On Sale Now! "The Secrets of An Intelligent Consumer" by Leon Forte!

On sale now for Amazon Kindle, "The Secrets of An Intelligent Consumer" by Leon Forte.

Newly reedited for easy reading and understanding.

Easy techniques for the average person to save $200,000 over a working life without scrimping or sacrificing.

Buy the same goods and services you're using while saving large amounts of money.

Shop in many of the same stores right in your area.

Have more cash in your wallet and have more money saved.  Owe less money.

Anybody with a high school education can easily learn to become An Intelligent Consumer.

Everything is covered from food, clothes, and cars to buying or remodeling a house.

Learn to spot when you're being played for the fool.

In today's bad economy, I would imagine this book would be very helpful to consumers.  I also noticed this thing is 633 (!) pages long.  Don't be fooled by some of the other books out there with a similar topic that are just thrown together and are usually less than 10 pages long.  This is the real deal!

You can buy it now at Amazon for $4.99.  Just click on the link here.

Reviews and More Reviews, and My Response

Okay, so my first book "An American Teacher in Taiwan" has been out now for a couple of months and the reviews have started to come in.  Thankfully, they have all been pretty good.  I'm going to share some of the reviews here and respond to the criticisms I've received so far.  I have no problem with criticism if I feel it's constructive.  Sometimes it is, and that sort of criticism helps a writer to grow and improve.  Sometimes, it's just ridiculous.  One writer in the UK gave my fiction book 2 stars simply because "It wasn't long enough.  I wanted more."  They apparently liked it and didn't want it to end, so because it ended, I'm giving you 2 stars.   Seriously?

Anyway, here is the first review, from Joanne Johnson (a three star review):
"A decent account of an average guy living in Taiwan. His complaints get a little tiresome, though. I began to wonder why he stayed so long, and wrote about the experience, if he were so miserable."

I wasn't miserable.  I enjoyed my life in Taiwan.  Sure I had complaints, but there wasn't a single foreigner I met in Taiwan who didn't have complaints about Taiwan.  There is just so much to complain about, but that doesn't mean I hated the place.  Our decision to leave was mostly based on having children.  If we didn't have children, I likely would have stayed longer.

The next review, from CK (4 stars):
"I really enjoyed reading this book, but then I've had a similar life abroad as Ken and could relate to a lot of his experiences. Anyone who has been to China or Taiwan will appreciate his anecdotes, which are generally spot on. And if you're interested in living or teaching in this part of Asia, this is also a good resource to let you know what's in store. Ken sheds a lot of light on the inner workings of "cram schools" and how easy/hard it is to get by on an EFL teacher's salary.

In fact, what really stood out to me in this book is how honest Ken is in sharing his personal life with the reader. The book includes photographs of people close to him and stories about his ex-wife, siblings, and in-laws that I don't think I would have the guts to divulge in my own writing. The teaching chapters are fun and useful, but it's the stuff about dating, raising a family, and dealing with his Taiwanese parents-in-law that make this a truly unique read.

One thing you should be aware of, though, is that the book is a direct copy of the author's (now closed) blog. I'm not all that bothered if a blogger wants to monetize what they wrote online, but Ken keeps referring to the chapters here as "blog posts" and at one point even asks you to leave a comment at the end of the article. Um... seriously? These kind of moments broke the flow. I would have liked to see a little more editing take place before the book was published. Likewise, An American Teacher is full of grammatical typos that are harder to forgive coming from an English teacher.

So I gotta knock off a star for the presentation, but don't let that deter you. This is definitely a good story and is one of the better "teacher abroad" memoirs I've read."

This was a nice review, and I have to admit that I feel a bit embarrassed that I didn't catch all the typos and grammatical errors.  It was a big book (356 pages) and I had to edit it myself.  I can't really afford a professional editor.  I've fixed all the errors that I've spotted and re-uploaded the file, so anyone who has bought the book recently should have a (slightly) improved version.  I also took out the chapter about "Kung Pao Chicken" (I just felt it didn't fit) and I added a new chapter about visiting the seedy side of Hong Kong (something I felt was too X rated to talk about on the blog.)

And finally, here's another one from A. Jeffers (5 stars):
"I first stumbled upon this book back in early 2009 when it was still a semi-active blog. At that time I was still in college and had recently returned to the US from my first trip to Taiwan with my Taiwanese girlfriend. I was curious about living and teaching in Taiwan after graduation.

As soon as I came across this blog (now book), I read through the whole thing in about 4 hours. It was compulsively readable, and "I couldn't put it down", as they say. The writing was accessible, the experiences were interesting, and the reader soon feels as if the author--who brings valuable perspective as a typical Everyman foreigner-- is their friend and travel guide. The author covers a lot of ground, from finding work, to starting relationships, to teaching English classes, and even raising kids in a foreign culture. What is more unique than all of this, though, are the plain-spoken descriptions of everyday life of an English teacher in Taiwan from the perspective of a relatively uninformed newcomer.

