I found this over at WheelchairJunkie.com.
Rollbob says in his post:
An archeological team, digging in Washington DC , has uncovered 10,000 year old bones and fossil remains of what is believed to be the first politician OH MY !
Month: January 2007
bookmark_borderPromotional Methods
UPDATE: I changed the date on this so it would be bumped to the top. Georganna Hancock wrote a list of great answers (which are in the comment section) to my questions. I’m working on several of them.
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(originally posted 1/16/07)
Lori L. Lake, author liaison with Regal Crest, has some good suggestions for promoting books.
She has a list of bookstores that are lesbian, gay, gay-friendly, or any combination thereof. She makes postcards (via Vistaprint.com) of the book’s cover and sends the post card to the bookstores. One side is the cover image, the other has basic information on how to purchase the book.
I’m going to try that. I’ve been fussing over the layout of the postcard for a while. The cost isn’t too bad, but it is enough for me to hesitate to purchase. Once it is ordered, it is a done deal. Custom work is always a hit-and-miss deal. Lori is going to send me one of hers for me to see how she does it.
Georganna Hancock of Writer’s Edge fame, mentioned my book in her blog. Later, she e-mailed me and suggested I do “viral marketing”. I went to Wikipedia to look that phrase up.
Viral Marketing is, basically, word of mouth advertising. Someone tells someone about something who then tells someone else. And on down the line. Just like if one person has the flu and touches another person, that person is infected. They then touch another person and the virus continues spreading.
In this case, viral marketing is me having a signature in my emails that mention the book. Everyone who reads those emails is “infected” with the knowledge I have a book published. I mention it here on my website and everyone who visits it is “infected”. Georganna mentioned it on her website. People who read that post are infected. The idea becomes that those people then mention the book, or my site or her site or forwards my emails, then those people are infected. Any site I frequent, I should mention the book. I should frequent more sites just to mention the book.
Sounds gross, but apparently it works. So, mention my book on your website! Link to the BGCFA page which is https://paulaoffutt.com/fiction/bgcfa.
Anyone else have any other ideas or suggestions?
bookmark_borderColts vs Bears
So I got one wrong and one right.
I am glad, however, that two black coaches will be in the Super Bowl.
Colts will crush the Bears.
bookmark_border80K!
Saturday night I crossed the line! Wow, never thought I would reach it so soon. The official count is 80037 for Simple Sarah.
I worked mostly on that difficult scene I had to do. I was surprised it came out to be so large. It will grow more, probably tonight, as I go back over it.
In the first go-through, the scene was much more emotional. This one seems so…easy. I need to go back and add some angst. For one, the first one covered three days. This one covers perhaps two total.
Here’s part of the scene where August meets Horace, a big black beetle:
August slid down into the pit. As he approached, Sarah began screaming at him.
“Watch your step, you big oaf! You almost stepped on Horace!”
“Horace?”
“Don’t you see him there?”
August started to bend down to look for her invisible friend when he saw the huge beetle. “Ah, I see Horace now. Are you Sarah?”
“I am. At least today I am. I think.” She squinted up at him. “Are you real?”
“As real as you are, Sarah. A friend of mine, Lorne, is going to come down here to help you.”
“No, he’ll step on Horace.”
“What if I hold Horace for you? That way no one can hurt him.”
“I will agree to that if you also promise to smash the remaining root for him before you put him back.”
“I promise.” August scooped up the beetle along with some dirt.
(snip)
With Sarah safely out of the pit and being attended to, August knelt down on the ground. He released the beetle who raced across the rocks to a crack in the wall. August shook out the last root from the little bag and used a rock to crack it open. Once that was done, he pocketed the bag and scrambled out.
He rubbed his hands in the dirt, on his pants, on the back of one of the recruits. He spit on them, rinsed them with water from his flask, and wiped them on his shirt. He danced around while doing all this, mumbling to himself the entire time.
Roni, the recruit whose back August had used, heard him muttering something about having to touch a foul bug and how he would never get his hands clean again.
“You don’t like bugs?” Roni asked August.
August shuddered and began wiping his hands again. “Terrified of them. Can’t stand to see them and certainly would not otherwise touch one.”
bookmark_borderBack to the &%#* Vet
Guess where we went this morning? Yep, the vet.
Last night, Sam and Maggie got into a pile up while coming in from outside. She turned and snapped at him. Ripped his ear pretty bad. We took him in to have the vet see if it needed to be repaired (it was a cut all the way through and skin peeled back). She felt we should leave it alone for now but use an antibiotic since cartilage can get infected quicker than skin.
