Weird Stories: Police Shoot Fake Alligator After Receiving Concrete Tip

(Reuters Life!) - Police in a suburb in the state of Missouri recently encountered one tough alligator -- or so they thought.

Officers in Independence, a Kansas City suburb, responded to a call on a Saturday evening about a large alligator lurking on the embankment of a pond, police spokesman Tom Gentry said Thursday.

An officer called a state conservation agent, who advised him to shoot the alligator because there was little that conservation officials could do at that time, Gentry said.

As instructed an officer shot the alligator, not once but twice, but both times the bullets bounced off -- because the alligator was made of cement.

The property owner told police later that he placed the ornamental gator by the pond to keep children away. But residents had little to fear.

"There are no alligators around here, we are too far north, it's too cold," said Bill Graham, spokesman for the Missouri Department of Conservation.

Gentry acknowledged the incident is drawing a lot of attention.

"In hindsight, it's humorous," he said. "But we have to take every call seriously."

PS. For a really weird story try this: Solar Powered Bikini Charges Your Gadgets While You Tan

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Once in a while it's good to go off topic and post something 'just for the fun of it' - Have a great day!

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Mega-Trending: Writing for Success - on Amazon UK

Yes, my new ebook How To Write & Self-Publish Your First Novel is now trending even better than a couple of days ago on Amazon UK. Take a look at the image below:

Oddly enough, it's not doing as well yet in the US. I think it's something to do with the plethora of available books in the Amazon bookstore. But you can rectify this situation!

For only $0.99 you can buy your own version in the US. Click HERE

(And if you're in the UK, click HERE)

What are you waiting for? Take a chance on my book - it really does contain a lot of very good advice!

Seattle Sunny Sunday in June

Here in Seattle it's going to be a sunny Sunday - the first this year! With temperatures rising to maybe the low 80's there's going to be a lot of flesh on display - pallid white flesh that has been kept covered for several months. Beware of the sunburned people tomorrow!

So, it's a day to get out and about and do something different. Yesterday I took a wonderful 2 hour Seattle locks cruise and today it's off to a friends to enjoy an afternoon BBQ. I'm taking along my extra hot Biryani dish too - that should spice up a few people ;-)

Writing begins again in earnest tomorrow morning. I've been too lazy recently and I need to get back on track. So -all of you should enjoy today, wherever you are and whatever you're doing. Embrace the world, breathe in the fresh air and be thankful to be alive. Life is good!

I Have a Retail Value of $15.94

That’s all it costs to buy a copy of each of my published books in digital format. Scary. The sum total of my retail life for sale is $15.94. Mind you, if 10,000 people buy me that would add up to $159,400. Not too shabby!

The reason I am writing this blog post is to try and understand just what motivates people. It’s obviously not everything to do with the money. If it was then anyone buying one of my books would simply buy them all. Maybe I should increase my book prices to $14.99 each. Would I sell more, or less? Probably a lot less. So that leads me to believe it’s also a lot to do with exposure. I have limited means to get exposure for my books. I’m just going to have to try harder somehow. My 2,000 Facebook friends and 54,000 Twitter followers equates to a very small percentage of the world’s population (in my case 0.001%), and that’s just my potential reach (not including drop-bys to my blog, etc.). When you look at things this way, it’s no wonder that new authors struggle to make a breakthrough in book sales.

So, I’ve decided to make June another crazy marketing month. I don’t know quite how I’m going to do this yet, but I need to somehow get my potential reach numbers higher. I’ve begged and pleaded for book reviews and I’ve had a few (it seems everyone is just so busy nowadays) and I’ve tried to get newspaper interviews. I’ve tried a lot of things, but it’s very tough and it all shows slow progress. I also need to publish more books (but come on, there are only so many hours in the day).

Anyway, there will be more on my marketing effort in the next few days. In the meantime, I am going to shamelessly promote this blog post and provide links to all of my books that are currently on sale at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords. The links below all point to Smashwords. Smashwords allows you to read a portion of my books for FREE (usually around 20%). You don’t even need an ereader to read the books – they can be read directly onto your computer! Then, if you like the FREE sample, you can either buy the book on Smashwords, or head over to Amazon or Barnes & Noble to find them there. So, go ahead, knock yourself out. Read a sample of my writing and help me realize my retail worth of $15.94.

