Does being tattooed make me a pirate?

As I believe I mentioned in another post in my blog (or maybe two or three posts, as it's never far from my mind), I lost my dad when he was 51, just a little over a month before his 52nd birthday.  Not only did that change my direction from going into acting, as he was my rudder, but it also put a thought in my head that I should do something special should I live to the age of 52.  Something permanent.  Something to mark me as having survived to see a birthday that was cruelly denied for my father.

Last year, just after I had my 52nd birthday, I got a tattoo on my left shoulder:

The tiger has symbolism beyond the fact that my novels all involve a tiger in the form of a young woman who hid in plain sight by painting herself with tiger stripes.  The tiger appeared many times before that in my younger life.

There was the fact that, at the tender age of six, when The Wonderful World of Disney first aired "The Adventures of Winnie the Pooh", I memorized the Tigger song the first time that "stripety" cat ever bounced onto the screen.  One of my cousins, hearing me sing the song while we were playing, nicknamed me Tigger....and several of my cousins still call me that when we get together.  I have Tiggers, big, small and in between, all over my house.

In the barn that my grandfather ran as a dairy farm, there were feral cats.  LOTS of feral cats.  For the most part, they all had tiger stripes and fought like little ninjas when we were asked to round them up so that the visiting vet could give them rabies vaccines while checking on Pepere's cows.  I wear the scars from some of the battles to corral them and have always had a healthy respect for a cat's ability to defend itself because of those little tiny tigers who lived in the secret places of Pepere's barn.

When I got to middle and high school age, the school mascot was the tiger.  Everything I have around my house from DRHS features the snarling face of a tiger.

The list could go on, but I suspect you have the gist.

That was why, when I saw the Chinese horoscope-based tattoo of this marvelous animal, I printed it off and started going from tattoo parlor to tattoo parlor to get a price and find the person who my intuition told me was going to be the best person to put my symbol of survival on my left shoulder - over my heart, where my father has always been even though he was taken from me when I was only 19.

And I found a kindred soul when I showed the print to a lovely lady at a tattoo parlor that had been suggested by a dear friend.  Jen Jacques took one look at the drawing and I watched her face light up the same way my face must have when I saw it.  It took over three hours to complete, but my beautiful tiger with the Benton green eyes has been my delight for almost a year now, especially when I get out of the shower and see him in my mirror - my symbol of survival and a permanent memorial to a man who was taken from me too soon, a man who should have been here to enjoy the beautiful little granddaughter who is the love of my life and my pride and joy.

But although I had planned on the first tattoo being the only one I ever had, I've discovered what other people I know were talking about when they sagely looked and me as said "SURE it's going to be your one and only.  Tell me that NEXT year....."

Um yeah.

Even as I type this, Jen is in the process of drawing me a very original Jen Jacques design for my right shoulder - and she's trying to talk me into putting it someplace where I can actually see it and admire it.  But hey, I'm going to be 53 in a couple of months.  I have massive varicose veins in my legs from having children and an old back injury that messed up my circulation.  My biceps are starting to develop that "bat wing" look so common to older people, and lets not even go to some of the other places my body is starting to show my age....

I think I'll stick to the shoulder, which is one of the places that I don't tend to store much fat and most people don't tend to wrinkle.  I want the beautiful tattoo that Jen designs to still be beautiful when I'm sitting in a nursing home, unable to remember the story of why I got tattooed....

And this is the very rough drawing that Jen is refining for me while looking at more source photos and deciding whether we're just going to do a green wash for the background to set this beauty to set him apart from my skin - or whether we're going to go with the look of him coming out of hiding to "hunt" whoever is standing behind me.......*grin*

On April 9th, I'm going to be tattooed again.  Again, I'm telling myself this will be the last one.

Um, yeah......

*grin*

Posting this everywhere to try to reach the "culprit from the pulpit"

If I haven't said this here yet, I'm a Wiccan.  I was raised in the Catholic Church, but had my faith shaken badly in 1980, when someone I had grown up with said "If you were a GOOD Catholic, your father wouldn't have died."  (He had lymphoma and I was still stinging from his loss after watching him slowly fade away for 18 months when she said this.)  After researching/going to several other churches over a couple of years, I discovered the Wiccan belief, which is, basically "If it harm none, do what ye will."

