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Sometimes He just likes to have some fun.

I don’t know how many of you have ever heard of Ry Cooder, but he’s been one of my favorite musicians for years. Not a piano pounder but a great song writer. Rolling Stone magazine ranked him the 8th greatest guitar player of all time.

Though Cooder has been in the music business since the ’60s and played with greats like Randy Newman, Mavis Staples, Taj Mahal, Mick Jagger and has written many film scores I’d never heard of him until one evening aboard Jolie Aire in Antibes, France I tuned in to a show called Les Enfents du Rock and saw him singing this song…

Now, I haven’t stepped into a church since my dad’s memorial service a half dozen years ago and I hold “organized” religion in the highest, or lowest, contempt no matter if it’s fundamentalist Christian, fundamentalist Muslim, or ultra-orthodox Jewish. Take your pick, they’re all horrible in my book. But that doesn’t preclude me from enjoying Gospel music. In fact I LOVE Gospel music. It’s the basis for rock and roll, rhythm and blues and just plain blues. It’s putting into action the injunction to “make a joyful noise unto the Lord” and it touches me in a very spiritual way. The last time I attended the New Orleans Jazz Festival I spent five days in the Gospel Tent only going outside one time to see Roy Orbison which, in and of itself, was a spiritual event.

Riding up the mountain from David this afternoon I was listening to The Zion Harmonizers singing the following song but couldn’t find them doing it on You Tube but Ry has this version.

I returned to Potrerillos Arriba yesterday afternoon for an indefinite stay. Steve, the owner of the house, has been having serious back pain since he came back here in mid-November. Actually even before then. He and his wife, Jane, have spent a great deal of their time this trip consulting with various doctors and an MRI was done at Hospital Chiriqui. The opinion was that Steve needs surgery. The two have returned to the States for further consultation and for insurance purposes.

Naturally they called me the other day and asked me if I’d come look after the house and the neurotic canine-on-residence. How could I say no? I LOVE this place though I’m a bit ambivalent about the dog. Besides, I’m retired. I don’t have a job, what else do I have to do?

It’s a bit hazy looking down the mountain this morning and the low mountains are indistinct, gray bumps in the distance and the Pacific Ocean is invisible. But it’s a lot quieter here this morning than in Boqueron. Every once in a while I hear a cock crow and not the 30 fighting cocks that were my neighbors.

As I announced I finished the first draft of my book and am now letting it rest before setting out to edit it and prepare it for publication.

One of the ways I intend on publishing the book will be through something called Smashwords. In order to do that you have to follow their Style Guide, a 48 page PDF document. When you upload your masterpiece something they call the “Meatgrinder” converts it into various ebook formats so it can be read on the Kindle, Apple iPad, iPhone, Sony Reader and a bunch of others.

In order to upload your tome it has to be presented to Smashwords in a MS Word .doc file. If you’re using the 2007 version your work is saved as a .docx file. No Good! Now, not to pat myself on the back too hard but I’m VERY proficient with MS Word but this weekend I learned at least a dozen things about the program I had no idea about.

For example, if you have Word 2007 on your computer bring up a document now. See that circle in the upper left hand corner? Click on it.

A drop-down menu come up on your screen with options you probably don’t know about. Of course there’s the usual Open, Save and Save As options. If you click Save As you can automatically convert your document into a PDF document.

Anyway, the Style Guide goes through a lot of formatting information and I thought before tackling my book I’d try something a bit smaller. There’s a lot of short fiction and non-fiction stuff on Smashwords so I dug into my old files and decided to polish up a story I’d written a long time ago and played around with for years. It’s about my single-handed sail from Key West to Isla Mujeres, Mexico. I set about polishing it up and went through the Smashwords formatting. Let me tell you, there are a LOT of things hidden in your documents you never even thought might be there.

I spent a couple of hours refining my story and formatting it and adding a cover for the story. Now I’ve gone up to the Info Plaza and set up my Smashwords account and have uploaded my story.

I’ve put a price of .99¢ on it, well, why not? HOWEVER, you, my faithful readers can get it for FREE. All you have to do is send me your email address and I’ll send you a special coupon that will let you allow you to download it for absolutely nothing. The coupon offer expires February 17, 2011, so hurry. Go to http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/37782 and after you’ve added the story to your cart enter the coupon number and you’ll get it for free.

Well, actually there’s one thing I ask you to do for the free story and that’s to go back to Smashwords and write a review of it. I think you’ll enjoy the story, but even if you want to say “I think your time would be better spent surfing internet porn than writing,” I’ll accept that, too.

If there’s a book you really want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it. ~Toni Morrison

Find out what was on the best seller list of the New York Times on your birthday.

http://www.biblioz.com/best_sellers.php?a=0&i=43622970