About Doug Franklin, That Publisher & Author Dude

Doug Franklin:

Doug Franklin is a Publisher, Writer, Business Owner, Website Manager, Content Manager, PPC Campaign Manager, Serial Entrepreneur, and Black Belt BJJ practitioner

He is also a husband, father, US Army Combat Infantry Officer, serial entrepreneur, BJJ practitioner, roof walker & new installer trainer, social media Luddite, marketing, SEO & AdWords expert, math nerd with LSSBB & PMP certifications, and an occasional book scribbler, I mean author.

Doug Franklin was not always an author or famous, though he has always been charming and blessed with overly handsome looks.  It is hard being so awesome, but we’ll get through together.  He can also be a sarcastic ass and extremely distractible.

Chronically shit with responding when it comes to email and social media, Doug Franklin does have them, though they are rarely checked between projects. 

Give Me A Shout!

Give it a stab, and see if you get lucky!  When I respond, please think of it like winning a lottery that doesn’t pay cash prizes.  It is nice to connect with good people.

Email: dafrankl27@gmail.com

Find Us HERE!

Expert Sales Professional Books:

This is probably the most important project we are working on right here and now!

Our lives are measured based on the width and depth of the positive (or negative) impacts that we have on people’s lives.  Creating Expert Sales Professional books is fast turning into an extremely fulfilling passion project!

Immediate Sales Results:

The goal is to take ten new cold leads where you, as a sales professional, might close an average of 10% of that new business.  And suddenly provide your cold leads with clear evidence of your industry expert status IMMEDIATELY, turning them into warm leads!

And closing your now-warm leads at a 25%, 30%, 50%, or even +70% rate will change your life and the lives of your new customers and friends!

Here are five concise and impactful promotional points to summarize the key benefits of your EXPERT SALES PROFESSIONAL web page:

1. Elevate Your Status:

   Transform your sales career by becoming a published author and establishing yourself as a recognized expert in your industry.

2. Attract High-Value Clients:

   Leverage your custom-published book to draw in pre-qualified prospects who are eager to work with a trusted authority.

3. Expand Your Network:

   Use your book as a powerful networking tool, creating connections and opportunities that propel your career forward.

4. Generate New Business Opportunities:

   Enjoy a steady stream of inbound inquiries and lucrative partnerships as your expertise shines through your published work.

5. Leave a Lasting Legacy:

   Cement your professional legacy with a book that showcases your insights and strategies, setting you head and shoulders above your peers in the sales arena.

These points effectively capture the essence of what your EXPERT SALES PROFESSIONAL web page offers, enticing potential participants to explore further!

I’m Also A Member!

And by the WAY!

The drastic effects that this method had on my prior business were nothing short of STUNNING!

When I deployed Decade In Daylight in my home improvement business, we SAME-DAY closed 24 home visits out of the 25 books we handed out!  That is a stunning 96% same-day close rate!

Plus!  Our average invoice climbed from $1,750 to $4,500+ during that same period!

If you want, we can reminisce about those good ol’ days during your initial consultation, just check that out HERE.

Social Media

They are posted here pretty much in order of use.  When I get into content production mode, which is often, I tend to forget social media as a matter of course & procedure.

When I am producing content, notifications on my phone and computer are all turned off.  And until the limited scheduled break times, I do not stop the content side of things.

Notifications are deliberately halted when I am working because they break the flow and disrupt not just the notification time, costing me not just the mental reset, re-establishing the mindset, rereading to where I was, and then picking up the thread of whatever I was working on before the disruption.

It is not personal.

One interruption for a text message or ‘two-minute call’ takes the next 30-45 minutes to restart the work where I left off.  It is a small thing to the person calling, but a major disruption and production breaker for me.  So I prevent it from the start.

X / Twitter:

With the management & logo change, X / Twitter seems to run a lot smoother without a lot of the bloatware that was slowing the platform.  X and Bastyon are probably the two fastest and best-performing social media platforms that I use.

