Fiendish Friday: Book Signings

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If you aren’t a self pub author this may never have happened to you but…

I have been to a lot of author panels signings. Generally you sit there talking to the other authors, waiting for people and when they come, they want to talk to the hot author of the hour. It’s never me. I always assumed this had something to do with me. I’m not a big name. I don’t have enough books out. Of course people are here to see Bob who has 9700 books published and is about 400 light years ahead of me in the process.

Then I went to SiWC. Saturday night they had an author signing event. All the presenters who were authors had a table and you could get your stuff autographed. I usually don’t do that. (Occasionally I author crush and I will seek out that author if I can but never at a signing event. Buying them a drink in a bar is much more effective.) However, one of my friends taught my writing class while I was gone and refused to take money for it. So I bought her a book and went to get it author-graphed.

I come downstairs in the middle of the event hoping to miss the early rush and the late stragglers. I see this line. Long, long line. Wiggling through an adjacent ballroom. I grab a volunteer. “Is this the line for the signing?”

“This is Diana’s line. If you want to see anyone else, just go right in.”

huh. So I walk in. Enormous ballroom. Tables all along the outside and in rows down the middle. The room is practically empty except for the authors who are standing about talking to each other. These are reasonably mid-list authors. Big enough names to get flown to this conference, put up for the weekend, and paid a stipend. All they’re just milling about talking to each other while all the attendees line up to see Diana, the hot author of the hour.

It was a total “holy shit” moment.

At lunch the next day someone asked me what I thought the dividing line was in the author realm. Published or not? Trad versus indie? An amount of money made?

I think it’s this. You’re either the hot author of the hour or you’re just another published author seeking your fan base.

Speaking of which, Ostrich Mentality launched on Wednesday. Have you got your copy yet? Have you left a review? Have you joined my readers group on FB?

Book Review: The Greatest Zombie Movie Ever

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If I remember correctly I grabbed The Greatest Zombie Movie Ever by Jeff Strand at a Scholastic book fair for less than a dollar. The premise sounded funny. Three high school students set out to make the greatest zombie movie ever.

This book is hard to analyze. It frequently made me smile but never made me laugh – so not really a comedy. It was decently written. But it never bothered me to put the book down. I think it was 3 weeks before I finished it.

The ending really rubbed me wrong. Build, build, build, splat.  They failed to make a movie. Shocking. Totally couldn’t have seen that coming.

℘℘ – Two Pages. Completely forgettable but will occupy your time if you have nothing else to hand.

Fiendish Friday: Public Service Announcement

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The other day I was in a public bathroom and over heard a mother berating her child for peeing her pants. In the short time I was in the space I over heard two key phrases.

“You’re five years old and should do better.” and “I asked you if you had to go when we got here.”

Now I will not slam another mum, but I will say there is absolutely no research that suggests berating your child increases bladder control.

So here’s the public service part. I have a two part rule system regarding the bathroom.

A) If you are passing a bathroom, you use it. Saves time later looking for one.

B) If one person in your party is using the bathroom, everyone should. Saves time.

Yes, this is rather circular but if you start them young they don’t realize the circularness. And pretty soon they know Mom has to pee every flipping hour and “if I just go when she does, every thing works out just fine.”

Now why do I think this works? I have traveled extensively with my child, who has not peed his pants since he was fully potty trained at age 3. He’s eight and half now. And we’ve been lots of places where there are not public bathrooms on every corner like most of the US.

Just consider my two step plan and everyone will have dry pants. Smiles.

Wednesday Words 11.8

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 2 Comments

Did you hear that loud crashing sound? Yup, that was my stomach falling though the floor as I pressed send on an email to that editor at Source from SIWC. Gulp.

I am working hard on rewriting the murder mystery in question. I know, I know, why did I pitch something that wasn’t done?

Well, the truth is I went to Surrey to pitch something else but went down hard in flames. Rather than keep doing the same thing over again, hello insanity,  I took my first chapter of the murder mystery, which I brought for an editing session, and I threw that up against the wall. It stuck. Three times.

What’s a writer to do in those circumstances? Look a gift editor in the mouth? Wait, that so didn’t translate.

To be fair, I was honest and upfront and told everyone I was in the middle of rewriting.

So that’s the big enchilada, writing. Fast.

For the rest of you, you can still get that pre-order special (99 cents) of Ostrich Mentality, for one more week before you gotta pay full price for my genius. Just saying.

How’s your Nano?

 

Book Review: Writer Mama

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Sigh. If only I could rank this book based on the cover. It would absolutely be a six pager. This book arrived as a surprise. I opened the package to find a book I hadn’t ordered. Hrm. Inside the book was an inscription “I saw this and I thought of you. Much Love, M.”

Right there, this book is perfect. A human I love, loves me enough to think of me, buy a book, inscribe it, and then trek their ass all the way to the post office to mail it to me. I know something about that last one – I have multiple packages in my To Be Mailed pile.

Sadly, that is where the perfection of this book stops. It’s a how to get your start in writing for magazines, from 2007. Laughing.

I would love to say it had great nuggets of information that was applicable to all writers but …. no. She actually talks about including a SASE in your query letters. Ouch.

