Author: Bob

My day job is teaching at the local community college. I teach databases and software development in a Career and Technical Education (vo-tech) program. Normally, this should mean that I have the summer off to get some writing done. Things don’t always work as intended.

A CTE program is intended to teach the students for two years and then send them into the workforce. Our particular does an excellent job of this. We can’t meet employer demand for employees and all of my students find good work. This is a good thing. The software development we teach is business oriented and very much “applied” rather than “theoretical”.

Unfortunately, the information technology (I. T.) world changes quickly. The course for which I am responsible underwent significant changes in the past year. That means new books, updated software, and rewriting the curriculum to match the changes. While my liberal arts colleagues were lounging and reading the few new developments in their academic areas, I had to work my backside off.

Every course has Student Learning Outcomes, also called Course Objectives. These are the things the student is supposed to be able to do upon successful completion of the course. Sometimes, these will be broken further into sub-objectives in order to provide greater detail. To make sure that the course is doing its job, there must be assessments. You assess student success in the course through assignments and tests. When done properly set up, there is a direct map from every assignment or test to a specific course objective.

That’s for a normal course. When teaching software development, you must write every program that is part of an assignment. If you are going to make the students do it, you have to do it first to make sure the latest version of the development environment works. I wrote a lot of software and designed a lot of databases this summer.

Another issue with teaching CTE is finding books. Many college books are written for students in a Computer Science program. These texts tend to be a little more theoretical, are math and science heavy, and cost a fortune. The other books available are for absolute beginners or for experienced programmers who are just trying to pick up a new skill. The best books for my students are often missing topics or the topics are presented in a less than useful way. I wrote a lot of supplemental materials this summer.

The result of all of this is that I did very little writing of novels, short stories, poems, or anything else. There have been large gaps between my “weekly” posts to this site. It has gotten very annoying. Will it continue to be annoying?

In a week, the new semester starts. I’ll teach five sections and help adjunct (temporary, part-time) instructors with a couple more. I have two night classes of four hours each. Those classes end at nine forty-five at night, after which I can drive home, try to sleep, and start morning classes at ten o’clock the next day. Then there is the grading.

I’m guessing that I will still be too exhausted and busy to do a lot of writing. My psychological health will suffer for it. My writing skills will suffer for it. I just have to make sure my students don’t suffer for it.

There’s always next summer. It’s only about nine months away.

I decided my book could use more exposure, so I did some research. A press release seemed like a good option. Only time will tell the final value of the release, but the experience was definitely educational.

The Internet has plenty of articles about writing for press releases. Most are about press releases in general, but there are plenty focused on book launches. Reading these gave me more confidence that I would be able to do this. The articles also pointed me in the direction of my next steps.

There are services available that will distribute your press release to a wide audience. Naturally there is a cost, but if you get proper exposure and sales, the cost is low enough. You must make sure the service is legitimate, but there are plenty of them with a good reputation.

Armed with information, I wrote my release and hired a service. Then I just had to wait to see which news and other agencies in the world picked it up. The service I hired sent me an email later in the day with a list of those news sites. There were even hyperlinks to the pages where those folks posted my release. It was thrilling to see my press release on the website for television news stations in major American cities.

As I looked through all the people who picked up my release, a pattern emerged. Many of the pages were in the financial news sections of their site. Some of the sites were entirely business and financial news. Why would a press release about a novel be picked up by the money people?

The press release had both a heading and a subheading. When I wrote the heading, I tried to pick something that would catch people’s attention. The heading was, “Who owns the company that owns your employer?” The subheading was, “New novel Hour of Consequence addresses this and other questions.” Looking over this, I think I figured out the issue.

I imagine that news services are flooded with press releases all the time. Like everyone else facing too much digital input, they probably use software to sort through it all. It is unlikely that a person decided that my press release was worth printing. A computer made that decision. At the same time, the keywords in the heading made the release look as though it contained business news. That’s why all the finance-oriented pages and sites picked up the release.

Fortunately, I saw the humor in that. The experience taught me several lessons. Since my day job involves software, I should be able to predict how software will view my next press release. My headings will contain keywords that computers will funnel but must still be intriguing to human readers. It should be an interesting exercise.

Check this page for news about me and my writings.

For Immediate Release: Hour of Consequence Published

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Hiawatha, IA July 20, 2019

In the new novel Hour of Consequence, radio host John Beaman loses his job. A caller to the show gives a play-by-play of the murder of federal agents and then calls for rebellion. Now the feds want to know Beaman’s part in the rebellion. Rebels want to rescue him from the feds. Patriots want him dead. He just wants to return to his pre-radio life. That’s hard to do with a mysterious group tied to everything he’s done.

This is the second novel by Bob Trapp. The first, Cordell’s Rebellion, came out in 2018. Though related, Hour of Consequence is not a direct sequel to Cordell. When not writing, Trapp teaches data analytics and software development in a small college in Iowa.

Hour of Consequence is available as an eBook or paperback from Barnes and Noble.

The new project is an attempt at a screenplay. I expected some difficulties learning the new format, having never done a screenplay before. Another problem has caused more trouble, and I’m not completely sure why. It will require a new approach.

My delay is something in my brain. I sit to write and everything goes blank. Normally this would just be writer’s block. Previous bouts writer’s block have prevented me from figuring out what happens next in the story. This is different, though.

I know the whole story I am trying to tell. I’ve watched it in my head as though watching the movie. I know the scenes, the characters, every line of dialog. I should be able to get that written without any trouble. When I sit to do so, it all goes away. When I walk away from the keyboard, everything is back.

My guess is that there is some sort of apprehension about taking on a new medium. This is my first real screenplay. I experimented by writing a couple of short, television commercial-length items just to get a feel for the document structure. They went smoothly. I haven’t done anything else.

In addition to writing a new way, there is the business itself. I’m not really a Hollywood person. Much of the glamour of the movie industry holds no interest for me. I would rather be an anonymous person in the woods than be a public person showing up at parties. I have to ask myself, is this a world in which I want to do business?

The best approach would be to ask: why do I want to write a screenplay? Maybe better, what do I want to accomplish? Those may or may not be equivalent questions. Most writing comes out of me because my brain needs to create stories to explore complex models. I get the writing out of me and I feel better.

At the same time, time runs quickly and retirement age approaches. I would like to have something I can do for income once “retired” and writing would be a good option as long as I can turn a profit. Novelists can make reasonable money if their books sell. According to the Writers Guild of America, the bottom end of a low budget screenplay can pay almost as much as I make as a community college professor. Given my normal writing speed, this is a skill that I definitely need for my retirement.

As an experiment, I plan to write the story of my screenplay in more of a narrative form. Once completed, I will then reformat it to fit the screenplay format. As mentioned, I can see the entire movie in my head and know what needs to be there. I hope that this will trick my brain so I don’t get the blockage.

Wish me luck.

I just finished reading a novel by my friend Alethea Shenea Cook called Just Wing It. This is the brief review I left on my goodreads page.

Just Wing It by Alethea Shenea Cook

I wasn’t sure that I would be in the target audience for this book, but I gave it a try. By the time I neared the end, it was hard to put down. There were definitely some good surprises. The characters were well developed and it was really easy to hate the bad guys while still understanding why they were bad guys. Very good job, Ms. Cook (the author).

View all my reviews