Cover Reveal: Reading Glasses

Another fantastic job by my fellow South Jersey Writers Group member and dear friend, Shelley Sjazner, who did the cover for TALL TALES AND SHORT STORIES FROM SOUTH JERSEY.

My story, "The Beach House," featured in READING GLASSES, is about a woman grieving the drowning death of her best friend at the same time that the U.S. waits on the brink of possible nuclear war with North Korea. The threat seems distant compared to her intimate pain, but the two events are more closely connected than she ever imagined, especially when her friend's ghost visits the beach house.

The book launch is NEXT WEEK!!! So stay tuned.

Happy National Milk Shake Day!

Not that I have anything against dairy products, but this is just getting silly. Today is National Chocolate Milkshake Day. It is also National Video Game Day and National Stand Up to Cancer Day. September is also Life Insurance Awareness Month, Ask a Man on a Date Month, National Organic Harvest Month and National Piano Month. This is National Line Dance Week.

Sooo.... ask a life insurance salesman on a date to play video games and line dance to piano music while holding a milkshake during the organic harvest festival in order to raise money for cancer. GOT IT?????                                                  

Cover Reveal: DIFFERENT DRAGONS II

I love this artwork, especially the fact that my roller coaster over the lake was incorporated into it. Anyone who's been to Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio, will know where that idea came from.  The book is due out on October 15th. Can you hear me squee?

An Exciting Announcement x 3

Last November, I submitted three stories for publication. To my surprise and astonishment, all three were accepted for publication. I'm still in shock. I'm waiting for someone to tell me they made a mistake. So far, no notices. So.... it's time to make the following announcement:

"The Beach House," about a woman being haunted by her childhood best friend and the impending end of the world, will be published in the anthology READING GLASSES by Hypothetical Press this August.

"The Dragon in the Kettle," in which a dragon's egg heating a blacksmith's forge hatches unexpectedly, will be published in TALES FROM FORTANNIS: A BARD DAY'S KNIGHT via Double Dragon.

"Bessie Returns," about the Loch Ness monster's cousin in Lake Erie, will appear in DIFFERENT DRAGONS VOL. II from Wolfsinger Press.

eHarmony - "The Enron of online dating"

Neil Clark Warren should be ashamed of himself.

After joining eHarmony for a trial subscription ending on Dec. 14th, costing approximately $20/month ($59.95 for three months), my account was then charged $49.95 for an additional month.  I had previously tried to close my account several times but was unable to because I had a 3-month subscription, and the website won't let you close out if you still have time on a subscription. So I had been very careful to make sure that the auto-renew feature was turned off prior to Dec. 14th.

Imagine my shock on the 15th when I checked my account, saw that it was still active and that I had been charged $49.95 for an additional month of a totally worthless service. I immediately called Customer Service, as there is a 3-day cancellation period in their terms and services.

Customer Service informed me that I had renewed my membership on Dec. 10th. I don't recall doing so, but I do recall looking at the subscription options recently to see if there were any changes to the available plans. I did not complete the subscription offer and therefore thought that my account would still close on Dec. 14th. There was no message stating, "Your membership is now renewed and you will be charged full price on Dec. 14th."

I was warned after I joined eHarmony about them charging to continue unwanted memberships, and was therefore very careful to be sure auto-renew was turned off. I had been travelling a lot for work that week, however, and clearly was not as vigilant as I should have been against stealthy charges.

Customer Service directed me to their email complaint department, which today informed me that they cannot issue me a refund and directed me to read the terms and services on their website. The terms say nothing about refusing to give a refund, but do include a 3-day cancellation period.

According to the email, they will not address the issue further and I have no other recourse. They won't even let me talk to a human person.

Since then I've found myriad complaints about eHarmony. The real shock is that Mr. Warren is an evangelical Christian, upon whose personal reputation the service is promoted.

Maybe I shouldn't be so shocked. Actually, I'm not. I'm just deeply disappointed and embarrassed on behalf of all the other evangelical Christians who get a bad rap because of charlatans like him.

One anonymous person wrote this on a complaint website:

Please tell everyone you know to avoid eHarmony. Online dating can work. There are honest and effective online dating sites out there. The top two competitors of eHarmony are both genuinely good sites. I know because I've used them since my experience with eHarmony.

