You may have noticed that this book seems to be taking forever to edit, and I actually wonder myself too. It almost feels like I have done about 4 or 5 edits, and I am honestly just waiting for the day when I publish this thing.
Yesterday, in complete confusion at which part of the process I was in, I decided to create a Writing Progress Tracker for the study. It looks a bit like the one that’s on the website, but it’s in front of me in the study, and gives me an easy-to-see progress report of the current book I am writing.
As you can see I have 10 boxes, which each represent 10% progress, and I have worked our ways to estimate my progress quite accurately. Hopefully this paper version will certainly make a difference and keep me on course for a much more disciplined way to write books.
True Time Travel Stories: Amazing Real Life Stories In The News (Time Travel Books Book 1)
Blurb: What the Scientists Say About Time Travel It’s fair to say that most scientists today will tell you that time travel is impossible. Three of today’s top physicists – Charles Liu, Brian Green and Michio Kaku – all hold that time travel is, if not impossible, unlikely in the extreme. However, one of the most brilliant minds of our time, physicist Stephen Hawking, disagrees – although only partially. He believes that time travel is theoretically possible, but only into the future. …. But What Do Real People Experience?
The opinion of science, however, has never stopped thousands of people around the world from reporting what they firmly believe are actual experiences of spontaneous time travel! Still others insist that time travel is not only possible, but they have already done it as part of top secret government programmes.
Claims for time travel range from the highly flaky to the astoundingly believable. They are especially difficult to dismiss when time travel reports come from absolutely ordinary, rock-solid people who have nothing to gain by proclaiming they travelled in time. Many people who report time travel experiences don’t necessarily believe it themselves. What happened to them was so strange, so unexpected, yet so real; they simply have no other good explanation for their experience.
You will meet a number of such individuals in this book, most of their stories straight out of the headline of local newspapers. No doubt, a story or two will strike the reader as pure balderdash. On the other hand, some of these cases of time travel are tantalizing and unexplainable. They also come with a certain amount of solid evidence, such as stopped clocks, frozen machines and electromagnetic devices acting in inexplicable ways. Physicist and NASA scientist Tom Campbell said that scientific advances always ‘come from the fringe.’ Thus, even if you consider some of these stories stepping dangerously ‘out there’ onto that fringy edge, remember that many of yesterday’s fringe theories are today’s scientific fact. At the very least, it doesn’t hurt to approach the idea of time travel with an open mind and a sense of wonder. Contents Include: * The Man Who Froze Time * Time Storms * Andrew Basiago * Planes, Trains & Automobiles…..and Ships * Liverpool * Back in Time – Retro-causation * The Kersey Time Slip * Remote Time Review
Blurb: Time takes everything – but what if it could also give back? It’s December 2019 in a small Welsh town, and 60-year-old estate agent Eric Meek discovers a property which boasts a truly unique garage conversion. Instead of the more customary home office or gym, it contains a hole in space-time that has been developed into a traversable portal.
The portal allows movement between 2019 and the day it was first powered up, 3rd July 1976, which just happened to be the best – and worst – day of 16-year-old Eric’s life. Presented with a chance to right the wrongs of the past, Eric revisits the moment he believes defined his future. His adventures in time also find him caught up in a decades-old missing persons case while he attempts to improve the lives of those close to him, including his long-dead father. The Time-Travelling Estate Agent is the story of a first love, a second chance, and a third age redemption. Will Eric change history? Or will history change Eric? Review
In a moment that may as well have come out of a dystopian novel, Amazon is making changes… and not everyone is going to like them. in 2022 the internet was rife with memes which claimed that “You will own nothing and be happy”. The question is… will we be happy?
Fast forward to the 26th February this month, and Amazon is taking this literally. Amazon is making a massive change, and this has got YouTubers, authors, readers, and Kindle-lovers alike posting on their blogs, and social media channels about what is going to happen next week!
Amazon is Taking Away Your Ability to Own Books If you’ve purchased books on Amazon’s Kindle store, you may think they belong to you. But starting February 26, Amazon is removing the ability to download Kindle books to your computer, meaning you will no longer have local backups. This is a major shift in digital ownership, and if you don’t act fast, you may lose access to books you thought you owned.
What’s Changing?
