Carol Anita Ryan's Blog, page 12

What would happen if 911 calls were answered by tax accountants?

There are problems when procedure should be followed and actions should be unhurried (getting a loan to buy a house for example), then there's choking. Responding appropriately is the true job of every person answering a phone.

It's dangerous and frustrating to get the procedural response to a crisis. When you depend on a mechanical devise like a power chair and it fails you have a crisis not an inconvenience. And yet, when this has happened to me, I have been met with the slowest most frustrating response from those who I must depend on for help: namely, The National Seating & Mobility Company and Kaiser Permanente's Department of Durable Medical Equipment. Those are the outfits I as a member of Kaiser must use to get mobility equipment and thereafter to have the equipment repaired or replaced when it fails.

Kaiser chooses the equipment—I don't have a say, and yet I'm liable for the 20% co-pay. Kaiser chose an expensive power chair for me—now that I have to spend all my waking time in one a ridiculously expensive model was selected. But it turns out that after five months the joy stick on my new chair stopped working: the chair would not move. The entire joy stick unit had to be replaced (and it took weeks since National Seating & Mobility never thought to keep those crucial but flakey parts in stock). They wouldn't even order the part without credit card authorization from me for the 20% co-pay. Since the chair was only five months old I fell into the warranty period that time. Now one year later, the same problem is occurring with the new joy stick unit. Again, both Kaiser and National Seating and Mobility have responded with bureaucratic double talk while I sit motionless. Believe it or not, National Seating & Mobility claims my warranty is up and I owe 20% of the cost to replace the defective part, less than one year old.

I know if the managers of the departments responsible put themselves in my place for twenty minutes their response would be different (spare parts on hand, a repair person sent with a loaner if necessary, more reliable equipment to start with). Meanwhile I sit like a plant, unable to move.

What would you do in my place?

How you can publish on www.Smashwords.com

 

Right Now Is Perfect cover

It's so easy I've hesitated to write about it.  But, you can not know what you don't know, so maybe it is worth mentioning.

 The key to writing for publication via Smashwords is to study the Smashwords Style Guide before you do anything else.  It is free and available for downloading.  In fact everything you need to know is explained on the website www.Smashwords.com.

 You should write with Microsoft Word and avoid the urge to use fancy formatting, because (think about it) an eBook has to be able to adapt to all kinds and sizes of fonts, various orientations, etc.  That is why you can't pre-format a page.  You have to start thinking about format in a new way for eBooks. 

 Study the Style Guide and strip your work of unneeded formatting as required. Then you upload your word document onto the www.Smashwords.com site per directions. Smashwords takes in your Word document and spits it back out in several eBook formats. You will have the opportunity to provide information—marketing material—about yourself and your work, what the price should be etc.  Getting your ebook accepted into the Smashwords Premium Catalog is your goal, since that provides you with automatic distribution to most of the major online retailers (Barnes & Noble, Apple, etc.) around the world.  The fabulous thing about Smashwords.com is that it is free.  Smashwords handles distribution of your eBook and computes sales figures (giving up-to-the-minute info about sales or free sample downloads).  You specify price (with some requirements by Apple, for instance), and Smashwords pays you 70% of the sales price/ copy sold.

 Very soon after submitting your work to the Premium Catalog you will learn if it's accepted.  If not, you'll be given the reasons why.  In my case I had some problems with Chapter Headings and links to the Table Of Contents, and some photos were too big to fit in the margins.  After re-studying the Style Guide, make corrections and resubmit.  Once accepted, it is about a week before your work is available to online retailers—just as if you were a famous author!  To make it so, you can get help via the Smashwords Marketing Guide.

As the author you can download your publication in any of the several formats that Smashwords provides.  You can also monitor sales, change the price, offer coupons etc.

For example a Smashwords author, Edward Patterson, set up 'Operation eBook Drop', a free eBook program for U. S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it was easy for me to send coupon info to interested military members.

 I also sell an eBook version of Right Now Is Perfect for Kindle on Amazon.  Smashwords is much easier to use, and oddly enough the standards for acceptance are much higher than for Kindle submissions on Amazon.

 So, what are you waiting for?  Smashwords even has marketing tips to help you sell eBooks.  See the FaceBook site for even more info!

