Everyone's a critic....

I posted a mock-up of the cover that included the possible title, which still needs to be adjusted size wise and color wise, but shows the font the art director is thinking will work quite nicely.  We were expecting some comments on whether or not that font will work against the background....

Here is what I posted:

*sighing because OBVIOUSLY there are Photoshop professionals out there who are OFFENDED by this cover because I can't afford a location shoot*

Okay folks.  SINCE you don't seem to understand this any other way:

1)  There are all kinds of stories recently about authors who are making thousands of dollars each month from romance ebook sales.  These are people whose books have BEEN in a bookstore, and therefore they can put on their cover "New York Times Best Selling Author", because the New York Times puts you on their list if you can get your books picked up by book stores, thereby having book sales in places OTHER THAN on Amazon.  (And, since the bookstore sales are low, it's becoming easier and easier to get onto that New York Times list PROVIDED you can get a bookstore to buy your book and put it onto their shelves.)

2)  I AM NOT one of those authors who is making thousands.  In fact, if I break a single thousand in sales this year, I will be EXTREMELY impressed.  As such, my budget allowed me to pay for the models and the photographer, who was able to use a little Photoshop magic to make it look like Daniel Sobieray and Patrice Garza were on an Italian street for this photo instead of in David Wagner's studio in Los Angeles.  I get offended when you put down David Wagner's efforts - ESPECIALLY as I can't even think about doing what he did for me.  If you're such a Photoshop pro that you feel the right to put someone else's work down, then show me how it SHOULD look!  If you can't make it look better than the 3D effect I saw when I printed this off in a 5x8 size on cover stock with the inks that the print shop will be using, GO FOR IT - but DON'T be giving me this "you can do better" bull unless you're the one who is footing the bill for this.

In my personal opinion, the only way this would have looked better would have been if I could have paid for the tickets to send Daniel, Patrice and David to Italy to do a location shoot....but I don't have the budget, so quit your whining or show me that I should hire YOU next time.......

3)  The comments should be on the TITLE at this point!  If you didn't pay attention to the multiple cover options over the past several months that we've been working on it, I don't want your belated opinions that are indicating that I should have spent my money elsewhere!  Maybe next time, when I'm asking for a photographer and models for my newest project, YOU SHOULD SUGGEST THAT YOU'RE THE EXPERT AND I SHOULD HIRE YOU!  (And, by the way, I'll be expecting YOUR covers for a redo of "Night of the Tiger" and "The Tiger's Cub", as I no longer have the publisher who is going to "cheapen down" all my hard work.  If you come up with a great idea and can show me that YOU are the expert I need to hire, I'll get the money into my budget to afford YOUR services.)

In short, if you weren't paying attention when I was asking your opinion on the backgrounds and you aren't going to demonstrate your argument by showing me what YOU can do, PLEASE follow the advice of Bambi's little friend, Thumper:

"IF YOU CAN'T SAY SOMETHING NICE (or at least, creatively constructive with proof that you can correct the problem you're pointing out), DON'T SAY NOTHING AT ALL"

Gypsies, tramps and thieves

My husband bought a laptop not too long ago, and Bill Gates' newest thing is to make you have a Microsoft email account that you have to sign into before you can use the newest Windows product.  Since the only account my hubby had was a Hotmail, it was used on the new laptop.  When he clicks the "mail" button on the Windows 8 start screen, it's SUPPOSED to bring him to his Hotmail account and let him see his new emails.

He doesn't use his laptop much because Lenovo seems to have a problem with not shutting itself off when the user is busily checking emails, surfing the web - and even in the middle of typing, as I discovered when trying to help him out by going through his settings to make it stop shutting itself off randomly.  (He's been an HVAC Technician for almost 30 years, but he rarely uses a computer, so I'm more of a geek than he is.  We have a little joke about me being his IT Tech here in our house.....)

SOMEHOW, even with as seldom as he uses it, Hotmail has decided he's having a security issue, and it keeps insisting that it needs to send him a security code so that he can retrieve his emails on his laptop.  (He can access the same email account from my laptop, from our desktop, from his phone, but Lenovo and Microsoft seem to have teamed up to have this "security issue" for him, making him miss a lot of important emails when he tries to check it on his laptop.)  The only problem with them sending him a security code is that they INSIST they have to send it to an email for our former internet provider, which we can no longer access, and that it can't be done RIGHT NOW - it has to happen in a month!

This little minion from Despicable Me has my reaction to that:

http://youtu.be/v0245xP_HVk

So I try to help him out by getting onto the phone with Microsoft.  It was like one of those scenes from a comedy routine, as the man I get on the phone has a very heavy accent and a middle eastern name, and while I'm trying to get them to just help me remove the defunct email account so that his "security code" can go to an email he can actually access, this guy is showing me a bunch of errors in which the Microsoft programs that are supposed to be running in the background are shutting down.  Funny thing, but my Dell laptop has the same programs shutting down in the background.

