Thursday This n That

FB sucks.

X is pretty okay, but I haven't figured out how to use it for marketing.  (Not free marketing, that is.)

We have fawns!  Yay!

Chex Mix Bold is addictive.  Unfortunately, my intestines do not enjoy it as much as my tastebuds do, so I stay away from it.  Additionally unfortunate, Wallyworld had a big ol' bag of it on sale and right there by the checkout.  Thus, I couldn't stop myself from buying it.  Also thus, I am paying for it.  But it's soooo damn good.  Especially when you add a handful of mixed nuts to a bowl of it.  Yummers.

Getting old blows.  I used to be able to eat whatever whenever and never worry about it.  Now?  I look at wheat the wrong way and I get into issues.  Stupid.

The inside of my greenhouse looks like a jungle.  It's scary in there.  And hot.  When the tomatoes finally fruit and are ready for picking, I'm not sure how I'll get back there to pick them.  The potatoes are taking over.  I expect them to reach sentience any day now.  Oh, and I picked up three new bell pepper plants, because they were free, so now they're in there, too.  If I disappear, it's entirely possible I got lost in the jungle.  Send help.

It seems like everyone I know is neurodivergent, which begs the question 'if everyone is neurodivergent, is it really divergent?'  Think about that for a minute.

I made Irish Soda Bread for the first time, and it turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself.  It's a super simple bread to make, too.  Messy, but easy.

For a woman who enjoys making bread, I have a weird quirk.  I can't stand having dough on my hands and I have to get it all off or I feel like I'm wasting food.  This is not a problem when I'm making a stiff dough bread product, like pizza crust, but for a wet dough... GAH!

Also, enjoying making bread and having issues with digesting wheat definitely do not go together.  Good thing Hubs enjoys eating bread, so there's less for me.

Okay, that's probably enough out of me.  Have a great day and feel free to drop some of your own observations about the world.  Peace out.

Thursday This n That

I'm enjoying being back on Twitter/X.  I'm reading a lot of interesting stuff that FB isn't showing me.  FB has been a real pain in the ass since the election, putting all sorts of crap I don't care about in my feed and hiding the stuff I've said I actually do want to see.  I've resorted to going to individual pages to see what I'm missing, which is kind of a pain, but necessary.  X doesn't do that.  So yay.

Speaking of hiding stuff, I think FB has shadowbanned me.  I hardly ever get responses to anything I post on my own page... loads of spammy stuff on my marketing posts in Groups, but not on my own page.  :shrug:  I gotta be me.  Of course, I'm not getting a ton of reactions to my X posts either, but I haven't been active on there in 8 years, so I'm not surprised.

Coffee is good. It makes it so I can do thinky things.

I was out of tea and my throat's been scratchy, so I zipped over to the Dollar General to pick some up.  They didn't have a wide selection - green tea, iced tea, Lipton.  I ended up getting the Lipton.  100 packets for like $6/$7 - 4 packs of 25 in little sleeves and wrapped in gold foil.  Ooo, fancy.  I was pretty excited.  It has to be better than Great Value tea, right?  Nope.  It seems like every other teabag tastes like mulch.  I could've gone out and grazed in the yard for free.  Derp.

Editing's coming along.  I'm averaging about 6 pages a day, which is depressing but it's my own damn fault for writing the book in the wrong POV.  Ultra-derp.

This morning, we heard a flock of snow geese going over headed south.  This makes me happy.

I don't know if I've ever mentioned Funky Chicken.  He's a neighbor's rooster and he does not crow right.  It's kind of sad and pathetic.  Well, Neighbor got him a buddy.  The new rooster crows correctly.  We now have the two of them crowing back and forth, like they're trying to teach each other how do it right.  ROFL

Okay, that ought to be about it today.  Have a good one wherever you are and whatever you're doing.  Hasta la bye-bye.

Sunday Update 11/17/24

Whoa, this year is going fast.  It's hard to believe I've been post-employed for over 6 months now.  Woot.

Okay, so this past week... Well, the beginning of the week started okay pretty okay.  I did stuff.  Then the end of the week, I felt like crap and didn't do much of anything.  Still, you came here for an update and here it is:

No writing, but I did get 16 pages edited and I'm through 6 pages of edit notes now.  Yeah, none of that sounds like a lot, but it is.  I'm going to try to boost those numbers this week.  We'll see.

I did marketing every morning of the work-week. This moved 146 copies of Early Grave.  No residual stuff yet, but I have hope.  I think I'll take this coming week off of marketing and see what happens.  Probably nothing.  :shrug:  I can handle nothing, I guess.  I've handled it a lot over a long stretch of the past ten years. ;o)

I read some stuff.  You can go to yesterday's post to see that.  Except the ebook I started reading is a suspense with few reviews and I'm enjoying it.  Is it perfect?  Nope.  Still enjoying it, though.  Yay.  I should be able to leave a good review for this and help a fellow writer out.  

