Welcome to 2012

As I was brushing my teeth this morning, I was thinking I should write
a little fable—“Barbie in Wonderland.” Except no one except two of my mothers-in-law
(my father-in-law married three times) has ever called me Barbie (and don’t
you dare; I’ll snap at you) and the Wonderland I’m thinking about is the
world of social media. Yeah, to quote Alice: “Curiouser and curiouser.”

Here we are, four days past the beginning of Aquarius, and I always try
to write my blog a day or two before the sun enters the next sign. I sure
missed it this month! Why? I’m glad to say that I’ve been busy. I’m editing
new books for two new authors. One is a bloke in England who’s writing
about how to improve your life. He’s giving some good advice. The other
is a physician who has enduring interest in the energy of X-rays and MRIs
and other medical apparati. (OK, that would be the proper plural of apparatus
if apparatus were a Latin word. I like it better than apparatuses.) This
physician is also interested in healing energy. He’s had encounters with
the Edgar Cayce folks, attended Jack Houck’s spoon-bending workshops, and
met a lot of other people who do energy work, mostly in holistic healing.
Me, too. I once got a kiss on the cheek from one of Cayce’s sons, and I’ve
bent spoons with Jack. And I’ve been editing for the American
Holistic Health Association, whose president and founder, Suzan Walter,
has been my friend since 1981 when we met at a Women In Management meeting.
I’m also still editing the memoir of the solo violinist, who has had an
extremely interesting life, and an author whose book I last worked on in
2006 is now coming back for more editing.  

But that’s not what I mean by wandering around in Wonderland. The Wonderland
in question is the world of social media. I’m working up to it. Why? To
publicize

Secret Lives, of course! I think it was my son who helped me
get started on Facebook a couple years ago. Now I have a
Barbara Ardinger FB page  and a

Secret Lives page, to which I post a few times a week. Maybe
that’s not enough, but when I finish editing in the middle of the afternoon,
I am pooped. Editing is extremely labor-intensive work because I’m looking
at every comma and semicolon and parenthese (singular of parentheses),
plus spelling, and I’m also doing some fact-checking. One of my authors,
for example, is just finishing a history of Bolivia, but he doesn’t know
how to add the tildes and accent marks that Spanish words require. So I
not only fact-check his dates and spelling, but I also add the tildes and
accent marks for him. And by the middle of the afternoon, all I want to
do is collapse on the couch and pet the cats. A man who lives here in Long
Beach and I are talking about how he can help me publicize
Secret Lives, and one thing he said I could do in the afternoon is
get out my iPhone and send (post? text-message?) some comments. Well, (A)
I do not have an iPhone, though I did buy a new landline phone right after
Christmas because my beloved purple phone died, and (B) like I just said,
my synapses are in shreds when I finish a day of editing.

So I have two Facebook pages. I post to them when I can. As soon as I
figure out how to download the photos from the camera I bought last week,
I’ll post photos, too. (The camera I bought is supposed to be idiot-proof.
We’ll see.)   

I’ve also begun blogging on a nifty WordPress site,
Feminism and Religion. I was invited by my friend Carol Christ, author
of

She Who Changes, which is a terrific book about process philosophy.
I think I’m supposed to submit a blog every two weeks, though we’re still
talking about schedules. My most recent blog is about humor in religion,
and I ended the blog with Verbena, my favorite Found Goddess. But most
of the comments I’ve received so far are in response to my assertion that
the holy books of the standard-brand religions don’t contain much humor
at all. My point is that the Goddess has a sense of humor.

My next blog will appear on Super Bowl Sunday. I am not a football fan.
I see no point in watching large millionaires giving each other concussions.
Part of my blog is an excerpt from the chapter in
Secret Lives where one of the Goddess’s “thoughty devotees” gives
her opinion of the Super Bowl. In the novel, this is the day the Norns
(gone mad in the modern world) declare war on our circle of crones and
use thunder and lightning as their weapons. The crones create a cone of
power that is steered by the Green Man and one of the younger women. The
dragon they created in Ch. 1 comes back to join the fight, and the women
invoke martial goddesses. I recently also wrote four political parodies
(did I mention that I watch MSNBC when my synapses start to function again?),
infomercials, which I will post on FAR. One for each of the current Republican
candidates. Hah!

A friend on a list I’m on recently recommended
GoodReads, so I’m working on that, too. Yesterday another of my authors,
whose young adult novel I edited late last year, spent an hour on the phone
with me getting me set up on GoodReads. I’ve put a lot of the books I’ve
read in the last six months or so on my GR bookshelf and I’m asking anyone
who’s read
Secret Lives to review it on GR, too. I obviously want to build up
a big audience for all my books, especially
Secret Lives. (Duh.)

And I’m tiptoeing into the world of Twitter. Now that really is behind
the looking-glass. I get on that page and feel the Jabberwock stalking
me. Well, no, it’s not really that wild or scary. I just don’t usually
know what to do when I get there. I feel like Alice running after the embodied
cards and chess pieces. Faster and faster, but where am I going? And all
of this is to publicize
Secret Lives.

I was the guest of honor at a literary salon here in Long Beach on Sunday.
I read a bit of the prologue and said that the goddess that appears to
the shaman is the same goddess I actually saw in 1992 when I almost died
after an all-day asthma attack. Next, I spoke about what happens all too
often to elderly women who lose their homes and are parked in retirement
centers. Then I read the language of flowers ritual, which brings tears
to readers’ eyes (mine, too). Finally, I introduced the audience to Madame
Blavatsky, the talking cat, and Frances J. Swift, the compleat bureaucrat
who is residence manager at the Towers. I ended by reading from the chapter
in which the cat is reading
Alice in Wonderland and disguises herself as the Cheshire Cat to
annoy (haunt) Frances. “I’m mad. You’re mad. We’re all mad.” Poor Frances—haunted
by a talking cat that appears and disappears. No wonder she has a nervous
breakdown. “Off with her head.” Indeed.

I hope you’ll all buy and read
Secret Lives. Make all my wandering through the social media worth
while, Write reviews of it on GoodReads and Amazon. Favorable reviews,
please. And five stars!