Judged solely as a piece of writing, this clearly is not a high-caliber literary effort. On the contrary, it is simply a published blog, written by an Average Joe. But for me, that's what makes it so great. It is a well-documented experience of a regular guy who finds work and love in Taiwan and rejuvenates his life in the process. This book is exactly what it claims to be, and it provided valuable perspective and ultimately helped me in my decision to move to Taiwan after graduation, where I still am, happily teaching English and studying Chinese.

As someone with a Taiwanese girlfriend who was already considering moving to Taiwan to teach English, I found this book to be an invaluable resource for its unfiltered presentation of what it's really like to live and teach here. Admittedly, though, my situation made this book much more relevant for me than for the average reader. Having been in Taiwan for about a year and half now, I can attest that the author's observations and descriptions are generally quite accurate. I will say, though, that his perspective is significantly hindered by the fact that he never seriously tried to learn the Chinese language. That is my only criticism.

In the end, I do not rate this book highly as a piece of literature, but simply for the accessibility and truthfulness of the insights it provides to living and teaching in Taiwan.

If you're curious about teaching English in Asia, life in Taiwan, and multicultural relationships, I bet you'll enjoy this book."

This is a good review as well, though this reviewer did manage a few jabs at my writing style.  It was always my intention to write simple and deliberate.  If you want to read a blog about life in Taiwan that's far more pretentious than mine, I would recommend my friend David's blog, "Meigouren Adventures"  He also complains a lot more than I do.

Actually, I wanted to learn Chinese.  I really did.  When I first arrived, I started doing language exchange with this really cute Taiwanese girl who spoke terrible English.  Once I met Christy, I stopped seeing that girl, even though our relationship never turned romantic.  I also wanted to enroll in a class in Hsinchu to learn Chinese, but again Christy put her foot down.  She didn't want me spending money on something that she felt she could teach me herself.  She wanted to be my sole Chinese instructor, either out of cheapness or insecurity.  I don't know which...possibly both.  Now, I don't want to put all of the blame on my lack of learning Chinese on Christy, but....65% sounds good.  :)

Now on Sale for the Amazon Kindle: "In the Midst of Secrets" by Katherine Vogel

Now on sale for the Amazon Kindle: "In the Midst of Secrets" by Katherine Vogel.

Synopsis:
"Her father was an intimidating man who held fast to his belief in his African heritage; that black should not marry white to avoid racial confusion.  She was in love with a white man whose mother wished to keep her family's heritage intact by not crossbreeding with another race.
Tiffany only wanted to be with Jonathan but had to face a father who was hell bent on controlling his family's every move.  Revelations would take him off his high horse as he realized all his family members kept secrets from him, secrets they knew he could not tolerate.  The showdown would bring a proud and sometimes unreasonable man to his knees.
A son's quest to find the truth would reveal a secret so crushing that the family may never recover.  "A secret that was buried for over thirty years."

Sounds interesting.  The racist father sounds a little like my own (deceased) father-in-law.  If this were an Asian-white story, I'd think she was writing about my life.

You can buy the story by clicking on this link.

My Latest Book, Now on Sale!

My second fiction book was just released today on Amazon.  It's another supernatural/horror/ghost thing called "Small Town Evil."  Unlike my last story, "Interstate 10", which my wife Christy called "like a table with three legs instead of four," she really liked this one.  She assures me that this story "has all four legs."  Okay...odd analogy, but I get it.

This story was based on a screenplay that I wrote back in 2003.  Unless your name happens to be Quentin Tarantino or George Lucas, screenplays just don't sell for the Amazon Kindle.  People don't want to read them.  So, rather than publish that screenplay as is, I decided to completely re-write it as a novella, taking out the parts I thought didn't work, and adding some new stuff.  It wasn't as easy as I thought it would be.  It's almost like taking something and translating it into another language.  In a screenplay, you can just write "they fight" and that's good enough.  In a book, you can't be that lazy.  You have to be a bit more descriptive.  However, since it was a screenplay, the story still remains somewhat dialogue-heavy, and that might turn off some of the gore hounds looking for a cheap thrill (it does have a little bit of gore, but not a lot.)

I like the cover for this one more than the last one.  Usually I just tell him one or two sentences about the story, and he comes up with the covers.  This time he really nailed it.  He captured the image of the girl I was looking for, and the car driving on the foggy road is straight from chapter 1 of the book, and this guy didn't even know that.

So, here it is, the latest book, Number 5 in my catalog.  You can buy it by clicking here.