Elyse Salpeter's Blog, page 9

THE MANNEQUINS… Horror Tale for Just 99 Cents until Halloween

“I beg of you… stay away!”

It’s the season to scare the pants off of you! With Halloween looming just a few days away, I wanted to offer a gift to my readers. Until October 31st, please enjoy my horror novel, THE MANNEQUINS, for just 99 cents. It’s about a film crew that enters an abandoned mansion… and disappears.”

You can purchase it here on Amazon: http://amzn.to/1Nl5ehS

A Review: ***** FIVE STARS: A Sophisticated Horror Story

By Baker Bronte on June 1, 2015

Ms. Salpeter’s The Mannequins was an unexpected treat. While many horror books rely on lots of predictable slasher/gore material to deliver a shock to the reader, The Mannequins provides a jolt of true creepiness through masterfully fleshing out common fears. I’ve heard several people mention the creep factor of dolls, but to take that fear and build on it, and craft a novel around mannequins? Well, that’s just genius. Imagine entering an alternate reality ruled by a sinister rogue simply called the Preacher. If you displease him, he’ll turn you into a mannequin, trapped within your own body and aware of it! Ms. Salpeter’s writing shines when she captures the atmosphere of the house as well as the desperation of the characters trapped inside. Especially enjoyable were the broad range of characters in this novel. Far from cookie cutter, they were true to life and very likeable. There were several I found myself invested in during the course of the novel, and before I knew it, I was repeatedly telling myself “Ok, one more chapter” just to avoid getting out of bed and turning off the light! This story is more cerebral than most books in the horror genre, and I’ve checked her blog and know she has a horror anthology, Rickett Row, coming out this summer. If you’re looking for a new author in the horror genre, I heartily recommend Ms. Salpeter.

A collection of creepy horror tales…

I love psychological horror. The kind that gets into your mind. I mean, slasher fic and that good old “someone is behind you” trick is great for that instant scare, but I love when a scary story lingers in the back of your mind for days. The kind that makes you get freaked out when there’s a knock on the door. The kind that causes that trickle of fear when a strange smell wafts by. The kind that makes you scared to look in a mirror. I have my horror anthology RICKET ROW now available and you may want to check that out as well. You can purchase that here: http://amzn.to/1NngtpV

Here’s a review of Ricket Row:

**** 4 Stars Keep the light on when reading these!

ByMonica R.on August 2, 2015

These are some creepy stories! I don’t generally read horror, so I might be a bit of a wimp for this kind of story. After starting the first story, I decided this would be better read during the day. Ok, I am a wimp.

Many of these stories are very short, but manage to convey just enough to portray real horror. The first story, Inside, for example – the demeanor of the changed people was unsettling. The briefness of the story, leaving you to imagine how it unfolds, adds to its disturbing nature.

That is the way with many of these stories – short enough to set up a disturbing scenario and leaving you to fill in the blanks. Truly chilling. Some have a surprise ending, like Mr. and Mrs. Odd, that startle you at the last moment. Body Parts was appropriately creepy – until that ending! Did not expect that! I really enjoyed Mrs. O’Malley’s children. The tension was high from the start, good characters with just enough backstory. I even got a little emotional a couple of times. Great climax, and this time we got a good, if not happy, ending. All in all, a great collections of stories that will chill you and keep you up at night.

Happy Halloween, everyone!

A Review of THE HUNT FOR XANADU by Douglas Preston

“The Hunt for Xanadu by Elyse Salpeter is a remarkable novel, a fascinating and fantastical journey in time and space, and one of the most gripping novels I’ve read in a long time. It flies along at the pace of a thriller, with plenty of murder and mayhem along the way. But behind the thrill-ride is a spiritual story, an archetypal tale of mystery and darkness, riddled with fascinating and esoteric concepts in Tibetan Buddhism. Vivid characters, a truly appealing protagonist, unexpected twists, and crisp writing complete this unforgettable book. I can’t wait to read the next one in the series!”

–Douglas Preston, #1 bestselling author and co-creator, with Lincoln Child, of the Pendergast series

My journey: I have been a fan of the Douglas Preston/Lincoln Child Aloysius Pendergast books for years. That series embodies to me what I wanted to create as a writer. Well thought out, unique characters that stick with you, emotional situations that are both believable, yet fantastical, and something that was smart, well written and where I think I learn something new with each book.

