Showing posts with label Unboxing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Unboxing. Show all posts

Monday, May 2, 2016

Getting the Hang of Zazzle


I’ve been going up the wall lately on optimizing a controlled and organized Zazzle store.  Before products were arranged in any and all kinds of order.  This left visitors scrambling all over the store.  Which isn't good!  Even I came frustrated with the disarray I’d created.  Added to my organizing, I’ve also been reviving the color of my original uploads from 2012.  A few color correcting techniques in the drawing process have stepped up since 2012.  So the difference from then and now were a little too noticeable for me to ignore.  
I wouldn’t call it grueling, but I’ve been up until like 4am all weekend redoing all my previous faults.  I think we've all been there, where it's late but we tell ourselves just one more action before we sleep.  Then one action leads to ten.  
So here are a few of my considerations to optimizing a fresh Zazzle store.

Saturday, June 27, 2015

+ SpreadShirt Unbagging + (VIDEO)


What's up Comic Towel friends and visitors.  Time to share my very first Spreadshirt purchase–directly from my Spreadshirt shop.  I hope you guys enjoy.  Please comment and share.  Don't forget to post and share your own stories and dream-seeking progressions.  Lol.  You get what I mean!



Take care!

Friday, July 25, 2014

A Little Gladstone


Book three in Max Gladstone's The Craft Sequence series (I'm hoping his publisher offered him another contract) has finally arrived at my doorstep! Yippee! Right on time, because I'm more than halfway done with book two, Two Serpents Rise.  (Update: I'm done with it.) Thinking today is a good day to relax and finish it, especially after another day at the 9-5. However, I don't think I'm going to go right into Full Fathom Five afterwards. I want Gladstone's world to simmer for a minute.

You know... it's really interesting. The reason I picked up Gladstone's first book [Three Parts Dead] was because the cover featured a woman of color. Mix that with the genre he writes in (which is a blend of sci-fi and fantasy... among further genre-blending), and I was sold. Immediately, I became determined to get to know him and his work. With the passing of Octavia Butler and L. A. Banks (to name a few), it's not common to find this kind of diversity in sci-fi/fantasy novels. At least not to the extent that the lead character is of an ethnic flavor. Nonetheless, the reason I mentioned diversity and covers is because Full Fathom Five features an Asian woman alongside a black woman–my definitive fantasy combination. Which is no surprise when you consider how Toni Morrison and Amy Tan are my absolute favorite authors! Funny, eh?

First book in Gladstone's Craft Sequence series.  See the cover?  That's Tara!

Happy Reading, everyone!

Monday, July 21, 2014

Unbox Me


Here we go.  Time to unbox the latest batch of BookOutlet books.  I suppose I can't resist a deal, and saving $10 when you spend a total of $30 is too good a deal to ignore.  Especially when the books are less than $7.  So you can look at it two ways: either you're getting free shipping or a free book.  Makes no difference.  You must indulge yourself!


Freshly opened and free of packing paper (and mysteriously missing a packing slip).  I'm already super excited at this point.  I like how BookOutlet always makes it seems like there are less books than you actually ordered.  But still, I can already tell I'll need to rearrange my bookshelves again.  Including placing the remainders of my last order off my desk and somewhere appropriate until I find the mood to read them.


As I mentioned in a recent POST, I finished the first book [Hotel Paradise] in Martha Grimes's Emma Graham series.  Immediately, I just had to have the remaining three books in Emma's series.  Like... it was that serious.  So I'm happy I found them all in one go!  The series order goes as: Hotel Paradise, Cold Flat Junction, Belle Ruin, and Fadeaway Girl.  Still, I'm going to wait before I jump into book two.  I have to catch up on another author first, then it's back to Emma Graham's world.



Two copies of Sue Grafton's A is for Alibi suddenly popped up on the BookOutlet's listings.  They're the original hardbacks–which is extra, extra cool.  And made for a quick, compulsive snatched.  The original hardbacks have tons more character than the current paperbacks (speaking about the covers).  So what better way to start collecting them in this form than with the first book in the Kinsey Millhone series?  A Mind to Murder is book two in P. D. James's Adam Dalgliesh series.  After reading the first book, Cover Her Face, finding book two screams WIN!


Max Gladstone's Two Serpents Rise is the second book in his Craft Sequence series.  Released in October of 2013, I've waited this long to finally pick it up.  Why?  Because book three, Full Fathom Five, just released and I'm behind.  Basically, I have to catch up.  Max Gladstone is great.  Like Steve Bein, I'm starting to notice that I like male urban fantasy writers more than female–which is very unusual.  But it has to do with how the romance aspects are mostly snuffed off by male authors.  That's just the damn truth.  Give me the great characters, the world-building, the unique plotting.  Leave all the sex chat and werewolf gazing out.  

Nonetheless, Gladstone's series reflects the democracies of corporate America (but not necessarily American) inside urban fantasy, extreme world-building fantasy, and a few other genre-bending elements.  As I await my copy of Full Fathom Five, I'm sinking my teeth into this one.  I'll be back Emma Graham.

Thanks, everyone.  Do you love BookOutlet?  And what're you reading this summer?  Share in the comment section below!

