I belong to a number of Yahoo groups. Authors who complain a lot tend to catch my eye. One author in particular who, in the past couple of years, has complained about eBook publishers and stated that self-publishing is the wave of the future, who has  complained about editors wanting to change her work, who has complained about various clauses in contracts, reviews and reviewers, and rejections of her work. I’ve seen her gripe about a lot of things.

Well, the other day an editor asked me what I knew about her. The editor had seen lots of promo by this author and rather thought the author must be big at another publisher. I told the editor what I had seen on the loops. And I was a tad more specific than I am here.  Then the editor said she was curious because she had a submission from the author. My first thought was that if this author was so big at the other publisher why was she subbing to my publisher.

At any rate, this author’s rantings in the past may have come back to bite her on the ass. I’ve posted numerous times in the past (most recently in the PASIC chapter’s newsletter) about how things you say on the internet can come back to bite you on the ass. I’m not 100% positive, but I rather think this author just got chomped.

So my rant for today isn’t really a rant anymore. See, this weekend I spent a lot of time visiting blogs I’ve never been to before.  I wasn’t happy. I wanted to come here and remind people of all those rules for blogging that you see across the internet. Like not having music that auto plays on your blog or website. This one should should be pretty obvious. Not everyone likes the same music. The blog owner may think it’s cool to show people what she’s listening to or give people a sense of who she is by making them listen to the song on her iPod. It’s not cool. It’s not a good idea. It’s kinda childish IMO but don’t take my word for it. Go read all those Do’s and Don’ts lists where they all state: Auto play music on your site – don’t do it!

I was going to rant about all the excerpts I see posted on blogs. Edited excerpts from published books. Excerpts with the use of TWO instances of WAS in the same sentence and SIX instances of WAS in the same paragraph. All those WAS’s equals a story written in the passive voice which is basically a no no, something an experienced professional editor should have caught and asked the author to fix.  I realized there are a lot more publishers out there now whom we can add to the list labeled “Has Shoddy Editing.”

I had my snarky remarks all ready to go for those blogs on a tour with comments on moderation and no one in sight to release the comments. I had even snarkier remarks for Live Journal blogs that show you a COMMERCIAL when you try to comment. Oh, unless you pay for Live Journal. Rumor has it that the pay customers over there don’t subject their commenters to the commercial. Maybe I should show those people all the pretty WordPress blogs I know. If I’m gonna pay for a blog, I think I’d rather pay domain and hosting and have my own blog like this one here where I can change the template and plugins and where commenting isn’t hard to figure out.

Seriously, I don’t get the Live Journal thing.  Commercials on comments. Sheesh.

I’m not really ranting. I’m not snarking. I was going to. But that editor asking me about the author reminded me that stuff you say can come back to haunt you. So I’ll  just flush my snark. It’s not worth it. For one, because everything I wanted to rant about won’t change. There will always be bloggers who don’t understand the music thing or the commenting thing. And I don’t think Live Journal’s commercials are going away any time soon. Neither do I think that publishers with shoddy editing will all go away and authors who think those publishers are amazing will remain as well. More than just love is blind in this world, don’t ya think?

Tossing the snark into the dumpster and just heaving a sigh and shaking my head is what I’m reduced to because I need to follow my own rules about what not to say on the net.  Luckily, you don’t even need to comment on this because I know my demographic and I know that most of you (more the bloggers than the authors but some authors get this) feel the same as me on these issues.  We’ll just have to heave a collective sigh.

And now, my Monday Marcus to ease my disappointment at not ranting.

So beautiful. I love a man with the top button of his jeans undone…

Have a great Monday everyone!

There’s still some updating of info we need to do (I need to fix my CafePress stuff) but it’s all small stuff at this point. The blog has now been resurrected and hopefully it will have more of a life than her past “I have no life” musings. If you get a chance, cruise on by and take a look at Skully’s – and Motley’s – new home.

I’ve decided I don’t have much of a life either. All I do is work. Work at the office, work at home. Of course, there are days writing is sheer fun and other days when it’s just work.  I have a lot of writing ahead of me this year including a resurrection – erm, revision of my five year old Regency manuscript for a contest. Luckily, I only have to fix 30 pages of it for the contest and it doesn’t have to be a completed manuscript. That’s good for me cause the damned thing has no ending. More than 75,000 words and it’s just hanging there waiting for me to finish it. I’m hoping the revision of 30 pages gives me the impetus to finish this sucker.

A bunch of stressful things are going on at home and before you ask…things are fine with Motley and Rott.  We’ve just got external stuff happening that is putting a lot of strain on all of us right now. I’m sleeping even worse than usual, but I’m hoping some things that are up in the air at the moment will be resolved in a  few days one way or the other. No one’s dying as far as I know so I figure I’ll just bite the bullet and try to deal as best I can and hope for the best cause I guess it could all be worse. (How many cliches did I just slap into a single sentence, eh? LOL)

I’ve got a nice Marcus in his undies here in honor of my friend Sally whom I recently found on Facebook after having lost touch with her more than 20 years ago.  She’s a little down in the dumps so I sent her a copy of The Pixie Prince and told her Max the underwear model should make her laugh. Because of Max, I bring you Marcus modeling underwear.