PS. If you liked this post or can empathize with it, please re-post, link to it, or retweet it. Thanks!

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Xannu - The Prophecy by Paul Dorset. $0.99 from Smashwords.com

For fans of Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter & The Narnia Chronicles, the 1st in a thrilling epic fantasy series. Would you wake up in a hot sweat if you lived your night’s dreams as a soldier battling un-earthly creatures, witnessing powerful magic and fighting to save your own life on a daily basis? English schoolboy Terry West does. Frequently. And someone wants him dead... *** READ 20% FOR FREE ***

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Xannu - The Healing by Paul Dorset. $3.99 from Smashwords.com

Continuing on from The Prophecy, this book follows the journeys of two groups of travelers who are both trying to heal their charges. Back in England, Terry West is distraught after the loss of his best friend. But as Teern Truthbringer the soldier, Terry is busy battling un-earthly creatures & witnessing powerful magic on a daily basis. But is he prepared for the perilous journey he has to take to heal his charge; the Xannu.   *** READ 20% FOR FREE ***

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Fergus Fedderfeeny's Food Factory by Paul Dorset. $0.99 from Smashwords.com

Farnsworth is worried. Bags of the Food Factory’s vegetables are definitely missing! What will his boss, Fergus Fedderfeeny, say when he finds out? Then there’s the wonderful tasting pies. He doesn’t know how the recipes got changed or if it’s because of the missing vegetables. Armed with a toolbox of hammers & staying well away from The Mangler, Farnsworth is going to solve the mystery.*** READ 20% FOR FREE ***

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Jai and Jasmine's Jeopardous Journey by Paul Dorset. $2.99 from Smashwords.com

Jai hates the stink of rotting vegetables and he’s been thinking about them and the smelly ship ever since he arrived in Gwillville. Maybe the ship is the secret to being reborn and maybe it’s a way to find Farnsworth’s missing father. Jai is convinced he needs to make a jeopardous journey of discovery, but his cousin Jasmine is not so sure it’s such a good idea. *** READ 20% FOR FREE ***

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The 10 Hour Project Manager by Paul Dorset. $5.99 from Smashwords.com

This book gives you the tools to successfully manage the majority of most projects in only 10 hrs a week. It is about the meta-rules associated with projects and the management skills that help you decide what to pay close attention to and what can safely be de-prioritized. You will learn the important things to focus on, because although every project is different the meta-rules are the same. *** READ 20% FOR FREE ***

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How To Write & Self-Publish Your First Novel by Paul Dorset. $0.99 from Smashwords.com

Writing and publishing your first novel is tough. It usually takes a long time. Years for most people. It can be soul destroying too. This ebook is a series of essays solely concerned with improving your writing skills and getting your first novel successfully self-published, and marketed. It is written from thousands of hours of experience and every essay in it is relevant and has a purpose. *** READ 15% FOR FREE ***

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Picture of the Week (#2) - Obama and the Pint of Guinness

This Friday I am continuing my weekly series that shows my picture of the week. It's just something that struck a chord with me for whatever reason. This week it's a picture of President Obama claiming his Irish roots. I call it: O'Bama Drinks the Irish Gold. Apparently he even paid for it himself. To be sure.

If I didn't know any different, he could easily be in my local Irish pub - J J Mahoney's. Enjoy a pint of Guinness this evening!

(Click picture for original size)

Picture from Boston.com/BigPicture

Trending: Writing for Success - on Amazon UK

Yes, my new ebook How To Write & Self-Publish Your First Novel is trending on Amazon UK. Take a look at the image below:

Oddly enough, it's not doing as well yet in the US. I think it's something to do with the plethora of available books in the Amazon bookstore. But you can rectify this situation!

For only $0.99 you can buy your own version in the US. Click HERE

(And if you're in the UK, click HERE)

Take a chance on my book - it really does contain a lot of very good advice!