X seems to not only perform better than most mass-market social media sites, but the per capita use seems high.  And that means that I see a lot more interaction with individual posts than on most other platforms.  The use of hashtags and SEO seems to work well, too.  The thumb of the algorithm does not seem to tamp down my post in favor of ridiculous amounts of ads.

This is my X / Twitter link: Doug Franklin

LinkedIn:

LinkedIn is probably my second most-used Social platform.  I spend more time looking at the professional feed than I do on larger platforms like Facebook.  I find the business cases and people’s positive professional progress inspiring.

This is my LinkedIn profile if you would like to connect: Doug Franklin

Facebook:

Facebook is probably the platform that annoys me the most.  The systems are cumbersome, response time is laggy, the pages are slow, and the variety of displayed posts is limited to about four people who are ultra-active on the platform.  The posts I see are usually +60% boosted ads on both my author page and personal page.

The back end is confusing, ineffective, and often infuriating.  Two of my self-narrated, music-less, video books were copyright-stricken by AI for individual words, by foreign organizations that not only did not operate in English but were a fraction of the age of my book copyrights.  It took about two and a half to three weeks of protesting the AI decision before both false copyright claims were released.

So YES! I find Facebook infuriating.

Unfortunately, I post there because it is so large, not for any love of the platform.

Facebook Books Page:

This is my Author Books profile if you would like to connect: Doug Franklin Books

Facebook Personal Page:

This is my Facebook personal profile if you think you can stand my personality and would like to connect: Douglas Franklin

YouTube:

The goal for my YouTube page is to narrate book episodes.  Then I would like to produce short and medium-length videos about my content that I can share on YouTube and TikTok. It will be fun to see how this new video endeavor works out.

The episodes have been a lot of work, but have made some pretty good products!  It would be great to get your thoughts on my material!

This is my YouTube Books page if you would like to check it out or even subscribe: Doug Franklin Books ‘n Stuff

Rumble:

Rumble is my Number ONE platform for Guardsman Video Episode views!

I do not know why, but for any reason varying from algorithm to audience members, or even content delivery, the Guardsman episodes receive about 10x as many views now on Rumble as they do on YouTube or Facebook.

I think that on Rumble, I need to make a separate channel for each video grouping I create.  The only channel that I have right now is the Guardsman.  If you would like to watch Rumble, here is the channel information for Rumble: The Guardsman

BitChute:

BitChute is the video platform where I spend my second-greatest watch time.

The Guardsman Episodes on Bitchute are also receiving about 5x-7x as much traffic as on YouTube right now.  Again, I do not know why.  But for hours watched BitChute has been watched by a good number of eyes.

And that is cool!

BitChute operates a little like Rumble in that you create playlists when you want to group your content for people.  I created a playlist of the videos for The Guardsman

So, when you get a chance, here is the channel (or playlist?) on BitChute: The Guardsman

Pinterest:

Pinterest has been a great platform in the short time that I have been sharing story-based images there.

My three main areas of interest right now are Guardsman Episodes, my podcast visits, and my Writing board, where I share my Orc name generator!

It has been a lot of fun adding images and telling a short image story about my pages and activities.  Pinterest seems to be a rising star in my social media constellation.

Here is a cool auto-link to my Pinterest that just appeared when I posted the link!

Instagram:

Instagram is a new platform for me.

It took a while to connect Instagram to my FB – Meta account, and the process was extremely convoluted and involved, like everything else with that management.

The results and aesthetics that Instagram is producing while telling the visual story for my work are nice.  It is similar to Pinterest, but I’m in wait-and-see mode about the results.

When I get into shorts, the goal is to post some of those shorts or reels, or whatever they are called onto Instagram.

It will be fun to see the results over time.

Here is my Instagram connection:

Doug Franklin

TikTok:

I have not done a very good job of using TikTok yet.

As of this writing, my camera arm just arrived, so I can work on things without holding my phone and looking like a dork while needing three hands to do my videos.

