Where In The World Was Cloyce Joseph Tippett, on this day February 14th, 1939

Filed Under: Blogs @ "Colonel C. J. Tippett", The Planes! by Corinne — Comments Off on Where In The World Was Cloyce Joseph Tippett, on this day February 14th, 1939
February 14, 2013
Col C. J. Tippett flew the Sikorsky OA8

Col. C. J. Tippett flew the Sikorsky OA-8 on February 14th, 1939… on his 26th birthday!

Cloyce Joseph Tippett was born on February 14th, 1913.

Twenty-six years later, on February 14th, 1939, he was at Kelly Field, Texas, flying a Sikorsky OA-8, also known as a JRS-1 or S-43.

Flying at Kelly Field was an accomplishment Tip had been trying to achieve since he was 16, flying his own Jenny biplane in the fields of Port Clinton, Ohio.

The amphibious twin-engine Sikorsky “Clipper” was only one of the many aircraft Tip learned to fly, at Kelly Field, and afterwards. This was a passenger craft and could hold up to 25 people in addition to the crew. Tip was learning every aspect of aviation, including navigation and communications.

Amphibious aircraft enjoyed the extended landing and take-off options afforded by waterways, but there were techniques specific to using those waterways that Tip had to master. Calm water was one thing, but any chop or waves presented a unique set of problems.

The extraordinary detail of Tip’s life as an aviation pioneer, described in the soon-to-be-released book “When No-One Else Would Fly”, was made possible by the flight logs and other documents that Tip carefully preserved throughout his life and travels.

Tip’s birthday flight in 1939 at Kelly Field, Texas was recorded in his flight log, along with every other flight he took as he studied with the US Army Air Corps. His descriptions of those times are a delightful read, and the book is almost ready!

 

Tags: , , ,
Comment

Turning my print book “Just A Couple Of Chickens” into an ebook as a Do It Your Self Publisher

Filed Under: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions, Blogs @ How to Self Publish by Corinne — Comments Off on Turning my print book “Just A Couple Of Chickens” into an ebook as a Do It Your Self Publisher
February 12, 2013
just a couple of chickens on kindle

Just A Couple Of Chickens is now available on Amazon Kindle… high five for Do It Your Self Publishing!

When I enter the phrase “self publish a book” into Google, I get pages of hits that are actually vanity presses: companies that I can pay to do the publishing for me.

I suppose that is one interpretation of self publishing, but it isn’t what I mean.

I mean “do it your SELF publishing”.

Of the growing number of authors who are self publishing, there are a smaller (but growing) number who are coming up to an intersection called Print Book or eBook. They are discovering that the same materials required for the print book will not automatically translate straight to an ebook.

Yes, a file has to be saved as a PDF for upload to a print-on-demand service for the print book, but very rarely is that same PDF file going to work as-is for an ebook. I’d say never, but I’m supposed to never say never.

I set out, three weeks ago, to produce a Kindle version of “Just A Couple Of Chickens”, which has been for sale on Amazon.com since December 2010.

At first, I was delighted to see that Createspace had a button on my book dashboard saying “Publish On Kindle,” along with a download button for two files: the cover and the interior of my book – for Kindle!

I hopped merrily along to Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), with my files, and while the cover file worked well – the interior did not. Not not not. At. All.
And that was the file that Amazon offered me to use on Amazon – for my cooliorageous new ebook.

I learned that it is very easy to publish a messy looking ebook with no navigation, but it is not easy to publish a good looking ebook with standard navigation.

sigh.

For those of you who know something about ebooks, which I did not three weeks ago, you will understand my journey when I admit that my first question was “What is an NCX file?”

And for those of you who don’t know… get ready to climb that learning curve. Pack a lunch.

BUT!  I did it. Myself.

