Nice Day; Kinda Chilly

Illustration Attribution:    www.scenicreflections.com

Crisis of Conscience

Well, I am NOT in the mood to be subtle, so I guess I just better hope this is not read by any detectives.

You know that story about the wisdom of King Solomon? The two women were fighting over who had the rights to the baby, so King Solomon said, "How 'bout we just slice the baby in half ?" So the person that really loves the baby says, "Don't cut the baby in half.  She can have it."  And King Solomon says, "Well, you love the baby more so you can have it."

So this is like a moral dilemma. Suppose a group of people are banding together to slice up your heart and your soul.  Would you play dirty pool just cuz they choose to?  Should you drag out the big guns?  If you knew the name of the grade school teacher that writes erotica on the side, would you reveal that?  Would you threaten to?  Would that be blackmail?  Even if you felt it was totally justified to survive their onslaught, to save yourself?  To save all that was important to you?  Stuff that is meaningless to them.  They are just doing it for spite.  Would you threaten to tell the guy that hides his marijuana stash in your garage to keep his wife from knowing that she will learn about it if he doesn't back down, if he doesn't take a different tack?  Would you talk it up in all the right social circles about the engaged couple that are seeing a urologist to get the husband-to-be wired up with a penis pump?  If you heard all these things with no warnings or stipulations, is it fair game?  If they go ahead and continue to attack you, when you know and they know you are undeserving of it, should you just reveal all?  Should you warn them of what may be in store?  Should you sit like a little mouse with your Christian conscience and let them ride rough shod over you?  My Christian conscience tells me to be a swell guy and keep all the dirty little secrets and hope Karma sorts it out.  (Yeah.  I know the Karma thing doesn't meld with the Christian conscience, but it is my mind, so get over that.)  But the subject of my quandary is far too precious to gamble with.

These are real issues that the midwestern grandmother faces daily.  Someone made a remark about one of my novels.  "Enjoyable read, but I don't know if it would play out in real life."  Wanna bet?  Does each and every Mr. or Mrs. Tom, Dick and Harry America have this shit raining down on them all the time?  Or is it just me?  Maybe it is my own misperception.  But I do have court documents bearing out this tale of woe and disconsternation.

Weigh in.  I am actually thinking of taking steps to erase the problem completely.  I discussed with someone just today what would be the outcome of my court ordered mental eval.  Would I live out the few short days left to me in a prison or in a mental ward?  Would it matter?  Actually, not at all to me if it served to preserve some of the things  that I find the most precious meaning in after all other considerations.

Strange how looking down the barrel of a gun can distract you from all the other weapons aimed at you.


Image Attribution:   asitoughttobe.com

The Big Hack

First, I offer you my sincerest apologies.   If whatever hijacked my accounts affected you, I am very sorry.  I see today that many people, including my bank, received a big red warning sign when they got the affected email.  Mine was from my cousin and did not bear a warning so I had no way of knowing it was infected.

I have changed all my passwords and stuff, but today I see that it has even affected some of my twitter contacts.  If you still have trouble, I can only suggest changing your passwords.  My bank suggested opening new email accounts, but that would be a disaster for me.  Not that this hasn't been so far. 

Please forgive me.  I was naive and careless.  I hope those are forgivable offenses.  

Image attribution:

robot6.comicbookresources.com

Everything Makes Me Cry

Just now I feel like I must be doing something right.  At least about one thing.  I think it would be better if I KNEW I was doing something right, but I take a lot of convincing.  But this is good enough to actually outweigh my worries for the moment.

It doesn't matter it seems.  I think I cry more tears over the good stuff.  

IDEALS

I feel like a fool.  I have always been good at rationalization.  Twice,  in the recent past, I have posted stuff in my feeble attempts at irony or jest and been taken seriously.  In another case, a person misread a facebook quote of mine and went into a well-meaning and correct explanation of the thing I was trying to be sarcastic about.

