Tag Archives: iphone

iPAD—FINALLY ALL OF MY BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE ON iPAD

Let me get this out of the way, right up front…BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!!! Finally, all of my books, Stan Lerner’s Criminal, In Development, Get Chicks 101, Get The Right Guy, Impact, Ninety Nine Post, and Blast are available in Apple’s iBookstore for iPad…There, fifteen years of work summed up in one sentence. But I wouldn’t be much of a storyteller if I didn’t have more to say than this…

It was about thirty-five years ago that I began sharing my vision with some of my close friends about not only wanting to be a writer, but wanting people to be able to read my works on handheld computers all over the world, in every language, and my words would be delivered through the air to these, at the time imaginary, devices. And because my friends were patient with me and had good imaginations of their own, I wasn’t dismissed as a SciFi crackpot. Rather, I was just thought of as crazy ambitious with an ego that seemingly knew no bounds. Not because I wanted to be rich or famous, but because I believed that what I wrote could make a difference on a global scale—especially if I could write and answer to no one other than I.

So as I watched my digital books take their place on the digital bookshelf of the iPad in my hand I couldn’t help, but to say, “Finally.” And I should mention here that this moment was made all the more important to me by the fact that Barnes & Noble and Borders had refused to put my award winning novel “Stan Lerner’s Criminal” in their stores—for no reason anyone who buys books can understand. The anger and frustration over my work being kept from the general public weighed on me heavily—my books becoming available on Kindle, Kobo, Nook, and Smashwords, did lighten the weight somewhat, but because iPad is much more than an ebook reader, meaning it will be used by the general public (EVERYONE), it’s the iPad, which has finally lifted the burden from my back completely.

Now while I’m the first to admit that there are technophiles far more qualified to revue the iPad than I, let me just assure you that if you try an iPad—you’ll buy an iPad! I have a MacBook Pro, I love it! I have an iPhone, I love it! I have a Kindle, I love it! And let me be perfectly clear—if you just want to read books on a light, relatively inexpensive device, Kindle totally rocks!!! And then there’s iPad, which combines elements of all of the previously mentioned, with some great new twists—all the more perfect because it allows you to experience these elements in ways / dimensions the others do not. Not that it replaces the others, it doesn’t, but it simply adds on to them. Being a couch potato these days just ain’t what it used to be!!! So yes, an iPad will be joining my growing list of things…

If I may depart from the iPad theme of this blog to focus on the central element of my childhood dream for a moment… Continue reading iPAD—FINALLY ALL OF MY BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE ON iPAD

INTRODUCING DOWNTOWN OLIVER BROWN

Foreword by Stan Lerner: as I began work today on the motion picture screenplay version of Downtown Oliver Brown I could not help but to think he should once again grace the home page of downtownster. And while all of Oliver’s adventures are available under the downtownster feature section there’s nothing like reading him off of the homepage — so enjoy, and I promise there will be some new adventures soon!!!

“I just dropped Kevyn off at the airport, so I can come hang out,” Joe’s voice rang out through my iPhone. “Where are you?”

 “I’m at Starbucks on 11th and Grand—come pick me up,” I answered back, wondering how I was going to get my hair cut at Salon Eleven and meet Joe in the same one hour time frame—oh well.

 Some background: Joe, like most of my friends, has become rich over the years. And yes he’s good looking too—whatever. So, now that he’s sold his luxury mansion rental business in Sun Valley for zillions he’s decided to come back to LA, specifically Downtown to get serious about business.

Who better to call than Oliver Brown? I’ve lived Downtown for fourteen years—that would be before it was cool and the Lakers were still playing in Minnesota or Inglewood or somewhere. Anyway, when my rich friends decide it’s time to get richer or cooler Downtown they usually call.

How did I come to live Downtown? I left the mansion I could no longer afford in Doheny Estates and moved Downtown. Somehow my failure to make enough money as a writer to live in twenty times more space than I needed has made me an artistic / business visionary. If I could have thought that one up and sold it to NBC I probably wouldn’t have moved.

Starbucks on 11th and Grand is as good a neighborhood hangout as one can ask for. I spend most of the day writing there. Continue reading INTRODUCING DOWNTOWN OLIVER BROWN

ROAD TO NOWHERE PART III

Just as the Road To Nowhere is a time and place to relax in the present, it is also a time and place to have a blast from the past. The device I used to advance this objective, an ipod, was considerably different than the Eight Track player of my original road trips, ohhh, but the music was the same! “We are stardust and we’ve got to get ourselves, back to the garden…By the time we got to Woodstock we were half a million strong…Can I walk beside you? I have come here to lose the smog…” And I plugged in the ipod filling the cabin of the big, black Suburban with timeless music and memories.

The rock formations in the land somewhere between the states of Nevada, Arizona, and Utah, for those who have not traveled the 15 past Las Vegas, are mind tingling beautiful—cliffs, valleys, streams, escarpments of every kind. And there is no doubt to the thinking man who sets eyes upon this terrain that the Earth itself has a soul. These massive protrusions are not monuments, but a quest by the Earth to reach out and be close to God. The struggle is so similar to our own; the Earth like the body of man anchors the soul so desiring transcendence from the physical realm back to the spiritual reality of all creation. I cry at the sight of these mighty boulders stretched by such an epic struggle…And I feel sorry for myself because of the futility of my own struggle…Surely if the soul of the mighty Earth, which can shift tectonic plates and create mountains can’t…

A stop for lunch in Cedar City, a nice little town with an abundance of Mexican food, a University, and a Wal-Mart—and up the road we continued. From Cedar City to Sandy the topography is that of an enormous, green valley, the surrounding mountains of which, are green as well, seemingly more content with their lot than those encountered earlier—there is a tranquility about them…Even the grazing cattle is happy. Yes, these cows that graze the natural grass are happy not mad.

And the conversation that transpired originating a few miles before St. George and lasting to a click past Beaver went something like this:

“I almost built a factory over there,” Mike nodded the direction of Colorado City. “But when they told me I’d have to meet with the elders I decided not to.” Continue reading ROAD TO NOWHERE PART III