So, I embarked on my Kelsey Porter series with the mindset that I would “write a book that Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child would enjoy reading.” I used them as my bar for this series of books.

I’m on their fan page, I interact, I’ve gone to all the NY signings and in the meantime, just kept writing my books. Well, four years later, I got up the guts to see if Douglas would ever consider reading my novel since it is in the vein he writes. This author is so incredibly busy and accomplished, I frankly don’t even know when he eats, so this endeavor made me steel my heart for any response. Well, we chatted back and forth about the book, it was indeed up his alley, he suggested I send it, he did read it and above is the result!

My journey with this series began with the goal to write a book he’d enjoy…. mission complete.

If you’re interested in checking the series out for yourself, the novels are The Hunt for Xanadu, The Quest of the Empty Tomb and now Book #3, The Search for the Yeti’s, is presently with my editor. My hope is to get it out early 2016.

If you’d like to purchase the first two novels in the series, feel free to click here:

THE HUNT FOR XANADU

AMAZON: http://amzn.to/1CEvEab

UK Amazon: http://amzn.to/1Cp2awz

Book #2 THE QUEST OF THE EMPTY TOMB

US AMAZON: http://amzn.to/1EvXExO

UK AMAZON: http://amzn.to/1JSRNqT

Reach for your dreams, folks… the universe may very well answer.

A Healthy Halloween

Come on, even kids will eat this spooky snack!

Just the title of my blog post “A Healthy Halloween” sort of sounds sad, doesn’t it? I can hear people whining already,”What do you mean a healthy Halloween? No chocolate? No gummies? No high fructose corn syrup? What the heck are you doing to me, lady?” Work with me here. I’ve got some ideas for a Halloween Party where your guests will love the food and won’t be leaving with a stomach laden with artificial flavors and fifty ingredient fillers that they can’t even pronounce.

How fun is this?

So, I started thinking… if I WERE to throw a healthy Halloween Party, or serve my kids fun spooky food, what would I serve? Here were some photos of super cool things I found on Pinterest that I think would be a hit for all age groups. While buckets of chocolates are cool, there are ways to integrate healthier food alternatives. Your guests won’t have any idea you just made a healthier choice for them. They’ll just think the food is “super spooky cool.”

Spaghetti as brains!

Guacamole Brains via Cauliflower bowl

I was also looking at a site called http://www.nuts.com and they have a host of foods as alternatives for the run-of-the-mill candy selection that Halloween is known for. Check out their site for some cool organic candies… I didn’t even know Gummy Bears could be organic! https://nuts.com/organic/sweets. They also have gluten free, too! Check this out: https://nuts.com/gluten-free

A scary take on chocolate covered strawberries

I have so many ideas of foods I want to make. I’d make them for my kids but they’re suddenly “too cool” for this any longer. I swear, in 20 years they’ll look back and wish they’d let me do these things.

A new take on Deviled Eggs!

And for those of you who want to throw a Halloween Party with other cool ideas – here’s the entire pinterest page for you too look at. Seriously, I’ve been itching to throw one. Sigh, one day… https://www.pinterest.com/elysesalpeter/halloween-themed-food-ideas/

Make one Tiny Change for Big Results…

Change is hard for most people. We get stuck in our ways and prefer to be comfortable. It’s easier to sit on a couch and eat chips than it is to take a jog outside and grab an apple instead. It’s hard to change a career later in life for fear of failure. It’s hard to talk to someone about how you really feel, just letting everything sit in your gut instead, so you don’t have to deal with confrontation. It’s hard to reach out to ask someone for their help, for fear of rejection.

But if we don’t change certain things in our lives, then our bad habits, or simply habits, will control us and bring us down.

