Harrasment Continues

My name is Wendy Allen. I am writing to you on behalf of my father, Kenneth Allen of Old Orchard Beach, Maine. Our family is in desperate need of help. In the past two years we have tried without success to get help locally, but now the deadline is less than a week away and we do not know what to do or who to turn too for help. Since this is a long and complicated ordeal, I well start at the beginning. First off, I should tell you that we are fighting the local government, the officials of the Town of Old Orchard Beach, Maine, for the followingcharges: Discrimination against a disabled senior. A seniors rights being taken away from him.Repeated harassment, and discriminatory attempts to force a low income family off their land, resulting in the year long hospitalization of already mentioned senior and resulting in his becoming disabled.Threat of the destruction of property, including the threat of tearing down the home of aforementioned senior and his minor children and their pets.Forcing the senior and his minor children out of their home and onto the streets where they lived for much of 2006 in a “tent” constructed out of shipping pallets and a tarp, where they lived in the elements of Maine’s harsh winter, some days suffering at below zero temperatures.The threat of having all our belongings destroyed.The reason the town official Ken Shoup gave for this harassment was quote:“This is Old Orchard, you have to change you lifestyle.”End quote. No other reason has been given.Now, for our story and how this train of events came to be:First off, our family has a long history with the Town of Old Orchard, due to the fact that our family settled this town more than 300 years ago. Our family has lived on the properties here in since 1657. Originally there were several hundred acres on our land, both forest and farmland, but as the centuries went by the land was divided among relatives and passed on in increasingly smaller sections from one generation to the next. As the town grew and the land became more valuable, relatives sold out and moved away. By the 1940’s ours was the last to remain in the original family, a small lot less than an acre in size. Not only was it the last to remain in the original family, but it was also the last farm in Old Orchard Beach.It should be noted that property in Old Orchard is valued in the millions due to it being one of the world’s top rated award-winning beaches, and there in lies the root of our problem. Our farm has been accused of decreasing the property values. By the 1980’s Old Orchard became known as the hang out for biker gangs, honky-tonks, and strip shops. Property values dropped as the family image of the town plummeted. In the 1990’s, things changed once again, the gangs were driven out, the honky-tonks and bars shut down, and the strip shops became restaurants and art galleries. Property taxes sky-rocketed to the second highest in the state as millionaire mansions and high rise condos reconstructed the sky-line, forever blocking out the view of the beach from the roads.Old Orchard beach town officials, spent millions putting in brick sidewalks, Victorian street lamps, and building a replica of the town hall that had stood here in the 1800’s…. their campaign was to create a “historical town” to draw in high income tourists. The campaign was wildly advertised, and well promoted… until the new town manager and his new staff showed their true colors, that is and their campaign turned to harassing long time locals off of their land. Several families have been driven out already. Most unable and unwilling to fight the local government as the threats of propety destruction, and the removal of personal belongings (including pets) has scared most of the “offending families” into selling thier land and moving. There are only a handful of families that have stood thier ground, but those too are leaving. Ours is one of the last to remain, still standing our round, and refusing to give in to the threats made by local police officers, local code enforcement officers, and the town manager himself. In the past year they have changed (without proper votes from the people) nearly every code on the book in an attempt to force these families off thier land. Changes in code include such things as “banning the growing of vegetation”, “painting your house”, “owning more than one car per family”, and other ridiculous town laws, that now prohibit such things as growing a garrden. It is like living in a strict gated community, only it is the entire town.On the outskirts of the town, one finds the beautiful rolling acres of Ross Forest, once a candidate to become a national park, most of it now clear cut, and what little remains is soon to be sold for housing complexes, many already under construction. Dividing the Ross Forest from the down town district, lay the remains of a few scattered farms, no longer in use. Except for one: ours. At one time a large full production poultry farm, today the home of pet farm animals, but still very much an active farm, small as it is.

The harassment of our family began in the fall of 2005 after an unknown person, wrote an editorial to the local newspapers, saying, “Four homes on Portland Avenue were distracting from the value of other properties in the town”. The writer continued saying that something should be done about it, that these four homes “should be torn down”, and the families should be forced to move out of town to make way for the new generation. Two of those four homes mentioned, as it turns out, were 144 Portland Ave and 146 Portland Ave.

At 144 Portland Avenue there lives my elderly dad Kenneth Allen, myself, and my three brothers (all under 16 years of age). As you may guess, our dad was much, much older than our mother, explaining how a senior came to have young children. In 1983, my dad’s mother died and he inherited her house at 146 Portland Ave. The tiny 16 foot by 9-foot house, which never had plumbing, etc. Was turned into a shed, but even so, the town has continued to tax it as a house. Since October of 2001 (six years ago) we have been applying for a permit to repair this building, and turn it into a greenhouse so we can extend our growing season, but the town STILL has that on a waiting list.

We continued to live in the old 700 square foot house, more of a cabin than a house by the town’s standards anyways. My dad was a newspaper carrier for 21 years, our family income was under $20,000 a year, so we were never able to afford much, but we never noticed, because we were happy. Our family was living together, we had our pets with us, and we lived on our farm. That we lacked a “normal income” or a “normal lifestyle” (as the town officials now put it) never occurred to us.

Than in spring of 2006, there came the letters from the town. One after another. Demands to “remove the junk and debris” or else. As it turns out, what they were calling junk and debris, was as follows:

Our car, which though they consider it “junk” still runs in spit of what it looks like, and we use it daily.

Our fire wood (we have a woodstove for heat, cause we can‘t afford anything else.)

My dad’s tools (he was a car mechanic in the 1970’s, and still works on his own car and cars of relatives)

Our brooder (used for raising baby chickens each spring)

My dad’s antique cast iron wood stove collection

Our garden (bean poles, pea fences, etc… they say we can’t have a garden any more either)

Our washing machine (a 1947 wringer, which we use weekly)

Our farming equipment (tiller, ATV, etc…. all used on a regular basis)

In other words, what they are calling “trash”, “junk”, and “debris” are actually things we use every day, things we need in order to survive… without them we can not garden, if we can not garden we can not eat, because we can not afford to buy enough food to eat more than one meal a day per person, without the garden we well starve to death, without the farm equipment we can not garden, they are trying to kill us… this is not a figure of speech… as you shall soon understand.

My dad explained to the town that this stuff is not junk but our livelihood. The town responded by attaching a lean/fine on our property, for “refusal to comply with orders“. I’m not sure how much the amount is unto today, but it was much more than we could afford than, and more so now.

My dad made an attempt to move the items so that they could not be seen from the road, in an attempt to comply with the town’s orders, hoping that if the items could not be seen from the road, that it would stop the harassment by the town… this was the biggest mistake he could have made, because as a result, a few days later on May 9, 2006, he went into a coma.

May 9, 2006 started like any other day. I woke up and went out to feed the chickens, work in the garden, and than help my dad move items out of view of the street. My dad had not yet gotten up. I had been in the yard barely 20 minutes when my 15 year old brother came running across the yard in a panic… something was wrong, I could see it on his face, and I ran to meet him… he told me that something was wrong with daddy… daddy had woken up and torn the wood stove out of the wall tearing with it all of the water pipes… and now the house was under water, while daddy was throwing everything from the toilet to the tables to shelves to files all over the house. By the time I arrived in the house there was 8 inches of water on the floor, and nothing left of anything… everything in the house was totally destroyed, there was not only nothing left on shelves, there were no longer any shelves. It looked like a tornado had gone through the house. The house was barely recognizable.

