The indignities of modern life

Now Me Also Commenting Here

/ J. F. Riordan / 2 Comments

When writers get together, the conversation immediately moves to the vicissitudes of publishing: which house treats authors well; who never issues checks on time; what kind of publicity is offered. And in these days of social media madness, the subject of blogging is always high on the list of topics.

If you’re a writer, you have to have a blog. And if you have a blog you live for comments. But you are always lured into disappointment by Spam. “You have 162 comments!” your blog site tells you. Eagerly, you check in, only to discover that your comments are 100 percent spam.

Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t understand how spam works. The majority of the come-on attempts are so patently false, and–at least on my blogging system–so completely separated out from the genuine, that I almost feel sorry for the perpetrators. Almost.

Remember Mad Libs? It’s a party game in which you are instructed to come up with a list of words: a noun, a verb, another noun, an adjective. And then your words are inserted into a previously unknown paragraph, with hilarious results.

Spam comments always remind me of this. And this is why I am puzzled.

Somewhere in the world, someone has provided a list of English synonyms to be inserted into standard sentences for the express purpose of permitting miscreants to invade your website and computer. Maybe the mastermind behind it played Mad Libs games as a child. Or maybe he has an unwarranted confidence in the intellect of his minions. And not incidentally, he may be underestimating the intelligence of the average blog writer.

To wit:

(All errors below are as written by senders.)

“I’ve been browsing online more than 3 hours today, yet I never found any interesting article like yours. It is pretty worth enough for me.”

“Personally if all web owners and blogrrss made good content as youu did, the net will be much more useful than ever before.”

“i’ve read this put up and iff I maay desire to suggest soke fascinating issues of suggestions.”

“Ahaa, its good conversation not he topic of this article here at this website, I have read all that, so now me also commenting here.”

“Thank you for the auspicious writeup. It in fact was a amusement account it. Look advanced to more added agreeable from you!”

One fellow (non spam) writer confessed to me that she was so fearful of contamination from these comments that she was afraid to even look at them.  She was missing the opportunity for some fine comedy.

But all the same, I am deeply grateful for spam filters. And I look advanced to your comments.

An Editing Cautionary Tale

/ J. F. Riordan / 1 Comment

We are in the final edits–the galleys–of North of the Tension Line (Beaufort Books, September 2014; Available now for pre-sale on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Sorry. Had to be done. ) just at the very moment that things are intense at work. Although a professional proofreader and my editor have been through the book, as the author, I, too, need to review it, and time is pretty crunched. My good friend, Mary Beth, aka “Impromptu Librarian”, offered to be an extra set of eyes, and I gratefully accepted. In less than a day she had read the book for probably the third time,  and returned the proofed documents for me to pass on to my editor. But the next morning she called and we had an odd conversation.

Mary Beth: “What is hapcedarss?”

Me: “I’m sorry?”

Mary Beth: “Hapcedarss.”

Me: “I hate your bluetooth system.”

Mary Beth: “It’s in your book. Hapcedarss.”

Me: “Hapcedarss? It’s in my book? Are you sure?”

Mary Beth: “I’m sure. The proof reader has many notes about it.”

Me: “In my book?”

Mary Beth: “She had been commenting on it several times, and then pointed out that she had googled the word and checked with OED, but cannot find any such word.”

Me: “That’s hardly surprising. I don’t think there is any such word.”

Mary Beth: “Well, it’s in your book.”

Me: “Hapcedarss is in my book.”

Mary Beth: “Right.”

Me: “Hmmm. Very odd.”

It was a busy day of meetings and preparations for meetings at work, so it wasn’t until quite late that, now having forgotten about hapcedarss, I was able to finally sit down with my manuscript to begin my own proofreading. Not far into the manuscript light finally dawned.

I sold my book much more quickly than I had expected, so submitting my manuscript for fact-checking had therefore also had a much tighter timeline than I had expected. Among the more essential things was sending the book to my friend, Captain Bill, the ferry captain, to make sure that I hadn’t committed any egregious ferrying errors. He called me, and in one of the more delightful moments of this whole process, left a message telling me that he had read the book, and that he had liked it. I still have his voice mail on my phone and listen to it when I’m feeling blue. Anyway, when I called him back, I anxiously enquired whether I had made any mistakes about the ferry, or said anything stupid about the lake or its navigation. He assured me that it was all fine, but he had one correction. The trees at School House Beach, he pointed out, were not pines, as I had written. They were cedars.

Armed with this information, I sat down with my manuscript and created a “find and replace”. Wherever P-I-N-E appeared, it should be replaced with C-E-D-A-R. For some reason, I have rarely used find and replace, even though I have been using Word at home and at work for a pretty long time. What I hadn’t realized was that find and replace doesn’t just find and replace words. It finds and replaces the interiors of words.

It was late in the day, but I called my editor in New York. “I’m so glad you called to tell me this,” she said. “I had a terrible day, and this makes it so much better.”

Apparently, there is a great deal of happiness–or at least the talk of it–in my book. And it’s likely that hapcedarss will forever be a part of Mary Beth’s and my, and my editor’s vocabularies.