From the date of this update, please watch out for more short-form video content posted to TikTok and other short video platforms.

This is your future favorite TikTok account here: Doug Franklin

Gab:

Gab is a good platform.  It is stable and though media tosses a lot of stones its way, the platform works well, is fast and responsive, while members seem active and engaged with the platform more than others.

I have done a bad job recently of keeping my content updated there.  Once I get past this deluge of work these last Google updates have created, I plan to pick up my posting there, too.

My profile on the Gab platform is: Doug Franklin

TruthSocial:

Truth Social is another strong platform that I am underutilising.

The people on Truth seem much more engaged per capita than some of the larger platforms.  That and some very funny video creators post there.

Again, the same excuse as with Gab, I need to post more on Truth Social.

Truth is a good platform that runs smoothly and has few ads breaking your feed.  This is my profile on Truth: Doug F

Telegram:

Telegram is more of a messaging platform.

I can post updates there, and unless people follow, they will never see them until they follow and doom-scroll back on the content.

Telegram looks like more of a long-term kind of platform and investment in group communication.

Still, Telegram is there as an option, and it would be great to connect there!

Here is my telegram contact information: Doug Franklin Books

Bastyon:

Bastyon is a small but technologically next-generation platform.  It accounts for collecting your information separately from everyone else’s.  Then others can seek and find you.

This organization was what Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s founder, said was the ideal and future of social media.  It keeps everyone’s stuff separate and accountable.

There are people there outside of the norm.  Just be an adult, and don’t follow those jerks.

Bastyon is probably the smoothest-running Social Media platform I have ever used.  There are not a huge number of users, but some of those produce some amazing content!  There is one account that comes to mind that posts some of the most amazing oil painting landscapes I have ever seen!  They are so good that I have saved dozens of them and added them to my computer desktop’s image scroll.

Please check out Bastyon if you want to work on a real next-generation Social Media platform before it gets big.

I am tucked away in my corner of the Bastyon network here: Doug Franklin

Business Aspects:

Publisher:

I have been publishing under three pen names for about fourteen years as of this writing.  In that time, I learned to segment my work into different pen names.

As of this writing, I have something like 22 works out and published for consumption across my three pen names.  They are not all available in the same places, but the active books should be listed here.

I have dozens of books in process, as outlines, drafts, works in progress, finished and waiting for final edits, finished and waiting for cover art, or finished & paused for this website before publication.  Every once in a while, I will start talking or writing about one of my books, go to the link to that book, and realize that I have finished and completely forgotten about that work!

And then there are the books I have removed from publication for whatever reason, throwing off the count again.  I’ve literally had a conversation where people corrected me, saying in a loud, frustrated voice, “Last time we talked, you had twenty-four books!”  I just shrugged and countered, ‘Yeah, sorry, I took two down and forgot about them.’

So, as a publisher, it has been very hard for me to keep track of the count.  I might need to get one of those magnet boards and make little labeled magnet shuttles that I move over as work progresses.

All three pen names are my work.

Over time, I plan to open a publishing class and offer services as a publisher, handling the promotion, websites, and hosting of other writers’ works so that they can focus on the greater process of writing instead of beating their heads against the wall learning all the marketing and technical skills I have had to acquire.

The Publishing Class:

Eventually, I will open a writing and prep-for-publishing class.

I have answered the same questions a thousand times, so I might as well offer them all at once in a consolidated class format.

I plan to open a publishing class and offer services as a publisher, handling the promotion, websites, and hosting of other writers’ works so that they can focus on the greater process of writing instead of beating their faces against the wall and learning all the marketing and technical skills I have had to acquire.

That will probably be a Udemy class and then maybe a mastermind small group style class after that, with guests and work sessions.

Writer:

R.G. Taark:

My favorite is writing science fiction and fantasy books under the Doug Franklin pen name R.G.Taark.  These were the first stories I wrote and the first I published.

My passion is writing those large, star-spanning epics.  Those take time, though.