My smaller brothers had run into the bedroom to hide, terrified at the event that was unfolding, while daddy was now in an attempt at tearing out the windows. When I asked him what he was doing, he did not recognize me, he could not hear me, he could not see me… it was like he had turned into a blind man and was tearing at the walls in an attempt to see… I rushed to the neighbor who called an ambulance.

The ambulance arrived, and talk of nervous breakdown and meningitis, were scatted around the conversations… the emergency team was in attempt of asking me what happened, when I was pulled away by a police officer named Jack Nichols, who proceeded to interrogate me about the condition of our house.

The wood stove was laying in pieces in the center of the dinning room, and this was his main focus…

repeating the same question again and again: “How long has this been laying here?” he demanded. I told him, it had just happened, he accused me of lying, and repeated the question…. over and over again, and I kept explaining to him, that daddy had just done this, which was why we had called 911. Than he turned his questions to the piles of paper and mail that scattered the house… “What’s all this clutter?” he yelled. Again I explained that this had just happened, that it was stuff that had been on the shelves and table, but as before, he accused me of lying and repeated the question again and again, his voice growing more heated and temperamental each time. Than in a menacing voice he turned on my three little brothers “Why aren’t these children in school?”. I explained that we home schooled, and we had approval from the town’s superintendent. Next he railed me out about how children can’t live in “clutter and filth” like this… again I explained that this “clutter and filth” as he called it, had just happened moments ago, and it was because this had happened that we had called for his help. He responded by calling the Department of Human Services to take my brothers away, and than calling the town code enforcement officer to condemn the house on grounds of “clutter and filth”.

While all this was happening the ambulance had taken my dad away, to where they had taken him I did not know, because Jack Nichols had not given me a chance to even know what had happened to my dad. More police, this time with cameras, stormed into the house, none of them would tell me what they were doing, why they were there, or what had happened to my dad. In the mean time my mom and her husband arrived, and my brothers and me packed a few things so we could move in with her while we figured out what to do next. We tried to pack what little we could find that hadn’t been destroyed by the flood, and do it around police officers who seemed to be going through everything in the house for no reason at all, and who refused to talk to me or even acknowledge that I was there. Luckily the hospital called us during this time and told us where my dad was, but they would not discuss his condition over the phone. It was four hours before the police would let us leave to find out what happened to my dad. A friend, who had witnessed the police searching the house with their cameras, said that he thought it looked like a drug raid, and he suggested that we get copies of the police report to find out why they were going through the house like that. I told my dad this after he came out of the hospital and he went to the station to get copies of the report, but they refused to give them to him without a court order, so we have been unable to obtain any info as to why the police were going through everything like that.

It was a lesson well learned. We called the police for help and they turned on us like rabid wolves. I well never call 911 again.

Once at the hospital I was told that what we had just witnessed was a diabetic seizure, brought on by extreme amounts of stress. The doctor asked if my dad had any recent stress… yes, he had, with the town harassing him the past couple of weeks, and than the police harassing him even during a medical emergency, nearly hindering the emergency teams ability to get him to the hospital. Dr. Greene than explained that it was luckily he had gotten to the hospital when he did “another 20 minutes and he’d have been dead” is what he said. I shudder to think that the town police and their obsession with throwing us off our land nearly resulted in my dad’s death. Dr. Greene went on to explain that my dad was now in a diabetic coma on full life support. Wither or not he would live was not yet known.

As days, turned to weeks, my dad remained in a coma, his system getting weaker by the minute, at one point his kidneys failed him and he had to be rushed in for dialysis.

My dad remained in Southern Maine Medical Center in a diabetic coma on full life support for 21 days. In mid-June they moved him, wheelchair bound, from SMMC to New England Rehab Center in Portland. On June 29, 2006, my dad came home, unable to walk on his own, and saw for the first time what had become of our house. Just three days after my dad went into the hospital our electricity was shut off. The town claims they had nothing to do with it when I asked them. Without electricity, there was no light, and thus no way to see to clean the mess from the flood, and so, it remained just as it had been left on that day in May.

My dad, was now severely disabled, only able to walk a few feet at a time and unable to lift anything. The stress caused by the town’s harassment had left him with a weak heart and failing kidney’s, but the harassment had only just begun, for almost as soon as he was out of the hospital, the town once again began its relentless pursuit to remove us from our land. Land that for us means our heritage, our history, our legacy, but land that for the town, means nothing but dollar signs and profit margins.

Due to the months of the house sitting filled with water, we could not go back in to live in it. Having no family or relatives willing to help us, we were forced to camp out in the yard. We signed up for various shelter foundations and were put on their waiting lists. At HUD we were informed that we were #600 on the list.

Problems had gotten worse than I had known… for my dad was now disabled and could not go to work, thus I started my long and fruitless search for a job, which is today still ongoing. During his hospitalization, no bills had been paid, and about 10 or so years ago my dad had taken out a mortgage on the house… there has been no money since May of 2006 (nearly a year now), and thus no mortgage payments since that time either, they are now threatening to foreclose, but know the situation and are trying to work out a payment plan with my dad, in hopes that his disability check well eventually be approved by the state (he is still waiting to hear from the state on that… they sure do take a long time. They said it well is approved, they just have to wait for the paperwork to go through, so there should be some type of an income soon, we hope.)

With no income, and a house that we can not live in, my dad lived in his car, my brothers now liveing with our mom and her husband, and I built a house-tent-lean-to type of thing out of 12 shipping pallets, 3 cinderblocks, and a tarp. We had asked the town if we could put up a yurt (not hard to build as our land boarders a forest) until we could get a house back up, but they told us no, only tents were allowed, but we couldn’t afford to buy a real tent, so I built one instead. (UPDATE: The town has since taken our house. No one ever did make an attempt to help us as every one is just too scared of the town counel to stand up to them.)

Letters from the town continued to arrive. We continued to visit the town hall where we got the run around… “Come back in the morning, he’s only here in the mornings.”…Next day: “I’m sorry, did I say mornings? No, you’ll have to come in the afternoon.”… Day after day after day… week after week after week… “He’s out sick today”… “He’s on vacation this week.”… “He’s out on an inspection today.”… Weeks became months and STILL we had yet to meet the man behind the letters: Ken Shoupe. Though we went to his office almost daily, we would not meet him until November of 2006.

In July my dad had to have surgery, and was bed-ridden or rather car-ridden, as he had no bed, for several weeks afterwards. For food we get a bag a month from the Salvation Army (the only place that made an attempt to help us, little as it was) and each month we stretch that single bag of food as much as we possible can to make it last the entire month, but that often means we are limited to one very small meal a day (sometimes less). The State only allows us $13 a month for food stamps, and we aren’t eligible for TANF or welfare because we own our land.