Of course, this ISN'T a Microsoft issue.  It must be something we're doing on the laptops.  Microsoft, according to every tech from Microsoft I've ever spoken to DOESN'T program in things to fail on system A so that, in a couple of years when they come out with system B, you will go out an buy it to get rid of the issues you've been having with system A.

Of course not.  That's why every IT tech at every company I've ever worked for can tell me exactly which spots Microsoft programmers have programmed to fail.

Needless to say, in order to get rid of this security problem and have the computers "fixed" for the next year, it's going to cost us money.  They can't just correct the email address on the account to allow a security code to be mailed to a functioning email address next month to allow my husband to access his account and actually get the emails that his friends and customers send him.

Do I need to post the minion link again to illustrate my reaction to the amount of money it's going to take for this?

Suffice to say that we aren't rolling in cash.  In fact, after the transmission fiasco with Chevrolet, we're trying to get my husband into a new truck, which means that in the next 6 years, we're going to have even less cash than we have right now.  We're going to be among those die-hards that still have Windows 8 on our computers when Microsoft decides they're no longer going to support Windows 8 because we aren't going to be able to afford all the "upgraded packages" that they'll come up with to fix the inherent problems with Windows 8.  (For that matter, I'll probably still be using the Windows 7 on my Dell laptop, as I can't even afford to put an office program on the desktop we had to replace because it was still running Windows XP and didn't have the memory functions to upgrade to 8, so I can't even do my writing on my desktop computer at the moment.)

SO glad that Bill Gates thinks everyone in America is just sitting on a stack of cash to pay him for this crap he keeps putting out......

*rolling my eyes so hard that I just found where that pea went that I stuck in my nose when I was 3*

Something I keep saying to myself: "I'm getting too old for this!"

I keep trying to remind myself on days like this that I'm only 53.  After 6 days in a row of doing what is called "throwing load" (otherwise known as breaking down pallets on which the product we need to sell comes in), my body is trying to insist I'm 153.

I've bruised like a peach for as long as I can remember, so I'm not at all surprised at the bruises that grace my forearms from the boxes that slipped as I was trying to hoist them onto the conveyances to bring them out onto the selling floor.  What bothers me is the aches in parts that I thought I'd been building up over the past year.

Ten extra hours ages my muscles by 100 years?

Heaven help me if I ever get another full time job that needs me to be hoisting things around.  I'm sure to feel 300 before retirement at this rate.

Theme for the week from Roger Allen Wade: So I says "well it must be your socks"

Every year for our anniversary, my husband and I take a week and go someplace a little "out of the way".

Okay.  I'll be totally honest.  We pick a place that looks remote, drive until we have no cell phone reception, and then drive another 20 miles or so.....

So this year, instead of the "castle on wheels" (a pop up camper), we went with a new tent that has a little screen tent attached.  Rather nice to be able to have a dry spot to walk in and not soak your bedding by opening the door when it rains, especially since we were planning on staying on a beach on a boat-in site.

Did I mention that, every year, we have rain?

That's Maine for you.  Thunder, lightning, tornado warnings (something becoming a bit more prevalent, as we were being told they were "microbursts" before radars became so sophisticated), all coming at you just out of the clear blue on a day when they weren't predicted when you planned this trip.....

So we plan for rain.  Tent with screen room attached.  Screen tent over the cooking area.  Port-a-potty with it's own tent to avoid a walk to a distant outhouse in a downpour.  Lots and lots of other gear, so we aren't totally roughing it, but the plan is to take at least 4 trips to get it all transferred from truck to camp site.

On the way in, we notice something a little strange.  What's wrong with these two photos, taken at two separate intersections?

You know that old thing about "You cahnt get thayah from heyah" we Mainers are supposed to do?  I think this is the source.  (For those who need a hint, how far is it to Gassabias from each intersection?)

We got to our destination.  We tried to get the remote camp site.  They were all full, so we camped in the easier to get to camp site.  There was only one other couple and us on Monday evening.  It slowly filled in all week.  Not the most ideal site, but we know some REALLY remote sites for next year....and it gives more excuses for going out riding around on back roads that take you call kinds of interesting places, like lots of beautiful lakes all around an active logging site.

Wednesday night, we got drenched, but not the "hail, high winds, yada-yada" they predicted.  It blows past by morning, and it cools us to a comfortable level.  Great week to get away from the internet and recharge the mental batteries for another year.

