This is an author's blog written by Pico Triano. 'Pico's Profile' will tell you a little about me. 'Pico's Stuff' will lead you to links and information on how you can access all my publicly available writing. 'Friends and Family' advertises websites on behalf of family and friends. The 'Friend Book Reviews' page is where I review materials written by the many friends I have made as a writer. Finally I recently added a review page for general reviews.

Sunday 31 August 2014

From Pico's Pen Has a New Home



From Pico's Pen has a new url. This will be the last post at this address. I do get a steady stream of traffic here and would like to see that all transfer over to the new site. If you have found this site please click on the link here http://frompicospen.blogspot.ca/ to visit my new site. If you are one of my followers, please follow the new site. This one will remain open but will not be maintained or updated anymore.

The new website should be a lot better. It will be easier to follow my writing if you are so inclined. It will also incorporate everything I have learned about this site in time.

Thanks for reading. Looking forward to all my readers visiting the new site.

Pico Triano

Friday 4 July 2014

Catch Up Update!



This is not working the way I would like it to. I forgot because my Sunday evenings are crazy packed anyway. This will catch me up to last weekend. I've come to the conclusion that I have to do this on a different day of the week. Thursday or Friday could work but maybe it is too soon to make promises.

I will try to get a regular update in here. It is important to keep track of all this stuff. Too far behind becomes too big of a mountain to climb for catching up.

Once this is done I have a whole bunch of other work to do to make this place and the rest of my writing more accessible and efficient.

Bubblews Posts

Frustrated With Facebook

Blackberries In Our Future

The Starters Pistol Has Sounded

Absentee Excuses

Porcupine Lair

Paving the Worst Spot on the Trans Canada

My Mind is Totally Blank

Primal Hunting Instincts

Full Agenda Ahead for Me Today

More Productive Day Than Expected

Not At Work

Television Is Back!

Future Article Inspiration

Computer Clean Up!

Hubpages Articles

Homeschooling-Lessons of Opportunity: The Moose Skull

Homeschooling-Lessons of Opportunity: The Shipwreck

My Three Prong Article Writing Attack

Sunday 15 June 2014

Pico's Week in Review June 8 - 14


Almost forget to write this week's update. In some ways this week was better than last week. My Bubblews efforts were on track until glitches with the website and my own equipment intervened. Still compared to the previous week my posting was epic.  I thought I did pretty well. I did have an additional focus setting myself up to work on Hubpages again. That took about of time. I think it will be worth it.

Eight posts for the week and they are:

The Big Guy Turns Ten

Mismatched Socks

Moncton Mourns

Mosquito Morning Mayhem

My Agenda Today

Our Beef Goes To Church

Netherlands Lays a Beating on Spain

Resting on the Sabbath

My inaugural Hubpage is a new direction for some of my writing. I found that Bubblews is great for short quick posts with a short shelf life. Hubpages can garner attention for a longer period of time. There are more options for creativity as well. I will be posting my longer more serious work there. First one is below.

Homesteading-The-Detritus-of-Another-Mans-Dreams






Sunday 8 June 2014

Pico's Week In Review June 1 - 7



When it came to Bubblews this week I didn't get much done. I have my excuses though and I will get back on track this week. I do have a goal to average at least a post a day for an entire year. I think I'm just a bit behind pace now.

Reason I fell behind is that our router for the family Internet system died. It wasn't very simple to troubleshoot either. We tried rebooting the modem and the router. We tried bypassing the router and hooking directly into my laptop. Nothing worked. We finally ended up calling our Internet provider at the neighbour's (our phone runs through the Internet) and communicated back and forth with two way radios. Fortunately the neighbour is within range of our radios. We went through all that procedure all over again with them trying to fix the connection from their end. What finally worked was hooking the modem directly to my son's computer which is a different brand and more up to date. Once we figured out that the router was the culprit we had to wait for the weekly shopping trip to replace it.

Didn't waste the time. I did write two articles for the coming issue of Pico's Cycling - Tales of the Road. It's good to be ahead of the game on that count. We're looking forward to another topnotch issue.