Food: I realize I’m addicted to sugar. Just love it. On my yogurt, in my cereal, candy bars, and when I drink coffee, three heaping tablespoons is my preferred amount of sugar inducing coma. Well, my family is riddled with diabetes. I realize I am also not feeling so great these days and while a blood test said I’m totally fine, I think I need to get this addiction under control. I switched to artificial sweetener in my coffee, but honestly, that’s worse for me than sugar. It’s like putting cardboard or poison or plastic into my system on a daily basis and guess what? I still don’t feel well. So, I made a tiny change just a few days ago. Did you know that cinnamon is a sweetener at its core? I am a coffee snob and at first refused to try it, but then realized I love Starbuck’s Pumpkin Spice Soy Lattes and the Cinnamon Dolce isn’t bad (NOTE: they are FULL OF SUGAR so of course I love them). But, now every morning in my coffee I use just one teaspoon of sugar and sprinkle Cinnamon into it and while it is not nearly as sweet as I normally crave, it’s completely acceptable. (I wonder if a Cinnamon stick would be good, too? Hmmm) Not to mention Cinnamon is used to help treat muscle spasms, vomiting, diarrhea, infections, the common cold, loss of appetite, and may lower blood sugar in people with type 1 or type 2 diabetes, according to Diabetes UK.

Jobs: I changed my job six weeks ago. I am learning things that I never learned before, lingo that I’ve never heard, getting eye rolls from people younger than me when I ask a question that seems like a no brainer. Sigh… luckily I catch on quick and most times you only have to tell me the answer once! But the fact is, I had to change what I was previously doing in order to learn something new in my field. I had to make this change to continue to be relevant in my industry. (I’m in publishing advertising sales by the way) It was scary. It IS scary. I want to know everything right now. I want to be successful right now. But the last thing I want to do in this life is say I didn’t try.

Promotions: We all know I write. I have been building my “critical mass” (fancy shmancy word for social media fan base) and have done all the necessary things. But something I need to do is get blurbs for my book cover The Hunt for Xanadu. I just got up the guts to ask a very well-known author for a blurb. There is a very good chance he will ignore me or say no. He writes in my genre and we “casually” know each other, meaning I’ve met him multiple times and he’s responded to my emails. In fact, he has the book. I mailed it to him two years ago because we’d met and I was supposed to also send him something else, so I put my book in here. But I never got the guts to ask him if he would do a blurb. I guess I’m afraid he’ll reject me, read the novel and dislike it, or just not talk to me any more out of embarrassment. It could be any number of things. The fact is, if I don’t ask, I’ll never give myself the luxury of ever hearing a “yes.” P.S. I asked him three days ago – haven’t heard a peep yet.

So, making tiny changes. I know it’s not New Year’s and it’s September, but there’s no better time than the present to make a change for the better. Think of one thing you can do that is outside your norm and try it. One thing to change your life in just a teeny way. Love to hear what you come up with.

Life is about Choices, Take a Chance…

I thought I’d chat today about choices. I have seen so many people in my 40+ years remain in jobs they dislike out of fear of never finding another one, I’ve seen writers leave all their ideas hidden in their computers for fear of people laughing at them, I’ve seen heavy people stay in their homes and hide from the world because of the fear of ridicule.

Fear is all around us. Cooking for friends- what if you screw it up and everyone hates what you make? Throwing a party – what if no one comes? Falling in Love – the risk of being hurt.

For whatever beliefs you hold, the fact is, you go through this particular life just once. You can hide from the world, or you can live it. The trick is to take that fear and shelve it.

I’m not going to lie – publishing all my books is terrifying, even now. I mean it, it’s terrifying when you hit that publish button. It’s terrifying sending first drafts to my editor, or a beta reader. What if they hate them? No one likes to be upset, no one likes to be embarrassed, no one likes criticism, and certainly no one likes to be laughed at.

But, life is about chances. You need to look in yourself and decide if that chance is worth it for your own personal growth. I’ve written two books that right now are pretty much done and sitting in my computer for years. Both are Dark Romantic Suspense books but I have not put them out to the world. Why? Because they are violent and sexually charged books. Different than my regular more tame Adult thrillers, Horror and YA thriller books. At their core they are both love stories, but… well… I’m embarrassed. Here I am talking about taking chances, yet I don’t listen to my own advice. I’m grappling with releasing them because I fear people judging me with these two books. The fact is, they are fiction and they are suspense thrillers, written with much of the same flavor as my other books, but I’ve upped the ante. I think the stories are pretty great and exciting too and I know there is a market out there, but I just have to get the guts to put them out.

