By no means does this mean I’m halting my environmental activism. I will continue to fight for the environment (and for our survival in it) through my fiction writing, through my personal habits, and through social media. This only means that Batshite is going on hiatus until further notice. I may pick it back up at a later date, but I may not.

Here are what I consider to be among the most important Batshite posts:

• Society’s Cancer: Fossil Fuel Companies
• How Admitting You’re a Hypocrite Can Save the Planet
• Participation in the Green Economy: A Question of Self-Interest
• The Dangers of Progress
• Build a Future You Can Be Proud Of

I will be still be blogging, at scottplots.com. I hope you’ll connect with me there.

I’ll be frank: my years researching and blogging about environmental issues have left me with serious concerns for humanity’s future.

Our problems are numerous and grave. For example, at our current rate of greenhouse gas emissions, we are set to destroy the stable climate that allowed civilization to arise. As well, global oil production is fast approaching a peak—many remaining reserves are harder to access, and more carbon-dense. And environmental degradation threatens to destroy 25% of the world’s food production by 2050.

That’s all pretty bad news, and my first time hearing it made me eager for some good news. Here, I did find encouragement. I learned that possible solutions far outnumber the problems, and even better, many of the solutions address several problems at once. For instance, reducing fossil fuel use and pursuing clean alternatives won’t just help with the energy crisis—it will also mitigate global warming, which in turn will preserve our ability to produce enough food.

It’s one thing to read about remedies, but it’s quite another to encounter a network of resourceful, determined people working together to realize them. When you experience that, you start to believe we can overcome the mounting crises that face us in the 21st century.

At least, that’s what happened to me when I traveled to Rio de Janeiro last year, to cover World Environment Day for UNEP and Treehugger.com after winning the Rio+20 Big Blog Off. This amazing opportunity brought me into contact with such environmental heroes as Maasai warrior Samson Parashina, who won a Champions of the Earth award for his leadership in conserving the wildlife and cultural heritage of the Tsavo-Amboseli ecosystem in Kenya.

I also had several opportunities to speak with UNEP’s Executive Director, Achim Steiner. On one occasion, he told me that UNEP doesn’t select host countries for World Environment Day based on whether they’ve achieved “environmental nirvana”—the presence of lively debate is much more important. Another day, I heard him say UNEP’s role is “to speak truth to power.”

When I began to reflect on the theme for World Environment Day 2013, Think.Eat.Save, I realized the food crisis calls for the same approach. World leaders have a lot on their plates, and environmental issues are often pushed aside. It’s vital that during World Environment Day—and indeed, during our day-to-day lives—we work to promote informed debate on environmental issues, and also to speak truth to power.

Our food problems are considerable. According to a recent report, one-third to one-half of the four billion metric tons of food produced yearly goes to waste. Meanwhile, 20,000 children under the age of 5 die from hunger every day.

But again, possible solutions are diverse, and their benefits extend even beyond the food crisis.

For example, we can bolster our communities’ food security by growing our own food, as well as buying locally. Security isn’t the only benefit here, however—numerous studies show that getting food locally emits fewer greenhouse gases than importing it does, and also improves air quality.

World Environment Day provides a high-profile forum to discuss such solutions, and to develop interconnecting frameworks for their implementation.

For humanity to continue flourishing, we have to work together.

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And while my promotional efforts have resulted in a steady increase of awareness, so far there has been no point when it’s exploded.

Except for, maybe, right now.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Here’s what’s happening: I posted a giveaway to Goodreads, which began two days ago, and which at the time of writing has attracted 401 entries. While I wouldn’t exactly call this the ‘ship coming in’ for my writing career, it strikes me as very promising, and I do believe I’ll be hosting multiple Goodreads giveaways in the future (though perhaps not with as many books).

In an attempt to make this something more than a straight promotional post for my book, I’ll tell you what I’ve figured out about hosting a successful giveaway on Goodreads. (Not that, I’m sure, mine could be called successful just yet. Getting there, though!)

Giveaways are accessible to users via 4 lists, and the more time your book spends at the top of these lists, the better. The lists are as follows:

1) Ending Soon

2) Most Requested

3) Popular Authors

4) Recently Listed

You get on the Popular Authors list by being a popular author–meaning, your books have attracted lots of ratings/reviews from Goodreads users. That isn’t me yet, so it’s not a list I’ll be focusing on for this particular giveaway.

You get on Recently Listed by, obviously, having recently listed your giveaway. This is probably what got me most of the initial 400 entries. But it isn’t quite that simple–you should choose an unpopular date to start your giveaway, so that you aren’t competing with a bunch of other giveaways on the day you start. I chose February 4th, which is neither a holiday nor the beginning or end of a month.

The same thing applies to the Ending Soon list. (I’m ending mine March 7th.)