Last week, I made Outrageous Chocolate Chip Cookies, pizza, and a big vat of chili.  Yummers.  I picked up the stuff to make French bread pizza instead of regular pizza, so that's what we're having today.

On the activity front, like I said, I did stuff early in the week.  In fact, I did three days in a row throwing logs around in the woods... maybe that's why I got to feeling pooky... ya think?  Anyway, I feel better in general when I'm active, so I'm going to get back at it soon.  Weight: 175.0

What else... let's see... I'm back to being 'active' on Twitter... X... whatever.  I'm still weeding my feed, following new stuff, unfollowing crap stuff.  Posting interesting things when I can.  It probably won't be the most exiting place to follow, but follow me anyway.  @BE_Sanderson

Okay, I think that's it.  There may be other stuff, but it's lost to me right now.  Tra la la.  Have a great day and a great week, wherever you are.  Hasta la bye-bye.

Back on Twit... Err, X

For the first time since 2016, I am active on what used to be Twitter but is now X.  (I still call  it twitter.  Sorry, Elon.)  If you're interested, I'm @BE_Sanderson.  I'll try to remember to post stuff, but you know me.  Some weeks I can hardly remember to post here.

I stopped visiting Twitter because of all the crap I was seeing.  I did not delete my account, because I'd be damned if I was gonna let someone else have my user ID, but I relegated it to the unused links section of my Bookmarks.  And the only thing I did with it was let Goodreads post my reviews to it.  So, I'm back to see if I can generate interest in my books and other fun junk.  So far, so good.  My password still works, and all of my goodies are still there.  Woot.  I posted a notice that I was back, liked a bunch of posts, and then posted a funny thing.

"When your KDP sales graph is sick of your shit."

Eh, it amused me.  I mean, come on... it looks like a hand flipping the bird.  And yes, that's my graph as of first thing this morning.  Today's orders are still climbing, which would screw up the whole 'this is a hand' thing, so I snapped it as soon as I saw it.

I have to amuse myself where I can.

What's amusing you today?

Thursday This n That

Someone spoofed my name (using b.e,_sanderson) and photo last night and sent out messages to some people on my FB friends list.  I got a message from one of them alerting me to it.  I posted something to FB warning people and got a comment from my brother that he'd already reported them.  I tried looking for the numbnuts so I could report them, too, but they were already gone.  Always check the name.  I am B.e. Sanderson (personal) and B.E. Sanderson (author) on Facebook. If there is any difference, it isn't me.  If you're not sure, comment here or email me.  

They also got me on Twitter.  But I haven't actually been on Twitter in more than a year.  If you get contacted by someone looking like me on Twitter, it ain't me.  The only reason I still have a Twitter account is I don't want to chance someone else using B.E. Sanderson on there.  It's mine.

All this spoofing crap... Gah.  People with nothing better to do, I guess.  Grow up and get a life.  Sheesh.

This morning, I listened to a radio broadcast snippet wherein a woman was complaining about deer crossings.  Her feeling was they should move them to lower traffic areas so the deer won't get hit as often.  And the government should move the deer to less populated areas.  Umm... yah.  As someone stated in comments, her vote counts just as much as yours or mine.  

This past week, I have seen three hit deer.  None of them near deer crossing signs.  Those rebel deer.  Shame on them.  I also saw a hit beaver.  Why are there no crossings for those poor little dudes?  ROFL

It's Spring... which means the roads are looking like the aftermath of a war.  Critters are moving around and getting schmucked.  It seems worse this year than usual, at least here.  Keep an eye out for wildlife and slow down, people.  

Last night, there were tornadoes in the area.  This morning, we might see snow.  Stupid weather.

Speaking of tornadoes, the Wireless Alert System sends out alerts to cell phones.  Weather alerts and Amber alerts.  Unfortunately, they keep sending me Amber alerts for St. Louis and Kansas City and St. Joseph.  All of which are hours from here.  Thus, when my cell phone went off during dinner last night, I ignored it.  Once I finished eating, I was over here at the computer, scrolling through my Facebook feed and saw we had been under a tornado warning.  Yep, sure enough, that was what my phone was trying to tell me, but I ignored it because I thought it was another damn Amber alert that didn't apply to me.  Someone really needs to read Boy Who Cried Wolf to the emergency management people.  

Unfortunately, I don't get alerts for the county south of me, which is actually closer to me than most of the alerts for my own county.  Tornado in the middle or the northwest part of the county don't apply because storms there rarely head this way.  :shrug:  I'll keep taking care of myself, thank you very much.  