When writing fiction, both the science and historical types require a lot of research.  Do NOT be the writer who transposes the ‘hyperdrive’ and ‘wormhole’ style propulsion nomenclatures! 😉

I LOVE learning about history and science to make better stories.  The details make the tale believable.  There was a Star Trek episode where a Klingon was created as the Empire’s spiritual prophet.  The guy being put up as the prophet was asked about the color of someone’s eyes in a critical story, did not know and was discredited as a fraud.

Details make your story.

When I write my fiction, adding those gritty details, though it is time-consuming, the details make for fantastic world-building.  I find stories with accurate details much more involving, while inaccuracies break immersion.

With every story I write, I work hard to ensure all details are not only accurate but consistently portrayed.

Doug Franklin:

I publish my useful books.  Books that I want to use as tools for my business, books, or interview-based books to help people I know with their businesses and get their messages out.  I am also making coloring books for fun and relaxation.  These books are cool enough that sharing them will help other people work out their issues or with some situation they are in.

Those are all under the Doug Franklin Books author’s name.

Doug Franklin Amazon Author Page:

If you would like to go directly to the Author page on Amazon HERE is the link: https://www.amazon.com/author/dougf

A.U. Link:

A.U. Link is a fun joke name for my Doug Franklin-written adult stories.

Writing adult stuff is typically a diversion.  They are stories or technical writing challenges that pop into my head and are short enough that I can quickly write and finish them in about 1-3 weeks, depending upon how involved I want to get with them.  Sometimes these stories are placeholders while I’m struggling with some aspect of a larger, longer story and need the time to think about how I want to solve that particular issue in my other story.

Because they are fast to produce, they are heavily represented relative to my other work.  They are still fun stories and typically have some concept that I am modeling, practicing, or developing.  For example, “Taming The Ice Queen” was my first foray into psychic – psionic – magical powers and their balance.  That was also my first adventure into using a criminal given overwhelming power over people, as she suddenly became unaccountable.

I started with the ridiculous question ‘How would I go about dealing with an overly powerful, morally nebulous woman like that who had a crush on me?’  And things pretty much spiraled downhill from there.

Other adult stories pull on interpersonal concepts or dialogue styles that I am practicing.

These A.U. Link stories are fun fast-reading books.  They push the heart rate as much as the written boundaries.  Just don’t leave them out for the kids to read, or you might be answering some questions!

Doug Franklin, The Business Owner:

My last business was a home efficiency business installing skylights and ventilation systems to help people enjoy their homes more, with both brighter, happier rooms and lower energy bills.

With that in mind, after almost a decade, last year, in June 2023, I closed that business.  The cash flow was not where it needed to be, and painful as the decision was, we needed to end that venture.  That business was the inspiration for this book Decade In Daylight.

Because I have almost a decade’s worth of experience in the home efficiency market, I have partnered with a training partner of mine named Colby.  We are working together to present affordable solar and efficiency-based home solutions.

If you are interested in solar or boosting your home’s efficiency, or even if you have a single room that just won’t cool, please reach out, and we can get you taken care of.  There could be several great solutions to fix any one of those issues!

When you have the opportunity, please check out my site, Cost of Solar, and see if there is some reasonable information there that you can use:

https://costofsolarpanelsin.com

Website Manager:

Working with my websites since 2006, it has become almost a way of life!

I had ideas for websites long before that, but struggled with the coding and did not do a very good job learning before 2006.

The cool thing is that as technology continues to evolve, I can constantly learn more, develop skills, and find new and better ways of doing things!

At this point in my website management career, I am confident that we can manage sites for you!  If you are interested in contracting some site management, please check out the technical management offer for Professional Website Maintenance & Management Services HERE.

My First Website:

The first website I worked on, but never deployed, was for my construction company DAF Builders in 2006.

My Second Website:

The second website I built in 2007 outranked the Texas Department of Aging and Disability with our impressive amounts of reference-quality content on the Texas Provider Services program.  It is cool to rank the state agency that licenses your agency for accreditation!

