Preview PICTURE IMPERFECT on Amazon Direct on Your Browser

If you’re a reader you’re probably familiar with the Look Inside feature over on Amazon, but as I was getting ready for PICTURE IMPERFECT’s release week, I realized that Amazon now has a cool little pop-up app you can direct folks to, and if they click on it they can start reading my book right where they are, on their desktop or tablet and likely also their phones.

Testing it out here.

Yep, it works!

You can read up to around the beginning of Chapter Four without having to go search on Amazon for my book. Just click and read! (If you like what you read, you can then buy directly from the app, which would be nice the next time I need to buy some bulk cases of Kraft Dinner). (Mama needs royalties to keep DH in KD…)

I do have an excerpt on my website, but the Amazon preview app thingy is very cool!

A Note About Comments

My delete finger has been a little trigger-happy with comments on my blog lately. Sometimes I empty the spam folder before I realize that a comment might not really be spam. And once I’ve accidentally deleted all the spam comments, I can’t get back to them again.

So if you have left a comment on my blog lately and you come back and don’t see it, that is why. Sorry, it got caught in the spam filter and something about the dashboard on WordPress must’ve changed, because I am losing those comments before getting a chance to check out if they are really spam or not.

The best way for me to realize that you are not spam is to mention in your comment where you saw the link to the post on which you are commenting. If you came to my blog from Facebook, let me know that. If you came to my blog through Twitter or Instagram, let me know that.  You are much less likely to get lumped into the spam category along with all the comments from SEO website engines.

Apologies to anyone whose comments I may have inadvertently deleted. Practically nobody comments on blogs anymore, so it is easy to get trigger-happy. 🙂 But I do welcome comments, if you wish  to leave them here rather than on Facebook, for example.

And Now Television…

While I’m blabbing about my childhood influences, I might as well confess my childhood TV addictions. Because I think they also influenced my desire to become a writer. And my tendency to write humorous/comedy. Even when I’m writing emotional contemporary romance, I like my characters to possess healthy senses of humor. At least one of them, anyway. The other one can be serious. I’m flexible like that.

I tend to believe I’m one of those writers who was born a writer—or at least a reader. I learned to read early (aged 4, so family legend goes), and once I started reading, I couldn’t stop. Yes, we had TV, but for years we had one, maybe two channels. And neither of those channels was dedicated to children, let me tell you! (“Let me tell you!” is something my grandfather used to say all the time, so when I say it, I think of him, let me tell you). Oh, we had a couple of Canadian children’s television shows, like The Friendly Giant and Mr. Dress-Up. And we had The Walt Disney Show on Sunday nights. If we kids were good, we were allowed to watch The Ed Sullivan Show following Disney. And Ed had that little mouse who told jokes and made everyone laugh and feel good about themselves.

My father loved The Red Skelton Show. I watched and loved it, too. And so comedy seeped its way into my veins.

No one could top Red for me until The Carol Burnett Show happened along. I LOVED Carol Burnett. She was funny, too. Especially her pitiful Eunice character. Tragic and sad, yet, in the midst of all that dysfunction, laugh-out-loud funny. Suddenly, funny seemed so natural to me. When you’re shy as a child, humor is a great way to break out of your shell. Every once in a while I run across someone who tells me I was shy when they first met me. Usually, they just tell me I was weird.

Well, I was raised on Topo Gigio, Red Skelton, and Carol Burnett, with a healthy dose of Bugs Bunny and Grover from Sesame Street thrown in (I didn’t discover Grover until I was 15—long story involving a coveted color television set and my high school that year being on split shift and not starting until afternoon).

And people wonder why I’m a bit odd. Now you know.

“But I’m a Talent!”

This video is making the rounds. I love the mechanical voices and how the bear on the left doesn’t listen to ANY advice from those gone before him. You’re right, buddy. None of us know what we’re talking about. We’re just trying to hold you down.

Follow your dreams! But educate yourself along the way.

For Bikers Who Golf!

Yes, I’m still on a tech break. It would be pretty pathetic if I stopped blogging for only two days, no? One might think I’m addicted. While I’m breaking, I thought I might as well commandeer the blog for some free advertising for my husband’s new business (he’s the one without the beard-goatee thingie). For more information, pop by www.ironhorsecaddybag.com or visit on Facebook. Happy viewing!