We went to our church for help, but than there isn’t much they can do, you see, our town manager, Jim (James) Thomas, the man giving the orders to Ken Shoupe, is a “leading member” of the church, and others involved in the letters, such as the secretary who mails them out, also go to our church. The bishop tries to help when he can, but, in the end all he was able to do was get our electricity turned back on, but for that there was a catch: The town was going to let us remove our belongings from the house, before they tore it down. So, with the electricity back on, and this new threat hanging over our heads, me and my 3 brothers, built a second tent next to the first one, and began to move what we could salvage out of the house and into the second tent. Everything we own now sits outside, damp and wet, under a tarp, buried in snow.

Such threats and happenings have been going on now ever since my dad came home from the hospital, and the stress has made his recovery almost impossible, and thus he remains weekly, sometimes daily, in and out of doctor’s offices and hospitals with increasingly failing health, and every day his doctors tell him: “You have got to get the stress out of your life before it kills you.”

And now I shall skip ahead to where we are at today and why I am writing to you:

In December, with below zero temperatures and snow burying the “tent”, a woman from the Department of Human Services showed up at our land, explaining that someone had filed a complaint, because there was a family living outdoors during Maine’s harsh sub-zero winter. We have been on waiting lists for shelter since this had happened, but we are such a large family: 5 people, plus cats, dogs, and farm animals, there is no one who would take us, we had no choice but to sit out Maine’s winter and try to keep the tarp from collapsing on our heads under the weight of the snow. She was furious, at the Town Officials, for she had attempted to contact them first and was given the same “run around” that we had been given. She told them that if they were going to force us out of our home than they should at least pay for a hotel room (Old Orchard Beach has over 300 hotels, motels, cabins, camp grounds and condos.) She said that they had told her off. She is the one who said that what was happening here was not legal, that it was harassment, and that it was bordering on criminal. It seems that if one of us had died from the cold, the town could be charged with murder, we did not realize this. Before the DHS came in, we didn’t know that what was happening was illegal, we didn’t know that we had the right to fight the town. She gave us the phone number of Pine Tree Legal, Maine’s free lawyer group. We called. And called again. And keep calling, but can’t get past the operator, who says our name is on a waiting list.

This woman from DHS was the very first person to make any attempt to really and truly help us, with her help we went from #600 on HUD’s waiting list to #1 and on January 10, 2007, after nine months of homelessness, me and my dad were allowed to move into a temporary apartment in Biddeford, while HUD, AVESTA, and CALEB Foundation, try to find a place that well take both us and my 3 brothers, and our pets… a wait that we are told could take as many as 8 years! Unfortunately the apartment is tiny beyond belief and so everything we own is still back at home in the 2 “tents”. (UPDATE: We have been taken off the CALEB foundation list because our income is too low.)

We thought things were looking up at this point. We should have known that the town officials would not allow us to be happy for a single moment. Following the news that we are in an apartment the town has moved on to a new level of harassment: This week, we received a letter from the town, saying that we have until February 12 (just 3 days from now) to remove EVERYTHING from our land (including not only the things they had listed before but also the 2 tents, our house, the sheds, and the barns), after which time they well come in and level the land. They came to the land and told us that they wanted a totally empty lot… nothing, apparently not even the trees. They are complaining that the tents are an eyesore… the tents that THEY told us we had to put up to store our belongings in, because back than they were threatening to tear down the house. Among the items in the tent is my book collection, some 7,000 books that I have been collecting over the years; antiques that had belonged to my great-grandmother, and grandmothers; and other such items. Everything we own, now stands to be stolen from us, by the town officials, and why? We asked Shoup why he was doing this to us, he said: “This is Old Orchard, you have to change you lifestyle.”

We know this is Old Orchard! Unlike outsiders like him, our family has been here on this land since 1657. My dad’s family built this town. Of course we know its Old Orchard. What kind of a reason is that to force a family off their land? We have 3 days to stop them, and no one well helps us. It seems like the whole town has turned on us. People who we once called friends now seem to be strangers.

Today this caper of harasment has taken on a new level… they are now threaten to take our animals away, based on false accusations made by one named Smith. They say they well take them in 5 days from today, but they have no grounds to take them, and as with everything else they have done, they have no court order to back themselves up with. The animals are part of our family, they are like children to me, they have no right to threaten to take them. No right at all!

We have gone to everyone we can pleading, begging for help, but no one is willing to help us. Every church, every charity… even the volunteer lawyers, but Old Orchard Beach is Maine’s biggest tourist attraction, a town that draws in millions of tourist each summer, tourists who bring with them, money that makes Old Orchard one of Maine’s wealthiest towns, and because of that no one well help us fight them. We are told to give up, to just move… we are told that we can’t fight the Town of Old Orchard because it’s one of Maine’s most powerful government seats. But that doesn’t give them the right to steal our belongings! That doesn’t give them the right to steal our land! That doesn’t give them the right to force us to live in a tent during the winter! How can they just come in and level our land? They don’t even have any court orders to back themselves up with! What they are doing is not legal, but no one well do anything to stop them! They well not break us into losing, but if this doesn’t stop, they well kill my dad. This has to stop. They have too far. Please, there must be someway someone can help us! If you know of anyone who may be able to help us, please let us know!

Our Mailing address is:

Wendy C. Allen
P.O.Box 1452
Saco, ME 04072

my email address (my dad don’t have one) xavychup@yahoo.com

You can also write a letter of protest to the town council at:

Old Orchard Beach Town Council
1 Portland Ave
Old Orchard Beach, ME 04064

Please, even if all you can do is write a letter to the town hall, please help us.

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

If you liked this post, than you might like what I say on my other blog too!

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All donations to Star Log go either to The Rabbit Hole Fund and/or The Pidgie Fund. The Rabbit Hole Fund is raising money to start a small retail clothen shop, while The Pidgie Fund buys food for pets in Southern Maine.

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This Post copyright Wendy C. Allen 2007. EelKat

Harrasment Continues

My name is Wendy Allen.

I am writing to you on behalf of my father, Kenneth Ricker-Allen of Old Orchard Beach, Maine.

Our family is in desperate need of help. In the past two years we have tried without success to get help locally, but now the deadline is less than a week away and we do not know what to do or who to turn too for help.

Since this is a long and complicated ordeal, I well start at the beginning. First off, I should tell you that we are fighting the local government, the officials of the Town of Old Orchard Beach, Maine, for the followingcharges:

Discrimination against a disabled senior.

A seniors rights being taken away from him.

Repeated harassment, and discriminatory attempts to force a low income family off their land, resulting in the year long hospitalization of already mentioned senior and resulting in his becoming disabled.

Threat of the destruction of property, including the threat of tearing down the home of aforementioned senior and his minor children and their pets.

Forcing the senior and his minor children out of their home and onto the streets where they lived for much of 2006 in a “tent” constructed out of shipping pallets and a tarp, where they lived in the elements of Maine’s harsh winter, some days suffering at below zero temperatures.

The threat of having all our belongings destroyed.

The reason the town official Ken Shoup gave for this harassment was quote:”This is Old Orchard, you have to change you lifestyle.”End quote. No other reason has been given.

Now, for our story and how this train of events came to be:

First off, our family has a long history with the Town of Old Orchard, due to the fact that our family settled this town more than 300 years ago. Our family has lived on the properties here in since 1657.

Originally there were several hundred acres on our land, both forest and farmland, but as the centuries went by the land was divided among relatives and passed on in increasingly smaller sections from one generation to the next. As the town grew and the land became more valuable, relatives sold out and moved away.

