A Professional Dilettante

Please do not read any further if all you're going to do is tell me to use another browser.

Please help me figure out how to fix this.

Ever since the last updates for Windows 8 (which I have no problems with otherwise, so please let's not get sidetracked into oh, god, Windows 8, yuck) the other day, every single website I go to IE 10 does this little pop-up thing at the bottom telling me the website has security errors. Even my own damned website.

How do I get it to quit doing this? The Microsoft forums are way less than useful.

Thanks in advance because someone will help me, right?

Well, I’ve done something completely new, at least for me.  I had ordered some more print copies of my books from CreateSpace, mostly for a local signing I’m going to be doing on March 18th, and they arrived today.

The last time I ordered copies from CreateSpace, it took them three weeks to arrive, so I was allowing plenty of time for them to get here.  This time it took three days.  Go figure.

Anyway, I’ve been dithering about sending Repeating History to the Midwest Book Review for a while because you have to send them the print version, and now that I have some spare copies, I thought, why not now?  So I put together a press release, and I wrote a cover letter (both required), and I packed up the requisite two copies, and I will mail the package off tomorrow.

Here’s hoping they decide to review it.  Bookstores and libraries read the Midwest Book Review — it’s one of the few review sources that concentrates on small press and indie published books that can say that.

Oh, and the signing?  I’ll be one of a group of several female historical writers who will be a part of a program (no, I’m not the speaker, thank all the gods) celebrating women’s history month, put on by the Lakewood Historical Society.   Good times.

Here’s how I introduced Repeating History in the cover letter:

Repeating History is a time travel novel set in the Old West, specifically the early years of Yellowstone National Park.  It takes place back in the days when to be a tourist in the park was to take your life in your hands.  This was not only because of natural hazards like geysers and bears, but because of the flight of the Nez Perce Indians through the Yellowstone country on their way to Canada in 1877, not to mention the soldiers pursuing them.

I like to say that Repeating History is ninety percent history, ten percent fantasy.  I believe it would appeal to those who enjoy coming of age stories, the Old West, and those who enjoy a romance along with their history and adventure.

Hopefully that’s enticing enough…

Mirrored from Repeating History.

They're a horrible bandwidth provider (as opposed to ISP). This is what my ISP said when I complained about the intermittent slowdowns (I've recorded them as low as .2 download speed when it's supposed to be 1.25):

"I contacted Centuylink again and after speaking with them I believe I've found the root of your issue. It looks like they replaced the DSLAM you were connected to with a fiber node, and routed you to a more distant DSLAM. This is something they do when building out their fiber network and does have a negative impact on DSL customers.

Unfortunately, this is not something that can be resolved. This is a business
decision Centuylink made to focus on their fiber network. When they do this we have no way to resolve the issues caused by it, as they own the physical lines."

And when I said this means I'm no longer getting what I'm paying for, they replied with this:

"This is something Centurylink has complete rights to do unfortunately, as they do fully own the lines. You are correct that your two choices are to use the service as is, or to move to a different type of service such as Comcast or Centurylink fiber. Centurylink does this to push people off of third party ISPs such as ourselves and force them into their fiber services."

I do NOT want to go through the hassle of switching ISPs, and even if I did the only choices I have are CenturyLink itself and Comcast (the local cable provider, which sucks eggs as well (I have TV through them, but only because I have no other choice), as well as being a lot more expensive), so there's no one to move to (Frontier doesn't cover my area, and when I go to those websites that take your address and tell you where you can get internet from, I get two lousy choices, Comcast and CenturyLink).

So I'm stuck paying for service I'm not getting because There Are No Alternatives.

I'm screwed, basically.

I'd be "angry as hell and not going to take it anymore" too, like the guy in the old movie Network, if it would do me the least particle of good.

I loved her movies as a kid (no, I'm not that old -- I saw them on TV).

I knew little to nothing about her politics as an adult.

http://www.latimes.com/obituaries/la-me-shirley-temple-black-20140211,0,1264780.story#axzz2t3NnrNf4

Whilst doing some housekeeping on my Amazon pages this afternoon, I clicked on Cross-Country‘s page and discovered a really wonderful new review.

I am still new enough at being a published writer that when a perfect stranger writes words like these about my own words, it pleases me more than I can say.  I suspect I will always be new enough at this to feel that way when this happens.

Oh, and when I wrote Mr. Frauenfelder to thank him, it turns out he’s written a longer version of the review on his own blog.

Sometimes things are so much niftier than they have any right to be.

Mirrored from Repeating History.

So.  I’m back to my roots in one way, and about as far away from my roots as I can get otherwise.

Back about twenty years ago, when I was rather desperate in a lot of ways, I took a job in a small town in the mountains of Montana.  For someone who’d grown up in suburban Los Angeles, Denver, and San Francisco, it was one heck of a culture shock.  Twenty-five hundred people in town, twenty-five thousand in a county the size of Connecticut.  The nearest mall was ninety miles away, and the the movie theater was only open three nights a week.

I didn’t stay there very long, because I was offered another position near Seattle a few months after I arrived, and western Washington was where I really wanted to be.  But by the time I left, I knew I was going to miss that little town in Montana, where a traffic jam consisted of three cars and a moose, where a federal wilderness area was less than a dozen miles from town, and whose residents called it the Last Best Place.

I still sort of miss the fact that I could not walk down the street there without someone calling out, “Hey, Meg, how are you?”  When I first moved there, my employment as the first degreed reference librarian they’d ever had put my picture on the front page of the bi-weekly newspaper, so everyone knew my name.  I never did get to the point where I could say, “Fine!  How are you?” without wanting to add, “Do I know you?”

Anyway, I’ve always wanted to set a book in my small town in Montana.  Much Ado in Montana, which will be coming out the end of March, is about a small-town librarian who falls in love with the doctor who comes back home.  No, it’s not a Mary Sue.  Tara Hillerman has lived in Campbell, Montana, all of her life except for college, and she wouldn’t leave it again on a bet.  Timothy Swanson, however, has no intention of staying when he comes home to help his ailing father close up the only medical clinic in town.

What happens when bets are actually made and Tim’s father comes way too close to ruining their best friends’ love life is the stuff Shakespearean homages are made of.

If you click on this link, you can read the first chapter.  I hope you’ll want to read Much Ado in Montana when it comes out this spring.

Mirrored from Repeating History.

So, over 700,000 people showed up for the Seahawks celebration parade in Seattle today. The population of Seattle is 634,535 [g].

Never mind that the temperature at parade time was in the low twenties plus windchill.

It was quite amazing (and, no, I watched it on TV -- I'm not that crazy).

To where I was when I inadvertently deleted over two chapters of revisions.

I'm into the last chapter. I will finish these revisions by the end of this week (preferably sooner).

Yay!

My Seahawks blew the Denver Broncos OUT!!!!!!

43-8!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Woo-hoo!!!!!!!!!!!

Holy cow!!!!!!

It is a happy, happy day here.

[beams]

What's it called when you set things up on Google so that when you put in a word or phrase, they'll send you an email letting you know when it's mentioned somewhere?

I used to have it set up for M.M. Justus so I'd know if someone mentioned my authory name anywhere, but now I can't remember how I did it, and it doesn't seem to be working anymore.

Help?