Living 140 characters at a time #outofthestoneage

Drumroll…I’m on Twitter.

Here’s what happened. I was working a night shift a few weeks ago (for those who don’t know, I work as a bookseller ant Barnes and Noble) and started having a conversation with a very nice lady who mentioned she was a writer of Historical Romance. I mentioned I was a writer too, and she started talking about how much she loved the whole process, particularly the Facebook-ing and Tweeting. She has over 1200 followers on Twitter, including other Romance authors, and then she was telling me about a virtual ball they had involving all of Jane Austen’s crowd, and it suddenly sounded like fun.

So I asked her about her book. Well, it hadn’t published , but she’d was thinking Random House or Penguin Putnam. Neither of those houses had actually accepted it, because it hadn’t been sent out yet. It seems that although she had several agents interested, she didn’t really have an agent. Or even a book. See, she hadn’t finished writing it yet.

Wow.

So. Here was a woman who had 1200 people ready and willing to buy her book, and she didn’t even have a final draft. Maybe this whole Twitter thing really was worth looking into.

When we ended our conversation, she gave me her card, invited me to a Writers Conference in March, and said if I had any questions, I should send her an email and she’d be happy to help me out.

Well, lucky for me, I have a 15 year old daughter, so the whole Twitter tutorial was covered. Then I got the flu, had to work a few Sundays, had to clean the house, took the dog for a walk, so the actual going on Twitter and, you know, Tweeting was delayed for a while.

But now I’m here. And you all can follow me a @Dernst1. I’m still trying to figure out how to add the button to my website. That may involve several emails to all sorts of people, because my daughter – surprise – didn’t know how to do that. But be patient – if I don’t throw something at the screen in total frustration, I’ll find a way to do it eventually.

In the meantime, the real challenge is the Tweeting part. I’m following a few people who I admire – Neil Gaiman, Susan Orlean, and the very nice writer lady I met in Barnes and Noble. I actually replied to one of Susan’s (may I call her Susan?) tweets, so I’m sure she’ll jump on the Dee Ernst bandwagon right away. See, that’s the trick – finding people willing to follow me. Let’s face it – I’m not quite famous yet. And then the actual Tweets – I’m limited to 140 letters – God, I have to COUNT and everything? I’m a writer – condensing is not really part of my make-up. And what do I Tweet about?

I probably shouldn’t Tweet about the insanely stupid things that happen at work. If I did, I’d have people hanging on every one of my 140 characters, because you can’t make this stuff up. But B&N has a very strict policy about their employees and Social Media, so that’s out. I could Tweet about my everyday life I guess (Just found a great deal #cancansale) but that how boring would that be? I can make fun of my husband and daughter, but then I’d have less to blog about.

So I’ve settled for wry and biting observations about the world around me (Sorry Obama can’t fix in 4 yrs what it took GWB 8 years to break). Wait. Is that 140 characters? Do spaces count? Is this being monitored by some secret government organization, and is it possible I’ll end up on a ‘List’ somewhere?

Hmmm. Never mind. (Eat at Jimmy Buffs #yummyhotdogs)

Yeah. That’s better.

Welcome Holiday Hoppers!!!

Welcome to the Holiday Blog Hop!

I’ve never done a blog hop before, so this is just as exciting for me as it is for all of you. I hope you enjoy this little stop-over. First – how about my cool theme – great colors, don’t you think? Next, check out a few posts in ‘Babble’. The good news is that I don’t post often – only about once a month – so if you do want to subscribe, you won’t be bombarded with e-mails from me.

Now comes the fun part. Read a few samples of my book, Better Off Without Him. Maybe you won’t like what you read – that’s okay. Really. I won’t even send anyone after you to extract revenge. Chick Lit is not for everyone. So if you’re a sci-fi or horror fan, just skip off to the next blog and we’ll call it even.
However – if you like what you’ve read, you can buy a copy to download or as a paperback and you can start enjoying Mona’s exploits right away. If you’d rather take a chance on winning a little something for the holidays, then you’re in luck. I’ll be giving away three digital copies (international) and one signed trade paperback (US only) to some lucky winners.