By the 1940′s ours was the last to remain in the original family, a small lot less than an acre in size. Not only was it the last to remain in the original family, but it was also the last farm in Old Orchard Beach.

It should be noted that property in Old Orchard is valued in the millions due to it being one of the world’s top rated award-winning beaches, and there in lies the root of our problem. Our farm has been accused of decreasing the property values. By the 1980′s Old Orchard became known as the hang out for biker gangs, honky-tonks, and strip shops. Property values dropped as the family image of the town plummeted. In the 1990′s, things changed once again, the gangs were driven out, the honky-tonks and bars shut down, and the strip shops became restaurants and art galleries.

Property taxes sky-rocketed to the second highest in the state as millionaire mansions and high rise condos reconstructed the sky-line, forever blocking out the view of the beach from the roads.Old Orchard beach town officials, spent millions putting in brick sidewalks, Victorian street lamps, and building a replica of the town hall that had stood here in the 1800′s…. their campaign was to create a “historical town” to draw in high income tourists.

The campaign was wildly advertised, and well promoted… until the new town manager and his new staff showed their true colors, that is and their campaign turned to harassing long time locals off of their land.

Several families have been driven out already. Most unable and unwilling to fight the local government as the threats of propety destruction, and the removal of personal belongings (including pets) has scared most of the “offending families” into selling thier land and moving.

There are only a handful of families that have stood thier ground, but those too are leaving. Ours is one of the last to remain, still standing our round, and refusing to give in to the threats made by local police officers, local code enforcement officers, and the town manager himself.

In the past year they have changed (without legal and proper votes from the people) nearly every code on the book in an attempt to force these families off thier land.

Changes in code include such things as “banning the growing of vegetation”, “painting your house”, “owning more than one car per family”, and other ridiculous town laws, that now prohibit such things as growing a garden.

It is like living in a strict gated community, only it is the entire town.

On the outskirts of the town, one finds the beautiful rolling acres of Ross Forest, once a candidate to become a national park, most of it now clear cut, and what little remains is soon to be sold for housing complexes, many already under construction.

Dividing the Ross Forest from the down town district, lay the remains of a few scattered farms, no longer in use. Except for one: ours. At one time a large full production poultry farm, today the home of pet farm animals, but still very much an active farm, small as it is.

The harassment of our family began in the fall of 2005 after an unknown person, wrote an editorial to the local newspapers, saying, “Four homes on Portland Avenue were distracting from the value of other properties in the town”.

The writer continued saying that something should be done about it, that these four homes “should be torn down”, and the families should be forced to move out of town to make way for the new generation.

Two of those four homes mentioned, as it turns out, were 144 Portland Ave and 146 Portland Ave.

At 144 Portland Avenue there lived (they have since taken our home) my elderly dad Kenneth Allen, myself, and my three brothers (all under 16 years of age). As you may guess, our dad was much, much older than our mother, explaining how a senior came to have young children.

In 1983, my dad’s mother died and he inherited her house at 146 Portland Ave. The tiny 16 foot by 9-foot “house”, which never had plumbing, etc. We turned into a shed, but even so, the town has continued to tax it as a house. Since October of 2001 (seven years ago) we have been applying for a permit to repair this building, and turn it into a greenhouse so we can extend our growing season, but the town STILL has that on a waiting list.

We continued to live in the old 700 square foot house, more of a cabin than a house or at least by the town’s standards anyways.

My dad was a newspaper carrier for 21 years, our family income was under $20,000 a year, so we were never able to afford much, but we never noticed, because we were happy.

 Our family was living together, we had our pets with us, and we lived on our farm. That we lacked a “normal income” or a “normal lifestyle” (as the town officials now tell us) never occurred to us.

Than in spring of 2006, there came the letters from the town. One after another. Demands to “remove the junk and debris” or else.

As it turns out, what they were calling junk and debris, was as follows: Our car, which though they consider it “junk” still runs in spite of what it looks like, and we use it daily.

 Our fire wood (we have a woodstove for heat, cause we can’t afford anything else.)

My dad’s tools (he was a car mechanic in the 1970′s, and still works on his own car and cars of relatives)

Our brooder (used for raising baby chickens each spring)

My dad’s antique cast iron wood stove collection

Our garden (bean poles, pea fences, etc… they say we can’t have a garden any more either)

Our washing machine (a 1947 wringer, which we use weekly)

Our farming equipment (tiller, ATV, etc…. all used on a regular basis)

In other words, what they are calling “trash”, “junk”, and “debris” are actually things we use every day, things we need in order to survive… without them we can not garden, if we can not garden we can not eat, because we can not afford to buy enough food to eat more than one meal a day per person, without the garden we well starve to death, without the farm equipment we can not garden, they are trying to kill us… and no this is not a figure of speech… as you shall soon come to understand.

My dad explained to the town that this stuff is not junk but our livelihood. The town responded by attaching a lean/fine on our property, for “refusal to comply with orders”.

(They eventualy threw us out of our house and stole my grandmothers antiques, and took our house)

My dad made an attempt to move the items so that they could not be seen from the road, in an attempt to comply with the town’s orders, hoping that if the items could not be seen from the road, that it would stop the harassment by the town… this was the biggest mistake he could have made, because as a result, a few days later on May 9, 2006, he went into a coma. May 9, 2006 started like any other day.

I woke up and went out to feed the chickens, work in the garden, and than help my dad move items out of view of the street. My dad had not yet gotten up. I had been in the yard barely 20 minutes when my 15 year old brother came running across the yard in a panic… something was wrong, I could see it on his face, and I ran to meet him… he told me that something was wrong with daddy… daddy had woken up and torn the wood stove out of the wall tearing with it all of the water pipes… and now the house was under water, while daddy was throwing everything from the toilet to the tables to shelves to files all over the house. By the time I arrived in the house there was 8 inches of water on the floor, and nothing left of anything… everything in the house was totally destroyed, there was not only nothing left on shelves, there were no longer any shelves. It looked like a tornado had gone through the house. The house was barely recognizable. My smaller brothers had run into the bedroom to hide, terrified at the event that was unfolding, while daddy was now in an attempt at tearing out the windows.

When I asked my dad what he was doing, he did not recognize me, he could not hear me, he could not see me… it was like he had turned into a blind man and was tearing at the walls in an attempt to see… I rushed to the neighbor who called an ambulance. The ambulance arrived, and talk of nervous breakdown and meningitis, were scatted around the conversations… the emergency team was in attempt of asking me what happened, when I was pulled away by a police officer named Jack Nichols, who proceeded to interrogate me about the condition of our house.

The wood stove was laying in pieces in the center of the dinning room, and this was his main focus… repeating the same question again and again: “How long has this been laying here?” he demanded. I told him, it had just happened, he accused me of lying, and repeated the question…. over and over again, and I kept explaining to him, that daddy had just done this, which was why we had called 911. Than he turned his questions to the piles of paper and mail that scattered the house… “What’s all this clutter?” he yelled.

Again I explained that this had just happened, that it was stuff that had been on the shelves and table, but as before, he accused me of lying and repeated the question again and again, his voice growing more heated and temperamental each time.