I do not have a sincere voice.  My real life voice is a joke.  I went to see a doctor about five years after my last appointment.  I said, "Hi, I'm Virginia."  He said, "Oh, I remember you.   The voice. . ."

My writing voice is intended to be facetious,  but evidence points to the fact that I am a complete failure at that.  Actually, I have heard from three readers that they got the joke in three cases.  Not a good percentage.

So, how am I going to steer this conversation back to rationalization or idealism?  Well,I just clicked on a book title in a blog.  Actually, it was a "website".  I think.  I am not too sure of the difference, and, no, Jonathan, you don't need to explain it to me.  The site was The Rumpus.  It is pretty liberal but kind of fun for writers.  It has infuriated me enough that I  have cancelled my subscription to it for years.  I have had wonderful discussions on it.  I found out, much later unfortunately, that one of the people I was arguing with was an author, unknown to me, of some repute. ( I admit I travel in the wrong circles.)  So apparently I read something on or about the Rumpus that caught my attention.  I am not subscribed to it, but am apparently subscribed to comments.  Really, that is all you need anyway, frankly.  It is even a bit too much info.

I linked to this book title which sounded interesting and that led me to two hours of linking through various sites connected, in sometimes vague ways, to the book title or author.  And I just stopped it by closing some of the many tabs I had thusly opened.  (I am relishing the fact that I have always wanted to use that word and have never before had the opportunity.  I hope it is a real word.)  (Aren't my asides annoying?)  And, for a reason God intended, but that has never worked too well on me, a light bulb just went off in my head.

I have gone on and on arguing in favor of certain principles.  I am calling them that because, although they may be philosophies or dogmas or truths or precepts or commandments or ideas, I feel, at the base of their structure, they must be principles.  (I flunked philosophy twice.  I have a former classmate who is a Professor Emeritus in Philosophy at a major University.  I am able to communicate with him.)  (I'll stop it now.) And, just now, when the light bulb went off, I realized that some of the things I argue the most fervently for, that shall for the most part go unnamed, for which I have published material with tedious documentation, I do not practice, have not practiced, and have no intention of practicing. And I seriously do not think I am a hypocrite. I think I earnestly believe in those principles and, in my own concept of idealism, those principles would be followed to the letter by all of humanity -- which, of course, they are not and never will be.  And, in my dotage, I will gladly own up to the fact that a lot of the stuff I have done would not have been any fun if I had not felt like I was defying some moral precept or principle.  And that makes me a sinner and that makes me a Catholic.  And this is not a confession.  This is just a light bulb moment that I have really enjoyed.  And that two hours of linking from a book title has given me a lot more insight to my self than probably the whole rest of my life -- a life that has had its share of ups and downs, mostly downs, but has been a great deal of fun and very interesting so far.

Yeah.  My meds have been adjusted.


Photo Attribution:  Google Image

Professionalism

So this journalism degree cost a lot.  I hope to pay off my student loans soon.  I got a job!

Death Lists

So my husband, Louis, had a fall today and went to the hospital in an ambulance.  His pelvis is broken but not near the hip socket, so, instead of pinning it, they are "just going to let it heal". 

I wonder if, because of his age, he has been put on one of those death lists I have been hearing about. I am not an orthopedist, but I have to wonder how quickly weight-bearing bones heal in a slightly over weight man of his somewhat advanced age. What is a little lingering intense pain when you have out-lived your "usefulness"?

I will not sarcastically thank the voters of America until I have more information.  I'm good that way. 

  

Illustration attribution:  crosbiew.blogspot.com

Paying Attention

I notice that several of the people who's blog I read also read mine.  I am pretty sure not everyone who hits on my blog reads it.  I could be wrong about that because every now and then I will get a nice comment from some one who got what I was writing about.  I sometimes get comments that make me think they were reading a different blog altogether, but it is nice to know my words can mean different things to different people. And then there are the New Zealand Plumbers.