So how do you average so much love and good intention without lack of anything useful? LOL

Sunday Sup: Truffles

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 1 Comment

Last week my friend G and I took a little time out for yourselves, Ostrich Mentality was out to pre-sale – we could breath for 2 seconds, and went to Theo Chocolate for their truffle making class.

Making Ganache was way easier than I thought. Tempering chocolate on the other hand was a nightmare.

Theo’s Ganache recipe:

226 grams or 1/2 # dark chocolate

168 grams or 6 oz heavy whipping cream

1 tbsp honey

1/2 a vanilla bean insides

2 oz butter room temperature

Bring the cream, honey, and vanilla to a steam, 145 degrees for 70% chocolate.

Pour it over chopped chocolate and allow it to sit for three minutes. Stir until the chocolate is melted. Add the butter a little at a time until fully incorporated. Let it sit for a few minutes again. Stir the mixture again until it is thick and glossy.

Pour the ganache into molds or pipe it into disks on parchment paper. Let cool completely. Like 12 hours.

Now your ganache truffles can be dipped in tempered chocolate, rolled in cocoa powder or nuts or coconut or….the possibilities are endless.

I plan to make some for the hubs with his favorite pecan whiskey. (just subtract the amount of alcohol from the cream weight)

I’m not going to explain the tempering of chocolate. That was an art. Google it yourself if you really want your truffles dipped.

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Fiendish Friday: The Internet is Down Again

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 6 Comments

A guest post on a blog I follow reminded me this morning of one of the funniest moment’s in my tech career. Lots of serious things happened over the years.

A server farm crashing enough disks that an entire 3 year research project was gone. (I got it back from tape.)

The CFO who asked me if I enjoyed spending my time on my knees under people’s desks. (yes, full ick factor there)

Collecting technology from their desks, while a 600 person division was finding out they were laid off. (that day needed a very long trip to happy hour)

But early on in my career when I was just a little baby tech geek….

I got a call early one morning from my boss. The CEO had just called him ranting about the Internet being down, again. (eyeroll)

Apparently the VP of Sales couldn’t get on-line for the third morning in a row. Why this woman couldn’t have just called me, I don’t know. I guess she needed to feel important, so she called the CEO at home. Should I throw in his wife had just had a new baby? LOL. So you can imagine what the CEO said to my boss….

To give Jason, my boss, his full credit, he was very restrained on the phone with me. He did not shout, scream, swear, or otherwise vent his frustration. This was the third day in a row and we had done everything under the sun. Including running fresh cable to her desk the day before and I don’t just mean giving her a fresh cable to plug into the wall. As in: up the wall over the ceiling, to the switch, from the switch to the server room, FRESH CABLE.

I walk to her office. She is steaming and ranting and all but throwing things. I take a look at her desk. Pick up the network cable and plug it into her laptop.

There is instant silence and then she starts to bribe me with things “Just don’t tell (CEO).”

ROFL.

Wednesday Words 11.1

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Happy Nanowrimo! It has begun.

Back in 2016 I sent Ostrich Mentality, unnamed spy novel at the time, to a ton of people for beta. You might remember this, I complained a lot about the conflicting responses. Along the way a couple of people sent me super detailed line edits. But I was so overwhelmed that I shelved the whole project for a year.

This summer I picked it back up, rewrote, re-edited, and now I’m on the verge of publishing. I send copies to a half dozen author friends, asking for a quote to use in marketing.

One of them responds, “Um, it seems like a lot of my edits didn’t happen.”

BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP

You have got to be kidding me. In all the various revisions and comments and edits, I missed hers.

Twelve brief hours later I had finished the worlds longest, highest stakes game of spot the difference. Because of course, 50% of things she commented on were gone – rewritten out of the book. 25% were already fixed. And 25% were rewritten but maybe or maybe not fixed.

My eyes are still blurry from that much intense screen time. LOL

Oh yeah, did I mention, pre -order is open! That’s right. You can get your very own copy of Ostrich Mentality for just 99 cents right now.

Book Review: A Knit Before Dying

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 4 Comments

I simply can’t help myself, I see a cozy mystery and I have to pick it up. But give me credit, I often put them right back down before I even leave the library. A Knit Before Dying by Sadie Hartwell made it home with me though.

This is the second book in the series. I haven’t read the first. There were a lot of references to the first that I didn’t understand, so that was flow disruptive. Clearly, the main character, Josie, solved a murder in the last book but I have no idea who it was or who dun it. People are mad at her without any explanation, so I was left to assume their kin had something to do with the murder.

Josie was ok. Kind of bland. Actually that’s a good description for the whole book, bland. Josie solves two murders that are intertwined while running her Great Aunt’s yarn shop. It just didn’t evoke any emotion in me. Even the “big bad” scene was flat. And several times Josie refers to herself as Blair in her thoughts, before someone uses her whole name and you find out her last name is Blair. Which – double weird. Who refers to themselves by their last name in their own mind?

Why did I finish it? Well, I had it in my bag on a super busy week. And I never cared if I had to put the book down.  So it filled a lot of awkward time and it was vaguely entertaining. I did learn one thing though: Never put your name across the very top of your book because that’s where KCLS puts it’s bar code sticker and your name will be covered. LOL

℘℘℘ – 3 Pages. I finished it and it wasn’t offensive. Bland is the word of the day.