No More Offline Downloads – You will no longer be able to download Kindle books to your computer for offline storage.
Amazon Controls Your Library – Any book Amazon removes from the Kindle store will be automatically removed from your device.
Subscription Model Push – Amazon wants you locked into its ecosystem rather than owning your books.
Loss of Ownership – You don’t own the books you buy digitally, only a license to access them (as long as Amazon allows it).
Locked into Amazon – Kobo and other eReader owners will no longer be able to buy books from Amazon and transfer them to their devices.
Books Can Be Edited or Replaced – Amazon has previously updated books, and covers without user consent, even altering content.
Why You Need to Act Now
Amazon has a history of removing books. In 2009, they famously deleted George Orwell’s 1984 from customers’ Kindles without warning, citing licensing issues. In 2012, a woman lost access to her entire Kindle library when Amazon suspended her account for allegedly violating their Terms of Service. These changes mean your digital library is at Amazon’s mercy.
What You Can Do
Download Your Books Before February 26
You will need to manually download each book one by one.
If you have 300 books, this will take roughly 1 hour and 20 minutes.
Use Calibre to Backup and Transfer Books
Calibre is a free software that helps you organize your ebooks.
Amazon books have DRM (Digital Rights Management) that locks them to Kindle devices. While removing DRM violates Amazon’s Terms of Service, it is not piracy if you’ve legally purchased the book.
Consider Switching to Kobo, Nook, or other e-readers
Unlike Kindle, Kobo allows USB transfers of books, meaning you can store and access your books offline.
You can still buy DRM-free ebooks from many stores and read them on Kobo.
Buy Paperbacks Instead
Physical books cannot be deleted or altered.
You will always have access, no matter what happens to a digital platform.
Final Warning
If you ever decide to delete your Amazon account, you will lose all your purchased Kindle books forever. Amazon’s move to restrict downloads is a clear step toward controlling how, when, and if you can read your own books. Now is the time to take action and ensure you don’t lose access to your library.
Backup your books today – before Amazon takes your ability to download them!
✔ Come back from a week off, raring to go and full of energy. Last week we had the week off, and spent a lot of time just relaxing, visiting places and spending time with Family and Friends. This week I have bounced back to work on the book with some much-needed energy, and managed to edit 23 chapters! This new-found energy has much to do with some changes I have recently made.
✔ Edited another 23 chapters. I am back in the swing of things, and Grammarly is my editor of choice. With not-too-many errors, I am whizzing through the book’s final edits, and can’t wait to start sending it out to my beta readers.
✔ Converted my filofax to a small moleskine diary. As you may know, I have been trying to make an all-in-one organisational system. I have tried Bullet Journals, and Index Card Planners, and Leuchtturm 1917s, and Zettelkasten and more. This week I decided that I no longer wanted to carry around my big bulky filofax, so I have bought myself a moleskine week-per-page planner (with note pages) and am using it in conjunction with a similar style notebook, and my now-trusted-I-don’t-go-anywhere-with-it Kuru Toga. After transferring all my appointments and notes from my Filofax to the Moleskine planner, I can honestly say that it’s a great weight off my mind, and out of my pocket. There is no pen loop but the KT pencil clip fastens nicely to the cover, and the elastic bands hold the planner and the notebook together in a great little bundle. I have made a small packet out of an old envelope, and carefully placed some spare 0.5mm leads for my Kuru Toga, and placed them in the notebook pocket. This is more environmentally friendly, and much easier to carry than fountain pen ink, so it’s a win all round 🙂
What sort of methods do you use to keep organised?
✔ Edited 5 more chapters Even though I had a week off, I made sure I edited at least one chapter every day throughout the week.
✔ Had some much needed time off Outputting is good, but I need to input too (to prevent creative block), so we had a week off, and spent some time resting, watching the Supernatural series, and enjoying some downtime together.
✔ Went out with the fam We went to a place we have never visited before, with lots of interesting stories, architecture, and I took some photos. More details and photos in this weeks featured article.
✔ and more… Minecraft Update: I created a realm a little while back, and this week I have spent some time really getting stuck into creating a railway. I even managed to create an auto-storage box for my mine carts when I get to the end of the track.
