Deborah Woehr

FSB Associates is holding its first annual bookfair to help promote authors online. They specialize helping new authors spread the word about their books. This bookfair, scheduled to run from October 3-5, is the latest in their publicity efforts.

I’ve been working with them for the past year to review the books they’ve promoted. Because of them, I’ve been introduced to books that I may never have read and enjoyed.
These people are great at what they do.

To see what they’ll be doing, click here.

I hope to see you there!

Writer’s Blog Alliance

Today made up for my two weeks in Hell. The domain Finally transferred to the Namecheap site. Now, all I have to do is figure out how to transfer it over to John’s server without any more hiccups.

I found an article late Saturday night that explained how to transfer your website without experiencing significant downtime. The Number One Rule they gave was not to tell your current web host!

Anthology

The edits are finished. The second proof is on order. I could have kicked myself for opting for the cheapest mail service because it took so stinkin’ long for the book to arrive. Tonight, I opted for the 2nd Day service while cringing at the shipping costs.

I finally got the proof copy of the 2006 Writer’s Blog Anthology today. Other than some minor layout issues, I’m very impressed with the way the book turned out. The cover turned out better than I hoped it would, and the binding is superior.

The only thing I have to do is add blank pages in the appropriate spots so the layout will look better. I’ll be working on that tonight.

You may have received this in an email, but I thought I’d post it here anyway.

Here’s a quote from a government employee who witnessed a recent interaction between an elderly woman and an antiwar protester in a Metro station in DC:

There were protesters on the train platform handing out pamphlets on the evils of America. I politely declined to take one.

An elderly woman was behind me getting off the escalator and a young (20-ish) female protester offered her a pamphlet, which she politely declined.

The young protester put her hand on the old woman’s shoulder as a gesture of friendship and in a very soft voice said, “Lady, don’t you care about the children of Iraq?”

The old woman looked up at her and said, “Honey, my father died in France during World War II, I lost my husband in Korea, and a son in Vietnam. All three died so you could have the right to stand here and badmouth our country.”

“If you touch me again, I’ll stick this umbrella up your ass and open it!!”

~God Bless America~

While looking for something to write for Supernatural, I found the mention of another paranormal TV show called The Meant to Be’s, which sounds very similar to Michael Landon’s Highway to Heaven. I don’t know the details of when it’s supposed to premiere.

Ghosts seem to be the latest fad on television, next to reality shows. I tried watching Supernatural, but it didn’t do much for me. The Medium has become my favorite. Do any of you watch these shows? If you do, which is your favorite?

I’m writing this post for those of you who don’t yet have a domain for your blogs and are thinking about getting one. You’ll find several webhosts out there who lure customers in with a free domain. I acquired the majority of my domains this way, thinking that I would save money by not having to pay a monthly fee for GoDaddy in addition to webhosting fees.

Although I have saved money over the long run, they did charge me for the domain after one year. I paid around $70 for The Writers Buzz. These hosts don’t announce this charge in big bold letters, so I thought I’d make you aware of this.

Because of the transfer fiasco with Writers Blog Alliance, I would not recommend signing up for a hosting package with a free domain. Instead, I would register through GoDaddy or some other domain registrar service. That way, I can transfer it wherever I want without huge hassles and delays.

Last week, I had to jump through hoops to start the transfer process for WBA and thought this was going to go smoothly. I’ve never transferred a domain before, and after the crap I’ve been through the last ten days, I never want to do it again.

Back in February (approx.) SBC Yahoo decided to delete my account when they reformatted their system, forcing me to sign up with Gmail. Fine. I changed my email address on all of my websites via the C-Panel and billing. Everything was updated, I thought.

Apparently not. I’m still not clear exactly what part of the domain I didn’t update, but I’m thinking that it might be the “Who Is” portion. I don’t know. The managing director of my webhost was very unhelpful.

To shorten this story, I now have to wait two days before my email address change “propogates.” Then I have to wait another seven days while the transfer goes through again.

