Monthly Archives: August 2014

Do you like charming ghosts?

Haunting Danielle small ebook_edited-2

 

Haunting Danielle is now live at Amazon! 

When Danielle Boatman inherits Marlow House, she dreams of turning it into a seaside bed and breakfast. Since she’s never visited the property, Danielle’s not sure what awaits her in Oregon. She certainly doesn’t expect to find one of the house’s previous owners still in residence. After all, the man has been dead for almost ninety years—shouldn’t he have moved on by now?

Charming Walt Marlow convinces Danielle the only way he can move on is if she solves the mystery of his death. Danielle soon discovers her real problems may come from the living—those who have their sights on Marlow House’s other secrets.

Remember when rabbit ears weren’t furry?

TV

 

 

 

What is that old cliché about age? Oh I remember—you are only as old as you feel. Personally, I find that saying a little passé.

These days it’s not necessarily the aches and pains that make us feel old, but the inability to keep up on the technological treadmill. It started innocent enough with the TV remote. At our house we have four different remotes for our living room television. One came with the TV, another from our cable company, the third for our Roku and I’m not really sure what the fourth remote does. When my husband and I go out for the day, my mother (age 86) asks me to turn the living room television on for her, because she has yet to master the remote. Truth is, I can barely operate the remotes.

I’ve always felt fairly young; after all I’ve kept up with fast paced technology. Haven’t I?

I’m not intimidated by computers. I got my first one back in the mid-80s when hard drives were considered optional, and DOS was the operating system for what we called IBM computers—even if they were not an IBM brand.

Back in those days we didn’t have the luxury to Google for instructions to help us operate our new computers, which, by the way, did not come with instruction manuals.

I’m self-taught in numerous software programs: PageMaker, Word, account programs, Photoshop, Family Tree Maker, Excel, Expression Web and more.

My first online experience was with Prodigy in the late 80s. I wasn’t able to get Internet—like we know it today—until 1998. Until that time, the places we lived didn’t have Internet service.

Since going online I’ve tried to keep current with happenings in the cyber and digital world. I’ve created websites and dabbled in basic html code. I was on MySpace before Facebook. I know the difference between upload and download and how to do it. I’ve tweeted and shopped online. I’ve registered domains and am fairly competent with Photoshop. I’ve used QR Code generators to create barcodes. Personally, I think I am a pretty tech savvy grandma.

Today one of my author friends made a post about Amazon buying Twitch TV for $970 million, a move that surprised him. As I was reading his post I asked my self, What in the hell is Twitch TV?

At the end of his post he wrote: Twitch is a streaming service for video gamers… for those of you old people who don’t know what I’m talking about.

I really wanted to hit him with my cane.

Does Self-Publishing ever make you feel a little ADD?

ajDo I really have attention deficit disorder? There was a time–when I was general manager of Havasu Palms—that I seriously considered the possibility. As manager of Havasu Palms there was a restaurant to run, a mobile home park with rents and utilities to collect, a marina and store to oversee.

I recall numerous instances where I would be sitting in my office working on something, and then suddenly I would remember something else that needed to be done. Not even realizing what I was doing, I would shift gears and start a new project, leaving the one I was working on unfinished. Several hours would go by, and I would realize I had half a dozen half finished projects strewn across my desk.

After employing a few organizational skills garnered from a self-help book, and putting great effort on focusing my attention, I curbed my erratic hip hopping from one task to another.

But here I am, some 20 years later, and I find myself in a similar situation. A self publisher—like a manager of a resort—wears many hats. I am writer, publicist, marketer, project coordinator, type setter and more.

As the to-do list piles up, I find myself hip hopping around in much the same way I did at Havasu Palms. In the midst of my current work in progress I might be reminded of a tweet I need to send, a blog post I must write, site to submit one of my books to, a newsletter to send, or get distracted by my writer’s group on Facebook. Each day I tell myself I will get organized, yet I rarely feel more accomplished the following day.

Perhaps what I really need is an assistant. But then I also need the time to hire and train one. It would be easier to simply clone myself. That might work, providing the cloned me can stay  focused.