Month: November 2009

The Misadventures of Claudia Zenk

I’m blogging over at Nobody Writes It Better today. Please drop by and help me mock my friend, Claudia. Or empathize with her. Take your choice. Although I recommend the mocking.

That’s a fake name. It’s only here that I’m revealing that Claudia Zenk really is Sandorf Verster, my BFF. Yes, loyal Muse Interrupted readers, I never wanna hear that you don’t get rewarded!

You see, Claudia has encountered several misadventures in the local airport lately. Most of them aren’t her fault…but this one was. I nearly split a gut when she told me this story. And of course I had to add my own little writerly tidbits. Enjoy!

Cough, Cough, Hack, Hack

No, I don’t have swine flu. Not even a cold. My computer’s been sick, however. More specifically, this blog. And it’s all my fault (I know, hard to believe). I got hacked!

Several weeks ago, I decided to edit my blog’s style sheet to make the blog titles smaller. For some reason, I can’t edit the style sheet from within the WordPress dashboard. It always says it’s not writable or something. I don’t know if this is because I installed the blog using Fantastico, or if it’s an idiosyncrasy of my website host. I have edited the style sheet previous to The Debacle. Successfully. However, this time, I missed a velly important step.

If you need to download your style sheet using a program like FileZilla (which is what I use – recommend it!), you need to change the permissions on your host. What are permissions, you ask? It’s a series of three numbers that essentially tells your host WHO (or, in the case of robots, WHAT) has access to your files. Who can tangle with them, so to speak. Who can screw them up. In other words, by changing the permissions so you can edit the file, you’re leaving yourself open to a security breach.

So…an intelligent person would change the permissions only as long as needed to edit the file and re-upload it. Then the intelligent person would change the permissions back to their previous state AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE.

Now, I’m not saying I lack intelligence (although it could be argued…). However, several weeks ago, due to brain drain or too-much-to-do-itis, or what-have-you, when I uploaded my edited style sheet, I forgot to change the permissions back to their original state.

It took awhile for the hacking robots to find me (maybe it was a human, but I think it was a robot). Around the middle of October my domain emails suddenly stopped forwarding to my private email address, because my Internet Server Provider has blocked my domain addresses. This has happened before, and my host’s support staff usually gets it fixed within a couple of days. But this time it wasn’t fixing. I couldn’t figure out why.

Then, about ten days ago, I checked my domain webmail and discovered several emails from Google informing me that my website appeared to be a forgery of a U.S. banking institution and was trying to get browsers to input financial information. Everything looked okay on the site. I couldn’t see this forgery page, so what the heck was up?

I contacted the web designer who coded my blog for me when I couldn’t do it myself. She reminded me of the permissions angle. Yikes! This is when I discovered my own stupidity. I went into my blog files on my web host and did some sleuthing. I discovered a WordPress theme on my server that I could not see from within the WordPress dashboard. I asked my web contact about it, and she determined that it was the phishing page. She removed it and quarantined it, and just the other day I contacted Google to let them know all was fixed, so could they please remove the phishing notice some browsers get when they try to visit my blog?

I have no idea how long it will take to get the notice taken down. Whether you see the notice or not when you visit my blog seems to depend on your operating system (Windows or Mac) and your virus protection program. If you can read this post, then you’re not having an issue! However, some Mac users are getting 404 errors (page not found) when they try to visit my blog. Windows users of Trend Micro are getting warnings not to visit my blog and/or my site. Users of AVG and Norton’s don’t seem to have a problem visiting the blog. I’ve had one report from a McAfee user who does have a problem, and AOL users might have problems.

At this point, there’s nothing else I can do but wait for Google to take down the phishing notice. Meanwhile, I personally contacted my ISP and explained what I think happened to lead to them blocking my domain emails. Unfortunately, because of the hacking, the problem was too entrenched to get fixed over a tech phone call. They told me to contact my web host again and ask the host to get in touch with them. I did that, but, again, it’s a waiting game.

So let this be a lesson to you! If you do your own blog tweaking, for Pete’s sake, return the permissions to their original state as soon as possible afterward. Don’t take after Cindy, no matter how great the urge!

Mentoring Mania with Kylie Brant

Author Kylie Brant (who guest-blogged here not too long ago) is hosting a cool contest on her website this month. Here are the deets, peeps (in Kylie’s words, hence the quote block…)

For the November contest we’re doing something a bit different. Have you ever wanted to have an in-depth conversation with a multi-published author about your manuscript, plot idea, getting an agent, publishing houses, etc? MENTORING MANIA with Kylie Brant offers multiple chances to win an intensive mentoring opportunity of your choice—a thirty minute phone conversation or a 24 hour email exchange.

The contest runs from November 2–November 27. The grand prize winner will be announced on my website by Tuesday, December 1. You can be entered multiple times, according to the number of points you earn. Here’s how you earn points:

1 point for sending me a short paragraph on why you need a mentoring opportunity. What writing hurdle to you need help with?

1 point for subscribing to my newsletter.

1 point for mentioning the contest with url on any social network (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace etc. One point per site.)

1 point for becoming a Facebook fan of Kylie Brant

5 points for posting a paragraph about my current series, The Mindhunters and the contest in a blog post.

Visit Kylie’s website for more information.

NaNo You?

It’s NaNoWriMo time! (National Novel Writing Month for those not in the know). I’m not NaNo’ing this year. In fact, I’ve only done participated once. It was fun, but I’m deep into revisions on the first of two manuscripts. No time to NaNo. Yano?

Are you NaNo’ing? Why or why not? If you are participating this year, what are you working on? Did you honestly not write a word of your manuscript before November 1st? Just planned? Or have you tweaked the NaNo write-50K-in-one-month-without-editing parameters to suit your personal creative process? I wouldn’t blame you if you have.

