What's Your Secret Place?

I think I've got the crud. Not real sure, but it's pointing in that direction. I was feeling really shitty all day long, so about 7 p.m., I lied down on the couch and somewhere around that time, American Idol Rewind came on and I fell asleep.

I got back up about 11:30 just about when my daughter came home from work. I decided to try to do more tour stuff, then go on back to bed, but a blog post idea came to me after I "friended" Ryan Seacrest on Twitter, then found out I forgot to "friend" CNN, my most favorite television show of all time right behind American Idol. Somehow that's like comparing oranges to apples, but anyway, I came upon this site.

When I feel better, maybe I'll send something in to them, but it made me think in my pre-sick delusional state, of just what my secret place really was. Was it one place? A combination of many places?

After visiting the Smoky Mountains several years in a row, I decided that was the place where when I died, I wanted my ashes to be spred, so if I had to pick a favorite place, a secret place, it would be right here...


My daughter and son knows all about this particular secret spot and it wouldn't be hard to find at all. There's a certain cabin in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Go outside on the deck with the hot tub, look toward the uhh east maybe, well off the deck anyway, and that's the spot.

I could go on and on about this spot but I'm fading fast and need to go on back to bed.

Do you have a secret spot? If you blog about it, leave the link in your comments so we all can go take a peek!

Bon soir, my boomer friends...

How Email Marketing and Guest Blogging Worked for Me

Yesterday was such a crazy, crazy day. I've got only a few days left before the March authors need to be out in the cyberworld and instead I was playing around with email marketing. I figured it's good to learn these things, you know?

What happened was I was a guest blogger at Denyse Bridger's Fantasy Pages. Denyse said she and Heather were going to be promoting it in groups, so I decided I'd try to bring in some hits from my email contact list. I didn't get very far because I have so many contacts, but what I did get through resulted in several things happening. I was able to contact past clients who was able to come over and give their input on their experiences, but I also reconnected with an old friend who started out as a publicist for a very high ranking publishing firm we'll just call Judy.

Judy had left the old publishing firm months ago and we lost contact. Her email address she was using was picked up by the head of this old publishing firm and who I had to deal with instead of Judy as far as getting payment and signing up new authors. It wasn't the same. Not that he wasn't cordial; he just wasn't Judy.

I must have had another email address for Judy that I didn't know about but she was one in which I sent promo to about this talk over at Denyse Bridger's Fantasy Pages.

What resulted in that was our friendship was reunited. I had no idea what happened to her, but was delighted to learn she was now working for a new publisher and not only was she signing up for a tour for her and her sister, she was going to see what she could do about getting this new publisher signed on with us. But, here's even greater news...I saw a book on the publisher's website and asked if she could check to see if I could review it. This is the book. It's like O.M.G.
Yes, it's being sent to me!

While all this in itself is enough to keep me on Cloud 9 forever, I also sold a tour and have others requesting applications.

Now, if I can do this at just one stop and the authors on tour have approximately 20 stops, what will happen for them?

We all learn and this was a major breakthrough. I wore the author's shoes yesterday and it was really fun and eye-opening. I'm going to be doing more guest spots and interviews in the upcoming weeks to see if I can't find the secret to selling books, but it's all about the exposure.

Well, gotta run, I now have a lot of catch up to do!

A Cure for Incessant Happiness

Finally, there's a cure for that annoying person who is constantly on the happy end of the stick. Watch!

My Feng Shui is Off Balance

Okay, so BF has left again. He plays these disappearing acts all the time. I get to the point that when he says he's leaving, I just keep watching television like he didn't say anything. He packs up his stuff and I'm sitting there laughing at Golden Girls. He storms out of the driveway and I switch over to Orange County Housewives, or whatever the show is called. And then I go upstairs and work on my tours.

BF and I have had a strange kind of relationship for the past 13 years. We're more or less what I would call best friends.

Now, BF and my daughter are from different planets. And they're both warring planets at that. They hate each other more than I hate it when Max indoctrinates my kitchen chair legs in the middle of the night (like I didn't know who did it). So the reason why he left was because he broke the cardinal rule that he can't come into the house when I'm not home and I called him on it. So, he huffs and puffs and says he's going to a hotel.

Anyway, you would think I'd be a little upset, and maybe I am a little just because I don't know if he's dead or alive. I would presume someone would have told me by now, but still.