Health Update: All seems to be going well so far. No more seizures, just the usual aches and pains that life throws at you, all part of becoming older, lol. Changing our diet to get rid of processed food, and enjoying more home made food has made such a massive difference. I really noticed the difference last week when we ordered in fish and chips, and spotted just how greasy it was, and how sluggish it made us feel afterwards. Home made food is definitely the way to go 🙂 I have more energy now, and am enjoying food much more 🙂 I have decided to quit the dieting group I go to, but still intend to lose 1 stone before Summer. Wish me luck 🙂
Productivity Update As you may know, I use a filofax, and a while ago I bought myself a day per page diary insert to plan my days. This has been pretty useful, but I’ve also noticed that I am not chewing up as much space as I was expecting ting with the appointments and scheduled events I have. This is mainly because I time block my appointments, and try to be realistic about how long the tasks I add will take me. Because I am not completely filling my diary with writing, (instead time blocking) I have decided to change the day per page diary / planner for a week per page planner.
This has several advantages.
I can now see what’s in my work week at a glance.
I have no wasted space in my pages.
I can now add notes using separate pages, so I can log my days, or add notes, without overfilling the filofax binder. This means that I can now turn the pages without them getting stuck, and insert pages without having to smush everything in the binder.
This week per page, combined with the Kuru Toga pencils I purchased last week are proving to be a great way to schedule my week, without the overwhelm, and no panicking if I am going to forget something. I have even added an apple airtag to my planner, so if I walk off without it, my phone while remind me, yay 🙂
Time Travel Romance – Medieval Love: Reunited by Dagger Heart Spell (Time Travel Romance Book Book 1)
Blurb: A Time Travel Romance – Medieval Love: Reunited by Dagger Heart Spell (Time Travel, Time Travel Romance, Fantasy Historical, Romance Fantasy, Medieval Romance, Medieval Love, Medieval Romance English Knight, Time Travel Books, Medieval Romance Books, Time Travel Romance Historical, Time Travel Romance Medieval) In this romance fantasy, Elise is a present day, high-priced career thief, whose services are sought by the wealthy and anonymous around the globe, and are commissioned through her mysterious employer Mr. Smith.
The latest assignment presented to Elise from Mr. Smith, is the request to retrieve a man’s heart. Once this alarming revelation is disclosed, Elise has serious reservations about her employer and declines the assignment. That is until her employer, Mr. Smith, assures her that it is not for the retrieval of an actual human heart, and that the assignment pays a generous commission fee of two million dollars. Against her better judgement and intuition, Elise accepts the assignment, and finds herself suddenly wrapped up in a bizarre set of circumstances. Elise questions both her sanity, as well as whether or not her mysterious employer Mr. Smith has set her up to participate against her will in some strange time travel fantasy of a delusional group of individuals.
The assignment goes terribly wrong, and Elise finds herself being held captive by a pair who act as if they are living in a different era, and feed her a historical fantasy dating back one thousand years ago, that they are convinced Elise was a part of. Elise begins to question whether she is being fed mind-altering drugs during her captivity in order to play along with the pair’s outlandish time travel scheme, until a series of incidents start to trigger an overwhelming feeling of deja vu. With two failed escape attempts, Elise is mentally frustrated and physically weakened, and to make matters worse, she finds herself strangely drawn to her captor Mr. Andris Blackstone, the very same man who had commissioned her services through her employer Mr. Smith.
Desperate to be released, Elise makes a deal with Mr. Andris Blackstone. His request is simple, and if Elise complies, he will allow her to leave, along with the full two million dollars she was promised for the assignment. Things don’t go quite as Elise had planned however, when a memory from one thousand years ago is suddenly returned to her, along with something else she certainly wasn’t expecting. A return of something so sacred, it took the clandestine efforts of those she knew in a previous lifetime to fulfill.
Chapter 1: Assignment of the Heart Chapter 2: Manor Mission Chapter 3: Meet Lord Blackstone Chapter 4: No Escape Chapter 5: Revelations Chapter 6: Silver Box Time Travel, Time Travel Romance, Fantasy Historical, Romance Fantasy, Medieval Romance, Medieval Love, Medieval Romance English Knight, Time Travel Books, Medieval Romance Books, Time Travel Romance Historical, Time Travel Romance Medieval
Last week I asked you a a question: Should I keep Ask The Author or dump it from the newsletter. I want to say thanks for everyone’s responses. Your comments have not gone unnoticed.