That business went squish because an ex-wife decided to empty the business and household bank accounts for three months in a row.  But we don’t talk about that one.

The Site I Did Not Build!

In 2010, when I was first writing The Guardsman, I failed to create a website for the Author page!

That is the biggest publishing mistake I have ever made!

My failure to build that website, link to the site from my books, and then create an email list destroyed my ability as an author to reach out to prior customers to let them know more books were on the way.  And when The Guardsman Honor of the Fallen and Blood Debts fell out of the Amazon top 20 best seller ranking it has been a struggle to reach the audience for those books again.

The Daylighting Site:

For almost a decade, your humble Doug Franklin assessed, proposed changes, managed, grew, ran SEO & PPC ads for, and developed all aspects of the Daylighting website.

We used multiple systems, feeders, and linking strategies and produced an extremely high-ranking website that connected all the good pressure points.

Current Website Management:

Currently, we are managing three websites.

Publishing Site:

The publisher and content website is this Dougfbooks.com site

Solar & Efficiency Site:

Then there is our Cost Of Solar reference website partnered with our training partner Colby, a United States national-level provider of Solar panels and home efficiency devices.

Centex Office Pros:

We also manage the website, content, and PPC campaign services for Centex Office Pros and that growing business.  The Centex Office Pros commercial cleaning services are growing by leaps and bounds!

And since the owners are friends of 25+ years, that is THRILLING!

The best part of the whole project is that we devised a full-spectrum services-based content strategy and are now effectively challenging vastly larger organizations for profitable contracts every month!  And that is also AWESOME!

Here is Centex Office Pros.

If you like how the Centex Office Pros website looks, please let me know via the email contact.

Then we can talk about what you are interested in building, the content requirements, if you are interested in PPC services management, and ultimately how much of a relationship you want to build with those services.

I am super busy, so we will need to come to a clear understanding of what services you would like, and then we will need to budget the time commitments for the project.

The website maintenance services offered to Centex Office Pros are in this Professional Website Maintenance Services Package HERE.

Doug Franklin, As Your Content Manager:

I have been producing content for my websites for years.

I have been making website content for almost twenty years now.  The whole time, balancing readability and SEO value for search.  Up above, I mentioned that I outranked the Texas Department of Aging and Disability, and everyone else in the world, for regulations because my content was newer, better presented, and cleaner than theirs.

Then we did the same with the follow-on health care businesses until the changing Federal regulations made that model unworkable, and we closed the business.

We established a Content Management option on this site, if you care to check it out for your work or site.  The pricing is reasonable, but we need to talk about your goals and vision before we get started.  Please check out our SEO and Sales Copywriting Expertise HERE…

Centex Office Pros is our most recent example of when I have been asked to produce content specifically for a third party.  Which I did on a contract basis.  I currently maintain the whole website, but produce the service content in full.  We kept an eye on presenting service information in such a way that we could quickly apply Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising to those local service pages.

For an example of those pages’ results, please check out the Centex Office Pros Flooring page.

If you would like to talk to me about managing SEO-driven sales content, please check out this SEO content production offer.

PPC Campaign Management by Doug Franklin:

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) management is a long-term investment in your business.

Because of my years of PPC experience, I have generated literally MILLIONS of dollars worth of sales through both Pay Per Click sales and print advertising!

When you reach the point where you have the money to invest in your business because your systems are evolved enough to answer all the calls and provide fulfillment of your promised services, your next step is to scale and drive leads.

That is where PPC management comes into play.

The idea is to commit one dollar to the marketing & promotion of your product or service and then make back 10x or 15x that with every iteration through the click to lead to a close cycle.  When you do not have your steps in place, or let Google spend your money willy-nilly, that is a fast way to watch your money disappear!