SOMEONE has been paying for a subscription to Guideposts Magazine for me for over two years now.  I've only opened one or two of the monthly magazines, but they usually go right from my mailbox to my recycle bin.  I contacted the magazine MONTHS ago, requesting that they "cease and desist" and notify whoever has been buying these that I am sincerely NOT interested and that I sincerely see this as a waste of everyone's time.

I got another magazine today, almost 6 months after they told me "it will take us a month or two, then they'll stop".  The company is getting the magazine back with a note basically stating that I'm going to start shredding them and sending them back starting next month, because I REALLY don't want some Christian falderal in my mailbox every month.

So, in keeping with what I'm posting everywhere else I can post it on the internet, I'm posting here as well (and I apologize for the "yelling", but I've already been arguing with Time Warner Cable about their ever increasing fees for their ever decreasing service and I REALLY don't feel like being nice about things any more today....):

PLEASE DON'T SEND ME GUIDEPOSTS MAGAZINE! I DON'T READ IT AND IT BUGS ME TO TOSS IT INTO THE RECYCLE BIN WHEN SOMEONE WASTED THEIR MONEY ON SENDING ME SOMETHING I HAVE NO INTEREST IN!  PLEASE DON'T RENEW THE SUBSCRIPTION!!!

Thank you for your time, and if you're the one who keeps sending me this, please stop wasting your money and my time!

That is all.......

DANGER, WILL ROBINSON!!!

I've been posting this EVERYWHERE, so PLEASE be warned!

While following up on a notification that Barnes & Noble is going to be releasing their NOOK in several more countries, I wanted to see where Amazon is currently offering "Night of the Tiger".  Much to my surprise, I found this web site offering "Free" PDF books - but you have to give them a credit card number to "confirm your identity" before they'll send you the "free" book....

pdf8998.kctzbooks.com/the-night-of-the-tiger-PDF-22002471.pdf

In fact, this is the complete link as it appeared on Google:  "[PDF]
The Night of the Tiger pdf
pdf8998.kctzbooks.com/the-night-of-the-tiger-PDF-22002471.pdf
Debi Emmons - "Night of the Tiger". 45 likes · 1 talking about this. "Night of the Tiger" has been on the internet since 1999 as an ebook, first at ebooksonthe.net ..."

Needless to say, while investigating this, I DIDN'T give a credit card.  Instead, I followed it through to where you need to "sign up" - and sent the address and information to the Internet Crime Complaint Center for them to investigate.  When I got an email (which you have to give to get to that next part of the site) about my "free" book this morning and how I needed to "complete the application" to get it, they weren't even offering MY book to me.  (Repeat clicks through just to see what would happen brought up SEVERAL books with the key words in it.)  They obviously were more concerned with my credit card information than what it was I was coming to get "for free".......

So, if you see someone offering a "free" copy of the book (apart from Amazon or a library, who have "loaner" deals with me so that people can read the book and decide whether or not to add it to their collection), PLEASE let me know.  In trying to make sure that you all get what you pay for, I'm trying to be very proactive about pirates and scammers who don't care who they hurt.

Trust me, I don't want to see ANY of my "faithful readers" hurt in any way.....

So, let's see if I've managed to "contact" everyone now with messages to the appropriate accounts...

Facebook (both my personal and fan page)....check
Twitter.....check
The Northern Bard......check
Google plus.....check
This blog.....check

I think that's all the accounts I can post on, but feel free to share this information with your friends, family, etc. so that EVERYONE will know not to give credit card info to these Pirates, Scammers, Scum-of-the-Earth types.

And thank you for letting me rage....

 

Another pause for what they used to call "Station Identification"...

I just wanted to take a minute to say a HUGE "Thank You" to all of my faithful readers here!  In less than a year, almost 1000 of you have visited the blog and read my ramblings, either as one time visitors or repeat "offenders" (or "offendees" perhaps?).

While suffering with the fringes of a cold, I haven't managed to get my mucus-clogged head to focus on what Kelly is trying to show me from Scotland for the next chapter of "A Wild Tiger's Heart".  It's something like trying to swim in a mud puddle - lots of thrashing, but not a whole lot of progress.  So while pulling out the proper words to describe the scenery is like trying to extract DNA from a Q-Tip that was soaked in bleach, I've been checking traffic reports to the various places where such information is monitored for me by the various accounts I hold.