As for Most Requested, your giveaway needs to be among the currently active giveaways with the most entrants. To this end, I plan to put a push on to promote my giveaway both on and off Goodreads. I figure the earlier one can get on this list, the better. (Hence this blog post, lol.)

Goodreads also has a paid advertising option, which puts ads in front of its users and only charges you based on the amount of clickthroughs you get to your giveaway–50 cents per. Though I’ve barely paid for any advertising at all over the last year, I’ll probably drop $100 or so on this.

According to my research, having an eye-catching book cover is crucial. Scrolling through the books currently listed, I noticed mine is among the most colourful–many book covers on there right now use a lot of dark tones.

After that, the giveaway description is very important. I’ve read you should start with review quotes, then list any awards the book has won, and then give the book’s description. Some say not to even bother giving the description. I took a gamble and put a slightly-tweaked version of my usual book description first–I believe in my book to speak for itself.

But let’s get back to that thing in this post’s title–go join my giveaway!

On Friday, Chris Robley, who maintains the BookBaby blog, posted a write-up of the book launch I held for Royal Flush last year. I made the launch ‘open source’, meaning anyone was welcome to contribute to or modify the event. (BookBaby is the company I used to publish the Royal Flush eBook.)

I should also mention that Susan Heim interviewed me on her blog, and it’s one of my favourite interviews to date. Underneath it you’ll find a giveaway of the Royal Flush eBook, to which there are already 58 entries(!) The giveaway is over January 31st, so get steppin’ if you want to enter!

Finally, Cyrus Webb interviewed me on his radio show/podcast Conversations LIVE. I thoroughly enjoyed our discussion, which involved both my fiction writing and environmental activism, and also explored the intersection between the two.

All these generous peeps featuring me made me feel bad about posting here so rarely, and inspired me to post more. And how better to start that than to write a blog post about the people who’ve inspired me to do it!

So that’s what I’ve done.

By signing up for my newsletter, not only will you receive *AMAZING* exclusive content in your inbox every month, you will also get Part One of Royal Flush as an audio recording, complete with sound effects and all the different zany voices–for FREE FREE FREE!

This is my book, you may have seen it around

You will also be entered to win a signed copy of the novel.

So yeah. Here’s the link to sign up. I won’t take no for an answer! Except, actually I would, because what am I gonna do about it?

Here’s an excerpt:

19,000 people fit into the new Barclays Center to see Jay-Z perform. This blog was viewed about 75,000 times in 2012. If it were a concert at the Barclays Center, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

So, without further ado, here it is:

My footprint is about a third of the provincial average, which I’m glad of. It was also increased quite a lot by the trip I took to Rio de Janeiro in June, to blog from World Environment Day for the United Nations Environment Programme and TreeHugger.com. As I was working through the calculator’s seven steps, inputting that trip created the biggest leap.

At the end, the tool provided me with tips for lowering my footprint next year:

All in all, a versatile and helpful resource. Again, if you’d like to check it out, click here. (Note, however, that certain values used in the calculator are specific to Newfoundland and Labrador.)

Note: Thanks to Scott Bartlett for posting this and for helping me promote my book, also please check the end for a prize! :)

If you’ve seen the movie, or read the book, you’ll know what the title means right away (and a hint at my anecdote) but the meaning will become clear regardless. In September I did a book signing (in fact two in the one day) the first at a local Chapters and the other at a Coles in a mall. The first one went fairly well, I sold 3 copies and I went on to the next. The second book signing also was going good, a Twitter follower introduced himself and we had a nice chat about the internet, Twitter and writing in general. It was the first time a Twitter follower had come up to me in person and I was feeling good. Four more copies sold and I had about ten minutes left, I had done some writing, a little reading and played some video games on my iPad.

Before my time was up I noticed a young woman who had been sitting close to the book store entrance, near the escalator. She had been there a good hour or more and did some reading, played with her phone and occasionally looked at me and smiled. I’m a friendly guy so I smiled back and didn’t think much else of it. Then just before I left she came up to me and said, “I noticed you’re selling your book. I’m sorry I don’t have any money on me but I wanted to wish you luck and I wrote this note for you.” I said “Well thank you.” She smiled, waved and left and I was left with the note. I kept it and will share it with you now it said, “Every writer starts off with one word, one phrase, one book. Then builds their success on passion and love for their stories and imagination. Don’t be discouraged at what people say if negative. Write for yourself.”