Have any of you tried to transfer a domain from one host to another? If so, did you experience these types of problems?

Last night, my husband and I watched a documentary of a filmmaker who had been working on a “day in the life” film about New York City’s firefighters. Listening to those frantic 9-1-1 calls and the sounds of bodies of the jumpers crashing onto the concrete were the worst things I’ve ever heard in my life. Nevermind the roar of the collapsing buildings.

I missed the first fifteen minutes of this film, so I couldn’t tell you what it was called. But it brought a lot of things home.

I’ll never forget sitting in front of my television that morning, watching the planes hit and thinking that this looked like a Hollywood movie and knowing that it wasn’t.

I’ll never forget the absence of planes in the sky for a full week after this incident and worrying about my father-in-law, who was stuck in Philadelphia. September 11 was his mother’s birthday.

I’ll never forget the wide-eyed looks my sons gave me as I tucked them into bed that night. “Mom, I’m scared. Is Osama Bin Laden going to bomb our house and school?”

I’ll never forget the looks on the parents’ faces when I went to pick my boys up from school that day. One of them was the wife of a police officer, who was on call for 24 hours for weeks. All of us were wondering when they would attack San Francisco.

I’ll never forget my pen pal in New York City, who lives a mile and a half away from Ground Zero and what she shared with us. She’ll remember the stench of those bodies for the rest of her life, while I can only imagine it.

Every time I get on a plane, I wonder if it’s going to be hijacked. The flight home from Texas last month was especially grueling due to the latest terrorist tactics and the fact that I had both of my kids with me. I’m still very grateful to England for being watchful of these guys.

As far as I’m concerned 9/11 (9-1-1) is not over. It won’t be over until those terrorists are killed.

Lynne was known as the “Ann Landers” of her group of friends. “They were always calling to ask advice, from clothes to boyfriends to whatever,” said her mother, Pat Morris. “I used to joke that the phone was glued to her ear.”

She had an infectious smile that drew people and animals toward her. At 22, she had an equally bright future ahead of her as a stock trader or a teacher. She couldn’t decide which she wanted to do because she enjoyed both. A year after she graduated SUNY Oneonta, she landed a job with Cantor Fitzgerald as a P&S Clerk in the Equities Department.

Lynne wanted to move up in the corporate world, but she didn’t want her career to rule her whole life. Raising a family was very important to her. Several months prior to 9/11, she rekindled her romance with Mark Chabus and was planning to announce their engagement.

But instead of going to her wedding, her friends and family had to say goodbye. If there is a God and a Heaven, she would be there with that glowing smile.

I never got the chance to meet Lynne, but she sounded like a sweetheart and someone who was loved very much by everyone she knew.

Heather Hartman:

“I have known Lynne since we were babies; she was my neighbor and my friend. My favorite memories of Lynne include sleeping over at her house, with our friends Sarah and Jaime, and playing truth or dare. Another one is how she hated when I called her “Lynnie pig” just because it rhymed with “guinea pig”. . . that still makes me smile, as Lynne always could.

“Lynne has touched so many lives, and since we grew apart as we got older, I’m not sure if she ever knew how much she touched mine. But she is a part of many of my childhood memories and I will always love her. I misse you Lynne!”

Her mom, Pat:

“She was probably helping someone right to the end.”

Her older sister, Chrissy:

“She always worried about everyone else’s feelings more than her own, and she said it sometimes got her in trouble.”

I received the email from Lulu last night. The Anthology will be here sometime next week. I’m hoping that I got the formatting right. One of the things you have to do before you upload your book into Lulu’s system is make sure your total pagecount is divisible by four. That means inserting blank pages, if your count comes up short.

I looked at the books in my office, some of which were POD, and noticed that a few had up to three blank pages in the back and several filler pages (for reviews) in the front. So I put one blank page in the front and two in the back. Keep your fingers crossed. If all goes well, the book will be available next week.