Okay, I'm running late today, so I suppose I should let you get back to your lives and I'll get back to mine.  Have a great day!

Social Media - The Options

With the big options in social media showing themselves to be buttwarts, people are scrambling for another option.  So in addition to the FB, you can find me at MeWe and Parler. 

MeWe - seems like it's going to be a good alternative to FB.  I mean, once more people migrate over and I find my base.  I have around 200 followers on FB, and not nearly that many yet on MW (I'm sitting at 14 as of yesterday morning).  But there's hope.  MeWe promises to not censor stuff or block stuff or impede your reach.  So basically, I hope it'll actually show my posts to people who follow me and actually show me posts of the people I follow.

Parler - this seems like it's an alternative to Twitter - with parlays instead of tweets and echoes instead of shares.  It's open to everyone, but it seems like a conservative safe-haven at the moment.  Not sure how much marketing I'll be able to do there.  It doesn't seem like the place to do that right now.  It seems very serious.  Might be a good place to market Blink and Unequal. 

I've also heard of something called Gab, which I'm looking into.  Of course, the main stream media complex has deemed that one a place for all the bad white people to hang out.  We'll see.

Like I said, I'm still on Facebook.  Unless I want to shoot myself in the ass with regard to my publishing career, I have to have a presence there.  But from what I've seen over the past week, the exodus is on.

That said, I also still have a Pinterest account and I have one on Instagram that I can't use because I don't have a smartphone.  I still have a Twitter account, but only so no one else can claim besanderson as their twitter handle.  And, as always, you can reach me here and via email.  Like FB, I can't give up all the Google-based stuff without hurting myself.  Although I am trying to shift my internet searches over to Duck Duck Go.  

Anyway, that's me.  There are options out there, if you're so inclined.  See ya around the webz!

Trying and Failing... and Trying Again

As some of you may know, I joined in the Twitter pitch party thing yesterday.  I ended up sending out a bunch of tweets for Djinnocide - in various forms - and a couple tweets for Dying Embers.  And the response I got - I mean, other than from friends - was...

:CRICKETS:

True, one agent did say that if she 'favorited' your tweet, she wanted you to send her pages, and after some checking I realized my Twitter settings didn't alert me when people who aren't my friends favorite my tweets.  (It does now.)  Still, unless that one agent tried to favorite me and I don't know it, I didn't get a single response.

But I tried.  I sent my loglines out into the world during a pitch contest and I didn't die.  I even tweaked my loglines, so they're crisper and catchier.  It took a lot of work, and more than a little indigestion, but I did it.  Of course, it was an epic fail.  But that's not the point.  The point is, I tried something new.  A change was presented to me and I embraced it.

And I will try again.  As many times as I need to try, I will try.  Because the only real failure is giving up.

What about you?  What haven't you given up on?

Oh, and to curb any curiosity for those who don't Twitter or didn't see my tweets, here they are (with the hashtag #pitmad removed)...

Djinnocide - paranormal suspense: Even all-powerful genies aren't safe when someone unleashes the deadliest of wishes.

When Jo began saving her fellow genies from those 3 wishes, she didn't dream they'd ever need saving from something worse. 

When something evil starts killing the genies Jo's devoted her eternity to freeing, she discovers a fate worse than slavery.

When Jo began saving her fellow genies from slavery, she didn't dream they'd ever need saving from something worse.

Emma's mission to kill all her old flames leaves Agent Jace Douglas to catch a murderous pyromaniac despite her own fear of fire. 

Not bad, eh? Or am I the worst pitch-artist ever?

Update: Thanks to the supreme Twitter goddess - you know who you are - I now know how to check if people have favorited any of my tweets.  And, no, nobody did.  :shrug:

Confuzzled

Twitter...  What can I say to my fellow twitter users other than 'pay attention to what you're writing when creating hashtags'...

This morning I was reading along and saw boobeinglate as a hashtag.

To be perfectly honest, the first thing my whacked out brain did was transpose the i and the e, making it look like boobie nglate - whatever the hell that means.

Once I put the letters back in their correct order, I couldn't figure out why someone would say 'boob ein glate'.  Is it German?  Is it dirty?  WTF?  Toss that option.

Then I went to boobe in glate.  Still a major WTF moment. 

And then my brain finally put it together... Boo Being Late. This person was unhappy with her own lateness.  (See the little lightbulb over my head?  Pay no attention to the fact that it sputters.  I'm having my own personal brown-out today.)

Sure Twitter makes the world smush everything together and not speak in full sentences, but let's all take a moment to make sure we're not creating more confusion... like the world needs that.

(btw, if you have Twitter and would like to follow me, the link is over there on the right.  Or leave a comment with your Twitter ID and I'll follow you.)