Published My Unfinished Novel; Published A New Edition of My Excel Book and Already Learning To Use The Bloomberg Terminal

Today's a 3 in 1 post. And I want to open it with this timeless quote from Maya Angelou, "There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."

I have many stories to tell the world. Stories about the things I have seen, the things I have heard, the things I have read and the things I have imagined. And yesterday I published on Amazon my novel that is a collection of those things -- a turbulent mix of fiction and reality. I set it at the lowest price Amazon allows ($0.99) and you can buy or preview it here: http://www.amazon.com/Akin-Smith-biggest-dangerous-Nigeria-ebook/dp/B01DWIC1QW It currently has three chapters, I will keep adding more chapters with time and if you buy now, you will be able to get all future editions of the book on Amazon at no extra charge. Also I don't intend to keep the price at $0.99 for too long. But first, next week I will do a promo that will make it free for 5 days. If you want to get it free, then wait for my announcement of the promo next week. I see the book as a way of letting generations after us know what life was like for most people in Nigeria in the 1990s and 2000s. Like my own Charles Dickens type of book that paints the life of the average Lagosian at that time.

And as a complementary news, I have also updated my Excel and Business Data Analysis for the Busy Professional book. It now covers some new Excel features/tools and other not-so-new but very useful tools. If you have bought the book already on Amazon, you can re-download to get the update. And I intend to keep updating the book.

Lastly, I got my Bloomberg Terminal set-up and licence yesterday. It wasn't so easy setting it up and I had to call their legendary 24hr/7days support team to help complete the set-up. I also had to watch tutorial videos on it and go through the Bloomberg University materials too. I am now getting a hang of it. The most valuable use I will put it to is to extract all the financial data/report of all the Nigerian (or even African) stock companies. It will save me from the tedious work I currently do of downloading their annual reports and extracting those data manually into my stock analysis template which I intend to use build the core database of my stock analysis app. Also it will give me a clear idea of what types of analysis the global investment world likes to see. Makes the picture of what my app should do clearer to me and it's just left for me to build the app.

I am glad that I am able to do things I really want to do: the things I have got passion for and the things on life list. Most especially the novel. Now that I have published it, I am going to find it easier expanding and completing it. And, maybe, move on to another.