Now the big question. How do you BECOME a lucky winner? Well, here’s the thing. I’m not just a writer. I’m a reader as well, and I love finding great stories with characters I can laugh along with. So, to enter my giveaway, go to the Comment section and tell me the name of your favorite Chick Lit character and the title of the book she’s in. Also let me know if you want digital or paper (if you don’t tell me your preference, you’ll get thrown into the digital pile automatically).

See? Pretty easy, yes? And I’ll have lots of good suggestions for what to read in the long winter months ahead.

Not only that, but all of you winners will then be eligible to win a free Kindle Fire!

I don’t know how I’m going to pick a winner. Seriously. I haven’t a clue. I assume there’s a giant cyber-hat I can throw all the names in that will pick out winners a random. Not to worry – I’ll figure it out.

As for winning the Kindle Fire – the very efficient person who organized this Hop is in charge of that, so I’m sure she’ll have it all covered.

Okay – off you go. Enjoy the rest of your hopping and have a safe and happy whatever holiday you prefer!

‘Tis the season. No, not that season….

For those of you who read my blog and are not related or close personal friends, I’m pleased to tell you that I’ve been (fairly) happily married for twenty-three years.

My husband watches football.

He also does other things. He works. He’s an IT guy. He used to be just a geek until somebody figured out that computers DO in fact run the world, so now he’s an IT guy. He must be good at his job because he will get phone calls at three in the morning from some other IT guy in Belgium who is sure that my husband is the only person in the world who can help him fix a problem. Even though it is three in the morning. And my husband is home rather than in the office.

All IT guys are NOT created equal.

My husband is named Gene, by the way. He’s also a father, all-round family man, raker of leaves and doer of other husband-type chores. He does his own laundry.

Pretty good, huh?

And he watches football.

He also watches baseball, but baseball games are several nights a week, so it seems like there’s ALWAYS a baseball game on, from April until some vague date in October when the play-offs suddenly do or do not matter.

Football, it seems, is more of an event. The games are on Sunday, often two or three in a row, so it’s possible to start watching a game in bright sunlight and emerge from the ManCave after the last play in total darkness.

Yes, he has a ManCave. We started calling it that well before it became a well-used phrase. The Man Cave is the lower level of our house, nice Pergo floors, but with dark wood paneling that screams 1978, as well as pseudo- rustic trim and a fireplace of fake stone you could roast a fake ox in.

I keep wanting to redecorate, but have met resistance. Apparently painting the walls a nice medium taupe will damage the ‘Cave’ aspect of the ManCave. I’m trying to find an angle, but this one is tough.

The ManCave is home to a large screen HD TV (3D over my dead body) an elaborate surround-sound system, a leather recliner and a prized collection of beer mugs and Bobble-heads. It’s where Gene watches football. Often, Gene’s brother, Gary, comes over. Gary is another lovely man who watches football. Which, at my house at least, is in itself a team sport.

They yell a lot. They also tend to swear a lot. They advise the coach. At concert pitch. In fact, I often wonder how the coach does NOT hear them. They are also rather critical of certain players, what they do, how they do it, and who they’re doing it to. And then they make suggestions about what they can do instead, even though, to someone like me who knows nothing about football, the suggestions sound anatomically improbable.

Maybe it’s because they’re Jets fans. For anyone who is not a Jets fan – boy, are you lucky! The Jets are the kind of team that you think somebody somewhere would throw a game or two their way out of pity. The Jets have not won a Super Bowl game in a really long time. It’s frustrating for the fans. I imagine it’s frustrating for the team as well, but at least they’re getting paid. Gene and Gary experience every play, groan on every tackle, analyze each miss-step, and they aren’t getting a red cent.

This year, it looks like things could turn around. Of course, I hear that every year. And to be truthful, both Gene and Gary are pretty realistic about their team. In fact, if the Jets are winning, say, 178 to 3 and there’s less than two minutes to play, Gary will sigh and say with complete confidence “They can still lose”.

But this year…there’s something going on with New England that I will never understand, and then there’s the NY Giants ( hey, they’re a New York team, and they seem to win a few, so why can’t you root for them?). There’s a Wild Card, and the play-offs, then more play-offs, or is that just baseball? And that East-West thing – is that just baseball too? So this year…maybe…

…maybe the IT guy in Belgium can explain it to me.

