Rayne Hall's Blog: Rayne Hall, Fantasy and Horror Author - Posts Tagged "email"

Ok, we all know that Yahoo sometimes does weird things, such as delaying messages for a week or sending each message in multiples of five.
From time to time, it fails to upload or to deliver attachments. This is currently happening again.

Now comes the weird one. Prizes for anyone who can come up with a rational explanation for this.

When I send email from my rayne_hall_author@yahoo.com account, some recipients receive it as coming from Jonathan Broughton.

Somehow, Yahoo has substituted the sender name 'Jonathan Broughton' for 'Rayne Hall'.

Admittedly, I'm confused at times about who I am and which pen name I've used for which project (I have different pen names for different genres), but I'm pretty sure I'm not Jonathan.

I know Jonathan Broughton. He's a writer of fantasy and horror fiction whose stories I've published in the Ten Tales anthologies. His email address is in my contacts list. But he's not me.

The only logical way this could have happened would have been if I had changed my sender name for that account to Jonathan Broughton. I'm sure I didn't do that.
I do stupid and absent-minded things sometimes, but even I am not that mad.

I've checked my Yahoo mail option sections. They did not offer enlightenment. The rain_dancer_UK@yahoo.com address has Rayne Hall as the sender name, as before. The rayne_hall_author@yahoo.com address, which used to have the sender name Rayne Hall too, has nothing. Not even Jonathan Broughton.

Several people receive my emails with the Jonathan Broughton name. But not all. Jonathan, for example, doesn't.
I tested it by sending emails to my backup account on gmail. It arrived from Jonathan Broughton.

So I just want to reassure you: I'm not Jonathan and Jonathan isn't me. And if you have a rational explanation, I'd like to hear it.

I have no idea what to do. Maybe just wait until it's over? Most Yahoo glitches resolve themselves after a while.

Rayne
(not Jonathan)

Be careful when accepting someone's offer of free promotion. There's almost always a catch. Many are email address harvesters. They use your email address and pester you with promos for their own books.

Sadly, they treat this as a mailing list, and assume they can use your address in any way they please, sell it, use it to spam you, share it with others so they can spam you.

Today, I've asked one of those spammers to stop this sort of thing. I thought she might simply be ignorant about netiquette and not realise how obnoxious her behaviour is, so I asked her politely.

She got stroppy because (in her opinion) having promoted my book obliges me to put up with whatever she does with my email.

Hmm.

It seems that once these people have published a book, they forget all about courtesy, consideration and common sense.

Authors, be careful whom you give your email address. Remember that not all promotions are beneficial. Do you really want your book promoted one of those obnoxious pests? Your reputation may get tainted by association.

And please, authors, don't become one of those obnoxious pests yourself.

Rayne