We packed most of the gear last night, leaving only the tents and enough to make a cup of coffee before leaving the campsite.  We got up with the sun and were out of the campground by 6:45 a.m.  We were well on our way, looking forward to breakfast just before hopping onto the turnpike to head for home.  A nice little 4 hour tour.....

But then there was a strange noise from under the truck.  It was a distinct grinding noise that shouldn't have been under the truck.  Pulling off to the side of the road to investigate, we discover we have no reverse gear....

No transmission and still 220 miles from home.....

We managed to creep along until we got back cell service, then the fine fellow who was on call for A-1 Towing out of Bangor came and towed us to the dealership in Bangor that is the sister store to the place we bought it.  My mom came and brought us to a U-Haul dealership across town.  We went back to the dealership, got all our gear, then back to the place we'd left the boat trailer when the tow truck couldn't take it, too.  Eventually, 8 hours later than expected, we finally made it home - fully 12 hours after leaving the campground.

But we figured out why that happened when we were just about an hour from home and it started raining on us.

It's tradition that we have a fierce storm on the way back from our anniversary trip.  You know, the kind of storm that the rain is coming down so hard you can't see the vehicle in front of you.  The kind of storm that eases off just long enough for you to get all the gear transferred to the garage without thoroughly soaking it, but making it so you need to drag it out on the next dry day before storing it for another year.

My advice to you?  Avoid camping in Maine the last week of July.  That's when Mother Nature likes to make sure we stick to tradition.


P.S.  The complete song I quoted from is here:  http://youtu.be/zgvrWlubkv4#aid=P-yAR7SHPHE  (Roger Allen Wade is a cousin of Johnny Knoxville from "Jackass".....*grin*)

Reflecting on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in light of a tragedy

Having a sad couple of days here, but not because of anything that happened to me and mine, per se.  Instead, I'm reading articles about this accident, which took the life of someone I had become friends with during an 8 year stint of working with his wife - and I won't pass on the version that has photos of Brian in action and that shares something his wife SHOULD have the common sense NOT to post......

http://www.conwaydailysun.com/newsx/local-news/114669-accident-071414

The #1 reason why this hits a sore spot is because of a pact my husband and I have had for years now.  His mother passed away in 1989 after battling Multiple Sclerosis for many years, and he had to watch her life slowly go downhill before pneumonia took her from a life that she no longer wanted to live.  My father died of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma after an 18 month battle in 1980, and he had gone to the point that he didn't even recognize family when his blessed release came.

Bill and I have both said that, if there was a diagnosis of one of these "slow death" diseases for us, we would go out and go after that Bucket List with gusto, hoping for just such an accident (and overturned kayak in the ocean, or a slip from one of the many trails we've hiked) to take us out before the real suffering starts.  Brian and I had joked about that and the fact that both Bill and I want our ashes scattered over the mountains we love.....

It's very sobering to see that he really did have an accident and will be scattered at his favorite mountains.

I'm reassessing my life as we speak and how to go about filling some of those "Bucket List" items, as this has shown me yet again that tomorrow is never promised.........

A Cover For My Baby

Those who have been following along know that I've been working with a model in California for a cover for my new work in progress, "A Wild Tiger's Heart".  I really can't come up with enough words to state how truly grateful I am that, when I asked my Facebook peeps for a suggestion for a model, the Universe walloped me with Daniel Sobieray, as he has been a remarkable person to work with.

Not only did he graciously give me permission to use his image for Stefan Savoldi, but he also suggested a lovely lady to be able to approach to use images of for Kelly Starbird.

When we got into a discussion about a cover and the possibility of having him and his suggested model friend on said cover, he made all the arrangements at his end of the world.

When the woman he suggested didn't make it to the shoot, he scrambled and got a substitute, then sent 509 photos for me to chose from and "introduced" me to the photographer, David Warner, so that I have a way to communicate directly with the person who will be putting in the background and doing any needed edits before I send the final image to my publisher, Northern Bard Publications. 

Talk about your hard choices!  If I had my way, I'd have 509 different covers because they were all so good!

So, being brutal, I first went through and cut back the group to 57 that I felt most suggested the characters and the way they interact.  Then, with those 57 in another file, I went through again, cutting out more and getting down to a final 6, which were then introduced to the Facebook community for an opinion.  This is the final choice for the raw image, which indicates Stefan Savoldi's fascination with Kelly Starbird and her lack of interest in him when they first meet.....with model Patrice Garza as Kelly and the marvelous Daniel Sobieray as Stefan.

I'm still in shock about how fast all of this has happened, as I just approached Daniel less than a month ago, and now I have a raw photo that the photographer can put in background and "clean up" for the cover.

Now I'd better get off my duff and finish the story....