Someone just went over a million hits and offered a little contest event to celebrate.  She did mention that it would be nice if each of those hits was a dollar.  I have mentioned it would be good if each of my hits represented a book sale.

I just went to a book promo site and literally begged people to purchase one of my books that was not doing well.  I really have no expectations that it will help, but I am beyond being reasonable about that book.  It is not my usual fare, but it is a quick little non-fiction read that is fun.  I honestly thought it would be a big deal.  I have read so many articles about gender issues lately that I almost think I started something.

In a blog that was about giving a certain type of speech to certain audiences and the pros and cons of it, I chose to comment not on speech giving but on the content of the speech (politicizing gender issues).  No one commented back but two comments after someone left a comment about gender imprinting that was almost exactly what I had said in my book.  That affects me the same way that writing about washing the counters and having someone I know is a reader write about washing counters the next day.  Ditto:  boys haircuts, pets, serendipity, destructive storms, etc.  Sometimes I think it is flattering, but sometimes, when it is really noticeable, I would like a nod. (Yes, Roy.  I saw your wonderful reference and link.  Have you thought about cloning yourself?)

I have been on what, for lack of a better term, I will call the downside of having interest in this project.  I look at my past results and I know exactly what I have to do to duplicate that.  It is time-consuming and boring, but it is not difficult and it bears very sweet fruit.  Yet, I sit, I mull over the phrasing of a scene in my mind.   I know I should write the scene down and then work over it, but I don't.  I mull til I fall asleep.

Sometimes I think it would be nice to be noticed, to have people pay attention to what I have to say, but lately, ironically, since I have more blog hits every day than I ever imagined, I kind of don't care.  Well, it isn't really that I don't care because I know how I react to nice reviews and good numbers or compliments, (I probably get much more pleasure out of it than it deserves, but I think I already wrote that blog.)  but I am wondering what difference does it make.  Anything I do, some one else can do, does do, is doing, is maybe even using me for inspiration.  I know I never thought I would come up with a game changer so I do not know what is lacking in my approach to the process right now.  I do know that I am dying to reunite Maisie and her husband and will play solitaire on my iPhone for an hour and a half to keep myself from doing that.

If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding.
You can't have any pudding if you don't eat your meat.

What You See

 

Y'all see  that I am tapped out.  There is nothing coming out of my brain.  I feel slightly zombie-ish.  Maybe that will be the real zombie apocalypse.  Big Pharma will finally have everyone medicated to this level except the few selected to control the zombies or manufacture  the meds.  Although I am sure they will be able to train zombies to manufacture mediction.  I am currently still trainable.

I was reading about the huge uproar over the newest edition of the DSM, that new hand book listing  mental health  disorders.  The brain farts we used to call senior moments are now a disease.  I am currently reading a really interesting book called Blood, Justice, LLP: Vampires at Law by Juno Ross.  (Consider this a plug.) It sounds so plausible.  The few problems historically exhibited by vampires, such as sunlight, have  all been controlled by different kinds of pills.  The fun part is that if you were dumb when you became a vampire, 2,000 years later you are still dumb. It is a very interesting read and very well written, but it is a little scary if you actually think about whether or not it could be true.  There is that old saw I love to drag out that every societal myth is somewhere grounded in reality, a belief I subscribe to. So maybe there will be a future for me if I can find an agent that is an over-medicated zombie.  She will love my books.

Speaking of which, I thought April was the first month in which I had not sold a single book, but I sold a few on Smashwords, so thus far I am still afloat although struggling to stay afloat and not really very interested in whether or not I do.  I figured out why my Sacred Sin holds its place in the ratings.  When I had the KDPSelect  giveaways, I was downloaded in the  thousands and they count that.  So, here I go back to KDPSelect.  I was all afire then to do the promo so everyone knew about the freebie and I am just going to have to psych myself up to do that.  Now, at least, I know how.  I just hate it more.