Than in a menacing voice he turned on my three little brothers “Why aren’t these children in school?”. I explained that we home schooled, and we had approval from the town’s superintendent.

Next he railed me out about how children can’t live in “clutter and filth” like this… again I explained that this “clutter and filth” as he called it, had just happened moments ago, and it was because this had happened that we had called for his help. He responded by calling the Department of Human Services to take my brothers away, and than calling the town code enforcement officer to condemn the house on grounds of “clutter and filth”.

While all this was happening the ambulance had taken my dad away, to where they had taken him I did not know, because Jack Nichols had not given me a chance to even know what had happened to my dad. More police, this time with cameras, stormed into the house, none of them would tell me what they were doing, why they were there, or what had happened to my dad. Meanwhile another police officer, Will Watson, stormed through the house “photgraphing evidance”, and turn what was left of the house inside out and upside down. Him and the handful of officers who were with him (names unknown to me otherwise I’d list them here as well) turned oer ever unturned item in a desperate search. Though I asked them what they were doing, none of these officers said a word, and continued to destroy everything they touched, never telling me why they were doing so or what it was they were looking for. By the time they got down, everything we own was completly destroied, there was nothing left in one peice.

In the mean time my mom and her husband arrived, and my brothers and me packed a few things so we could move in with her while we figured out what to do next. We tried to pack what little we could find that hadn’t been destroyed, and do it around police officers who seemed to be going through everything in the house for no reason at all, and who refused to talk to me or even acknowledge that I was there.

Luckily the hospital called us during this time and told us where my dad was, so at leaste we knew were to find him, but they would not discuss his condition over the phone.

We were not allowed to leave until the police had continued and finished their destructive mad dash search of the house. It was four hours before the police would let us leave to find out what happened to my dad. A friend, who had witnessed the police searching the house with their cameras, said that he thought it looked like a drug raid, and he suggested that we get copies of the police report to find out why they were going through the house like that. I told my dad this after he came out of the hospital (several months later) and he went to the station to get copies of the report, but they refused to give them to him without a court order (which we could not afford to buy), so we have been unable to obtain any info as to why the police were going through everything like that.

It was a lesson well learned. We called the police for help and they turned on us like rabid wolves. I well never call 911 again.

Once at the hospital I was told that what we had just witnessed was a diabetic seizure, brought on by extreme amounts of stress.

The doctor asked if my dad had any recent stress… OMG! I told him what the town hall had been doing to us and about this freakish ordeal we went through with the police, so, yes, he had suffered from stress… extreem stress, and the doctor agreed that it was the fault of the town hall that my dad was now in a coma. … As I said earlier, they are trying to kill us, and that is not a figure of speach, they are literally trying to kill us.

So, with the town harassing him the past couple of weeks, and than the police harassing him even during a medical emergency, nearly hindering the emergency teams ability to get him to the hospital, the doctors agreed that the town was at fault and the cause of my dad’s coma.

Dr. Greene than explained that it was lucky he had gotten to the hospital when he did {quote}”another 20 minutes and he’d have been dead” {end quote} is what he said. I shudder to think that the town hall, the police and their obsession with throwing us off our land nearly resulted in my dad’s death!

 I shudder to think was horrors the town hall will dish out to us next.

Dr. Greene went on to explain that my dad was now in a diabetic coma on full life support. Wither or not he would live was not yet known.

As days, turned to weeks, my dad remained in a coma, his system getting weaker by the minute, at one point his kidneys failed him and he had to be rushed in for dialysis.

My dad remained in Southern Maine Medical Center in a diabetic coma on full life support for 21 days.

In mid-June they moved him, wheelchair bound, from SMMC to New England Rehab Center in Portland.

On June 29, 2006, my dad came home, unable to walk on his own, and saw for the first time what had become of our house.

Just three days after my dad went into the hospital in May, our electricity was shut off. The town claims they had nothing to do with it when I asked them.

Without electricity, there was no light, and thus no way to see to clean the mess from the flood and the police, and so, it remained just as it had been left on that day in May.

My dad, was now severely disabled, only able to walk a few feet at a time and unable to lift anything at all.

The stress caused by the town’s harassment had left him with a weak heart and failing kidney’s, but the harassment had only just begun, for almost as soon as he was out of the hospital, the town once again began its relentless pursuit to remove us from our land. Land that for us means our heritage, our history, our legacy, but land that for the town, means nothing but dollar signs and profit margins.

Due to the months of the house sitting filled with water, we could not go back in to live in it, but even so, the polce would not allow us to go back home anyways, as they had condemed our house after they got done tearing it apart.

Having no family or relatives willing to help us, we were forced to camp out in the yard.

We signed up for various shelter foundations and were put on their waiting lists.

At HUD we were informed that we were 600 on the list. Problems had gotten worse than I had known… for my dad was now disabled and could not go to work, thus I started my long and fruitless search for a job, which is today (2 years later) is still ongoing.

During his hospitalization, no bills had been paid,  there had been no money at (not one single penny) since May of 2006 (nearly a year), but we lived in hopes that his disability check well eventually be approved by the state (it took 17 months after he came out of the hospital for them to approve it.) With no income, and a house that we can not live in, my dad lived in his car, my brothers now liveing with our mom and her husband, and I built a house-tent-lean-to type of thing out of 12 shipping pallets, 3 cinderblocks, and a tarp.

We had asked the town if we could put up a yurt (not hard to build as our land boarders a forest) until we could get a house back up, but they told us no, only tents were allowed, but we couldn’t afford to buy a real tent, so I built one instead.

(UPDATE: The town has since taken our house. No one ever did make an attempt to help us as every one is just too scared of the town counel to stand up to them.)

Letters from the town continued to arrive.

We continued to visit the town hall where we got the run around… “Come back in the morning, he’s only here in the mornings.”…

Next day: “I’m sorry, did I say mornings? No, you’ll have to come in the afternoon.”…

Day after day after day… week after week after week… “He’s out sick today”… “He’s on vacation this week.”… “He’s out on an inspection today.”… Weeks became months and STILL we had yet to meet the man behind the letters: Ken Shoupe.

Though we went to his office almost daily, we would not meet him until November of 2006.

In July my dad had to have surgery, and was bed-ridden (or rather car-ridden, as he had no house thus no bed,) for several weeks afterwards.

For food we get one paper bag a month from the Salvation Army (the only place that made an attempt to help us, little as it was) and each month we stretch that single bag of food as much as we possible can to make it last the entire month, but that often means we are limited to one very small meal a day (sometimes less).

The State only allows us $13 a month for food stamps, and we aren’t eligible for TANF (Temporary Assitance For Needy Families) or welfare because we owned our land.

We went to our church for help, but than there isn’t much they can do, you see, our town manager, Jim (James) Thomas, the man giving the orders to Ken Shoupe, is a “leading member” of the church, and others involved in the letters, such as the secretary who mails them out, also go to our church.

The bishop tried to help, but, he had to get church coucil approval, and with his council members also being the town mangaer and the town hall workers, we could not get approval for help from our church either, and in the end all the bishop was able to do was get our electricity turned back on, but for that there was a catch to that even:

The town was only going to let us have our electricty back on long enough for us to remove our belongings from the house, before they tore it down.