I actually started querying agents for one of the books. Twenty-six agents since February who represent this type of work. Ten wrote back “no thanks” and the others simply ignored me. Typical, but man, when you’re a person nervous about something like this, it hits you in your core. If an agent won’t even peek at it, does it really suck? My editor read my query and said it was great and sound, and I believe her. People I’ve spoken to think the concepts of the story are sound too, so do I keep submitting these babies to agents, or just publish them myself? I’m stalled because of my fear.

The fact is, I really do believe in taking chances. The last thing I want to do is end my life and regret not doing something out of fear. That’s a sad way to live if all you do is worry about how other people perceive you, but we’re human and it’s in our nature.

So, I implore all of you to take a chance today. It can be a little chance, it can be a big one, but really think about what you would love to do one day and just do it. I swear, deep in your core, you will be more satisfied with yourself.

I wish all of you well on anything you choose to do. Me? Step one is telling people in my circle about these books. It’s my teeny step forward listening to their thoughts about it… and you want to know what? They’re supportive so far.

There you go.

Priorities – Picking the Most Important Ones Can be Difficult…

Priorities: According to the dictionary this means “a thing that is regarded as more important than another” or “the right to take precedence or to proceed before others.” I’d like to talk about this.

I have two kids. I work all week. When I’m home, they are both vying for my attention and the issue is, neither of them wants to share me because they want me for themselves. If I try to do a dinner together, they balk, try to go somewhere together, they complain. So, I’m stretched. I get it, I really do, but with time being so limited I wish I could be with both of them together and have them be happy about it, but they’re not. So what I try to do is carve out alone time with each of them, a few hours here and there with just one at a time. Neither of them is completely satisfied with this arrangement because as soon as I’m home and switch kids, the other one gets mad at me again. Sigh…

Today is a tough one. One kid just got braces and he’s been miserable for days. The other has a martial arts tournament today. This tournament is about 30 minutes away and I would be sitting most likely in a gym for 6 hours to watch one minute of performing. The fact is, I wanted to go to the tournament to support her and she wanted me to watch her, but the one miserable at home wanted me to stay with him. If I choose one kid over the other, the other child is most definitely going to feel slighted. One will feel that I don’t value them enough to take the time to watch them, and the other is upset because mommy is not there to make them feel better.

So, what do you do? After much grappling, I chose to stay with the kid that wasn’t feeling well and now I’m in the dog house with the other. Her dad went instead and she’s annoyed with me. I feel like I can never win. I truly believe illness trumps all. My son needs comfort today, meds given on time so he feels better, soft foods. Priority made, but I’m still upset that I can’t be in two places at once.

It’s like that with my writing life, too. What are my priorities? Building my Social Media platform? Tweeting, Facebooking, Google+ing, Blogging regularly? Finding an agent? Querying contests? Learning how to do a mailing list? Making a treatment for Hollywood? Advertising? Book Store appearances? Creating give-a-ways? Creating Pinterest boards for your books? Signing up for a Conference? Querying media? Getting reviews?

Do you see a problem with anything in this list above? Where is “writing?” It’s not even there because as indies we are required to do everything else to gain any modem of success. I can’t tell you how many writers feel like there is so much to do, that writing has not become the main priority any longer. And they’re pained by it. They miss it, but they’re trying so hard to be successful, there are simply not enough hours in the day to get it all done.

So I go back to the definition of priorities above and realize that what is most important in my writing life has to be the writing. I find I get mired in all the rest of the conversation and marketing minutia and have to step back to basics or I’ll never get projects out.

In life, in lieu of time, hard choices are going to have to be made. Decisions are going to have to be brought down to basic needs. For family it will be “which kid needs me most at this time” and in writing it has to be “getting the words down on paper.” No matter what I do, someone is going to be unhappy and some project is going to get put on the back burner. Both are important, but I have to make a decision. In these cases, it simply means that “for that moment in time” I had to make the priority to get what had to be done first.

