February 5th, 2015 Challenge

Hi, it’s Christina –

Oh JOY, more white stuff falling from the sky. This is getting old, FAST. If I was staying in, this wouldn’t be an issue; but because of RV’s commitments today, I will be crisscrossing Central Jersey for most of the day. I detest driving in bad weather.

So Dani won her request to have the Christmas tree up until her birthday, but tomorrow, it’s coming down. I’m sick of looking at the thing.

Her birthday was good. She’s so excited about the Nikon D3200 camera Paulie and I got her. The gift was a bit extravagant, but a girl only turns 16 once, and it was the only thing she really wanted. We’ll be eating a lot of pasta over the next few weeks. LOL

Although she LOVED her gift from PJ and Alex, she wasn’t a happy camper this morning. The mid-way piercing is rather painful, and the poor kid didn’t get much sleep last night. Unfortunately, there isn’t a dang thing we can do to help her. She’s just going to have to wait it out.

As you know, I have been focusing on Twitter for marketing this past week, and quite frankly, it still is making my head spin. I’ve been doing 3 – 4 posts per book (depending on spacing) a day, manually thanking each new follower, and manually thanking each person who retweets one of my tweets. I have also been retweeting, favoriting, and commenting on other tweets. They come in so fast and furious though, I doubt I’m seeing 10% of the tweets that come in. I sneezed, got up to get a tissue, blew my nose, tossed the tissue, and when I came back, there were 218 new tweets – in what 45 seconds. Good grief!

I got a reply from Kobo yesterday. Their advice was to delete my books. REALLY? Needless to say, I pitched a fit. I don’t mind putting in the hours, but then for those hours to be for naught, fries my cookies. Basically, I told them to “figure it out”. You would think if the IT team was worth a grain of salt, this wouldn’t be such an issue. They’ve been “working on it” for over a week now. WTHeck?

My publisher, Annie Acorn, was so sweet. She told me I could send the books to her, and she would see if she could get them to work on Kobo. She isn’t even the publisher on these books, and she wasn’t asking for anything in return for getting them up on the site for me. Bless her heart! I told her we’ll wait and see what the Kobo Team comes up with, but it’s looking more and more like I may have to take her up on her offer.

With all the money grubbing scoundrels out there in the publishing world, I have been blessed with a real gem. I am so grateful our paths crossed, and I am so looking forward to a long future with Annie. She is truly priceless, always ready to share her vast knowledge, makes an excellent sounding board – not just on books, but on life as well, and is just an all-around good soul. Yes, I have been truly blessed.

Oh, by the way, I forgot to tell you this last week. Annie has asked me to be a guest Quill for the Pen & Ink blog on her site. As soon as I know more, I’ll let you know and provide you with a link. In the meantime, if you’d like, here’s the link to previous Pen & Inks. If you have any desire to write, you should check it out. The advice and tips are wonderful.

Okay, I have to get an early start today, so I best be going. I hope you have a warm & safe day, and happy writing!

Your Next Challenge is:

Enough already…

You have ten minutes (be honest). There is no right or wrong, just write. Spelling and punctuation don’t count, and NO ONE is allowed to criticize what someone else has written. Go.