What I’m working on right now

So, I’m writing a Young Adult novel.

Why, you may ask, am I writing a YA when I should be busy on the sequel to Better Off Without Him?

Well, there’s the good answer, and then there’s the real answer.

The good answer is because I have a 15-year-old daughter who was upset that she wasn’t a character in my first book, and asked if she could be a character in the next one, so I decided to write a book with a fictional version of her as the main character.

The real answer as to why I’m writing a YA is because I really want a beach house, and I figure with every television network out there producing show about hot young teens and supernatural beings, the quickest way to big bucks is to write a series, sell out to the CW as quickly as possible, then head down to Hilton Head for a cushy retirement.

My daughter, by the way, is perfectly fine with this. In fact, her main comments have been along the lines of –“When you sell your book, can I finally have an iPad?” She is a little upset because the book is about two sisters, and she’s the smart one instead of the beautiful one. We may have to work on the whole self-image thing.

The original concept was not YA – I had this idea that an older, unmarried woman got drunk in a bar, got picked up by a hot young thing and spent the night with him, only to find out in the morning that the hot young thing was actually a supernatural being, a prince of a supernatural being, and that by sleeping with him, she had in fact married him in the eyes of the supernatural community. She would then spend the rest of the book trying to figure a way out of the whole thing.

Or not.

When I was thinking about YA, this idea came back to me. I could have one of the sisters – the beautiful one – get into the same situation, but she wouldn’t have to sleep with the guy. I know from experience that teen girls can get into a whole lot of trouble by just opening up their mouths and talking, so that’s what happens here. The beautiful sister could say the wrong thing at the wrong time and find herself engaged to a prince who’s not at all what he seems. Then the smart sister could spend lots of time trying to figure out how to put things right. There could be a few hot good- guys, a few super bad-guys, a few best friends, a little romance, a little suspense – but all that doesn’t matter because I fully intend to put a Golden Retriever on the cover, and as any bookseller will tell you, that’s all you really need to sell a book in the first place.

My biggest challenge was deciding what type of supernatural being to write about. I struck vampires, werewolves and zombies off the list right away. They have all been seriously over-done, and I was looking for a previously unexploited merchandising opportunity. So I spent a lot of time trolling the internet trying to find a supernatural creature that did not have too much pre-existing mythology.

I work so much better if I can just make stuff up.

I finally found the perfect creature, something fairly recognizable, yet something that could transform to and from a cute teen-age actor with the minimum effort from the special effects department. (I don’t know what kind of budget the CW has.)

So now I’m writing away. No, I won’t tell you what the creature is. With my luck, thirty-seven other YA writers will see this, steal my idea, and when I finally get around to publishing my book, the world will be so sick of &N4%w#’s that I can kiss my beach house good-bye.

I’ll keep you posted on my progress. I may even try to post a few excerpts here. But if not, keep your eyes open for a new book next spring with my name on it. And a Golden Retriever on the cover.

A word or two of explanation

It has come to my attention that I now have a blog follower.

This is very exciting. Thank you, whoever you are. I’m thrilled, really, that you think that what I have to say is interesting enough to actually keep tabs on me. So I feel I should explain why I post so infrequently to this, my own personal blog.

First, let me assure you, it’s not because I have nothing to say. Believe me, I’ve got plenty so say, about all sorts of things, and if you ask my friends they will tell you I’m not at all shy about being very explicit in my opinions. I’m also a writer, so even if I didn’t have an explicit opinion, I’d have no problem making one up.

The problem is time. There are only so many hours in a day, and since sleeping is one of my favorite pastimes, I have even less actually productive time than some other people may have.

And, sadly, there are all sorts of previous claims on said time. Work, for one. I’m a book-seller at Barnes&Noble. My hours were recently cut, which, aside from the fact that there’s less money coming in, should have been a good thing, because it should have freed up hours otherwise spent running my butt off for $10.25/hr. to do other things, like blog.

However.