So, with the electricity back on, and this new threat hanging over our heads, me and my 3 brothers, built a second tent-lean-to-thing next to the first one, and began to move what we could salvage out of the house and into the second tent-thingy.

Everything we own now sits outside, damp and wet, under a tarp, buried in snow.

Such threats and happenings have been going on now ever since my dad came home from the hospital, and the stress has made his recovery nearly impossible, and thus he remains weekly, sometimes daily, in and out of doctor’s offices and hospitals with increasingly failing health, and every day his doctors tell him: “You have got to get the stress out of your life before it kills you.”

And now I shall skip ahead to where we are at today and why I am writing to you:

In December, with below zero temperatures and snow burying the “tent”, a woman from the Department of Human Services showed up at our land, explaining that someone had filed a complaint, because there was a family living outdoors during Maine’s harsh sub-zero winter.

We have been on waiting lists for shelter since this had happened, but we are such a large family: 5 people, plus cats, dogs, and farm animals, there is no landlord who would take us, we had no choice but to sit out Maine’s winter and try to keep the tarp from collapsing on our heads under the weight of the snow.

She was furious, at the Town Officials, because, as she told us, she had just come from the town hall, where she had attempted to contact them first and was given the same “run around” that we had been given.

She told them that if they were going to force us out of our home than they should at least pay for a hotel room (Old Orchard Beach has over 300 hotels, motels, cabins, camp grounds and condos.) She said that they had {quote}”told her off” {end quote}.

She is the one who told us that what was happening here was not legal, that it was harassment, it was unconstitutional, and that it was bordering on criminal. It seems that, according to her, that if one of us had died from the cold, the town could be charged with murder, we did not realize this.

Before the DHS came in, we didn’t know that what was happening was illegal, that they were acting on {quote}”Communist Rules”{end quote}, and we didn’t know before than that we had the legal right to fight the town.

She gave us the phone number of Pine Tree Legal, Maine’s free lawyer group. We called. And called again. And keep calling, but can’t get past the operator, who says our name is on a waiting list.

This woman from DHS was the very first person to make any attempt to really and truly help us, with her help we went from 600 on HUD’s waiting list to 1 and on January 10, after months of homelessness, me and my dad were allowed to move into a temporary apartment in Biddeford, while HUD, AVESTA, and CALEB Foundation, tried to find a place that well take both us and my 3 brothers, and our pets… a wait that we are told could take as many as 8 years!

Unfortunately the apartment is tiny beyond belief and so everything we own is still back at home in the 2 “tents”.

 (UPDATE: We have been taken off the CALEB foundation list because our income is too low. huh? our income is too low for section 8 housing? WTH?)

We thought things were looking up at this point. We should have known that the town officials would not allow us to be happy for a single moment.

Following the news that we are in an apartment the town has moved on to a new level of harassment: This week, we received a letter from the town, saying that we have until February 12 (just 3 days from now) to remove EVERYTHING from our land (including not only the things they had listed before but also the 2 tents, the sheds, the barns, and even my beloved Goldeneagle {a town landmark and worl famous car}), after which time they well come in and level the land.

They came to the land (with a developer, no less!) and told us that they wanted a totally empty lot… nothing, apparently not even the trees, as they talked about cutting them down as well!!!!

 They are complaining that the tents are an eyesore… the tents that THEY told us we had to put up to store our belongings in, because back than they were threatening to tear down the house. Among the items in the tent is my book collection, some 7,000 books that I have been collecting over the years; antiques that had belonged to my great-grandmother, (many of which have since been stolen), and grandmothers; and other such items.

Everything we own, now stands to be stolen from us, by the town officials, and why? We asked Shoup why he was doing this to us, he said: {quote} ”This is Old Orchard, you have to change you lifestyle.” {end quote}

We know this is Old Orchard!

Unlike outsiders like him and the town manager, our family has been here on this land since 1657.

My dad’s family (Thomas Rogers, the Googins, and the Rickers) built this town. Of course we know its Old Orchard.

What kind of a reason is that to force a family off their land?

We have 3 days to stop them, and no one well helps us.

It seems like the whole town has turned on us. People who we once called friends now seem to be strangers.

Today this caper of harasment has taken on a new level… they are now threaten to take our animals away, based on false accusations made by one named “Smith”… I only know one person named Smith, and I thought they were our friends, so either they are 2-faced, or the code enforcment officer is lieing to us yet again.

They say they well take them, but they have no grounds to take them, and as with everything else they have done, they have no court order to back themselves up with. The animals are part of our family, they are like children to me, they have no right to threaten to take them. No right at all!

We have gone to everyone we can pleading, begging for help, but no one is willing to help us fight these communistic bullies.

Every church, every charity… even the volunteer lawyers, but Old Orchard Beach is Maine’s biggest tourist attraction, a town that draws in millions of tourist each summer, tourists who bring with them, money that makes Old Orchard one of Maine’s wealthiest towns, and because of that no one well help us fight them.

We are told to give up, to just move… we are told that we can’t fight the Town of Old Orchard because it’s one of Maine’s most powerful government seats. But that doesn’t give them the right to steal our belongings!

That doesn’t give them the right to steal our land!

That doesn’t give them the right to force us to live in a tent during the winter!

How can they just come in and level our land?

How can they steal my car?

How can they steal my pets?

They don’t even have any court orders to back themselves up with!

What they are doing is not legal, but no one well do anything to stop them!

They well not break us into losing, but if this doesn’t stop, they well kill my dad, and the stress has yaken it’s toll on my own health now as well, I’ve been sick for weeks, I don’t know how much longer I can hold out under these conditions, and I have no medical insurance so the hospital won’t admot me, and the state said I’m not eligable for a medical card, either, again, saying that our income is too low.

This has to stop.

They have too far.

Please, there must be someway someone can help us! If you know of anyone who may be able to help us, please let us know!

Our Mailing address is:

Wendy C. Allen

P.O.Box 1452

Saco, ME

04072

my email address (my dad don’t have one) xavychup@yahoo.com

Please some one help us!

You can write a letter of protest to the town council at:

 

Old Orchard Beach Town Council

1 Portland Ave

Old Orchard Beach, ME

 04064

 

Please, even if all you can do is write a letter to the town hall, please help us.

 

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post.

Leave a comment and share your views!

If you liked this post, than you might like what I say on my other blog too!

Need To Publish Your First Novel?

Save the Goldeneagle

Shot at 2007-04-04

Hello! I am a 1964 Dodge 330 4-door sedan, VIN 4142216364, my name is The Goldeneagle. This site was created by my owner Wendy C. Allen of Old Orchard Beach, Maine, to save my life.

I am the main character of the original Twighlight Manor book, and a major supporting character of more that 30 other books and short stories by Maine author Wendy C. Allen.

I started out in life as a silver undercover Police car in Maine. In 1975 I retired from my job as a police car and was sent to Marcot Motors of Old Orchard Beach, Maine, where I was painted gold by some fool with a paint brush. He totally ruined my lovely silver paint job and left me streaked with brush lines. I was only there a few months before I was bought by the Allen family, who sanded me down and painted a lovely shade of metalic orange.