The votes have all been calculated and the result is… I am not going to get rid of it, but it will be changing in future.
Instead of removing it, I shall be moving it to the bottom of this newsletter, and changing it slightly. The option will still be there for you to Ask The Author, but it will no longer appear as a main article every single week, only when you want to send me a question. I want to thank you for your comments, and I believe this change will help make the Time Trekkers Journal a better publication.
Where did we go this week? As you will know by now, the fam and I like to go out to places of interest when we spend time off from work.
As a creative, there is a lot of time spent making choices, brainstorming, and more. These choices deplete my creative well, and sometimes you just need to refill it by getting more input. One of the ways to do that is to go out to different places. This week the fam and I went to Canons Ashby on a miserable wet day, but that didn’t deter us from exploring and having fun.
Of course no trip out is complete without a trip to the on-site bookshop, where I bought some more copies of “Diary of a wimpy kid” and picked up a very cool book called “Readers digest – The origins of words and phrases”, which gives me all sorts of insight into how most of our words and phrases came about.
The National Trust’s Canons Ashby is an Elizabethan manor house and 18th century gardens located in Northamptonshire. Unlike most National Trust places, Canons Ashby is a small village, including a church, grand manor house, bookshop, cafe and much much more. The weather was freezing cold, but the cafe was well stocked, and we stayed toasty inside.
The house was fantastic, and the staff were very helpful, giving us information about the history, and answering any questions we had.
Unlike last time when we went to Belton House, the wifi worked, so we were able to pay for the tour, lunch, coffees and cakes, and more.
The staff talked about how the place had been built many hundreds of years ago, and how it had eventually succumb to the elements and financial ruin. When the National Trust took it over years ago, it was in a very sorry state, almost unsalvageable, but after decades of hard work and restoration, it’s come back to it’s former glory, and was an absolute pleasure to visit.
On a warmer day, we will be returning to visit the gardens and see all the beautiful summer plants.
Where have you been recently? You can send me an email at brettjackson@brettishbooks.comand let me know. I would love to hear from you, and read all the emails I get.
✔ Edited 15 chapters of Time Clones 2 This week I went full steam ahead, and absolutely smashed it, by editing 15 chapters of Time Clones book 2. I am well on my way to completing this book, and hope to have it ready for beta readers to read soon 🙂
✔ Made changes to my Everbook In Last weeks newsletter I featured the Everbook, a great way to catalog, and organise the information that I like to keep handy. The videos showed a leather bound solution to the confusion I have in life. In effect, this is an all-in-one, allowing me to carry my journal, planner, business notes, projects, and much more all in one loose-leaf leather-bound folder. This means that all the flaps of paper that I keep writing on, and losing, now have a home, and I can concentrate on the projects that are written on them, making me much more productive, and it shows because of how many chapters I have edited this week. This week, I have been busy creating folders for my Everbook, and now have a Personal section, Business section, Church section and more. The leather folder is quite expensive, so I have opted for a cheaper solution (because I don’t want to spend loads of money, and then find out it’s just a fad and I no longer use it) by purchasing some leather and making my own folder for it, until I decide if and when I want to buy the official version. I have also bought a special writing tool for it, more information in the Featured Article section of todays newsletter.
✔ Finally tidied my desk With the same excitement of “When Harry met Sally” and the infamous YES, YES, YES scene, I am excited to announce that I have finally tidied my desk. This may sound like a bit of on over-reaction to what some may find to be a rather menial task, but I have to tell you, it’s been difficult. Anyone can just slide their arm across their desk and just make everything fly from the desk onto the floor, leaving an empty desk, but… that’s exactly the problem. The floor was packed full of other stuff, from Christmas and other junk just dumped into my study. So, when I say I have finally tidied my desk, what I actually mean is, the floor has been organised (I can now walk into the study) and the clutter has been removed from my desk, with some more practical stuff, and less junk. So, this has been a momentous journey, and now, I present to you… the photos!
Yup, I still listen to CD’s. No ads, no subscription fee, and when the CD has finished, its break time 🙂I love that coaster 🙂
