Category: Blogs & Blogging

NWIB Super Secret Santa Give-Away

My group blog, Nobody Writes It Better, is holding The Super Secret Santa Give-Away from now until Christmas Eve, with the winner announced on Christmas Day. Several authors are participating, with some of us donating copies of our books and some of us donating gifts. Each author will mail her book/gift to the winner independently, so every time you visit your mailbox, you might find another present therein. Sounds like fun, no? For my part, I’m donating a copy of BORROWING ALEX.

Visit The Super Secret Santa Give-Away for details on how to enter. (Note: comments to this post, while appreciated, do not enter you in the contest. Visit the blog and follow the directions there).

Tweet Fail

I’ve installed a (supposedly) cool Twitter plug-in for WordPress called Tweetmeme that (supposedly) allows me or a blog reader to easily tweet my blog posts. You can see the icon at the bottom of each blog (it says “tweet” on a green background that magically matches my color scheme—honest, I didn’t adjust it! It came that way).

The problem? I can’t get the plug-in to work. Whenever I try to tweet a post, I get the error, “Failed to resolve URL for tweet.” In my usual ignoramus way, I have no idea what this means. I’m contacting Someone Far Wiser in hopes they have the answer. But because they are SFW, they probably didn’t encounter this issue on their own blog and I’m probably SNAFU’ed. But what else is new?

In my defense, this is the first plug-in I’ve ever installed. Maybe I screwed up (noooo, can’t be!).

I just upgraded my WordPress. Maybe Tweetmeme hasn’t caught up yet.

So, if you want to tweet one of my blog posts, click on the green “tweet” button at the bottom of the post in question and give it a whirl. If it doesn’t work, blame your Thanksgiving turkey. Even if his name isn’t Vincent.

If you’re reading this post in the far future and don’t see the cute little green “tweet” button, that’s because I could never get it to work and gave up.

If you’re reading this post in the far past and don’t see the cute little green “tweet” button, that’s because I hadn’t installed it yet! So no time-traveling for you, my dear blog readers, or this post won’t make sense.

UPDATE: Saturday a.m. I was able to tweet a blog post today, so I’m no longer SNAFU’ed. Not sure what I did right this morning that I did wrong yesterday. That it was tweeted isn’t showing up on the icon, but that doesn’t matter. I’m going for efficiency here.

Harlequin Horizons, Part Two

Wow, a lot happened yesterday. Not only did Romance Writers of America inform Harlequin/Silhouette that they were no longer on RWA’s list of eligible publishers (which get perks like meeting space for Spotlights and book signings and for offering editor appointments) as a result of opening a vanity publishing division and putting the Harlequin name on it, but Mystery Writers of America and Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America stepped in, too. Author Jackie Kessler provided a breakdown of the Horizons press release on her blog. Here’s a link to her post yesterday, Harlequin Horizons Versus RWA. If you’re considering submitting to ANY vanity publisher, I encourage you to read it. It’s very, very important for a writer to educate herself about the multitude of, um, opportunities available in publishing today.

In her post, Jackie points out:

Vanity presses hurt authors. The rule of thumb is money flows **toward** the author. Period. Authors should not have to pay to get their books published — they should be paid for their work. If authors choose to self-publish, they damn well should get 100% of the profits, because they have paid for everything up front.

With vanity presses, money flows TOWARD the press FROM the writer. The press keeps some of the royalties, too. This differs from true self-publishing where the writer pays all the expenses to publish her book but also retains ALL the profits.

If a writer decides to publish her work through a vanity press, that’s her choice. But educate yourself first. Make SURE this is the option you want to take, when there are so many other options available, such as true self-publishing, or, hey about this one—continuing to hone your craft and submitting to advance and/or royalty paying publishers that don’t require you to contribute a dime toward the publication of your work.

