Posts Tagged ‘My Viral Sobriety’

Well I suppose this Hemingway quote at least explains why I don’t fear dying in Afghanistan. I’ve been broke too long to fear death, haha. Nah, I still fear death, in fact years ago, and this is chronicled in my book Hippopotamus Sea, I did something like 5 hits of acid, a couple of months after doing 50 and being put under house arrest and beaten up pretty severely by Atlanta finest, ironically, about a block away from 8111. I digress… as soon as I was off house arrest, released into the wild if you will, we went to Rishi Nagranis and we all ate some LSD, and I ate about 5 hits as I recall. It is one of the only times I can remember having almost shamanic like visions. I felt like I saw the universe expanding and condensing on itself, my life after death, being a part of the molecules in the earth, and then in a tree and then eventually released free into the air, and I even thought I saw my own death. As fate would have it, it was by AK-47 in Afghanistan, and this was long before 9/11 or we were even at war with the Taliban. I’m sure it was just a collection of memories from a book or something I’d read, surely I’m not prophetic or anything at all, but damn if I can’t shake the idea of still joining up, even though I’d thought I’d decided against it.

I should just go turn in the paper work go spend the day at the medical office and see if it’s even an option. More than likely they will just say you’re too damn old, we don’t take Hep C cured or not, thanks for playing, btw we found an old fine you still haven’t paid the city of Atlanta from way back when in your drinking and drugging days. But at least then I’ll know that it’s no longer an option, that I tried, and that the romantic notion of adventure, combat, and stories galore is just a figment of my imagination and I can refocus on the work at hand, building a successful recruiting career here in Atlanta. And of course growing the Indie Publishing house books4free.com from more than just one book. I’d originally started hoping to include a bunch of recovery related books, but now I think my next project will be sci fi. Anywayz, finding out will at least galvanize my next decision.

“The shortest answer is doing the thing.”

– Ernest Hemingway

Another gem, so fuck it, lets go see if it’s even an option.

-Jared Bryan Smith

In celebration of the 1st Professional review we’ve allowed the book to be downloaded on smashwords 100% free for a limited time. Smashwords converts the book for  Kindle, Nook, Sony’s reader, the IPAD and more, and Mark Coker is a genius as I’ve blogged about before. I allow Mark’s Smashwords.com site to handle all the digital distribution of the book because it’s simply the cleanest  most effective distributor of ebooks on Earth. Check out the book for free there, I’ll probably keep it free for a few weeks, down from $3.95.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/19066

It’s funny, when I was out there drinking, I was never insecure, shy or passive in any way shape or form, I was quite the opposite, loud, boastful and assertive in almost all aspects of my life. And running the show ended me up absolutely psychotic, so today things are different, I try and follow God’s will.

From a publishing standpoint though, if you’re not blowing your own horn, nobody else is gonna, especially as an Indie writer, but despite being slow, and shy, having sent out the book to only one professional book reviewer, instead of what is suggested by all the blogs and other vanity publishers, sending them to dozens, I couldn’t have handled bad reviews from that many folks. So I just sent to one, Bobbie Crawford McCoy in Canada, Founder of Nurture Your Books. You can find her review on my Amazon page, Smashwords on the front page of my blog, or directly:

http://nurtureyourbooks.com/website/index.php/blog/book-review24/

I was so relieved to finally read it. It’s a good review. That’s all I could ask for, and more importantly to me, she noted the fact that it was honest, and that the motive really is to help other people who may be going through the same struggle.

So now that I’ve gotten a good professional review, I feel much more comfortable sending out the book to multiple book reviewers as was suggested, I just really didn’t have the confidence to spend the time money and energy on that adventure without at least knowing I had one good professional review under my belt.

Thanks Bobbie Crawford McCoy, I can move confidently in the direction of my dreams for a while.

“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
— Oscar Wilde

-Jared Bryan Smith