I sincerely hope others are more fortunate and learn of eHarmony's deception before signing up. Because eHarmony will steal your money and according to the dozens of other complaints I've since read, they will renew your contract and charge your credit card even after you've cancelled.

eHarmony is clearly the Enron of on-line dating.

A friend gave me a good tip to avoid bogus charges on a website like this. You must enter a credit card to sign up, but what you can do is change the card to a Visa gift card that has no value on it.

Shostakovich and the Glory (or Odium) of the Internet

My son is doing a school project on Dmitri Shostakovich for his music class. He didn't know how to find the composer's greatest hits. I showed him how to search "Shostakovich Greatest Hits" and then take the playlist from the resulting Amazon.com CD listing.

Then I tried to explain about how when I was a kid, we went to the library. We used BOOKS. Some of them were called ENCYCLOPEDIAS. Our local library recently got rid of the entire Encyclopedia Britannica. A friend called me and asked if I wanted it. I did, but I had no room for it and had to pass.

Ouch.

Despite the slovenly ease of the Internet, I see books for sale all the time. I even see books for free. Recently, I attended a book festival and visited the tent of a small publisher that has published books by some of my friends. Both of their books were on the table. I bought one, having already ordered the other from the author. Then I was told that with a purchase, I get a book from the Free Table.

Ouch. May my books never be on the Free Table.

However, the free book I got looks really good. It's called Productive Procrastination by Kerul Kassel. The subtitle is "Make it work for you, not against you!"

Could it actually be wise to procrastinate sometimes? This book contains the secrets to understanding when it can be productive to procrastinate, and provides strategies for switching on the inspiration and motivation to start and finish the important tasks and goals you've been putting off.

Of course I've been procrastinating about reading it but I'll get around to it eventually.

It's All About Perspective

Bell Tower, Longwood Gardens

Perspective on our own work is nearly impossible to achieve in the beginning. We are scaling a tower and fighting dragons of doubt and incomptence to reach the prize at the top: a sense of self-worth. A feeling that no, I am not a delusional maniac with a multiply-split personality, but someone of vision and coolness and writerly awesomesauce.

That feeling lasts for about ten minutes when we actually finish a draft. Then we look down from the top of our completed manuscript, find we are dizzy and disoriented, and climb right back down to start all over again from the beginning. We repeat until we are so sick of that damned tower that we decide to go write poetry by the lake instead.

Eventually, however, we get jaded enough to gain real perspective. I believe that has finally happened to me ten years into my literary adventures. I finally have started to look at my work as... well... work. A draft is just something to be refined and edited like a report for my day job. This sounds callous but it's actually very freeing.

My soul's well-being no longer depends on someone liking my stuff. I know what I like. I know what sounds good. I know that there are lots of people who don't read the kind of stuff I write. Who aren't going to get the whole literary-fantasy thing.

One day I really do want to write a literary fantasy novel, about a character in another world getting to know himself. I want to write a fantasy literary contemporary novel, in which "she doth rise and toss the laundry into the washer with one meager cupful of viscous liquid, which when combined with cold water from the city supply doth miraculously make her clothing bright and fresh."

One day I shall write that report I jokingly mentioned on Facebook about how "68% of physicians are having affairs with their nurses and 42% of psychiatrists have unicorns to take notes for them during patient sessions." (I analyze health care provider surveys for a living. Sometimes you just gotta spice things up.)

Most importantly, I TRUST MYSELF. This is a huge thing, people. No longer will critique partners or casual commenters on my blog or Facebook cause me to rush to change a work I've slaved over yet again.

How did I get this way?

• Practice. Lots of it. Writing junk, seeing what works and what doesn't. 
• Talking to other writers, going to conferences and writers' group meetings
• Reading writing and agent blogs. 
• Having the courage to put a few things out there and getting some positive feedback from people who don't know me
• Realizing how very subjective anything to do with the creative arts is.
• Most of all... getting to know my characters inside and out. They guide me. They know what to do. 

As my friend February Grace says, "The characters are in control. I just take dication.