Tonight I’ll take kid #2, who is unhappy I didn’t go to her tournament, out to dinner alone to celebrate, and maybe later today I’ll work on social media, but for now, I’m with my sick kid and after this blog, as my son is on the computer, I’ll work on Book #3 in my Kelsey Porter Series.

It’s all about priorities and nothing about them is ever easy. Love to hear your thoughts on this.

All Reviews Need to Be Taken With a Grain of Salt

I’ve been disturbed recently reading reviews on the internet across a myriad of topics. The three biggest offenders for me are reviews on books, reviews on over the counter products and reviews on recipes. These reviews are put up on the web where the anonymity of the internet allows consumers to post how they feel about a product, whether or not that person is even credible. Many times they are not.

One Star Book Reviews: Most of the time if you see someone post a one star review they are either a troll (a person out to simply be vindictive to that author, or they just want to make a nasty statement to hurt someone). Why do I say this? Because if you READ the review, you’ll realize the reader many times NEVER even read the book, didn’t go more than two pages, reviews another book and mixed them up, or is upset that they thought they bought a romance and got a thriller. I kid you not. I’ve seen people give one star reviews because they bought a book in the wrong genre and are blaming the author. I saw another person give a book a one star review because they bought Book #5 or #6 in an epic series and were upset they didn’t know the history of the series because they never purchased the other previous novels.

Now, I’m not saying people aren’t entitled to say they hated a book, but make sure the review is solid. Is it poorly written? Filled with grammatical errors? Did they not like the plot or heroine? If there is a solid reason for that one star, okay, if not move on.

One Star on OTC (over the counter products like aspirin, laxatives, allergy meds, etc): I saw this yesterday all over amazon. People giving reviews for medications. The big thing I noticed is that most people claiming one star reviews over-medicated themselves each and every time and were trashing the products for the side effects. One medication said take 1-3 pills with lots of water. (and to START with one) These people went right ahead and claimed they took three pills and were upset they got very bad side effects like their insides were about to explode. Even when the packaging said that you should start with one, but you CAN take up to three if your symptoms keep persisting. I saw one star after one star review, all of these people took too much medication and then blamed the product. Others already have problems where they shouldn’t even take this product in the first place, others didn’t drink enough water, milk, food, with the medications and blamed the product. It’s odd to me that people will feel this need to post in this fashion. Where is their own responsibility in this? People must be participatory in their own healthcare issues. Be smart.

One star recipe reviews. I’m a cook, so I read reviews on recipes all the time. I know enough about cooking to be able to look at a recipe and adjust it if I need to, but when I see a one star review for something and the person didn’t have half of the ingredients in the recipe and instead substituted and THEN writes a one star review that says “this wasn’t tasty at all,” well, I have zero sympathy. I didn’t have sugar, so I used X, and I didn’t have nuts, so I used X and I didn’t have wine so I used X. How in the world can you write a bad review of a recipe if you didn’t use the ingredients listed or follow the directions?

Some of my favorite one star comments:

The meat was tough, but I didn’t have enough time to cook it for the instructed 5-6 hours, so I just upped the temperature on the stove. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.

I didn’t have tomatoes so I used bell peppers instead. (gee, are we magicians that we can turn bell peppers into a decadent tomato sauce without tomatoes?)

I know the recipe called for fennel, but it was too fennel-y for me. And I also don’t like fennel in the first place.

The thing is, think before you review something. People look at reviews, but we are starting to be smart enough to realize some of our reviewers are not credible. If you haven’t even purchased or read more than a page of a book, and slam it, well, you have no credibility. If you slam a product because you didn’t take the correct dosing and overmedicated yourself and now have side effects, that’s your problem. If you do a recipe and substitute ingredients and are upset with the end result, that is again your problem.

I think people just don’t like to follow directions. They want to beat to their own drummer and get upset when things don’t go their way. Accountability folks.

You Sit Down to Write… and “Got Nothing.”

Today I was given a gift. My husband took my son to the beach and my daughter just wanted to chill out and watch Netflix all morning. I was given hours to simply write and work on my latest WIP, Book #3 in the Kelsey Porter series.

Well, I sat in my favorite writing spot (on my bed with the laptop on a mini desk on my lap) and opened the story to the latest part, put my fingers on the keyboard and…. nothing. I stared at the screen in shock. Nothing? I couldn’t have nothing – I had three hours to write and I couldn’t come up with anything. I couldn’t waste this precious time!