I remained the faithful family chauffer for the next ten years. Together we drove on many roadtrips throughout the NorthEast. In 1978, I took them to New York where we croosed the Brooklen Bridge during it’s major repair construction. That same year we went to Washington D.C. I took the Allen family to Arcadia in Bar Harbor to see The Thunder Hole in 1981. Every year I drove them to New Hampshire where we visited The Old Man on the Mountain and Story Land and The Swift River. Three times I climbed Mt. Washington.

I’ve brought home puppies and baby chickens. I waited in hospital parking lots and veterinary clinics. I remained forever and always a faithful friend. The only friend who was always there, steadfast and unmoveble, silent and unjudgmental. My red plush seats always there like a shoulder to cry on when no one else would lend and ear or a shoulder. I alone remained to one true friend, the only friend to the child who loved me and defend me when no one else would put up with my break downs and failrues.

Over the years I grew old and tired, my engine weak and my transmission failing. My last trip was a desperate trip to the hospital, one dark and stormy night in 1985 when a hurrican flooded the town, sending the Atlantic Ocean over the Peir and up Maine Street. My last trip came when abulances could ride faster than my Mopar engine and Mrs Allen had to be rushed to the hostpital at 3AM. We speed through Old Orchard fatser than ever before, through hurrican floods that went higher than my door panels seeping water into my interior and flooding my floors, filling my transmission and engine with icy salt water, we made it to the hospital with Mrs. Allen, but I did not make it back home on my own and was towed home by a friend’s little VW Rabbit.

In spite of my loyalty, with a dead trasmission and an engine full of salt, I was usless, and parked in the yard, put up for sale for junk.

I was rescued from a trip to the junk yard in 1985 by 9 year old, Wendy C. Allen, after my trans died. Since 1985 I have remained a decoration on the hill in her rose garden, where she sits in my seats or on my hood to write the stories in which I appear. Without me, she can not write these stories for I am the one that inspires them. I have been happy in my life of peace and rest here in Old Orchard Beach these past 30 years. That has now changed.

New town ordinances and zoning laws have been set in Old Orchard Beach. As a result the police, the code enforments officers, and the town manager are now in attempt to see my death and destruction, with threats of stealing me from my rightful owner and sending me to become scrap metal in the junk yard.

This is an outrage! They well not listen to reason.

My profile now comes to you to spread the word and ask for your help in saveing my life. An entire network of websites devoted to my plight are now in the works and links to them well be added here within the next few hours.

Please join the protest and put an end to the Old Orchard Beach reign of terror. Old Orchard Beach is a town not a dynasty, they have no right to take me from my home and kill me!

PLEASE DON’T LET THEM KILL ME!!!!!

To read more, please visit my profile: http://www.myspace.com/savethegoldeneagle

Shot at 2007-04-04

 

This Post copyright Wendy C. Allen 2007. EelKat

Harrasment Continues

My name is Wendy Allen.

I am writing to you on behalf of my father, Kenneth Ricker-Allen of Old Orchard Beach, Maine.

Our family is in desperate need of help. In the past two years we have tried without success to get help locally, but now the deadline is less than a week away and we do not know what to do or who to turn too for help.

Since this is a long and complicated ordeal, I well start at the beginning. First off, I should tell you that we are fighting the local government, the officials of the Town of Old Orchard Beach, Maine, for the followingcharges:

Discrimination against a disabled senior.

A seniors rights being taken away from him.

Repeated harassment, and discriminatory attempts to force a low income family off their land, resulting in the year long hospitalization of already mentioned senior and resulting in his becoming disabled.

Threat of the destruction of property, including the threat of tearing down the home of aforementioned senior and his minor children and their pets.

Forcing the senior and his minor children out of their home and onto the streets where they lived for much of 2006 in a “tent” constructed out of shipping pallets and a tarp, where they lived in the elements of Maine’s harsh winter, some days suffering at below zero temperatures.

The threat of having all our belongings destroyed.

The reason the town official Ken Shoup gave for this harassment was quote:”This is Old Orchard, you have to change you lifestyle.”End quote. No other reason has been given.

Now, for our story and how this train of events came to be:

First off, our family has a long history with the Town of Old Orchard, due to the fact that our family settled this town more than 300 years ago. Our family has lived on the properties here in since 1657.

Originally there were several hundred acres on our land, both forest and farmland, but as the centuries went by the land was divided among relatives and passed on in increasingly smaller sections from one generation to the next. As the town grew and the land became more valuable, relatives sold out and moved away.

By the 1940′s ours was the last to remain in the original family, a small lot less than an acre in size. Not only was it the last to remain in the original family, but it was also the last farm in Old Orchard Beach.

It should be noted that property in Old Orchard is valued in the millions due to it being one of the world’s top rated award-winning beaches, and there in lies the root of our problem. Our farm has been accused of decreasing the property values. By the 1980′s Old Orchard became known as the hang out for biker gangs, honky-tonks, and strip shops. Property values dropped as the family image of the town plummeted. In the 1990′s, things changed once again, the gangs were driven out, the honky-tonks and bars shut down, and the strip shops became restaurants and art galleries.

Property taxes sky-rocketed to the second highest in the state as millionaire mansions and high rise condos reconstructed the sky-line, forever blocking out the view of the beach from the roads.Old Orchard beach town officials, spent millions putting in brick sidewalks, Victorian street lamps, and building a replica of the town hall that had stood here in the 1800′s…. their campaign was to create a “historical town” to draw in high income tourists.

The campaign was wildly advertised, and well promoted… until the new town manager and his new staff showed their true colors, that is and their campaign turned to harassing long time locals off of their land.

Several families have been driven out already. Most unable and unwilling to fight the local government as the threats of propety destruction, and the removal of personal belongings (including pets) has scared most of the “offending families” into selling thier land and moving.

There are only a handful of families that have stood thier ground, but those too are leaving. Ours is one of the last to remain, still standing our round, and refusing to give in to the threats made by local police officers, local code enforcement officers, and the town manager himself.

In the past year they have changed (without legal and proper votes from the people) nearly every code on the book in an attempt to force these families off thier land.

Changes in code include such things as “banning the growing of vegetation”, “painting your house”, “owning more than one car per family”, and other ridiculous town laws, that now prohibit such things as growing a garden.

It is like living in a strict gated community, only it is the entire town.

On the outskirts of the town, one finds the beautiful rolling acres of Ross Forest, once a candidate to become a national park, most of it now clear cut, and what little remains is soon to be sold for housing complexes, many already under construction.

Dividing the Ross Forest from the down town district, lay the remains of a few scattered farms, no longer in use. Except for one: ours. At one time a large full production poultry farm, today the home of pet farm animals, but still very much an active farm, small as it is.

The harassment of our family began in the fall of 2005 after an unknown person, wrote an editorial to the local newspapers, saying, “Four homes on Portland Avenue were distracting from the value of other properties in the town”.

The writer continued saying that something should be done about it, that these four homes “should be torn down”, and the families should be forced to move out of town to make way for the new generation.

Two of those four homes mentioned, as it turns out, were 144 Portland Ave and 146 Portland Ave.

At 144 Portland Avenue there lived (they have since taken our home) my elderly dad Kenneth Allen, myself, and my three brothers (all under 16 years of age). As you may guess, our dad was much, much older than our mother, explaining how a senior came to have young children.