Only three Bubblews articles on the list this week:

Not Worth the Money

I Can't Feel My Tongue

Last 72 Hours Have Been Crazy

Sunday 1 June 2014

Pico's Week in Review May 25 - 31



A weak week on Bubblews. Hope to do better in the coming week. It wasn't that I didn't have writing ideas and materials, I just had too many other things on my plate. Another issue was that Bubblews had quite a few glitches and it wasn't easy to post sometimes.

Here's my five titles from this week:






One of my main distractions from the above writing was getting the June issue of Pico's Cycling - Tales of the Road out into cyberspace. I'm quite happy with the results. It has shown some definite improvement and growth this month. Hopefully next month I can be a little more on top of the game and have everything ready in advance. It is a lot of work.

The fruits of those labours are right here:



Sunday 25 May 2014

Pico's Week in Review May 18 - 24



Another busy week is done. I wrote a post on this blog about a woman who made an important contribution to my writing career. Besides that I've done a lot of preparation work for the next edition of Pico's Cycling - Tales of the Road. I'm looking forward to the coming issue because we are introducing and additional contributor.

I had a busy week on Bubblews. That site is working better than it has been. Fewer errors and crashes to annoy those of us trying to write there. I am taking this evening off though. One of my very last calls at work was a credit card customer who just left an abusive relationship. She did a lot of crying. We did our best to make sure that he account could not be accessed by her ex-husband. He's facing jail time. When I got home the news and Facebook is plastered with Elliot Rodgers who murdered six people in the Santa Barbara area a couple days ago. There is a very strong outcry against violence against women. I did have a lot of good ideas for posts but this whole issue is really bothering me. As a father and husband I find the kind of violence in the world incomprehensible. Don't know if I'll write on the subject. At this point my thoughts and feelings aren't in a writing kind of focus.

Bubblews posts from the previous week are right here:

When You Have a Holiday Weekend...

The March of the Chairs

Ego Boost Today!

Should've Bought a Lottery Ticket

Rainy Day Means Writing

Sourdough Vs Regular Pancakes

Local Wildlife Encounters

Okay Now That Is Really Cool


Thursday 22 May 2014

In Between Post


I should have posted this bit of news some time ago. Our friend Jacqueline invited us over for a special meal together last month. It gave me an opportunity to give her an autographed copy of my book.

When my family stumbled its way into New Brunswick, we met her at church services. One of the subjects we talked about was writing. Jacqui and her mother had both been quite active on writing.com at one point and she recommended I go there to continue my journey as an author. That was one of the best suggestions I've ever been given.

Joining that site and getting involved was the next major step for me as a writer. Other writers on that site taught me a great deal. With their input, I reworked that first manuscript through two more drafts. Not only that another writer I met and interacted with on that site led me directly to Inknbeans Press where I became a published author.

Jacqueline's friendship, encouragement and suggestions are appreciated. Any aspiring writer is blessed to have friends like this. Thank you Jacqui. Hope to have more autographed books for you in the future.

Sunday 18 May 2014

Pico's Week In Review May 11 - 17


Another busy weeks in books. Laid a lot of groundwork for future writing but got bogged down in a lot of other schtuff this week. Not a bad week though. Kept up with Bubblews just fine. The next issue of my cycling webzine is pretty much planned out as well. Hoping to add a few touches before publishing as the end of the month. Only regret there is that I have not done my usual promotion of the previous month.

I made eight Bubblews posts this week and here they are:

My Mother's Day Post

Cool Call Centre

Fake Birds of Prey

You Get What You Pay For

Proud of My Daughter

Seriously Off the Rails Today

Back On Track

Today Was Absolutely Gorgeous

Sunday 11 May 2014

Pico's Week in Review May 4 - 10


Adding a new element here on my writer's blog. This is intended to be a weekly up date. For anyone following my writing this should make it easier. I do so much writing in my meagre time that I wasn't getting back here to write anything.