But waste it I was starting to do. I wrote a line, deleted it and then was so bummed I clicked on Twitter to complain about my ridiculous first world problems.

My tweet: My family just gave me a full hour to write – it’s quiet, in my favorite spot, been staring at the screen for 10 minutes. I got nothing!

And then I sat there waiting for responses, because I still had nothing and what better way to waste time then stare at twitter and wait for some of my 29K followers to respond. True to form, my lovely twitter peeps didn’t disappoint. Some of the best replies?

@elysesalpeter Just keep your butt in the chair & stay off twitter! It’ll come.

@elysesalpeter i usually watch the documentary channel for a book inspiration?

@elysesalpeter Blow something up. Start a fire. Give your characters a different mind set. Always works for me.

So what did I do? I listened to my tweeps. I got off twitter, I opened the WIP and I simply started writing an argument between two main characters, then someone went missing and then I added a scene about how two characters felt about each other… I don’t know if they are any good, but after having nothing all morning, I cranked out over 2,500 words after that.

We all go through moments when we “got nothing.” I think the trick is to “find something out of nothing” and just muddle through. To be honest, that’s what a first draft is all about. We shouldn’t stress about first drafts. They’re supposed to be rough, garbage, stepped on, ripped apart. The trick is to just get the story down and the framework laid.

So this post goes out to my twitter peeps who chimed in and gave me some cool advice. You guys rock!

So what do you do when “you got nothing?”

Authors, Really, Don’t Do These Things….

Now, before I begin this post, I need to declare that I’ve probably committed a few of these less blatant faux pas myself during my start in publishing. To a new author, you think it’s not quite a big deal, but they really are. The more you’re immersed in the publishing social media industry, the more you learn the do’s and dont’s. What irks me are not the newbies, but the people who have been publishing for years who continue to make these mistakes or these “not cool” actions. I’ve spoken to authors directly about it and many of them have listed why they do them. One told me “they were too lazy to do anything else.” Another told me that they were too desperate and figured “why not?”

Well, the why not and too lazy won’t help any of us be successful and more than that, it won’t help us with our other fellow authors helping us. So here are some things I see, some of my biggest pet peeves. If you see yourself consistently doing any of these, please just take a moment and rethink them.

#1) For goodness sake, on your author page, please don’t guilt readers, friends or family to buy your book. Please don’t tell everyone you’re broke and that you need to pay your bills and it would really help if you could purchase a book for them. This is your public author page. Be professional and respectful. It’s one thing to suggest they buy your book and explain you’ve just launched it and would love their support, or ask for reviews, promote blogs and other things, but when you start resorting to guilt to purchase? Not cool and you certainly won’t get a fan base invested in your work.

#2) Please don’t go to another author’s page and promote YOUR book or services. (someone did it to me yesterday – an author I actually know on social media) You want to tell an author you now do book covers? Then email them or IM them – don’t go to their author page and put a big photo of YOUR book or services on their page. Just not cool and you can be sure I’ll delete it pronto. That page is mine. Meaning, if I want to promote another author, I do it because “I” want to, not because someone else used my platform to meet new people.

#3) Please don’t spam your twitter followers with ONLY “Buy my book” tweets or a post about your book. Or for that matter, just post other people’s book tweets. It’s lovely of you to do that to support them, but you want to be known for more than just being a book spammer. Follow some conversations, ask questions, retweet other people. Work with the hashtags. Anything, but just spamming. Talk to people. You must do this if you wish to have more engaged fans.

#4) Please don’t ask someone to retweet your book if you’ve NEVER once done anything for them. If you don’t speak to these people ever, you don’t buy their book, you don’t promote them, you don’t do a review, don’t expect them to just do a dedicated campaign for you. And then if they don’t do this “dedicated campaign,” don’t then stalk them on social media and ask them WHY they haven’t looked at your book yet. Trust me, my reading list for author friends, which is 15 deep, comes first. And another thing, when I read a friend’s book, I do not expect them to buy and read mine just out of courtesy. I chose to read that book. My time is so limited between work, family, commuting, and my own writing that I simply have no time.