Amazon Won't Let Me Give My Books Away For FREE

Getting into the top 100 books at Amazon is a dream that everyone aspires to. Getting into the top 10 is an even loftier one. But getting there is very difficult and made more so by one interesting policy that Amazon has. Did you know that as a self-published (Indie) author you cannot set your book price to free at Amazon? No, the minimum price you can set is $0.99. Why is this important? Just take a look at the top 100 ebooks at Amazon and you will see the list littered with free books. Yes, there are several that are $0.99 or $1.99, but did you also know that a lot of these books were once originally free too?

Amazon has an arrangement with publishers whereby it can agree to give a book away for free in order to generate cross-sales. Are you an established traditionally published author with a back-catalog? Chances are that Amazon will give away one of your first books for free in order to generate sales of the other books. But you and me? Sorry, ain’t going to happen. We have to stick with the $0.99 model and hope we can generate sales that way. Some authors have tried to beat the system by giving their book away on Smashwords in an effort to force Amazon to lower their price too. Doesn’t work. You can even try it on Apple’s iBooks. Still doesn’t work for Amazon. Interesting.

So the question is, does giving your book away really help to generate sales? I guess the short answer is yes, it does. If it didn’t then people wouldn’t do it. But, and here’s the rub, how many of those free downloaders will never read your book? I know personally that books that are free are generally bottom of my reading pile. If I pay $0.99 for a book then I have a vested interest in reading it. But let’s say 10,000 people download your free book and just %5 read it, that’s still 500 first-time potential purchasers of your other books – not a bad marketing campaign.

Of course, if you have only written one self-published book to date then giving it away for free is not very attractive for you anyway. Why write it in the first place? The system only works when you have several books to sell. Another nail in the coffin of first-time authors. Well, no one said it was easy becoming an established first-time author, did they?

Us Indie authors will continue to try to beat the system and get our books out there in every way we can. I am trying hard to build a catalog of books so that people understand I’m not a single book author; I’m in it for the long haul. Becoming established takes time, so stick at it, break as many rules as you can and just keep doing what you do best – writing. One day Amazon may give one of our books away for free too. In the meantime, please buy one of my books on sale at $0.99 and spread the word!

UPDATE: Please read my later post HERE

Reading eBooks May Cause Cancer

Now that we have been told that using cellphones can cause cancer, it is only a logical step to realize that reading ebooks on cellphones or iPads could also cause cancer. Wow! I can just see how this headline will go down with Apple, Android and Amazon.

Maybe paper is about to make a comeback! Perhaps this is a plan by the major publishers to stop people from buying ebooks and force them to buy the expensive and bulky printed versions. Maybe it’s a government conspiracy to force people to build libraries once more. Perhaps it’s even bigger than this. Perhaps it’s a way to force the whole of technology to be abandoned in favor of luddite practices.

Whoops, I’m getting a little carried away now. But am I? This is how it starts. One day there’s a rumor. The next day it goes viral. Then finally, it’s fact. Then you have it. People proclaim from the streets that reading books causes cancer. Oh well, I guess if that were true I’d be riddled with the stuff by now. Maybe I am. Maybe the ‘cancer’ we’re talking about here is just a different type of cancer. Maybe it’s just like a disease that eats away at you. Maybe the cancer we’re talking about here comes from reading hundreds of books. After all that reading your brain just craves more and more until it completely self-destructs. The cancer wins.

Okay, enough. I can’t believe for one second that the world we’ve come to know for the past fifteen years is going to get turned upside down like this. Like the men in white coats said, there’s no actual evidence that cellphones cause cancer, just a reasonable suspicion. And the people who are saying this are all old people that never got their chance to do anything else amazing before. They don’t understand technology and they ‘poo poo’ technological breakthroughs. Of course, to them it makes sense that they should shun cellphones, ebooks and probably even xBox Kinect (how could they?).

Me? My life is already too short to worry about whether everything I do is dangerous or not. OF COURSE IT IS! I’m going to keep reading (and writing) ebooks, cancer causing or not!