The above figure for this blog impressed me.  I started this as a way to prove to a friend that no one really reads his blogs except for his family and friends.  I purposefully chose a site for my blog that would show where the visitors came from, quite positive that the primary group who would come to visit my blog were going to be from the United States, and that a good percentage of those folks were going to be from New England, where most of my family and friends live.

I was SO wrong!

I guess it never really struck me that, when my publisher had me sign a "redistribution clause" when Write Words Inc bought out Ellsworth, Maine based ebooksonthe.net in 2002, they REALLY meant to distribute my work in any country who would be willing to pick the books up.  The number of countries represented as "hits" to this blog site blew me away.......

Of course, on the flip side, I was amused by the audience that goes to the web site I've had up since I was looking for something to amuse me in 1998, when I was out of work because of a bulge in a disc in my lower back, on heavy duty pain medication, and limited on what I could do by severe restrictions from my doctor.  So, what can a very active person do with life when restricted to "no bending, no lifting, no twisting"?  Obviously, they can learn how to program HTML pages and put together a web site to showcase poems, other writings, and photos.

"The Northern Bard" also attracts visitors from all over the world, but the amusing part is that most of them seem to be attracted to pictures that I posted in 2001, when my husband and I, armed with a large IRS refund, took our children on a two week long vacation to Florida and back, a trip made in a Dodge Caravan that we had purchased just shortly before leaving Maine.  (We were driving a Dodge Omni, but our son had just had a growth spurt and was no longer able to sit in the back, and my continued difficulty moving made it impossible for me to let him ride in the front seat for the duration.  We traded the Omni for the Caravan, as it had TWO back seats, allowing our daughter to take up one whole seat and our son to take up the other.)  The most popular page of my entire web site seems to be the photographs we took in Busch Gardens in Tampa, Florida....

(For those who haven't been to The Northern Bard, found at this link - http://galadriel_emmons.tripod.com/ - the photos of Busch Gardens are part of the story of the places we visited, the fun/odd things we encountered, and the reaction of our children to having one special trip that WASN'T a camping vacation.  The story is called "The 2001 Vacation Odyssey of Avatar and Galadriel", as we were still going into a chat room called "Quick Chat Cafe" at the time, and those were our "secret identities" that we used in chat.)

So, thank you again for coming to visit me here and for reading my words, such as they are, and giving your feedback, whether in public or in private.  I can't tell you how much it warms my heart to know that there are people whom I haven't actually met and who don't actually share my bloodline who have been to visit.  Now to go and apologise to the friend who suggested that I needed a blog.......

And the cat came back the very next day.......

A friend in college introduced me to this song, and when I discovered You Tube, I found this video of this song:

http://youtu.be/bETCusT5kNM

I'm hoping that it doesn't prove prophetic this morning, as the cats who've been sharing our home since just after Christmas have all gone back to their proper places.  Nothing against my daughter's cat, Meeko, or her former roommates' cats, Moses and Thomas, but it felt really good to go to bed last night without kicking cats out of the bedroom (so that they wouldn't wake me in the middle of the night by clearing the earrings off my dresser or knocking my glasses off the nightstand).  It also felt very good to be able to come downstairs, get my coffee and settle into my office chair without kicking someone out of the chair.  Even the little Shih-Tzu/Pomeranian we've been sharing our house with for almost 4 years now seems much more relaxed this morning, as it's the first time in about 4 months that he was able to eat his breakfast without having to chase any cats away from his dish......

Of course, the best part of the end of the fostering arrangement we made, as we had only promised to care for the cats until the girls got settled into new apartments, is the fact that the first part of the income tax returns have arrived in our bank account.  The ancient farmhouse that we call home has several places where the former owners did additions, but didn't do them properly, so this past winter, it was more like living in an igloo rather than an enclosed building.  Spots where there wasn't a proper foundation poured have rotted out, giving the cold winter air places to slip through into our living space.  Just outside the room where I'm writing this, we've had a tarp and two sleeping bags hanging all winter, trying to cut back on the cold winter breeze blowing past us, but it's been so horrifically cold, we've still been freezing our tail feathers off.