#5) In the same vein, please don’t ask another author to do anything for you on twitter if you don’t even follow them back. I have so many authors asking me to do things for them, retweet their books, BUY a book, review a book, yet they don’t follow me and have never once engaged me, promoted me or listed me. Am I petty? No, it’s a courtesy. IM me on the side, go to my web page and seek me out and email me if you have a question – but tagging me so my followers see you just to promote yourself? Not cool. I’ll respond much better privately, trust me.

#6) Please don’t send me publicly anything dirty, racist or ultra religious. Even if it’s a joke and you think the joke is funny and I’ll enjoy it. I have a great sense of humor… but PRIVATELY. But, if it’s on my public feed, I’ll delete or block it. My son saw something really lewd on my feed last night as I was doing a tweet and when I checked it, this photo was right below it. He was appalled and fled the room. I was utterly embarrassed as I stared at the blatant close-up of a woman’s naked “hooha” being “serviced.” I had to assure my son that it wasn’t my post. He didn’t quite believe me thinking that if it was on my computer, it must be mine. BLOCKED and REPORTED.

#5) Lastly, this is a biggie on Facebook and it bothers me the most: FOLLOW THE RULES ON A PAGE. If it is a tweeting page, please make sure MOST of your requests are tweets. If it is a likes page, make sure most of the requests are likes. If it is a horror blog and they don’t allow book promotions – DON’T PROMOTE YOUR HORROR BOOK. It’s one thing if authors ask other authors on those pages occasionally to help them do something because they’ve become friends and they’ve all supported each other, but it’s something else when people continually abuse the rules on a page for their own self promotion yet the admins are too kind to do anything about it.

Maybe I’m just overly sensitive. Maybe I’m a just a stickler for rules. But, I do think with the internet being so impersonal we must put the “personal” back into it.

Thoughts?

Interruptions…

I don’t know about the rest of you, but when I’m writing, any interruption bothers me. I’m not one of those people who can zone out, who can just jump back into the story. I firmly believe that what I was attempting to write is gone forever. I mean, yes, I might have the direction I wanted to go, but those words WILL be different now.

I have a little rule (or understood rule) in my house. If the door is shut and I’ve told everyone I’m writing, please don’t come in. All I ask is thirty minutes. Really, I’ll even take twenty. Or, if people say they are leaving the house for an hour, I boot up the story and jump in.

When folks come back twenty minutes later, it’s frustrating. I have to stop what I’m doing. If they just walk into the room to chat, I feel guilty that I’m trying to get some work done and all they want to do is talk. Sometimes they’ll just walk in and use the bathroom or get something. They have no idea why I get frustrated with them, BECAUSE THAT IS AN INTERRUPTION. They quickly leave and say “I won’t bother you again.” What they don’t realize is I’ve already lost. My mind is already onto something else and for me, I’m done.

It happened again this morning. Everyone said they’d be gone for an hour. I finished my coffee and went to write. Within 20 min the family was home and in the bedroom with me. After a few choice “words” on my part, they shut the bedroom door again. Ten minutes later my lovely son walked in to see how I was feeling (yes the door was shut). But I wasn’t feeling well last night and he simply wanted to see if I was ok. Lovely, but now I’m done. I am incapable of finding that zone with two interruptions and now the story has been put aside again and I’m instead writing a blog post, or a tweet, or answering facebook.

I really don’t want to have to leave my house to write. I don’t think that’s fair. I don’t think that it’s my family doesn’t respect my time, but I think they truly believe that it’s not a big deal to pick up where you left off. They can do it, why can’t I? What they don’t realize is that it’s not “my process.” But I don’t want to be angry all the time about this and sometimes I really am.

I’d love to hear how all of you deal with interruptions. Do you leave your house? Do you demand your family leave you alone for set periods of time and what do you do if they don’t honor it? I don’t want to feel that “guilt” that I’m writing and they wish to speak to me. Or play with me, or just talk.

Thoughts?

And for those interested… I’m trying to work on Book #3 of the Kelsey Porter Series. If you’re as frustrated as I am that it’s not coming along faster, well, now you know why!