See What Others In The Club Say:

Experience:

If you would like to jump down to our personal experience, it is down HERE on the page, but we’re talking about your Pay Per Click management…

Managed Content First:

When I manage PPC campaigns, my name, Doug Franklin, is associated with all the work.  It is done with the intent and understanding that we need a solid content foundation describing your service, thus the content listed above.  Then, once we have that accurate description of your product or service, we present that description to the advertising team.  We geolocate your ad, making sure the traffic you see is relevant, while carefully managing keywords and then monitoring for weirdness PPC services will use to extract your money faster.

I approach this service with a fiduciary mindset for your money.  It irritates me that PPC programs are designed to blow your budget as fast as possible, so I restrain the machine using tricks and methods I learned over the last decade of running campaigns for myself and my various businesses.

Second Campaign Deployment:

We will build and deploy several campaigns for you.  One campaign per service that you require.  This process can take many hours, depending on how intricate we are working.

At this point, you can decide to run the campaign I have built for you on your own, committing to and managing your budget without my help.

Or you can decide to continue the relationship, and I will manage your campaigns in the next campaign maintenance step.

The most common choice is to build a Comprehensive Campaign.

This service can run without maintenance, but is designed to pair with ongoing service work.

Finally, PPC Maintenance:

Maintaining your PPC campaign will allow you to adjust to changes in the market and campaign using my years of experience.

Because I am managing and monitoring the campaigns, I will explain what I am doing and outline upcoming goals and improvements, and there are inevitably many needed.  Over time, Google will make recommendations and develop its strategy to account for trends it is seeing in your business.

Without an experienced hand managing those interactions, mistakes can become very expensive very quickly.

That is why I offer the Monthly PPC Campaign Management package, working on an ongoing basis.

Doug Franklin, The Serial Entrepreneur:

It is critical to NEVER quit, and keep making positive progress with your life.

In the past, I have made the mistake of focusing purely on a single business and banking my identity into that.

Over the years, I have realized and learned that the business needs to come second.  And I need to make sure that business works for me, not the other way around.

If you want a look at a summary of the businesses and doom-scrolled past it the first time here is the link to the Business Owner section above.

That will give you an outlay of the pieces and parts I have done without retyping it all.

Doug Franklin, The Black Belt BJJ Practitioner:

I have trained in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) for a long time.

It was in 2014 that I started training after a lot of rehabilitation workouts post-Army.

There were a lot of days when I was just plain tired of getting my ass kicked!  I still get my ass kicked, but the quality of those kicking my ass is higher.  Now, when I make a mistake,e I pay for it in spades, because as the expression goes, “The belt only covers two inches of your ass, you have to cover the rest.”

And some days it really feels like I am not covering my ass.  Even while the brain knows what I am working on is improving, it does not feel like it when getting smashed for mistakes.

Get Knocked Down:

I have been knocked down a lot.

Submitted for your consideration, all the times I have mentioned personal and business tragedies that have caused costly setbacks.

Because of the Army thing, I am attracted to the challenge of BJJ.  Then, once involved, I quickly realized that the challenge was only matched by the utility of the sport’s massive mental, physical, and psychological benefits.  Once I started and saw the consistent high-quality benefits to my mental health and improvements to my body and confidence physically and mentally, I committed fully to the self-improvements from BJJ.

How I Learn BJJ Fast:

 

 

When I train, classes are taught with three methods of learning.  First, the lesson is explained, and then second shown with actions by the instructors.  The third method of learning in class is the action of doing the technique.

After class, I have been writing down the technique.  That requires that I first recall and visualize the technique I learned.  Then, fifth, I need to actively write down the whole technique step by step.

Those two additional methods of learning have allowed me to memorize techniques much faster than before.

The greatest benefit is that I can flip back in my pages and quickly review what I learned in the past.

Eventually, I will show some of the training journal entries in both text and practical demonstration, but those short videos will be posted on the video platforms listed above.

History Of This Legend Called Doug Franklin!

They say that difficult childhoods make the best adults.

People say that struggle builds character.

They also say that mistakes are the best way to learn.

