Jay Bell Books

Jay Bell is a Writer, Not a Baseball Player

As soon as you make your foray into the world of publishing or any other media outlet, you soon realize that your name is your product identity. Outside those that know them, nobody thinks of Stephen King as just Steve, or mentions “Liz” when talking about the Queen of England. Unfortunately, my birth name James Bell is as common as can be. Any town I’ve lived in, even in Germany, has included another James Bell. Since there is already an author with near enough the same name, James Scott Bell, I decided to go by what most people call me. I soon realized that I had competition of another sort when it came to being Jay Bell.

Baseball player Jay Bell is retired, so I figured his trademark had expired. If not, I’m sure people will have no trouble telling us apart. I’ve always sucked at sports. As I kid, I cried every time I went up to bat. The few times someone was crazy enough to toss a ball my way, it always ended up hitting me in the head. Even today I fail at Wii Baseball. There couldn’t be anyone less athletic in the world than me, so it’s a bit ironic that the company I keep on the Jay Bell boat is that of an athlete. If only we had more in common. The only connection Jay Bell and I have, is that he once played for the Royals. I suppose if I were forced at gun point to name my favorite team, the Kansas City Royals would be it, since I grew up around there.

The only problem with sharing this name, is that baseball statistics sites tend to drown out my blog in the search results. I’m not sure what I could do about that. Maybe the other Jay Bell could do me a favor and change his name, now that he’s retired. Jim is nice. Or how about a decorative symbol, like Prince once used?

I had the chance to avoid all of this. I thought about giving myself the pen name of James Donner many moons ago. It sounds cooler, and makes a better name brand, but I wanted to stick with Bell to make my dad proud. I still hope to, so there’s no turning back now. Maybe Jay Bell and I can set up some sort of timeshare on the name. Dibs on the weekends!

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Sometimes I Wii myself…

Only because I don’t have anyone to Wii with. I just got my console online today. I thought that I’d have to buy some sort of USB WiFi thing until one of Andreas’s coworkers clued us in. Now I’m online, but still a little clueless as to what to do when it comes to interacting with other people? Messaging, maybe? How does one arrange a Wii date to play tennis or whatever? Feel free to enlighten me.

Here’s my code, in case that’s helpful.

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Cow Clearance

I have this pet peeve about the post Christmas season, where I hate seeing anything holiday related. It’s all binge and purge with me, and it turns my stomach to see old Christmas decorations in the middle of February. That having been said, I have my work cut out to get the Christmas entries off the front page of this blog. Maybe I should just make a bunch of short posts? How about some desert cows? You like cows…

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Coming Out Day

Today is International Coming Out Day, the perfect opportunity to come out to friends, family, or coworkers if you haven’t already. Much of the fight for equal rights comes from gay people being visible, showing the world that we are familiar faces and not distant statistics. Please consider doing your part and speaking up for yourself or supporting gay friends and family that you might have. Below are two videos I made about my own coming out story. Two talking heads for the price of one!

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Why not a soul food train?

To celebrate our anniversary, Andreas and I headed down south to visit the Bärenhöhle cave. This might not be a common activity that couples do to celebrate their steamy man love, but it sounded like a good idea at the time. Unfortunately, the cave itself was a bit boring. I was expecting trippy colored lights and innumerable mysterious passageways, but instead it was a very straight forward affair. There weren’t even any rock formations that resembled other things. Sure the tour guide would point at something and say it looked like a ship, horse, pencil, or fried egg, but it was obvious she was grasping at straws. They could have at least piped in some “Hall of the Mountain King” to add atmosphere. Luckily the nearby town of Reutlingen was cool. There was plenty of shopping and Andreas scored a new bus for his collection.

We searched high and low for a place to eat that night, finally settling on a sushi joint since I was hoping to score some sake. We don’t eat sushi often, and the places we have eaten at were pretty classy. This was the first restaurant we had even been to with a sushi train. That’s what I call it anyway. One of those conveyor belt things that your food rides along. It was really a really fun experience and they often switched up the offerings, so there were always new surprised. For only the second time in my life, I ate so much that I almost tossed. Charming story, no? Despite my description, it was a very romantic day for us.

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Metallic Flowers and Butterbirds

We visited the neighbouring town of Tübingen this weekend, and while there were a lot of things going on, it was the flowers that I was distracted by. Check them out, they’re full of silvery, shiny, sparkles! They’re like something out of a fantasy novel!

I promise you these aren’t covered in glitter or anything. They appear to be natural, although I don’t know the species name. Flying around these bizarre flowers was what looked like a humming bird but what turned out to be a really big butterfly. The camera couldn’t capture how fast it’s wings were flapping, they were a blur.





This particular flower box was hanging over a river. Gorgeous!

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