Lessons for today in The Tiger's Wife: A Novel

In The Tiger's Wife: A Novel by Tea Obreht, you'll read many folk-stories set in an unnamed Balkan country. The main story that the folk stories surround, like a band of coyotes after a stay dog, takes place in the last fifty years in what was once Yugoslavia. The primary narrator is a female doctor in her twenties, trying to discover exactly how her beloved grandfather died.  In the process, she learns about the stories and myths of his life. Sometimes the language in the novel is beautiful, sometimes it is inventive and unexpected, sometimes it seems purposely jarring and strange, so that the words and phrases fling you into some woody Balkan village far off the modern grid.  You feel the distance from the modern in the folk stories which seem to pile up upon each other, like Turkish carpets stacked, one more beautiful than the next.  Not that there is anything wrong with the stories, but like the carpets unfolded during a sales pitch, do they all contribute to a coherent plot?  I'm not convinced they do.  Nor am I fascinated by any of the characters in this book.  Yet, the book is more than the sum of plot and characters.

 

I travelled through Yugoslavia in the 1970s before the death of Tito and the subsequent unraveling of the State, when the country was an incredibly poor and backward eastern European nation. Like most Americans, I could never understand what the apparently sudden ethnic wars and need for separation in the 1980s was about.  Tea Obreht, in telling her characters' stories reveals some of the dynamics that can cause isolated, illiterate peoples to turn on a perceived 'other' with terrible consequences, especially when times are tough, and especially when politicians play with cultural differences for their own greedy power.  It makes me shutter to see how easily that happens in the novel and in life.

 

That is why The Tiger's Wife reminds me of a campfire where scary stories are told, resulting in unsettling dreams and fear of the sounds just out of sight.  How easily a culture can split into uncompromising factions—as we find our country doing right this minute.  That is the message I take away from this intriguing novel.

 

The Tiger's Wife Review:lessons for today?

In The Tiger's Wife: A Novel by Tea Obreht, you'll read many folk-stories set in an unnamed Balkan country. The main story that the folk stories surround, like a band of coyotes after a stay dog, takes place in the last fifty years in what was once Yugoslavia. The primary narrator is a woman Doctor in her twenties, trying to discover exactly how her beloved grandfather died.  In the process, she learns about the stories and myths of his life. Sometimes the language in the novel is beautiful, sometimes it is inventive and unexpected, sometimes it seems purposely jarring and strange, so that the words and phrases fling you into some woody Balkan village far off the modern grid.  You feel the distance from the modern in the folk stories which seem to pile up upon each other, like Turkish carpets stacked, one more beautiful than the next.  Not that there is anything wrong with the stories, but like the carpets unfolded during a sales pitch, do they all contribute to a coherent plot?  I'm not convinced they do.  Nor am I fascinated by any of the characters in this book.  Yet, the book is more than the sum of plot and characters.

 I  travelled through Yugoslavia in the 1970s before the death of Tito and the subsequent unraveling of the State, when the country was an incredibly poor and backward eastern European nation. Like most Americans, I could never understand what the apparently sudden ethnic wars and need for separation in the 1980s was about.  Tea Obreht, in telling her characters' stories reveals some of the dynamics that can cause isolated, illiterate peoples to turn on a perceived 'other' with terrible consequences, especially when times are tough, and especially when politicians play with cultural differences for their own greedy power.  It makes me shutter to see how easily that happens in the novel and in life.

 That is why The Tiger's Wife reminds me of a campfire where scary stories are told, resulting in unsettling dreams and fear of the sounds just out of sight.  How easily a culture can split into uncompromising factions—as we find our county doing right this minute.  That is the message I take away from this intriging novel.

 

Scary Stories Around a Smoky Campfire

In The Tiger's Wife: A Novel by Tea Obreht, you'll read many folk-stories set in an unnamed Balkan country. The main story that the folk stories surround, like a band of coyotes after a stay dog, takes place in the last fifty years in what was once Yugoslavia. The primary narrator is a woman Doctor in her twenties, trying to discover exactly how her beloved grandfather died.  In the process, she learns about the stories and myths of his life. Sometimes the language in the novel is beautiful, sometimes it is inventive and unexpected, sometimes it seems purposely jarring and strange, so that the words and phrases fling you into some woody Balkan village far off the modern grid.  You feel the distance from the modern in the folk stories which seem to pile up upon each other, like Turkish carpets stacked, one more beautiful than the next.  Not that there is anything wrong with the stories, but like the carpets unfolded during a sales pitch, do they all contribute to a coherent plot?  I'm not convinced they do.  Nor am I fascinated by any of the characters in this book.  Yet, the book is more than the sum of plot and characters.

 I  travelled through Yugoslavia in the 1970s before the death of Tito and the subsequent unraveling of the State, when the country was an incredibly poor and backward eastern European nation. Like most Americans, I could never understand what the apparently sudden ethnic wars and need for separation in the 1980s was about.  Tea Obreht, in telling her characters' stories reveals some of the dynamics that can cause isolated, illiterate peoples to turn on a perceived 'other' with terrible consequences, especially when times are tough, and especially when politicians play with cultural differences for their own greedy power.  It makes me shutter to see how easily that happens in the novel and in life.