I would also like to tie that in to the release of my next story which is about 75% done in writing and 100% done in my head.  But I started the book because I had a good idea for a title, and I am having a struggle fitting a book of any length to the paradigm proscribed by that title.  Which shall remain a safely guarded secret cuz it is GREAT.

Then the other night when I was waiting to fall asleep, the time I usually use to further the narration of my current book in my head, I was thinking, what will I do next?  And I had a brilliant idea that I could run with, but I did not quickly jot it in the notebook next to my bed which must always be there for that reason.  Instead of writing down a few words, I actually fell asleep and the next morning the idea was gone.  Here though I do have hope.  Despite my having a brand new diagnosed mental disorder  which they do not call brain fart-itis, they call it something like Minimal Loss of Cognition or something close to that because I am too lazy to go find the article, I know the idea will come back.  They always do.  So now I probably qualify to be diagnosed with Delayed Factual Memory Recollection disorder. 


Photo Attribution:  www.examiner.com

Mommy Blogging

I am not a mommy blogger.  I do talk about my grandchildren a lot and feel it is necessary to share their amazing beauty with this deprived world. (That is an "I" not a typo) And a few years back when nine people lived here and I was in a fog, I did write about my children some times.  But now I write about me and politics and idiocy and stuff. Which may be the same thing mommy bloggers write about.

Well, maybe I got this attitude from starting out my internet communication mania pre-twitter by using Goodreads and Amazon forums.  On both of those it is clearly stated that it is bad form to promote yourself or spam, that is, hide a sneaky link to something within the boundaries of your blog so people do not know they are reading an ad. They have specific self-promotion forums where you can go nuts if you want.

That has gone out the window.  There is Google Ad Sense, and I used to have ads on my blog.  Once I wrote about my canaries and an ad for birdcages appeared in the margin.  I thought that was terribly clever and technologically advanced.  I even had a balance of $1.72 in my Ad Sense account which I never collected because they don't cut you a check unless it is a certain amount.  I don't have ads anymore.  I have asked them why because the spaces are there.  My readership is much higher now so maybe I would earn more than $1.72 a year, but they keep telling me my blog sign-in is not my Ad Sense sign-in and they don't answer questions; they just send you to their circuitous forums and I never get the right answer.  Their loss.  They could be raking in a bundle off my back.

Anyway, I noticed lately this "Buy my book"  "Like me on facebook"  "visit my blog", etc.  EVERYWHERE.  Everyone still says you will lose twitter followers if you just keep linking to your book.  If someone reads my blog, they see the links to my book and can click or sample or whatever. (Damn, I wish they would BUY.  I'd be shitting in tall clover.) And "agents" will not ALLOW their clients to write on twitter or anywhere about their books.  So it is a subtle game.  To draw attention and not be spammy.  But now I have signed up to several blogs that have given me lots of hits, and some of them are interesting and amusing.  But many of them are purely ad based.  They try to relate it to their family, but it is buy this or that. And one that is usually about her family suddenly drops one that is purely an ad.  I am new to this, so maybe everyone else knows that is the purpose.  I am just trying to figure out how to get their links off of my facebook because they breed like bunnies.

I know that I will lose a passel of hits when they read this and take me off their linkys.  They probably already know I don't get it because I have been commenting  on their blogs about the content instead of the products they are pushing.

I hope everyone is not laughing up their sleeve at me, that that is the real purpose of Blogger and Wordpress and I have been totally disillusioned that it was to bring my literary bon mots to the attention of the world for their enjoyment and intellectual betterment.

And I hate that fucking Raffle Copter.

Photo attribution:  www.bloggerstand.com 

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Sauce For The Goose

One of the best parts of putting my writing out in public is, of course, a positive response.  And certainly, a bad review is hurtful, especially when they offer no insight as to what was wrong with your work.  In many instances, I know, it has to be just a matter of taste.