Our cups overflow with hapcedarss.

 

 

 

 

 

 

An Unprepossessing Beginning

/ J. F. Riordan / 3 Comments

Today was one of those days. Generally, I try to remind myself that all my problems are lucky people problems. But sometimes you have to allow yourself a tiny bit of self pity.

So, I arrived at the office, dressed for the long day of back-to-back meetings. Since I usually start early, I eat my breakfast at my desk. I am fortunate to have a beautiful office in an historic building, with oriental carpet, oil paintings, and a brass chandelier. But underneath my desk, in a concession to practicality, is one of those plastic sheets that allow your office chair to roll on carpet. I should note that for once in my life I was wearing (relatively) sensible shoes, a pair of low-heeled black sandals, but with, as it turns out, very slippery soles. I was carrying my bowl of yogurt and blueberries in one hand, and my cafe au lait in the other, and had just stepped behind my desk when my foot slid from under me. In what seemed like slow motion, I went down, my hands went up, and a cascade of yogurt, blueberries, and cafe au lait went up into the air in a spectacular arcing curve, landing, with rather remarkable accuracy, on my head. My Italian designer suit jacket sleeves were soaked through with coffee, my hair was clinging to my forehead,  and there were blueberries kind of mushed into the part of the oriental carpet that wasn’t covered by the plastic sheet thing. The receptionist called from downstairs to ask if we had knocked over a file cabinet. “No,” I said. “That was me.” My colleague from across the hall tried to be helpful by laughing and bringing paper towels. After going through a massive stack of paper towels, in a triumph of optimism over yogurt, I went to one of my female colleagues (assuming that the males would be of little use in this case, since they would have only laughed) and asked her if I were presentable enough. She paused for a moment as she looked me over. “I think you need to change.”

I went home to start again and missed my first meeting.

I suppose, in some respects, it was the highlight of the day.

 

Lessons in the Modern Age

/ J. F. Riordan / 1 Comment

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I know. I’m supposed to have a Facebook page to market my book. But I have spent Facebook’s entire existence avoiding it. It seemed too intrusive; too much trouble; too…unrestful. But this morning, succumbing to earnest advice, I launched my page.

The first thing I did was omit to capitalize the initials in my name. I had managed somehow to type  J. f. Riordan.  So I went to edit it. You can’t. I couldn’t believe this, thinking it must be some personal failing on my part. But it wasn’t. You actually can’t. If you try, they want you to submit a copy of your driver’s license. I am not doing that. So I tried to ask Facebook for help. This was my first exposure to Facebook customer service. There is none.

Then, I thought, maybe I can put my author’s bio at the top of the page. I can’t. You can’t. No one can. You have to have the things they want on the top of the page. Like your favorite tv shows, and movies you watched recently. I went to the “about” section and removed things like favorite tv shows and movies I watched recently. But the tv shows were still there. TV shows have nothing to do with why I have a Facebook page. But it doesn’t matter.

Then I realized from my sister that my birthdate–which wasn’t my real birthdate–had been posted, even though I didn’t want to post my birthdate. “Oh yeah?” she wrote. “You were born only a few months before we were married? Hahahaha!” I don’t want to post my birthdate. Did I mention that? So I “hid” it. But when I look at the page it still shows in my timeline. I tried changing my birthdate. A Facebook message popped up: “You can only change your birthdate a limited number of times.” How many? I wondered. How often do people want to change their birthdates? And why can’t I change it whenever I want? Why would they care? What’s one woman’s vanity to them? (Answer: they are collecting data on you and want to tell their advertisers that they know everything about you.)

Facebook asked to access my e-mail contacts. Reluctantly, and against my better judgment, I allowed this. Should I send to business associates? I suppose. It’s marketing, right? To the vet’s office? Maybe. I write about dogs. The Dentist? Well, why not? They want me to like them on Facebook. A billion e-mails went out to people who will probably be wondering who this J.F. Riordan is who is sending random invitations to perfect strangers. 

By this time, my 1 friend–a relative–had increased to 7. I had friends! But the reason I had built the page was no longer visible on the time line–namely, my book. My husband informed me that (oh, fond hope) once you have 5,000 followers you can’t have a regular page. “You shouldn’t have a regular page,” he said. “You should have a book page. You’re an entity, not a person.”

This sounded about right. I was feeling rather like an entity. So I went back to Facebook to create a business page. It wanted to link to my other page, to J. f. Riordan. I really didn’t want my book going out with an error in my name. But nothing I did, from private browsing, to creating a new e-mail account with a different name enabled me to escape from the original page. I deleted the account and tried all this again. I got an e-mail saying they would delete my page forever in 14 days. Was I sure I wanted to delete this account.  I was sure. Very, very sure.

So I have spent my entire morning in my pajamas fruitlessly messing around with social media on the computer. I have become that person. My day is half gone, I am frustrated, the dogs are restless and unhappy, and I haven’t gotten one actual piece of writing done on my one actual day of writing. 

And billions of e-mails have gone out to invite friends, associates, veterinarians, dentists, and miscellaneous others to a nonexistent Facebook page. 

Facebook, I hate you.