Luckily, the vet bill was $45 (two meds).
While we were there, we told her Pav was still not putting any weight down on the foot. She wants us to try a high potency anti-inflammatory to get the swelling down. If he’s not bearing weight by Monday, it probably is broken after all. Sigh.
We walked in and the staff just grinned at us.
UPDATE: Pav started putting weight on his foot this evening! If he keeps it up tomorrow, it’ll mean it’s not broken after all. Phew!
bookmark_borderFrenzy? Berzerker?
I went on a writing binge last night. From when I first got up until I finally went to bed this morning, I wrote 5883 words, most of which was from 8pm until 2:30am.
I couldn’t stop. It just kept coming. Oh, I paused to back up and clarify or to expound on a detail I just had another thought on. And my bladder forced me to stop and go.
Even when I went to bed, I only went because my eyes were gritty and oh so tired. And when I did lay down, my mind kept going around and around. Lorna lay awake and listened to me rattle on. My brain just wouldn’t shut off.
I hated it and I loved it. And hell yeah, I’d do it again.
Simple Sarah is now at 76335. I’ve not written a word today, well, not since I woke up. Note: In terms of word counts, unless it is a contest, I usually count a “day” as from when I got up until I went to bed. Yesterday I bent that rule and started the count over at about 1am or so.
Meaning, I have 3695 words for yesterday and 2188 for today.
Oh the little rules we make and break that no one cares about but us.
bookmark_borderWhat a Day!
After a late night/early morning creativity outburst (see the above post), I got to sleep until around 10am. Then Lorna drags me out of bed with promises of waffles and a trip to the aquarium place to get Sumo food and meds.
We go to Waffle House.
We go to pay the phone bill.
We go to Ball Photo to get lens cleaner. We came out with a cleaning kit, Peterson’s First Guide for Birds and a camera bag.
We go to Office Depot next door to get printer ink. We came out with a memory card for the camera, two boxes of magazine holders,
and printer ink. They tried to talk us into a $599 office chair. Sure, it was nice and very comfortable. But at that price?
We go to Asheville Aquarium for new Sumo food (he needs more variety) and multi-purpose medication.
We go to Denny’s for milkshakes and a break!
We go to Ashley Furniture so Lorna can look at recliners. She found one she loves for much much cheaper than the office chair at Office Depot. We go pay for it tomorrow and it will be here by Super Bowl! She came out to the truck and dragged me inside the store to look at this massive roll top desk (I’ve always wanted one) and it’s smaller (and cheaper!) sibling. Both desks were part of the Drake line. We saw other furniture in that line and liked them all.
We go the hell home and pull in the driveway at 5:45pm. What a day indeed!
bookmark_borderAnother Great Passing
From BBCNews:
US satirist Buchwald dies aged 81
Art Buchwald, a Pulitzer Prize-winning US writer and author of 33 books, has died at the age of 81, his son says.
Buchwald had been suffering from kidney failure and had checked into a hospice in February 2006, but checked himself out again several months later.
Known for his wry humour, he published his final book, Too Soon to Say Goodbye, in November of last year.
The book includes his plan for getting a big newspaper obituary: Don’t die on the same day as a Nobel Prize winner.
Buchwald published his first column in 1949 when living in Paris, and went on to write thousands more after he returned to the US, many poking fun at Washington’s elite.
(snip)
Too Soon to Say Goodbye includes classic Buchwald observations, such as that dying is not as difficult as finding a place to park in Washington, DC.
bookmark_borderCrossed the 70K Mark!
Simple Sarah has now reached over 72,000 words. Way freakin’ cool. I’ve set a goal to get it done this month which is very do-able. It feels good so far.
Soon, a major event happens to Sarah and I have to lead her through it. I’ve written this part before so at least I have an idea of what to do. It is a very emotional set of scenes.
At any rate, I am thrilled to be this far along. The goal of 95K is not so far off!
bookmark_borderPav’s Foot
The vet, cutie-pie Dr. Logan, is 90% sure that the foot isn’t broken. There’s a puncture and another scratch on his foot. We all believe he got into a fight and was bitten. The swelling is just the inflammation of the tissues. There’s no abscess but he was running a temp so he’s on an antibiotic. That’s three critters on the same drug. Pav’s is liquid though.
The swelling should be gone in three days. If not, then they’ll x-ray it to make sure it really isn’t broken.
With the bite on the foot, it narrows down the chance of abscess since there’s not much room for a deep enough puncture.
Oh, and the bill was $78 and some change. That means we’ve spent nearly $700 in vet bills in the past 13 days. Sheesh.