These bullet points were earned in metaphysical sweat and tears, and they are a beautiful thing for anyone interested in “do it your self publishing of a kindle ebook”:

  • You will make a separate file for your kindle ebook. It will not be the same file for the same book in the different ereader formats. 
  • KDP is publisher for Kindle, and many people use Smashwords as the publisher for everything else.
  • The technology behind this process, and therefore all of the how-to directions, are changing so fast that you will probably discover something new and buggy during your process. You must use The Force.
  • eBooks have no page numbers. You do not control the font. You are at risk of not controlling the page breaks. Navigation is important and you are better-off setting that up in MS Word, using styles, headings, and bookmarks.
  • I don’t know if the InDesign kindle plugin works or not because it only works on CS5 or later and I have an earlier version of Adobe Creative Suite.
  • The Word document must be super clean and simple – see the Smashwords Style Guide by Mark Coker. Most Word documents are not super clean and simple.
  • KDP will let you upload a word docx but it will look crappy. Use  a Word doc – but unless you did something htmlantizing, you won’t have a nice looking Go To,
  • For that, I used Calibre because I’m on a Mac. 
  • If you are on a PC, good luck using mobipocket – I couldn’t resolve Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 8. And I really tried.
  • If you really can find someone who really will Kindle your book for less than $100, pay the money. Make super sure that the offer includes Go To navigation with the chapters listed. Tell them up front if you have images in your book and read the fine print on the offer to be sure your price is still going to be less than $100 after they get started.

To all of the tech-heads who posted how-tos on forums, chats, article sites, blogs, comments, and free ebooks… thank you.

Oh, and I almost forgot… “Just A Couple Of Chickens” is now available on Kindle!!!  WahOOOOOOOOOO!

 

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Comment

Famous People Who Met My Grandfather, Col. C. J. Tippett… Alfred C. Glassell, Jr.

Filed Under: Blogs @ "Colonel C. J. Tippett", Famous People Who Met My Grandfather, Fishing at the Cabo Blanco Fishing Club by Corinne — Comments Off on Famous People Who Met My Grandfather, Col. C. J. Tippett… Alfred C. Glassell, Jr.
February 7, 2013
Alfred C. Glassell and Col. C. J. Tippett

Alfred C. Glassell, Jr and Cloyce Joseph Tippett won this trophy fishing for black marlin at the Cabo Blanco Fishing Club, but for Glassell, these were not the biggest fish in the sea…

Alfred C. Glassell, Jr. was one of the founding members of The Cabo Blanco Fishing Club, along with S. Kip Farrington, Jr.

He was a tall man, and towered above the other people in every photograph he stood for, unless he was standing next to my grandfather, Cloyce Joseph Tippett.

Tip was frequently at the Club, managing operations, and he joined Glassell on the Club boats as they fished for black marlin and giant tuna.

In 1958, Tip joined Glassell and Farrington in a fishing tournament. Together, they won the trophy seen in the photo.

Five years earlier, Alfred C. Glassell, Jr. had won a much bigger trophy. He caught the world record for largest fish caught on rod and reel – and the record still stands today.

On August 4, 1953, Glassell hooked a black marlin using mackerel as bait. He fought the fish for more than an hour, knowing it was big enough to qualify for a record.

Tip was back on shore that day, at the Club, and had suggested that Glassell take along a film crew who were visiting Cabo Blanco, hoping to catch a marlin on film. They were shooting for the film version of Ernest Hemingway’s “Old Man and The Sea” and they were certainly getting good footage.

The black marlin was 1,560 pounds and Alfred C. Glassell, Jr. entered world history. He had the fish transported home whole and had it stuffed. For a long time, it hung in the Smithsonian Institution’s Hall of Sea Life. Now, it hangs in the offices of the National Museum of Natural History.

Tip’s biography includes many stories of The Cabo Blanco Fishing Club, and stories of aviation history. The book is coming soon, and you can sign up here for an email announcing the book’s release.

 

Tags: , , ,
Comment

How Does Self Publishing An E-Book Lead To A Big Book Deal?

Filed Under: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions, Blogs @ How to Self Publish by Corinne — Comments Off on How Does Self Publishing An E-Book Lead To A Big Book Deal?
February 5, 2013
corinne tippett and the westchester press

Writers dream of big book deals with traditional publishers, or big sales income from self published books. The big blue skies of Amazon.com pervade both dreams.

In the chaotic clouds of The New Publishing Landscape, one (of many) possible pathways to making money as a self published author is starting to emerge.

By learning how to self publish a book, an author can produce work that will not only be out there in readerland, possibly earning money from the start, but could also lead directly to a big traditional book deal.

