Sharon E. Cathcart's Blog

Hi, everyone. I am delighted to announce that both In The Eye of The Beholder and Les Pensees Dangereuses are now available via Barnes and Noble.

Hello, readers. I just wanted to let you know that there will be a book release celebration during Dickens Faire at the Cow Palace (event admission required), time and date as noted in the title. Here is the invitation I sent to my Dickens Faire friends:

Hello, everyone.

As some of you know, I was fortunate enough to publish my novel earlier this year. "In The Eye of The Beholder" takes place in fin de siecle Paris and late Victorian London. The book is easiest obtained through my publisher in the UK (we have ongoing issues with the Amazon catalog listing), at this link: www.turnermaxwellbooks.com/In_T...r.htm . The multi-format eBook version is available at www.smashwords.com/books/view/2163 if you would prefer.

I want to celebrate the book with my friends, and thought it would make the most sense to do so during Dickens Faire. Therefore, at the date and time above, I would be honored if you would meet me at the Absinthe Bar; we will move to the tables at Mad Sal's as needed. Bring your paperback copy of the book and I will happily sign it for you.

I understand that many people have gigs and that the scheduling may not be ideal. I hope some of you are able to stop by and say hello. :-)

Hi, everyone. Today, I joined the Shadow Forest Authors Project. The goal of the group is to provide free books to those in need (underprivileged kids, prisoners, etc.). It's free to list on the project, and the only commitment authors are asked to make is to donate one book to one of the group's beneficiaries. I'll be sending off a paperback copy of In The Eye of The Beholder to the Women's Prison Book Project, which is specifically seeking romance titles.

I'll be sending out a press release and so on about this later today, but wanted to share it first with my blog readers.

Hi, everyone. I am writing today about a subject that I take very seriously: animal cruelty.

A 19-year-old male was arrested and sentenced to 18 months in jail in my state's capitol for torturing a domestic pet to death; I won't post all of the particulars here, because it is just too gruesome.

Someone who, in the past, I considered a friend opined in the comments section that animal cruelty should not be a felony and that the pet's owner should have just sued in small claims court. That animal cruelty, since pets are property, should not be prosecuted by the district attorney. That jail time should not ensue because counseling would do the trick -- because the known links between animal cruelty and anti-social personality disorder (which cannot be overcome with counseling) are mere hypothesis in this person's mind.

Well, needless to say I could not disagree more. I am asking today that you consider donating funds to the ASPCA because my former friend's attitude has so incensed me. A while ago, a friend of mine lost his precious kitty when burglars broke into his home and killed her; I set up a donation page in her memory: Donate for Patience. If you could please go to this link and donate even a dollar or two, in memory of Patience and the poor kitten in Sacramento, I would be grateful.

Thank you.

Australian author Belinda D'Alessandro is one of my fellow participants in Operation eBook Drop. Here is the page from her site about the program, and her page about yours truly.

Here is Belinda's home page so that you can check out all of her work. :-)

Hi, everyone. As you know, I've been working on a non-fiction piece for the last while. I am delighted to report that I have finished, and Les Pensees Dangereuses is now available exclusively at Smashwords.

I have made the book available using the "you set the price" option; this is something of an experiment. This means that readers can pay nothing, a little or a lot, as they so choose.

I hope you enjoy the work.

I just got this note back from the new representative assigned to my trouble ticket at Scribd. I am grateful to learn of this outcome.

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Hello Sharon,

G., the rest of the team, and I met to discuss your situation. We recognize that holding your earnings indefinitely is not acceptable, and we agree that requiring you to close your account is too extreme. Reducing or eliminating the minimum amount, though, is unfortunately not feasible, so we came up with a compromise.

Every other quarter, at the beginning of January and the beginning of July, we will issue payments to our sellers regardless of how much they've earned IF THEY HAVE NO SELLABLE DOCUMENTS AT THE END OF THAT QUARTER. We've now documented this in "What if my earnings never reach the minimum amount for payment?" at http://support.scribd.com/forums/36630/e...

So, when our engineers produce our global earnings report at the beginning of January, and you have no sellable documents, you'll be included in the report and we will issue your payment. If you have any documents for sale when the report's run on January first, though, we'll take that as evidence that you're actively selling in the Store and issue payments normally.
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I can leave my free military history book up on Scribd (which is good, since the PDF-to-Word conversion was a huge failure), and focus my sales efforts for In The Eye of The Beholder and any future eBooks on Smashwords.

Hi, everyone.

I find myself in an unusual position. In The Eye of The Storm is causing me no end of consternation; I just feel stuck right now. So, as I often do when this happens, I turned to my other project.

Les Pensees Dangereuses (French for "dangerous thoughts") consists of a number of essays I have written over the years, including an unfinished memoir about depression, Unmasking My Phantoms: My Dance with Madness. I have put in all of the essays I decided to include, and now need to write introductory notes for each "chapter" (the essays are broken down by theme) and put the whole thing together. Once it's finished, I'll put the work up as a free eBook on Smashwords.

In essence, it looks like this non-fiction work will be out by the end of the year, and my planned sequel will take longer than I anticipated. So it goes.

I am sorry to have to issue a warning about Scribd to my fellow authors, but that is the position in which I find myself.

When I first published In The Eye of The Beholder as an eBook, I went with Scribd as my imprint. I did not yet know about Smashwords and its multi-format set-up (which is, frankly, superior to Scribd's PDF-only arrangement). I left my document at Scribd as well as placing it with Smashwords.

Well, after a few months of less-than-stellar sales, I decided to delete my document from Scribd and stick with Smashwords. However, when I clicked the "delete" option, I was told that the document was now marked "private" because people had purchased it. That's true; I have $50.43 sitting in my Scribd account from purchases -- funds that, frankly, I would like to see.

I wrote to tech support, and their response was to refer me to the FAQ section on quarterly payments -- which was not my question at all. I want to remove my document and obtain my payment. I wrote back and reiterated the situation, and was then referred to a section of the FAQ that stated no payments of less than $100 would be made.

So, it appears that Scribd is willing to essentially rob me of $50.43 for the privilege of posting my content on their website. Fellow authors, please beware of this hosting services; this is an unscrupulous practice to say the least. I am highly disappointed.

Today, September 23, 2009, marks the 100th anniversary of Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera The Original Novel -- in a way. It was initially published as a serial in a French magazine called Le Gaulois, and the first chapter appeared 100 years ago today.

The complete novel, as we know it today, appeared in April 1910. Leroux's thinly veiled social commentary on Parisian society has inspired numerous films, musicals and books -- not the least of which is my In The Eye of The Beholder A Novel of The Phantom of the Opera.

I hope you will consider buying my book, either in eBook form via Smashwords or in print at Turner Maxwell Books.

In closing, I wish "bon anniversaire" to my beloved Erik, whose voice cried out in my heart that his story was not over.