When my hours were cut, the first thing that went was my cleaning lady. I love my cleaning lady. For three years, she has made it possible for me to not have to even think about a toilet brush. I have pets, so I was always sweeping and vacuuming, but I didn’t mind. Because I knew, every other week, Carliane would come and clean my bathrooms.

I tried to convince my husband that we could do without milk, bread, meat and cable rather than let her go, but I had no luck. So now I have to spend some of that supposedly extra time cleaning my house again. I also spend lots of time complaining about it to anyone who will listen. You, for instance.

I have to find a way to sell my book. Since I have roughly zero dollars in my Marketing budget, I spend at least an hour a day trolling the web, finding people to review, print excerpts from, feature, mention or otherwise talk about my book. So that people can buy it. So I can make enough money to hire back my cleaning lady.

I am part of a blog called ‘Boomers and Books’, and twice a month I post there, and since at least one of my posts is a book review, I have to find time to read a book worth reviewing.

I’m also on an on-line book club that’s reading The Forsythe Saga, which is roughly seven trillion pages long.

Then there’s the Next Book. Actually, the Next Two Books. One is a sequel to Better Off Without Him, where Mona goes to Hollywood to write her movie script, and hilarity ensues. The other is a Young Adult with a slight paranormal bend, which will hopefully open up a previously untapped merchandising opportunity, which will then allow me to make lots of money and hire my cleaning lady back.

So that’s why I don’t post much here. And I’m sorry about that. But keep checking back. That way,when I hire back my cleaning lady, you’ll be the first to know.

Do you just love the new look?

My husband, who designs web-things for a living, said my old page was dull, and he re-did the whole page for me. Isn’t it beautiful? I even have the little ‘Subscribe Here’ button, although I have no idea if anyone is even reading all this. But it looks good, which is the main thing.

I’m still working on the whole Twitter thing. Am I supposed to be following people, or are people supposed to be following me? And how do I get them to follow me? And why would they want to? Does anyone really want to know about the crappy customer at work who wanted the book “about drug abuse with the blue cover”? Or what I bought at Foodtown?”

I don’t think I’m a Twitter person, but it’s a very valuable Social Media tool that I can use to get the word out about my book. Or, it’s a very valuable Social Media tool for those people who think that the world wants to know what they bought at Foodtown. Either way, I’m working on it, and as soon as I figure it out, I’ll let you all know. I’ll try tweeting. I think.

But in the mean time, I’m going to try to get other people I know who blog to link to my blog, by promising to post a link to their blog, and that way we can all expand the blogging pool, gather many many cyber-fans, win a few blogging awards, and be able to retire to a fab beach house somewhere, which is still my main objective in life. So look to my blogroll, click, subscribe, and know that you are helping bloggers everywhere to fame and fortune, one click at a time.

So I thought I should say something…

Until very recently, this blog was only used to post samples of my book in case anyone was interested in actually buying it   But since the blog address is out there now, and the merely curious may be dropping by, I thought that I should say something.  So, lets start by explaining that it took me over three hours of typing, clicking, re-clicking, copying, pasting, and screaming at the top of my lungs to make the four or five changes to the blog site needed to get it looking the way I wanted it to.  I separated out the ‘Buy Here’ links, added a picture of the cover, and posted my email address.  My 14-year-old daughter could have done all that in 8 minutes, but I’m trying to wean myself away from my cyber-dependence on close family members. Although my husband will always be the go-to guy when it comes to moving things from one place to the other, because I don’t know the difference between a file and a folder, and I don’t want to.

So, that gives you an idea of what my life is like.  I’m a writer who should have been born in the quill and parchment age.  Instead, I have to grapple with things so beyond my comprehension, I sometimes pretend it’s all magic, because that’s easier for me to accept than bits, bytes and motherboards.  But if it weren’t for the cyber-world, my book would never have been published, so let’s call it a blessing, okay?  I assume you’ve read Better Off Without Him, and that’s why you’re here.  Unless you just stumbled in by accident.  In that case, by all means read one of the samples, be completely charmed, then click on one of those links over there and you will be (magically) taken to a place where you can buy my book.  Or not.  You may end up in a virtual coal mine.  As Mike Doonesbury once said, there are still a few bugs in the system.