I do love the way he fills out boxer briefs…

On Wicked Wednesday I’ve got a guest blogger talking about vampires so come on back and check it out later this week.  I hope you all have a great Monday!

I don’t know what it is about the end of the year that sends me into a frenzy when it comes to writing. Perhaps it’s because I got my first contract in October, on the 30th, the day before my birthday. I have so many projects I’m working on with deadlines looming (some with real deadlines and some with self-imposed ones) that it’s a wonder my mind hasn’t wandered away before this!

I have Rock My World and Honorable Silence coming in November. I have Christmas Wishes and Unbreak Me coming in December. Right now, I need to finish my dark tale of the Five Realms for Patric Michael’s Wishing on a Blue Star anthology. Deadline: Nov 1. Next I need to do edits for Unbreak Me which has some world building issues (yes, even I have world building issues sometimes!) Then I need to tap out 10K for Christmas Wishes. After that I have a Quickie sequel to Rock My World to do and I need to get rolling on my Guardians series and then there’s the sequel to Unbreak Me…

You get the picture. Nonstop work. Which is good for me.

Last night I sat down and wrote out the story of how my parents died and how grief had affected me. I had not ever done that before. It was cathartic in some ways.  Mostly, I looked at it and went, “Wow. How the hell did I survive?” And the biggest AH HA moment came when I wrote down that grief had affected me to the extent that I hadn’t been able to write fiction for ten years. I still built the worlds and characters in my head, I just could not commit them to paper. I figure I must be okay now cause I can write up a storm these days!

Writing is very personal for me despite it being a business, but on a more personal note, my wandering mind is flitting to the jam packed week ahead. It’s my birthday week. And this is the big bad birthday. The horrid birthday. The one that has the AARP sending me mail. *sigh* Can I just say I’m kind of not looking forward to it? I mean, my birthday hasn’t really meant anything to anyone since my parents died. I realized that last night too as I wrote my grief story. Yeah, that makes me a little pathetic, but what and ever. It’s just how my life is. I don’t know what I’d do if someone made a fuss. Seriously.

Aside from my birthday there’s Halloween and a bunch of promo things I have happening like blog posts and interviews. And I have stuff going on at work that is going to keep me hopping. I have a conference call today for a couple of hours about new cemetery software and how it would affect our current customizations… blah blah stuff to the rest of you.

I have a new group blog I’ll be writing at every other Tuesday until the end of the year. Castles and Guns is a dark fantasy blog and right now I’ve only got the two fantasy stories (Ain’t Nuthin’ But a Hellhound in Weirdly III and my urban fantasy/paranormal Where There’s Smoke) but Unbreak Me is more urban fantasy than paranormal and In the Light (for Wishing on a Blue Star) is definitely a dark tale with a fantasy feel even though Weylyn Randall is in it. And how I managed to write anything about Weylyn and not have a sex scene is amazing.

Lots of stuff happening in my world right now. I made two new covers for Pink Petal Books and have a third in the works. You can see those over at Winterheart Design. Rott spent some significant time working on my new computer yesterday and I’m thinking the end is in sight soon which means switching over to the Tribal machine and giving the Green Machine to him.  I think there’s other stuff going on too but hell if I can remember this early in the morning. Just all kinds of things for my mind to wander back and forth through.

It’s raining again here in SoCal, remnants of a typhoon according to my Weather Channel desktop icon. So I think another wet Marcus is in order. I know it’s a repeat from more than a year ago but it sure is worth repeating.

I’ll be doing my first blogging at Castles and Guns on the 2nd so make sure you check it out and see what I have to say on my first day there. If you’re in one of the rainy areas today, try to stay dry. I’ll see you back here on Thursday for some Jimmy Thomas!

Have a great Monday!

Anyway, I found this post at RD about the Epic Black Car. So I clicked the link cause I’m way more curious than I ought to be. And WOWZA. Am I ever glad I clicked! This guy is funny! He’s amusing! He’s SMART! Yanno, his sense of humor reminds me a lot of Dave2 and he’s a dude from WA too so it makes me wonder if it’s something in the water up there…

I left a 100 word reply in a bid for the Epic Black Car with my bid of $50 and a pack of Blogography.com playing cards. Apparently, the owner of the Epic Black Car liked my reply. He liked the reply of the other romance author too. He liked us so much he wrote a post about romance authors. I love this dude. Seriously.

Epic Army of Man Boosters. Yep. That would be me and every other romance author out there. We. Love. Men. Some of us even love men who love men. Bah. I just love em all. They make great heroes even when they have geeky jobs and don’t have long hair. And really, I love a guy with a sense of humor. Epic Black Car Guy has a great sense of humor! So please go by his blog and check out the posts and the auction. You never know, you could win the Epic Black Car!

Today’s Marcus is a repeat but I felt like posting it cause I’m in a car mood now.

Damn. All this car talk makes me want to watch the Transporter series again. Or go on a road trip. Oh, yeah. Road trip…*eyes glaze over*

Soooo. I’m sending you all over to the Epic Black Car blog to check out the fun. Have yourselves an Epic Marcus Monday!

Have a great Saturday!