I have a sort of collection of King Arthur books.  Some I have tried and tried and cannot get into them.  One was the beginning  of a saga.  It started when the ship full of people spotted a baby someone had just thrown in the sea.  A sailor jumped in and saved it.  It was, or course, Arthur. (The different spins on the legend are part of the fun.) It was very well written and quite a large book.  By the end of the book, they were getting off the ship after finally  reaching shore and the baby was still a baby.  Sure, there was lots of back history and necessary exposition, but I just couldn't plow through it all.  Other, one in particular that is mostly focused on Guinevere, I have read and reread. I won't deny that a lot of what I write has its seeds in that legend.

One particular review struck me so that I wanted to ask the person to be a beta reader and dissect the book for me.  It is supposedly a no-no to speak back to reviewers, but I am still toying with the idea. Something about her language or style made me think we would understand each other.

I read one Harry Potter, the first.  It was okay.  I galloped right through it, but for some reason I have no desire to read another. I was insulted by one of my relatives when I asked her if she had read my book and she replied, "No.  But did you read Fifty Shades of Gray?" Please.

I will not be reading the Hunger Games.  Instead of Woody Harrelson  I will be picturing Richard Dawson and instead of Peeta, I will see Arnold Schwartenegger.  I just bought a trilogy of Edith Wharton's work.  She is very acerbic which I love, but I find it slow going so far.

I visit this site called Algonquin's Table.  I don't know how I found it, but I have put a few things up there.  The little story about the lamb was reviewed by someone who lived in that area and he said I got the sense of place right. That was cool since I have never been there.  The nice thing about Algonquin's Table is they love to comment and start convos about everything and they nag you in email if they haven't heard from you.  I recently submitted the same excerpt from The Maze that I have put up here. Here is a snip of some of the responses I have received:

I had made it clear that it was not classified as Erotica, but it is nice to hear someone somewhere enjoyed it.  Now I have to go back and thank him and mention the whole book costs last than a fancy greeting card.

"God Willin' and the Creek Don't Rise"

As a rejoinder to "See ya", the title phrase is a regional euphemism used largely today in an attempt to be cute or friendly or humorous.  I am sure there are areas of the United States where it is still in general use. God knows who lives back in the Smokies and the wilds of Western New Jersey (Yeah, there are. . .) But being raised a big city girl, I never heard it until I dated a person who had been raised rural and traveled many parts of the world.  He used it to be cute, I am sure. I married him.

Anyway, today, as we near the Vernal Equinox, the temperature hovers around 47 degrees Fahrenheit, (she adds this coyly, knowing the world-wide breadth of her blog audience) the ground is still covered with several inches of snow,  and it has been raining lightly for about 24 hours.  My little creek is already over its banks.  This should be interesting.  The carp flopping around under the play gym was a memorable sight.

"BORING" and I do quote. . .

In a local library-type amateur critique group we were talking about slow sales and some one said re:  Sacred Sin.  "Don't you think that story's been told enough?  Like Gone With the Wind?"  I mentioned I was well aware it has been told and retold but I was working more in the Arthur-Guinevere vein.  I wonder if anyone told Margaret Mitchell her book was too derivative of the King Arthur Legends?

And a baker (!!!) in England found my sex scene excerpted here, "Sex in the Shower"  (most hits of any post ever) introspective, (Bad?) human, (Bad?) and somewhat boring.  He said he felt a little sad for me if I thought it was racy.  I think he was looking at some of my other book blurbs cuz I didn't use the word "racy" on Algonquin's Table.  He probably didn't find enough references to "shaved pussy" which he mentions a lot in his work,  and which I think sounds a little crude.  And anyway, my heroines can all afford laser treatments for that issue. Well, maybe not Deanie.

Guess I'm having one of those bitter days here. Don't know why. Ben's team won again and last night I felt like I was back in that writing place after a long time.  So on with that boring, introspective, human stuff that's already been told.  And retold. Gonna tell it again!!



Photo attribution:  www.shavingstuff.com (I am not making that up.)