Most of my daily musing is done on Bubblews.com for the simple reason I can write what's on my mind without worrying a great deal about classifying any of it or sticking to any kind of theme. For me it's writing practice and I get paid a penny for every view, like and comment. It adds up. I have a lot of friends there and I enjoy my time on the site. I don't worry to much about grammar or punctuation either. It's just raw Pico. If you're here because you want to get to know me as an author and person, this is the place. I write on the site almost daily. I will add a complete list of my posts and their titles every week. Currently I have 319 posts on the site. If you go to my profile page you can scroll through all of them with the arrows. The link is this: http://www.bubblews.com/account/34385-koopharper.

This past weeks posts were the following:

The Toronto Raptors Start the Offseason

My Birthday Today

Nice Day Out!

Sawbuck Built, Wood Stacked

Raised Mint Beds Are Ready

Fixed the Electric Range

My Bubblews Anniversary

The weekly review with be more than Bubblews. I will also post links to all my other writing including my cycling webzine and other writing. Whether Sunday evening is the best time to do that remains to be seen. Right now it is my logical time slot with my current schedule. Hope to maintain this and improve it.

Pico

Saturday 5 April 2014

Eventful Couple of Days


So eventful that I've had trouble getting back here to do a post about it all here on my author's blog.

First I got my royalty check from Inknbeans Press. That was supposed to be here awhile ago. There are some issues with getting mail from there to here. They could have paid me via Paypal which would have been a lot quicker but I wanted the experience of holding the check in my hand. This is my first one. Next time we'll go the Paypal route. It's nice to get paid.

Second item besides my usual too busy schedule was dropping by the local town library in Sackville to drop of copies of "Let Sleeping Dogs Lie". They had one copy and I had promised four more. Inknbeans liked the picture my son took and asked me to send them a copy. Hoping we can get a little publicity and a few more sales out of all this. I sent them contact information for the local news outlets.

Besides that I still continue to struggle to write regularly everywhere I committed myself to write. Bubblews continues to pay and I continue to contribute there. The cycling webzine is a lot of work but we haven't failed to make that happen each month. I really would like to attract some more writers to the project. Would make the project easier. It'd be nice to see some articles from international areas. I never intended it to be a maritime Canada webzine.


Thursday 20 March 2014

Added Bubblews Highlights to the Page


This is a lame beginning to something that I hope will be an epic improvement to the site here and make it more worth regular visits. Brandon one of my boys is working on created an RSS Feed which would automatically show my five latest Bubblews posts in the sidebar here. I write there almost daily. This type of addition here would be a big win for me.

There are two ways it will benefit me. Number one, it will provide daily updated material right here on my author's blog. New material is the life blood of any good blog. It will increase my readership and give another reason for those readers to keep coming back for more.

The other way I benefit is that everytime someone clicks on one of those links and visits my Bubblews content I earn a penny. If they hit like on it while they are there I'll earn another penny. This potentially pays out better than any ad programs I brought on to the site.

The downside right now is that the automatic updating with my latests post isn't working. Brandon is not sure he can make it work. I know it's possible. The big question is how? Besides that it looks lame. Not inviting at all but like I say to my internal editor. Everything can be fixed. Any suggestions as to how to make this happen are more than welcome.


Saturday 8 March 2014

Belated Update



I was very pleased this week to have one of my sons and my daughter create their own blogs. My daughter is going to be focused on her writing with a passing interest in her cake decorating. Her blog is called "Fantasy by Antonia 'Cereye' White". My son is focusing on his photography and his writing. I really like the title we managed to brainstorm up: "Journey of a Thousand Images". I am hoping they will both do very well as they learn and grow as writers.

Pico's Cycling - Tales of the Road continues to have moderate success. Four months published on time and counting. We are slowly developing a readership. I've added a Zazzle gift shop both to that site and this one. Don't know that we'll make much money from that but it can't be worse than the advertising I've already put on my sites. They have effectively been generating nothing. I will likely start replacing that space with something I think has more value.

I continue to write on Bubblews. I'd love to create a news feed and post it here on the side allowing readers to go straight from here to my latest posts there. I write almost daily on that site and making a little money every time someone goes and looks. Only trouble is to figure out how to do that. I will devote a little time trying to do just that. I don't think it will be very easy to do though.