It’s the first week. Four to go. Good luck!

Desconstructing Halloween

I read on another author’s blog last week that she has an intense dislike for Halloween. Say what? All that candy? Haunted houses? Fireworks? What’s not to like?

I guess it depends. My Liege and I used to host big Halloween parties—adults only, no kidlets. We started doing this before we had kids and we continued for a few years afterward. Then the kids started getting too old to foist off on a grandmother while we partied the night away. Plus, the wood floor in my living room was damaged from too much dancing in high heels (not just me). After I had it refinished, I couldn’t bear to put it through the torture again. And did I mention the work of hosting these parties?

But they were fun. They also created an extremely busy month. Especially after we had the kids and I needed to create not only costumes for My Liege and me, but for the boys. I had it in my head that I needed to create homemade costumes, which I did for several years. Every once in a while, I bought a costume. One year, My Liege wore a cow costume. Youngest Son dug it out for this year’s Halloween. He went to work as a Holy Cow by wearing his cross and a priest collar over the cow costume. I thought that was ingenious! (Which begs the question, why didn’t I think of it?). You could also do this as a couple costume by having one person dress up as the cow and the other as a nun or a priest.

Now that the kids are grown, Halloween isn’t anywhere near as hectic for me as it used to be. I don’t carve pumpkins. I have glow-in-the-dark pumpkins that (to me) work just as well. One runs on batteries and the other plugs in. And I don’t have to worry about anyone smashing them and creating a mess in my driveway.

We live on a large corner lot on a not-very-busy street, so sometimes I need to bribe trick-or-treaters. How do I do this? Candy! At one point Halloween night, I was giving away 6 pieces of candy per kid. I made sure to tell them how many were going into their bags, too. I mean, I bought 300 pieces. I couldn’t be expected to eat them all myself! And I expect those 6-pieces-per to bring me plenty of repeat trick-or-treaters next year.

It was a warm Halloween this year. Trick-or-treating winds down pretty early in my next of the woods, because our local volunteer fire department puts on a fireworks show on the beach that rivals the Canada Day fireworks around town. My Liege and I used to take the kids down there every year. Now we go ourselves. The first year without the kids felt a little sad. One year we stayed home and watched the fireworks from the deck. It’s not the same! Another year we watched them from a viewpoint on the road. Not the same again! Nothing beats standing on the beach with other members of your community while hot chocolate gets handed out (if you stand in line) and a bonfire is blazing, and gorgeous fireworks are filling the night sky.

Any Halloween traditions you want to share? How do you celebrate where you live? Do you like/abhor Halloween?

Welcome Guest Blogger Anthea Lawson

Celebrating Romance!lawson_pic

Thanks for having us here at Muse Interrupted! Today marks the release of our second historical romance, ALL HE DESIRES. One of the themes of the book is the healing power of love—how love can transform us and give us hope no matter what lies in our past. We are glad to be writing in a genre that honors connection, love, and the willingness to overcome obstacles that keep us apart. So today as we celebrate the release of our book, here are some thoughts celebrating Romance.

Romance affirms the power of the emotions, and the power of love.

lawson_all_desiresToo much emotion is frowned on in our culture, especially where men are concerned. And love? Maybe because love is the most powerful emotion of all, it’s scary. Too capable of changing the world, changing who we are. It’s easier to shove love in a container, laugh at it or dismiss it as unrealistic. But romance is important. It moves us, gives us hope, lightens the load of our day-to-day lives where we have to deal with so many things that are sad, hard, and worrying.

Romance shows a positive and frank expression of female sexuality.

Not only are we talking about the big scary power of love, we’re letting it spill over into and inform physical desire. Modern romances are not afraid to describe the physical side of a relationship in a way that honors and celebrates feminine power. Despite the fact that we’re constantly bombarded by sexualized images, sex-plus-love and especially sex-plus-lasting-committed-relationship, doesn’t get shown a lot in popular media. Sex In The City was over when everyone hooked up with a mate. Do we really need the illusion that only those who aren’t in a ‘real’ relationship get to have hot hot lovin’? And how is that message going to play out after marriage?  Romance novels in any subgenre show strong, loving relationships that will endure for years—and don’t shy away from the physical aspect of the relationship. Maybe that’s why, according to a study reported in Psychology Today*, romance readers make love 74% more often than those who don’t read romance. That’s a pretty persuasive reason to read romance!

Romance speaks to the heroine inside us all.lawson_passionate

Romance novels acknowledge how hard it can be to get to that happy ending—we all know there’s going to be lots of conflict, trouble, and hardship along the way. But the heroines (and heroes) persevere. They stumble forward. They embrace the good times. And they win. They give us the heart and courage to keep going, even when things are looking their bleakest. Romances hold out hope, and they remind us that love and connection to other people is not weakness, but the best kind of strength.

So embrace your love of reading romance, celebrate the people in your life who are important to you, and honor that spark of hope and joy. All you need is love—and a good book.

*Harold Leitenberg and Kris Henning, “Sexual Fantasy,” Psychological Bulletin 117

WIN A BOOK! WIN TWO!

To celebrate our release day, we’re giving away a signed copy of ALL HE DESIRES, plus a copy of our first book, RITA-nominated PASSIONATE. A second winner will receive a copy of ALL HE DESIRES. Leave a comment below for a chance to win, and please tell us:  How has reading Romance made a difference in your life?

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To read Anthea’s bio and the back cover copy of ALL HE DESIRES, visit yesterday’s post. To learn more about Anthea and her/his/their books, please visit their website!