In short, over the next couple of weeks, we're going to be purchasing wood, plywood and drywall to first build a wall between the main house and the rotted part, then we'll be taking off the rotted sections to make this place the comfortable place that it has the potential to be.

What this means for me is kind of a two-fold situation.  On the one hand, it means that the former shed that was turned into a glorified outhouse, an unheated bathroom downstairs that everyone has hated having to use, is going to finally be taken away.  Smells and chills that have interrupted my concentration will be gone.  Trying to go into that bathroom after dark, on which the door was put in upside down, resulting in a doorknob that is closer to chest height instead of the regular hip height, will no longer be necessary.  (There will still be the properly done bathroom off the master bedroom upstairs.)

But there are a lot of things that have to find new places to be stored as the rooms disappear or the items that I've been storing will have to make their way to Goodwill if we no longer need them.  There will be sawdust and pounding noises to be dealt with.  Instead of being able to come home with my eyes glazed, seeing a scene that is demanding I sit down to transcribe it, I'll have to concern myself with helping my husband with the work that we'll be doing......

In short, although there's a good side to this needed remodeling, the work is going to be slowing down production on "A Wild Tiger's Heart".  I'm looking forward to getting the work done and being able to be warm for next winter, but I can't promise the next installment in The Tiger Series until some time next year......

And I keep hoping for a lottery win so that, instead of having to do this with just my husband and I doing all the work, we might be able to hire a contractor and have it happen in very short order, guaranteeing that we aren't going to be delayed by my husband taking off for fishing trips in the middle of the work.....

Let's see what tomorrow's review of my Astrological Chart with my friend, Ahura Z., tells me about the possibility of my actually being able to afford a professional instead of helping my husband with a DIY project......

:)

Looking for Mr (or Ms) "Goodbar"......

Although my little gathering at the Portland Public Library happened on a truly frigid day, resulting in nobody coming to hear the talk, I was able to discuss the differences between those authors who have good turnouts to such things and those who, like me, can't seem to catch a break.  These are some of the things that came from talking with the librarian:

1) The authors who manage to get their books into the local bookstores are the ones who get the attention, whether it be the local news stations taking notice and actually inviting the authors for interviews, or the general public, or the New York Times Best Seller people.

2) Having an online presence is good in this digital age, but still, it helps to get something - whether it's a regular paperback book, a comic book, a manga book or an audio book - into local stores.

3) My marketing research strategies ARE helping book sales online and are making me popular in other countries (especially when I look at my reach for things like my Facebook pages and this blog), but I need to work on getting the work out there in the old fashioned markets in order to hit the "impulse buyer", who will find a book in a bookstore quite by accident and become a major promoter via word of mouth.

So, if you're a writer or are otherwise creative, and you're following along with my learning process by reading my blog (for which you have my everlasting thanks), here are the things I've decided I need after the discussion on Friday:

I need to get some friends who are artists and are willing to have their works displayed as book covers (or possibly complete books, should we go the manga/comic book route) - either getting paid a flat rate up front or a percentage of the income from book sales.

I need to have a printing company that produces books at a reasonable enough per book cost that I will be able to get books picked up by local bookstores without having to go too deeply into debt myself in order to be able to cover the deal that basically comes down to selling the books on a consignment basis.

I need someone who is able to help me to record the books, as a lot of my friends and co-workers are getting into audio books, which isn't offered by my current publisher.

I need to reconnect with a couple of the legal eagles I've lost touch with, as they can help me with the legal wording for all the contracts that will have to be drawn up for the above things to happen.

And, obviously, I need to complete work on my web site for the business I'm going to need to get up and running to be able to carry out all of the above things and have a marketplace setting to be able to start selling all the resulting wares online.

Have I served myself up with a bit too large a piece of the pie to manage to get this all done before the end of 2014 along with the writing that Kelly Starbird is pushing me to do?  I sincerely hope not, but if so, this may all just bleed into 2015 and onward until I get it all done.

In the meantime, if you have someone you know who might meet one of the needs I've noted, please have them get in touch.  I'm not looking for "cover by Rembrandt".  I'm just looking for "cover by someone with more artistic ability than yours truly", as I have brilliant ideas for what I'd like to see for a cover, but I don't have the drawing ability to produce my vision.....

Thank you for continuing to show this blog your love, and Blessed Be.