And boy, oh boy, have I become the best-est adult, built the most interesting character, and by far learned more than anyone else in the whole wide world!

ADD, Doug Franklin’s Happy Place:

Doug Franklin works across random fields, making great progress in a few days, but sometimes gets distracted before finishing.  The stories section of the hard drive is like Dr. Frankenstein’s lab.  There are beautiful & viable parts of the next monster, er-hum, I mean books, not monsters, lying everywhere in various stages of construction.

Yes, I’m THAT Doug Franklin … Squirrel!

Early Years:

Doug Franklin was a Lego kid and suffered his early school years mostly in New Jersey, and then studied at Syracuse University.. After that, it was off to Ft. Knox to play with tanks and blow stuff up in the US Army.  The fun part went by entirely too fast before Big Green secured Doug Franklin to a desk with leg irons.  That desk-bound purgatory ended soon enough, and it was back to the line as a Mortar Platoon Leader.

The Future Author in the Desert:

Kicking in doors in Iraq for a year was pretty profound.

There was no real singular moment, but like the millions of waves against a rocky cliff, things changed slowly.  There are just so many gunfights you win, mortars you can dodge, IEDs that miss & hit someone else, and 220mm lawn darts you can wake up next to before perspectives shift.

So much has changed, but there are still so many things that are as vivid as the day they happened.  It is like nothing before or since had the same fullness of color or content as those times.  Those bonds remain.  Hands shake less frequently, and the nightmares are much rarer, even controllable, with conscious planning.

Years Have Passed:

For Doug Franklin, the sights and smells have faded, but are still recognizable; it is the screams of the broken-open men and women begging for death or screaming for their

mothers that haunt dreams.  The end of the Army came there when a 155mm artillery round crushed Doug Franklin’s ankle and changed his 5-minute 45-second mile into an unacceptable 12-minute per mile grind.  To this day, it is difficult to pick up an M4 because it is like an amputee finding and reattaching a missing limb; it is like being made whole again.

That is a very scary thing when those skills and pieces of emotional armor slam back into place.  You become whole again, wake & alive again, and ready to fight again in an instant.

Finally Got the Hidden Wiley Coyote Inside Joke:

On the other hand, the flaming black star on the ground under Wiley Coyote blowing up, and then a tire falling and bouncing out of the sky, developed a whole new meaning!  Watching a tank blow a truck with seven insurgents into flaming debris with a HEAT round left a star-shaped burn pattern in the dry field.  Then the flaming tire fell from the sky about 45 seconds later…  It was then that Doug Franklin realized that ALL those animators working on those zany cartoons were WWII generation, combat veterans.

They were drawing as catharsis, coping as best they could with the horrific shit they experienced, while society refused to hear them.

This Author’s times are vastly different, not better or worse, just different.

Doug Franklin’s Author: The Path to Writing:

There were about five years between the Army and starting to write Symbiote.  Between the depression of losing that Army team, meaning, purpose, and home found in the Army, and that fateful conversation that inspired Sympbiot’s outline.  There were lots of bad decisions!  Pretty much every new employee mistake possible was made.  Silly things like agreeing to pay cuts from the Army to the first job, with someone’s word of training for advancement later.  Then the guy who hired Doug Franklin quit and changed companies, and away went the arrangements with him.  That was a lesson in civilian business practices.

After building houses, the evil-ex browbeat Doug Franklin into starting a series of healthcare businesses for her.  That went well for a while until she decided to blow things up.  Suffering her constant physical and emotional abuse was not easy, but managed.  Someone who constantly tries to provoke a highly skilled and finely honed combat veteran to violence is probably not right in the head.

She then changed tactics to break things apart.  It’s funny how the cheaters accuse you of cheating while leaving pictures of themselves cheating with three different dudes in Las Vegas, on a trip you paid for, in the desk drawer she abandoned for you to clean up.  Ours is not to reason why, right?

