According to their guidelines, the review can now be published elsewhere under the following conditions: All excerpts must be attributed to “Kirkus Reviews” in italics, and industry standard best practices for proper excerpting must be followed. These practices include, but are not limited to, the following guidelines: If words are omitted from a quote, ellipses must be inserted in their place. No words may be added to the review. The integrity of the review may not be altered. What follows is the review in its entirety. If … Continue reading

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Watch Out, Random House

If the title of this post is black and/or you see the fighter-pilot header, click on the title to view the featured image header and continue reading. Among the indie writers I know, it’s generally accepted that having an imprint offers advantages. Defining those advantages, however, is a little more problematic. The most obvious question is whether an imprint endows a book with any degree of legitimacy. And while that issue can easily rush into the oft-discussed differences between indie and legacy (or traditional) publishing, in spite of this post’s title, my intention is to compare the different approaches of … Continue reading

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Update From the Blogosphere

Blog design is an iterative process that in truth probably should never be considered complete. Posts in this Blogbook category present a series of lessons learned since launching the site in late July of 2010. The primary purpose of toshmcintosh.com has been to establish an online presence in advance of publishing my first novel, Pilot Error. Up until last Fall, I’ve had nothing to offer for sale. But now, the underlying objective is to support the goal of getting the word out by taking advantage of marketing opportunities in the Internet universe. Site navigation notes follow: If you are reading this … Continue reading

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The Changes They Are A’comin’

Since this blog first appeared, I have changed themes once and the appearance of the theme multiple times. I made the decision to launch a satellite blog dedicated to the novel when I first published Pilot Error, but in retrospect that wasn’t a good idea. Keeping up with one blog is hard enough, and I can’t add one every time I publish a book. Over the next few weeks, therefore, I will be moving the posts specific to that novel from toshmcintosh.com/piloterror to the new Pilot Error logbook on this site. Once that’s accomplished the site URL will redirect here. … Continue reading

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Blogosphere Happenings

As mentioned in previous Blogbook posts, when I launched this site on July 29th, 2010, I thought the number of comments received could be used to assess the amount of visitor traffic. It took two-and-a-half months for me to figure out (because I was told) that less than one in 200 visitors will take the time to leave a comment. Imagine my surprise. On October 14th, 2010, I installed a Count-per-Day plug-in to track the number of visitors and what they read. That solved the problem of collecting the data, but assessing it is up to me. I’ve tried to … Continue reading

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The Blogosphere and Spam

spam: irrelevant or inappropriate messages sent on the Internet to a large number of recipients. Since installing a spam filter in October 2010, 3,769 of the devils have been caught before I ever see them. Some get through as comments to be held in a spam queue for me to approve or delete. A very few have been mis-identified as spam, but the rest most definitely are. I’ve not been able to determine what it is about these obvious intruders that the filter doesn’t recognize, but interestingly enough, they are almost always written in languages I cannot identify. The hosting … Continue reading

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Blogosphere Update #15

Prior to launching this blog on July 29, 2010, I Googled “Tosh McIntosh” and learned a few things: the #1 result linked to a complaint filed against a financial advisor of that name in California, the #2 result linked to a Facebook page for Tosh McIntosh of the United Kingdom, there are lots of Tosh McIntosh’s out there, and I was nowhere to be found within the first 20 pages of search results. A few weeks after launch I had made it to the lower half of the first page. A few months later I claimed the #1 spot. Which, … Continue reading

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Another Blogosphere Mystery

It’s sometimes hard for me to remember that this website/blog doesn’t exist behind the screen or under the keyboard in the guts of my laptop. It’s out there somewhere, and I can only look at it from the front side just like everyone else until I log in. Then the “back pages” open up, and the world of the WordPress blog tool and publishing platform appears so that I can act as the administrator. One of the available functions there monitors the update status of the theme I’m using and the only three “plugins” installed. WP-Stats keeps track of the … Continue reading

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Mysteries of the Blogosphere

This blogosphere never ceases to amaze me. I read a book about the final days of WWII combat in the Pacific and published a post on February 15, 2011 titled “Not Just Another Day at Work.” The post connected the events chronicled in the book with a link to a 360-degree panoramic view of the cockpit of a B-29 named the Enola Gay. Col. Paul Tibbets sat in this “office” and on August 6, 1945, dropped the atomic bomb that changed the world forever. On March 4, 2011, my spam filter nabbed a comment related to this post and held … Continue reading

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Status Report 14 – The Numbers Game of Blogging

The blog known as “The Shadow” continues to follow me around. Like a shadow. But that’s true even on cloudy days, so what’s up with that? The answer to this question is very simple: it’s become a part of me, and somewhere in the back of my mind I remain connected to it even when concentrating on other things. My original assumptions shortly after installing the Count per Day plugin remain unchanged. Frequent additions to content generate visitor activity, and in the last few weeks, links to this site have appeared on other sites for the first time. I mentioned … Continue reading

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