So the first night he's gone, I sleep like a baby. When my eyes popped open, the first words out of my mouth was "no doom" which meant I was okay with everything and the first thing I did was rearrange the room. You know, out with the old sort of thing.

I moved the bed caddy-cornered this time as I've never had it like that yet. It looked great from the door. The new bedspread was put back on the bed and it was really looking nice.

Well, I kept waking up. Max kept hogging the bed and Cassie kept me up with her snoring. I don't know if that was what was waking me up but I tossed and turned all night.

The next night, last night, I tried it again. Same thing. Got up at 2 a.m., ate a sandwich and went back to bed thinking maybe I was hungry or something (damn diets).

I told my daughter that something was obviously wrong. Was it bad feng shui to have the bed caddy-cornered? I wasn't dizzy, just felt "off balance." Something was definitely wrong. Could it be the window now wasn't behind me, but to my left? Feng shui experts, help!

I decided maybe the room needed a change. I went to Wally World and bought a fake bamboo tree, put lights on it and sat it in one of the corners. I mean, this room is really looking great.

So, we'll see, but if there are any feng shui experts out there, what in the heck am I doing wrong?

I don't mind change but don't take me off automatic pilot

I don't mind change. They can put up a super mall down the street and I am so there. They can build a new hotel next door and that's great as long as they don't block my view. Anything that boosts the island's economy and gives the locals as well as the tourists something to do, I am all over it.

So I really welcome change. Unless...it takes me off automatic pilot and becomes one big annoying hassle.

I'm talking about computers. I've killed mine. Okay so I learned my lesson and will never download anything over the Internet again. I promise and I'm not crossing any fingers. But I've killed it.

Because my online business depends on being ONLINE, I didn't freak because my daughter has a brand new laptop that I've been meaning to use but just never had the time for it and I just figured that while my computer was in intensive care, I would borrow my daughter's.

You know how when you're a kid and there's this little girl who owned the best looking white shoe skates in all the world and you just wished for one minute, she'd say, "Here, you can try them."?

And then when you put them on, it was like a second pair of shoes and you were whizzing up and down the sidewalk until dark?

Well it was sorta like that only when you're older, sometimes what looks and sounds good isn't exactly the way it is.

Especially when you're busy and everything that was on automatic pilot...isn't.

Laptops are a whole different breed. No mouse and you have to use your finger and until you get used to it, you feel like your fingers have just run the marathon. I can see myself sleeping and my finger still twitching.

I'll tell you something else that is even more fun than that - cutting and pasting. Have you ever gone from a desk computer to a laptop for the first time and tried cutting and pasting? I have it now, but damn all the time I wasted trying to figure it out.

I'm not saying I'm not grateful because I am, but the kind of word this machine has really sucks. No fancy fonts and I have not figured out how to put something in a new doc if it wasn't in a doc in the first place. Cutting something from an email into a new doc, well, you can forget it.

And where's the noise? This thing is way too quiet.

So anyway, what would take fifteen minutes takes about an hour because none of my files are on here, no images, nothing. It puts new meaning into PITA and I'm not happy.

So I find out the prognosis of my machine tonight. He's on life support right now and I'll find out whether he's going to make it at 6 p.m., or at least an update.

I cannot wait.

Whatever happened to old-fashioned rabbit ears?

A woman after my own heart...



I love her! We had rabbit ears. Anyone remember that? Sure...this was before digital TV, before cable, before satellite dish. Just an old-fashioned system of planting an antenna up on a telephone pole and hoping it was high enough to get a good signal and when it didn't, you'd grab a roll of tin foil and wrap it around the antennas right there on your TV.

My aunt. Man, I envied my cousins. Their TV was high up on their telephone pole and they didn't have to use rabbit ears. I remember when they came out with Wizard of Oz and I KNEW we weren't going to get it clear and might not even get it at all.

I suckered my cousin into letting my sister and I watch it over to their house. Uncle Cecil, he was a trip. Hated kids. Hated Wizard of Oz. I knew he'd be passed out on the sofa anyway.

It was summer, I remember that plain as day. Icecube popsickles and Wizard of Oz. What a night.

Of course, Uncle Cecil would wake up in the middle and start in. I heard he threw a lamp at my aunt one time and after that, I lost all respect for him. What an ass.

But rabbit ears. Good old fashioned rabbit ears.

Thank God for progress.