 That is why The Tiger's Wife reminds me of a campfire where scary stories are told, resulting in unsettling dreams and fear of the sounds just out of sight.  How easily a culture can split into uncompromising factions—as we find our county doing right this minute.  That is the message I take away from this intriging novel.

 

60,000 Year Old Ostrich Eggshell Art Discovered

 Ostrich eggshells make useful and durable containers, and have been used and decorated for 60,000 years!   Learn about an important recent archaeological discovery from one of today's  most interesting writers, Kathleen Flanagan Rollins.

 See blog on the MisfitsandHeros site

Rick's Slip

Not so long ago, Rick Perry wanted the state of Texas to secede from the United States. Now, he wants to be seriously considered as a Republican candidate for President of the United States. That fact alone makes him ineligible in my mind. But, the guy has arrogance. He has called Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Bernanke 'almost treasonous' (is that the pot calling the kettle black, or what?) and threatened that things would be 'ugly' for him in Texas, should Bernanke visit the state. That kind of talk is wrong on so many levels and a Governor should know that. A Governor running for President shouldn't have to be admonished for that kind of hate speech toward anyone.

So Rick Perry, quit your run for President before you show even more of the country what you're like!

Five Minute trip to the South Pacific

Here is a book trailer for 'Right Now Is Perfect.'  If you've already read the book, it's bonus material.  If you haven't read the book yet, look at it as a sampler–with music.

 

Erupting volcano and a western romance!

Tenderfoot    by Mary E. Trimble:  A book review

The author's previous books have been coming-of-age novels set in the ranch country of eastern Washington but Tenderfoot features a mid-life divorcee as the protagonist. As the reader discovers, even though a woman has been married for years and has a grown daughter, she can experience falling in love again like any school girl! Mary E. Trimble is a proven expert at conveying the emotional journey of a pure-hearted female (no matter her age) falling in love and Tenderfoot shows us this once again.

The story of Corrie Stephens, a writer researching life on a ranch, unfolds in the spring of 1980. Corrie happens to wind up—her sense of direction is atrocious—on a cattle ranch northeast of Mount St. Helens a bit before the explosive, deadly eruption. Her research on cattle ranching brings her into contact with J, a hunky widower who owns her rented cabin. While you might think two good looking main characters might get together rather soon, the story expands on the real-life impediments to mid-life romance: children and emotional baggage.

While the reader gets to know the characters, he or she also learns about the life on a cattle ranch. But that's not all! While Corrie and J's emotions are heating up, Mount St. Helens is simmering too. An important subplot is a newspaper writer and a photographer's coverage of the mountain. As luck would have it, Corrie is on the mountain with her newspaper friends when the massive eruption occurs. The story gives you a front-row picture of what it must have been like escaping from that life-or-death situation.

It's a good story. It's full of interesting facts about ranching and Mount St. Helens. It's a book anyone can enjoy since the language and themes are as wholesome as a John Wayne movie.

Why not? Let the Great World Spin: A Novel

Let the Great World Spin: A Novel by Colum McCann

There is a kernel of truth in this book, like an apricot with a seed around which the juicy fruit clings. The true part is the daring tightrope display by Philippe Petit between the World Trade Center towers on August 7, 1974. There are a couple of chapters about how Petit might have prepared for the feat, and in some way or another all the main characters relate to the events of that day in New York City.

But the juicy part of the book is the characters and their various intertwined stories. This book has a format popular with current writers—chapters are short stories told from different points of view. (The Imperfectionists: A Novel and A Visit from the Goon Squad are two others.) The reader has to remember details hidden along the path of the book to make sense of the plot. Time, point of view, and characters, are all changing throughout the book. As a result, this book may be too challenging for the Attention Deficit Disorder crowd, or even for serious readers who can only afford to read in short interrupted segments.

It isn't a perfect book. I hated an early chapter about siblings growing up in Ireland. And considering the author is Irish, that wasn't a promising start. McCann makes characters in New York—men, women, rich, poor, black, white, young, old—much more interesting and believable. I am not convinced a couple of chapters belong in the book—the characters seem too loosely connected to the plot, and were just not compelling.

But, I loved the book. The story that emerges (after you've put together the scattered clues) is heartbreaking and ennobling. Frequently the language McCann uses and particularly the final chapter where the narrator finds meaning to life, is pure poetry.