Here is how:

  • A writer writes a Really Good Book (note… the book has to be really good…)
  • The writer self publishes the book as an e-book on Amazon.com (note… it has to be on Amazon.com…)
  • The writer markets the e-book and it begins to sell, then sells some more (note… the odds on the book selling – even with marketing – are slightly better than winning the lottery, and slightly worse than being nibbled by a shark near a beach in Florida)
  • The e-book rises in rank on the Amazon.com bestseller list (note… the rank rise is directly related to the previous bullet…)
  • Traditional publishers, who are watching the Amazon.com lists, decide to take a chance on the already proven sales of the writer and her e-book (no note required)
  • Amazon.com, seeing that traditional publishers are beginning to poach the self published shoals of profitably-selling books, jumps in and offers the writer a traditional-style book deal directly (note… meaning that Amazon.com is not only a place where an writer can self publish a book, but it is also a traditional-style publishing house itself.)

This pathway to traditional publishing has already happened for some now-big-name writers, and is happening more and more. In a related, but reversed, scenario, some traditionally-published authors are beginning to self publish their work, relying on their existing fan-base.

It does, however, all come down to sales.
Write a really good book, self publish it as an e-book, market it well, and…. voila!  (maybe…)

My first self published book was only a print book, and will soon be available as an e-book. Let’s see how it goes!

 

Tags: , , , , ,
Comment

When No-One Else Would Fly – The Flight That Inspired The Title of Col. C. J. Tippett’s aviation pioneering biography

Filed Under: Blogs @ "Colonel C. J. Tippett", The Planes! by Corinne — Comments Off on When No-One Else Would Fly – The Flight That Inspired The Title of Col. C. J. Tippett’s aviation pioneering biography
January 31, 2013
Col. C. J. Tippett and the Beechcraft C45

The Beechcraft C-45, similar to the model pictured here, was Tip’s favorite twin-engine aircraft. He flew some amazing flights in it, and one of them is the inspiration for the book’s title.

The current leader for the idea of a title for my grandfather’s aviation biography is “When No-One Else Would Fly.”

It comes from a letter written to Col. C. J. Tippett by Dr. Gene B. Starkloff about a life-saving flight that Tip made in 1945.

Tip was living and working in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with his wife (my grandmother) and children. He had recently returned from flying a new Beechcraft C-45 from Washington DC to Rio on behalf of the US Government – the flight itself an amazing feat in that time in aviation history.

The Beechcraft was a gift, expanding the civil aviation mission in Brazil to twin-engine capability.

Dr. Starkloff was the Army Navy doctor assigned to the South Atlantic Command Headquarters in Rio, and on a dark and stormy night in June, he had received a desperate message from the American embassy in Paraguay. American personnel had been stricken with a wicked illness. They feared that it was polio, and several of the victims were children.

Dr. Starkloff needed both a pilot and a plane to fly him and his heavy load of equipment to Asuncion. There was hope if treatment could be applied soon, and Dr. Starkloff was the only doctor within reach who could deal with polio. But weather had grounded all flights; commercial, military, or private. The conditions were impossible, and the doctor could find no pilot willing to try.

The full story of Tip’s “flight of mercy” is beautifully detailed, in Tip’s own words, in the soon-to-be-released book. It is only one of the many record-setting flights that Tip made in the Beechcraft C-45 between 1945 and the 1950s.

Dr. Starkloff was able to help the children, and he credits Tip with extraordinary courage. He wrote: “We were the only airplane in or out of Rio de Janeiro that week… I will never forget that trip that you volunteered to fly – when no-one else would…”

“When No-One Else Would Fly” will soon join our cultural library of aviation history, and describe Tip’s life as an aviation pioneer.

Tags: , , , ,
Comment

How Do I Keep Up With Blogging?

Filed Under: Blogs @ "Just a Couple of Chickens", Blogs @ How to Self Publish by Corinne — Comments Off on How Do I Keep Up With Blogging?
January 29, 2013
cape meares oregon and the westchester press

Taking a wide angle view of blogging can help me see where I’m going as I work. (This is Cape Meares on the Oregon Coast, by the way.)

Along the way to learning how to self publish a book, I researched blogging, and saw that many resources suggested posting a blog every day.

Blogging every day sounded overwhelming to me.

It still does, which is why I don’t blog every day.

The whole idea behind blogging, or at least the one related to self publishing a book, is to use the right keywords (ones that readers will be entering in a search engine like Google) and write really interesting, useful, engaging, current, accurate, and readable content, and do it regularly. This builds traffic, and a readership, and an audience… for our books!

A good idea, but still. Overwhelming.