The smoking hot irony was that Doug Franklin was biblically bad in the Army, but behaved while married!  Go figure!  😛

Poor Doug Franklin, Your Faithful Author’s Face-First Landing:

When Satan decided to leave, stealing both children for two years, emptying bank accounts, wrecking both businesses, emptying payroll accounts three times in a month and a half months (I don’t care what people who weren’t there say, I have the receipts), abandoning three dogs, bankrupting, and turning your favorite author homeless, it was all at once an emotional shock and huge relief!

She was gone!

The ruthless needling and abuse she doled out suddenly stopped!  It was like stepping out of an oven and into a cool, fresh, springtime breeze.

It took about three months, but the time to level off was worth it.  It helped to reach out to people from the past.  Four female friends, in particular, shared something along the lines of, ‘Yeah, that nasty email you sent me didn’t sound like you’.  An email series with Adam, the gunner on the #3 tank, led to Symbiot’s concept.

Guardsman Was Finished First:

Symbiot was extremely difficult to write.

The violence was intimately personal and deliberately very close to what I experienced.

It is science fiction but contains many realistic pieces, weapons, and situations.  To write effectively, Doug Franklin needs to be inside the vision for what is happening.  Needless to say, jumping back into that was extremely difficult.

The Guardsman was first completed as a draft.  Symbiot sat dormant for a long time, while the final sequences played out visually. 

Guardsman is a distant future, dystopian science fiction.  Think corporate empires are constantly at war over resource worlds’ new markets, funding mercenary corporations, while everyone else just gets on with their lives in massive cities or whatever residential form their world planners devised.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming & Book Creation:

The Author’s Goal:

The average paid author writes around 750 words of new content per day to meet the length and delivery deadlines for most publishers.  Doug Franklin averages between 3250 and 5500 words per day when in full writing mode.  The key to that is using a modified neuro-linguistic programming plan, geared towards directing the creative process.

NLP for Authors:

Being an author is not hard; it just takes preparation.  You need things in your head so you can create them.  Otherwise, I find that I’m just an author staring at a blinking cursor.

Sure, NLP is a pseudo-science, and some people like to poke holes big enough to drive a truck through.  There are too many data points around many of its fundamentals to discount it fully.

‘The last thing in before sleep is what you focus on’, is why people who gratefully & positively pray, or say affirmations, often see those things come true.  Your big brain gets bored while you sleep, so you might as well give it something to work on before you sleep!

You need to be very careful about what you put into your head before you sleep.  Things like ‘watching the news’ within three hours of sleep will leave you anxious.  Watching violence will leave those images in your head before you sleep.  Things like that are powerful for how you approach your next day.

Author’s Results and the Big Ask:

When in full-blown writing mode, Doug Franklin writes in the morning and edits/reviews/reads sections of his work in the 2-4 hours before sleep.  The number of times friends, family & writing aspirants have asked, ‘How do you write so much?’ is truly staggering!  It gets a little frustrating to explain it, watching their eyes glaze, and then being told, ‘Just write my story for me!’

Umm…  No.  Probably not.

Unfortunately, you probably can’t afford to hire author extraordinaire Doug Franklin.

Choking people at practice, managing websites, Pay-Per-Click clients, writing, occasionally breathing, and sleeping 4-5 hours a night, there is not enough time left in the day for more projects.

If you want to learn how to publish your work, we can have that conversation.  Very rarely, we will add to the useful books the Biography series.  That needs to catch the eye and is a different kind of conversation.  In that case, we will need to have that special conversation about why you need the book and how we will make it interesting for others to share & enjoy your special knowledge.

There is a nice article about Doug Franklin on the Perplexity Pages

Outside Articles For Funnzies!

Perplexity Pages:

When we were playing with our friend Perplexity, our future A.I. overlord, thought this about us: Doug Franklin: Publisher, Digital Marketer, Serial Entrepreneur & More!

LinkedIn Article:

It was also time to put together our professional article on LinkedIn, which you can find HERE.

X.com:

And because I probably like it best, HERE is the article over there.