It touched my heart and I smiled broadly, I wanted to thank her but she was gone. Instead what I can do is pass this note along to anyone who reads this blog and hope that maybe somehow she’ll see it. Simple words of encouragement from a stranger meant more to me than her money, someone who would be nice expecting nothing in return and only wanting to help is worthy of praise. It is comments like that make me want to continue to write, to see the benefit of it. Not everyone (besides my friends, family and wife of course) is apathetic; there are good people out there who care. Maybe she got it from a book or the internet but it doesn’t matter, it’s the thought that counts and it’s one I very much appreciated. I can’t repay her but I’ll pay it forward, I hope another reads this and takes heart. Writing is a worthwhile activity that a chosen few (or many if we’re lucky) enjoy and appreciate, I encourage others and I hope you’ll do the same.

The Prize: You’ve made it this far so here’s your reward. Today (November 21^st, 2012) my book “The Newfoundland Vampire” is free on Amazon Kindle. I hope you’ll check it out and if you do read it, I’d love a review. Feel free to get in contact  with me through here. Thanks and have a great day/afternoon/evening!

Anyone who’s been keeping an eye on what Prime Minister Harper has been up to in Ottawa since receiving his majority may have had this realization: he needs to be monitored closely.

The most recent demonstration of this is his intent to pass FIPA, the Canada-China Foreign Investment Protection Agreement, without input from Canadian stakeholders, and without a vote or debate in Parliament.

The FIPA will allow giant Chinese corporations to spend billions buying out Canada’s natural resource companies, and will also allow them to sue Canadian governments at all levels should they do anything that limits the companies’ profits. These legal actions would occur in secret tribunals, outside the Canadian juidicial system.

If passed, the FIPA will be binding for 31 years, and will affect individual Canadians in several ways. For instance, Canadian taxpayers would ultimately be responsible for any damages won by Chinese corporations via the secret litigations. Job creation would also be at risk, since the corporations could challenge Canadian laws that promote it, as well as laws that protect our environment.

The FIPA is set to pass automatically on October 31st. This is not the way to avoid recession.

Scott Bartlett
Paradise

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John Gurdon, developmental biologist and recent Nobel Prize winner, received feedback on his high school report card indicating that for Gurdon to attempt to become a scientist “would be a sheer waste of time, both on his part and of those who have to teach him.”

In 1895, Albert Einstein’s teacher said of him to Einstein’s father that “It doesn’t matter what he does, he will never amount to anything.”

Me, wondering why no one has tried to crush my ambitions yet

And after one of Elvis Presley’s early performances–before he was famous–the manager of the venue told him, “You ain’t goin’ nowhere, son. You ought to go back to drivin’ a truck.”

These three rose to the top of their respective fields, clearly driven by the need to prove wrong those that forecast their failure.

But have I enjoyed similar messages of denouncement to propel me to greater heights?

No! I most certainly have not. Way to drop the ball, friends and family.

Friends have been encouraging, often taking an interest in my writing. My family has as well, recommending only that I have a backup plan (advice I’ve roundly rejected–HA!). The worst anyone’s ever said to me is that perhaps writing would make a good hobby while I pursue a more stable career, in case becoming a professional writer doesn’t happen as quickly as I’d like.

When, years ago, I uploaded my second novel (Royal Flush) to HarperCollins’ Authonomy.com, to compete for votes with thousands of other books, nobody called me an overeager upstart who’d be washed up before he even made anything of himself. Instead they voted for me, and they told their friends to vote for me, and before I knew it I had all these supportive God damn strangers trying their best to help me realize my dreams of being a successful novelist.

My book rose to the 18th frigging spot, and to top it all off, I’d promised to mention anyone who voted for me in the Acknowledgements, should the book ever be published. I self-published it last year, of course, and almost half the thing is names. (Hyperbole.)

And what about when it came time to have a book launch? Was I permitted the opportunity, so important for a writer’s development, to sit on the side of the stage in an empty bar, head in hands, crying big wet writer tears? Not a chance! They packed the place. Here’s the lousy Facebook event I created for it.

I even made it an ‘open source’ book launch, meaning anyone could contribute to or modify the event. So they basically had to put on the launch themselves, and I’ll be damned if they didn’t promote it, perform on stage, decorate, and fill a table full of delicious food. Jesus Christ! Don’t they know artists are supposed to suffer?

Oh, and listen to this one. Last April I competed in the Rio+20 Big Blog Off, held by UNEP and Treehugger.com, to fly to Rio de Janeiro and blog at World Environment Day. The winner was decided via a month-long voting slog, and by now you can probably guess what happened next. The legion of do-gooders took to Twitter and Facebook, sharing the shit out of the blog posts I’d entered into the competition, and rounding up over 3,000 votes to win it and send me to Brazil for a week of blogging, networking, and witnessing historic events.

Get a load of this.

This time provincial and national media got involved, so of course I had to sober up, turn off Leonard Cohen, and emerge from my murky writer den, blinking in the sunlight, to give interviews and other such nonsense.

So thanks again, everyone. My autobiography is going to suck.

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