Back to RWA and Harlequin Horizons. RWA pulled the hard line and removed Harlequin from their list of eligible publishers yesterday. Harlequin responded and is now going to remove the Harlequin name from the Horizons venture. Agent Kristin Nelson printed the Harlequin letter to its authors in its entirety on her blog. Here’s a snippet of that letter:

Most importantly, however, we have heard the concerns that you, our authors, have expressed regarding the potential confusion between this venture and our traditional business. As such, we are changing the name of the self-publishing company from Harlequin Horizons to a designation that will not refer to Harlequin in any way. We will initiate this process immediately.

Jackie Kessler then breaks down that letter on her blog in a post called The Day After: Harlequin Blinks. If you’re looking for a crash course in the Horizons, um, journey, this is another good post to read. Read Harlequin Horizons Versus RWA first.

I am proud of RWA for taking a hard line with Horizons. They have taken a hard line with small publishers when those publishers have chosen to open new lines or divisions that don’t meet the requirements for an RWA-eligible publisher, so it only makes sense to me that they would take a hard line with a major publisher, too. I can’t say that I had every confidence that the RWA board WOULD take a hard line. Because I didn’t. I was pleasantly surprised. Hurrah for the new RWA board.

I am glad the Harlequin name will no longer be associated with Horizons. However, I am still unhappy about the possibility of Harlequin rejection letters pointing rejected writers TO Horizons as an avenue for publishing their books. I personally don’t see how retaining this option will get H/S back onto the list of RWA-eligible publishers.

Stay tuned!

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!

The Middleman (Person, What-Have-You)

My apologies to those who visited the blog today expecting to find a guest blog post and book give-away. I did have a guest scheduled, but unfortunately had to cancel when I didn’t receive the necessary materials in time for me to fit photo resizing, blog formatting and uploading into my own busy writing schedule. This is the first time I’ve had to cancel a guest blogger in a year of hosting, so that’s good—but it’s the second time I’ve run into problems receiving the necessary materials, and, both times, there’s been a middle man. A publicity person or assistant. I find this perplexing. Isn’t having an assistant or someone to handle your publicity supposed to make things easier on an author?

Maybe it’s just coincidence, but now I’m reluctant to agree to host another author if the arrangements are made through an assistant/publicity person (unless it’s a super big name like Jennifer Crusie, Susan Elizabeth Phillips or Nora Roberts—then, yeah, walk all over me, I’ll love it!). I prefer to deal with my guest authors directly. When I agree to host an author, I send a specific listing of the items required and that I’ll need them five days before the blogging date. Sometimes I book my guests several months in advance, so I expect that they’ll need reminding. Two weeks before the scheduled date, I always send out a reminder, again detailing exactly what I need and by what day.

Dealing directly with authors, I always receive those materials on time and the authors always come by to respond to comments on their designated blogging day without me sending two or three emails to the contact person only to find out that the author is out of state and didn’t realize they were supposed to drop by the blog at all. A conversation ensues. A book is won. The author hopefully will garner more sales and readers. And everyone is happy.

I don’t like chasing after guest authors, or, as the case has been in the two times I’ve encountered it, chasing after my contact for that author. Hey, I’m busy, too. The guests I book contact me, not the other way around.

I’ve run into the middleman confusion as a guest blogging author, too. Earlier this year, one of my writing names had an opportunity to blog with a group of other writers on a popular site. We all jumped at the chance. And then didn’t hear anything about the blog days again. Not from the middleman and not from the blog host. None of us were aware that it was our responsibility to contact the blog host. No one had told us. We were embarrassed, but our blogs were rightfully cancelled. In this case, they were rescheduled. Then we realized that the middleman’s sole function was to gather together the group of authors. Thereafter, we were on our own. So we ran with it. We came up with a theme, coordinated with the blog host, made sure we had our materials to her in ample time for the rescheduled blog days, and we all had a great time visiting each other’s blog posts, meeting the various readers, and chatting with them.

I understand that there times an author has to cancel. What looks like a great promo opportunity four months down the line might seem like a ton of work you don’t really need when you’re suddenly staring a book deadline or family obligation or life-curve in the face. Believe me, I get it. All I ask is that the middleman keeps me in the loop.