Monday, February 10, 2014

Book Unboxing ~ ここで開く


Latest video.  I'm doing my first book unboxing here, coincidentally (though I don't necessarily believe in coincidences) tied to my first purchase at Bookoutlet.com.  It's a small wonder, though.  See, months ago when I discovered Bookoutlet, I wasn't particularly crazy about it.  I think I browsed the site twice and only ran across maybe two books that I really wanted.  And those books weren't a desperate-to-own.  So I passed.  I talked a little smack about the site's overabundance in YA novels (that was my poor perception at the time), and moved along.  Recently I tried them again.  This time I took my Amazon Wishlist and did a "cross check" where I browsed for specific titles that I knew were desperate-to-own.  Lo and behold I checked out with four titles and spent less than $24.  I consider that a fawning success.  While the titles are probably noted as remainders, they are all in perfect condition.  However, Bookoutlet marks the condition of several books as otherwise for consumer awareness.  They also list the stock amount of available books.  Which kid of pissed me off because had I paid attention to those small numbers before, I would've had a cheaper copy of Octavia Butler's Parable of the Talents by now.  Boo-hoo!

So I got...

1.  A Thousand Lives by Julia Scheeres

Without a doubt this is going to be a dark, dark read.  Anyone familiar with Jim Jones and the Jonestown tragedy that took place in the 1970s understands that there is probably nothing bright seeping out of this book.  Nevertheless, for the curiously nosy information freak that I am, I decided Julia Scheeres [Jesus Land] would provide a familiar narrative to the unfolding of this horrific event.  Needless to say, this is going to make for a page-turner.  While I'm familiar with its subject matter through watching several documentaries throughout the years, I've never went into educating myself on the hard details concerning Jonestown.  Stacked with referenced facts and recounts, I have to say that I am ready for the dive.  And it's next on my TBR.


2.  The Complete Keeper Chronicles by Tanya Huff

Long ago Tanya Huff was pointed out to me as a slicker alternative to Laurell K Hamilton.  To be specific, Huff's short-lived Victoria Nelson series shined as a better, comparable alternative.  Within five books and a short story omnibus, Toronto homicide detective turn P.I., Victoria (Vicky) Nelson, teamed up with her ex-partner and a centuries old vampire to deal out ass-whoopings to several paranormal uglies squatting the urban (and one rural) Canadian streets.  While that series makes an easy five stars, Huff's range stretches in further directions, including fantasy and sci-fi.  So color me anxious to read more by her.  The Keeper Chronicles trilogy is urban fantasy, with a high emphasis on fantasy done in ways other than vampires and zombies.  To my pre-mature awareness I should say.  I passed on the series until a couple of years ago when I bought the first book at a used bookstore.  I got a good 40 pages in when I put it down and read something else.  Never to pick it back up.  But I held on to it.  Like we all do.  Until two years ago when the trilogy was released as an omnibus edition and my interest peeked back up.  Took me a minute, but I finally got it at a great price--thanks to BookOutlet.  So far, we have a bed-and-breakfast setting, a talking cat, and a ghost.  No giving up this time!

3.  Hurricane by Jewell Parker Rhodes

I have gushed about my love of this particularly series in minute details throughout Comic Towel and my videos.  It's New Orleans setting, shrouded in old spells mixed with murder mysteries and some hospital drama, just lights me up.  Part of a trilogy, Hurricane is the final foray into the world of doctor Marie Laveau nee Levant, and her double life as a mystery-solving-voodoo-priestess.  I'm hoping her journey goes out with a bang, especially considering the first book (Voodoo Season) put this series on a high bar for a person with interest in such subjects as voodoo spells and mysteries.  The magic within this series has always been how Rhodes serves readers an intelligent woman of color solving mysteries, underneath the veil of commanding the powers of her ancestor, the infamous (and historical based) voodoo queen of Louisiana, Marie Laveau.  While the first book features a cult and zombies, and the second book (Yellow Moon) an African vampire spirit called wazimamoto, Hurricane takes on Hurricane Katrina.  And that's all I know at this point, but my thirst and trust in this author's delivery is so real.  Be sure that once I finish this book, it'll be splashed all over this blog. 

4.  Innocent Blood by P.D. James

I've never read any of the Adam Dalgliesh mysteries by English crime writer, P.D. James.  However, what I have read by her was the first book in her two-book Cordelia Gray series called An Unsuitable Job For a Woman.  Needless to say, I loved the book.  It features a young woman P.I. solving a seemingly domestic suicide that turns into a complex (and sometimes leaning toward convoluted) murder case.  Did I say that I was in love with this book?  Of course I did.  However, the second book, The Skull Beneath the Skin, was too much of a bore for me to complete it.  Though I plan too.  Innocent Blood isn't a part of either the Cordelia Gray or Adam Dalgliesh series.  It's a stand alone mystery.  According to the synopsis, the adopted, Philippa Palfrey, turns 18 and decides it's time to find her real parents.  While she has always envisioned aristocratic ties within her heritage, what she encounters is a little more bloody than she anticipated.  I've wanted to read this book for years based off the synopsis.  Finally, it's within my grasp.

With all that said... all I can scream is...



Thanks everyone.

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