So I developed a system:

  • I brainstormed ideas, and wrote them down in any form. On paper, in an idea database, in a word document, in a spreadsheet… anything.
  • I organized those ideas into categories. Ideas usually can be grouped – and those groupings are the Category. Assigning the category in the blog platform makes it easy for readers to find the topics they are interested in.
  • I printed out a blank month from my calendar program – on paper. Enough with having everything inside the computer, I need to old-school it with paper and pen sometimes.
  • I added any seasonal holidays to that blank calendar sheet, so that I could tailor that day’s post to the season if I wanted to. Christmas always comes as a surprise to me, and this helps.

Since I have too many topics I am trying to cover, I assigned one day a week for each, minus Fridays. If I were blogging about one topic, I’d maybe assign a day for each category or such…
For instance,  I am blogging twice a week at www.TheWestchesterPress.com, instead of three times a week (I couldn’t keep up with three times a week – given my other blogging efforts which are about to be revealed in my next sentence)… actually, I can’t even keep up with twice a week.

Many of my ideas could be broken up into more than one short post, so the calendar filled up rapidly.
After all this, I take one day a week and write the posts, add a picture, and schedule it for the designated day.
I write the posts in advance – as many as I can do on a Saturday, for instance, and when something timely comes up, I can just move the pre-scheduled post to another day, and insert my extemporaneous post.

Series are the most fun for me. Like, “Famous People Who Met My Grandfather” for my soon-to-be-released aviation biography, or “Egg Artist Spotlight” for artists doing amazing things with blown eggshells. My quest to turn my www.TheFreeRooster.com blog at into a book is a series of posts, as I use each tool I can find to accomplish the task.

My system makes an overwhelming task do-able. I see increased traffic every time I post. And I see growing traffic each month since I began to post regularly. If the content is useful, people will read it. If the keywords are correct, search engines will find it.

And now I’ve posted a blog about posting a blog – BlogElegant. Blelegant!

 

 

Tags: , ,
Comment

The Cabo Blanco Fishing Club and The Boat Captains

Filed Under: Blogs @ "Colonel C. J. Tippett", Fishing at the Cabo Blanco Fishing Club by Corinne — Comments Off on The Cabo Blanco Fishing Club and The Boat Captains
January 24, 2013
The Cabo Blanco Fishing Club and Col C. J. Tippett

Cloyce Joseph Tippett stands under the stuffed bluefin tuna on the wall of the Cabo Blanco Fishing Club’s main salon. He is posing with the boat captains and crew. The man in the checked shirt, to the right, is S. Kip Farrington Jr, founder of the Club. This picture was taken in the 1950s.

In the 1950s, in Cabo Blanco, Peru, world record catches were not unusual at the Cabo Blanco Fishing Club.

The club had been founded by the biggest names in sport fishing of the time, and members included rich and famous men. Everything about the club was focused on catching record fish, and the boat Captains were no exception.

The Cabo Blanco Fishing Club hired the captains and crew from the village, and the neighboring villages up the coast. These men had a lifetime of fishing experience, and additional training at the member’s expense in the fine art of world record fishing rules. 

Cloyce Joseph Tippett, who was pursuing a day job as the Director of the South American Office of the International Civil Aviation Organization, formed by the United Nations after World War II, was the also the Club’s director, and he often wrote of the dedication and enthusiasm of the boat Captains.

“The crews are quite depressed when the fishing is bad,” Tip wrote in a personal letter to a friend in the early 1950s, “They take it much worse than the guests!”

Fishing for black marlin and other big game fish was not just a job for the boat crews, it was a passion. The giant fish were often a food source for the village families, but it was more that as well.

The Club members were proving their sportfishing dedication by paying the extraordinary membership fee, but they were under-achievers compared to the commitment of the fishing boat crews.

This photo, showing Tip in the middle, Kip Farrington on the right, and the boat crews in the middle, is one of few images illustrating these behind-the-scene heros of The Cabo Blanco Fishing Club.

Tip’s book is coming soon – getting closer every day. It has a huge amount of fascinating detail about The Club, and Tip’s involvement with it. Join my growing list of people who want to be notified when the book is released by contacting us. We never, ever, sell your contact information.

 

Tags: , , ,
Comment
Copyright 2012 Corinne Tippett & The Westchester Press
Powered by WordPress & Web Design Company
Social Media Icons Powered by Acurax Wordpress Development Company