And my most heartfelt gratitude, once again, to Daniel Sobieray for EVERYTHING, to Patrice Garza for gamely coming in on a moment's notice and getting right into character for some of the most marvelous photos I've had the pleasure to see, and to David Warner for including some "fun" photos for me to be able to see that they seemingly had fun doing this.....like this photo, that makes me wonder if they had an impromptu round of doing the hokey pokey in the middle of the shoot....

 

For those who still haven't caught on from prior blog posts, I was born well before the internet, before computers were more than science fiction, and when I was in high school, computers took up space the size of my house and could only be programmed with punch cards.  I remember sitting with the guys from "Section 8", a special handicapped area of the dorm I was in, watching them learn how to program Linux into the computers that they were being trained to use.  I remember the old Tandy HX1000 that my husband got me on a trade that only had 256 mb of memory, my very first computer that was mostly good for playing a couple of computer games that one needed a floppy disc to play.

Who would have ever thought in my youth that, at the "ancient" age of 53, I would be marveling over the fact that, through the magic of technology, I was able to "speak" to someone in California on June 9th, arrange all of this without a single snail mail going between us, and will soon have a book out there to join my other two?

We live in a world of magic, and our children don't even realize it yet!

Added on 7/7/14:  The introduction on my the page that holds my poems and openings to all my other works:  http://galadriel_emmons.tripod.com/awildtigersheart.html

Update 7/31/14:  David Wagner sent the final picture that will be the centerpiece of the book - and I'm stunned with how beautiful it is as well as the fact that , when printed off and set about 6 feet back, which is supposed to simulate a customer seeing it in a bookstore window, it really pops and almost takes on a 3D effect.  I'm so very happy that I trusted my instincts and let Daniel, Patrice and David do this cover.  Now I'm psyched to go finish the rough draft and add some extras in the first edit to make the story worthy of the cover.  Here is the final 300 dpi cover shot:

I probably will need a good cheese to go with this wine (aka "whine")

Every year, my one week that I take off from work has been for the end of July, when we celebrate our anniversary by taking off for a camping trip, just me and the man I married in 1983.  Usually, this is a fairly easily accomplished trick.  He goes into his workplace and asks for it off.  Because he has so much vacation time accrued and because they seem to like him, they always give him the time off.

I go in and ask for the time off, and I beg, plead, whine and carry on until I get the time off - usually because other people are trying to get that one week off at the same time, and I don't usually have paid time off because I'm a retail slug who doesn't get full time.

This year, it seems like The Universe is conspiring against us.

For the first day of the vacation, there are two other women at my workplace who have asked for the same day off.  One of them is pushing for taking off for the sixth or seventh time this year, but she has seniority, so I'm not sure how that works out.  The other has a family thing going on in another state and should be flying in.  And to complicate things, my daughter, who got married in front of a judge in January with the promise of coming back home to do a ceremony for friends and family to attend, is coming to Maine that day to do the little ceremony.  It doesn't look hopeful for me getting away to get my vacation week to get my batteries charged for the week of my anniversary, but I'm still waiting for the official word from the boss as to who gets the day off and who has to work the pallets that will be coming in that day to refill our shelves......

And to complicate things, I got word of something that is making me whine even harder this morning.

Those who know me know that I had a wicked crush on Kip Winger when MTV actually played music videos.  In fact, there's a line in his video "Can't Get Enough" that inspired Kyle Benton's lady killer smile.  The line says "It's alright, it feels good.  When I'm in your chains, it's understood."  When he looks into the camera with a sexy little smile when saying "It's understood", I melt.  Every time.

So I get an email from a company that lets me know when bands are playing in my area.  The day before we'd be returning to the house from the vacation camp out, the band Winger is playing at a little bar in downtown Portland.  It's a venue that you get to be thisclose to the band.  It's the first time Winger has been scheduled to play in Portland in FOREVER!  And let's face it.  He's got a big streak of gray in his hair (kind of like Rogue from the X-Men comics), and he's got some wrinkle action going on, and, like me, he's got a few extra pounds that we all tend to get as we get older - but he still has that sexy smile........

And I won't be here if all goes well for the plan for my trip to get away from everything (including cell phones, as we go to places where you lose cell service about 20 miles or so from where we intend to camp), so I'll be recharging my interior batteries instead of cramming into a small bar to see one of those musical geniuses I've been following for years.

*pouting and making whiney noises in the back of my throat - which succeeds in making my crazy Shih-Tzu/Pomeranian cross think that there MUST be a psychotic serial killer somewhere outside, so he's barking his little brains out and trying to find a window short enough that his little tiny legs can let him see the culprit*

I wonder if my husband would notice if I tried to convince him that we really got married in mid August instead of the end of July..........*smile*