In 1983, my dad’s mother died and he inherited her house at 146 Portland Ave. The tiny 16 foot by 9-foot “house”, which never had plumbing, etc. We turned into a shed, but even so, the town has continued to tax it as a house. Since October of 2001 (seven years ago) we have been applying for a permit to repair this building, and turn it into a greenhouse so we can extend our growing season, but the town STILL has that on a waiting list.

We continued to live in the old 700 square foot house, more of a cabin than a house or at least by the town’s standards anyways.

My dad was a newspaper carrier for 21 years, our family income was under $20,000 a year, so we were never able to afford much, but we never noticed, because we were happy.

 Our family was living together, we had our pets with us, and we lived on our farm. That we lacked a “normal income” or a “normal lifestyle” (as the town officials now tell us) never occurred to us.

Than in spring of 2006, there came the letters from the town. One after another. Demands to “remove the junk and debris” or else.

As it turns out, what they were calling junk and debris, was as follows: Our car, which though they consider it “junk” still runs in spite of what it looks like, and we use it daily.

 Our fire wood (we have a woodstove for heat, cause we can’t afford anything else.)

My dad’s tools (he was a car mechanic in the 1970′s, and still works on his own car and cars of relatives)

Our brooder (used for raising baby chickens each spring)

My dad’s antique cast iron wood stove collection

Our garden (bean poles, pea fences, etc… they say we can’t have a garden any more either)

Our washing machine (a 1947 wringer, which we use weekly)

Our farming equipment (tiller, ATV, etc…. all used on a regular basis)

In other words, what they are calling “trash”, “junk”, and “debris” are actually things we use every day, things we need in order to survive… without them we can not garden, if we can not garden we can not eat, because we can not afford to buy enough food to eat more than one meal a day per person, without the garden we well starve to death, without the farm equipment we can not garden, they are trying to kill us… and no this is not a figure of speech… as you shall soon come to understand.

My dad explained to the town that this stuff is not junk but our livelihood. The town responded by attaching a lean/fine on our property, for “refusal to comply with orders”.

(They eventualy threw us out of our house and stole my grandmothers antiques, and took our house)

My dad made an attempt to move the items so that they could not be seen from the road, in an attempt to comply with the town’s orders, hoping that if the items could not be seen from the road, that it would stop the harassment by the town… this was the biggest mistake he could have made, because as a result, a few days later on May 9, 2006, he went into a coma. May 9, 2006 started like any other day.

I woke up and went out to feed the chickens, work in the garden, and than help my dad move items out of view of the street. My dad had not yet gotten up. I had been in the yard barely 20 minutes when my 15 year old brother came running across the yard in a panic… something was wrong, I could see it on his face, and I ran to meet him… he told me that something was wrong with daddy… daddy had woken up and torn the wood stove out of the wall tearing with it all of the water pipes… and now the house was under water, while daddy was throwing everything from the toilet to the tables to shelves to files all over the house. By the time I arrived in the house there was 8 inches of water on the floor, and nothing left of anything… everything in the house was totally destroyed, there was not only nothing left on shelves, there were no longer any shelves. It looked like a tornado had gone through the house. The house was barely recognizable. My smaller brothers had run into the bedroom to hide, terrified at the event that was unfolding, while daddy was now in an attempt at tearing out the windows.

When I asked my dad what he was doing, he did not recognize me, he could not hear me, he could not see me… it was like he had turned into a blind man and was tearing at the walls in an attempt to see… I rushed to the neighbor who called an ambulance. The ambulance arrived, and talk of nervous breakdown and meningitis, were scatted around the conversations… the emergency team was in attempt of asking me what happened, when I was pulled away by a police officer named Jack Nichols, who proceeded to interrogate me about the condition of our house.

The wood stove was laying in pieces in the center of the dinning room, and this was his main focus… repeating the same question again and again: “How long has this been laying here?” he demanded. I told him, it had just happened, he accused me of lying, and repeated the question…. over and over again, and I kept explaining to him, that daddy had just done this, which was why we had called 911. Than he turned his questions to the piles of paper and mail that scattered the house… “What’s all this clutter?” he yelled.

Again I explained that this had just happened, that it was stuff that had been on the shelves and table, but as before, he accused me of lying and repeated the question again and again, his voice growing more heated and temperamental each time.

Than in a menacing voice he turned on my three little brothers “Why aren’t these children in school?”. I explained that we home schooled, and we had approval from the town’s superintendent.

Next he railed me out about how children can’t live in “clutter and filth” like this… again I explained that this “clutter and filth” as he called it, had just happened moments ago, and it was because this had happened that we had called for his help. He responded by calling the Department of Human Services to take my brothers away, and than calling the town code enforcement officer to condemn the house on grounds of “clutter and filth”.

While all this was happening the ambulance had taken my dad away, to where they had taken him I did not know, because Jack Nichols had not given me a chance to even know what had happened to my dad. More police, this time with cameras, stormed into the house, none of them would tell me what they were doing, why they were there, or what had happened to my dad. Meanwhile another police officer, Will Watson, stormed through the house “photgraphing evidance”, and turn what was left of the house inside out and upside down. Him and the handful of officers who were with him (names unknown to me otherwise I’d list them here as well) turned oer ever unturned item in a desperate search. Though I asked them what they were doing, none of these officers said a word, and continued to destroy everything they touched, never telling me why they were doing so or what it was they were looking for. By the time they got down, everything we own was completly destroied, there was nothing left in one peice.

In the mean time my mom and her husband arrived, and my brothers and me packed a few things so we could move in with her while we figured out what to do next. We tried to pack what little we could find that hadn’t been destroyed, and do it around police officers who seemed to be going through everything in the house for no reason at all, and who refused to talk to me or even acknowledge that I was there.

Luckily the hospital called us during this time and told us where my dad was, so at leaste we knew were to find him, but they would not discuss his condition over the phone.

We were not allowed to leave until the police had continued and finished their destructive mad dash search of the house. It was four hours before the police would let us leave to find out what happened to my dad. A friend, who had witnessed the police searching the house with their cameras, said that he thought it looked like a drug raid, and he suggested that we get copies of the police report to find out why they were going through the house like that. I told my dad this after he came out of the hospital (several months later) and he went to the station to get copies of the report, but they refused to give them to him without a court order (which we could not afford to buy), so we have been unable to obtain any info as to why the police were going through everything like that.

It was a lesson well learned. We called the police for help and they turned on us like rabid wolves. I well never call 911 again.

Once at the hospital I was told that what we had just witnessed was a diabetic seizure, brought on by extreme amounts of stress.

The doctor asked if my dad had any recent stress… OMG! I told him what the town hall had been doing to us and about this freakish ordeal we went through with the police, so, yes, he had suffered from stress… extreem stress, and the doctor agreed that it was the fault of the town hall that my dad was now in a coma. … As I said earlier, they are trying to kill us, and that is not a figure of speach, they are literally trying to kill us.

So, with the town harassing him the past couple of weeks, and than the police harassing him even during a medical emergency, nearly hindering the emergency teams ability to get him to the hospital, the doctors agreed that the town was at fault and the cause of my dad’s coma.

Dr. Greene than explained that it was lucky he had gotten to the hospital when he did {quote}”another 20 minutes and he’d have been dead” {end quote} is what he said. I shudder to think that the town hall, the police and their obsession with throwing us off our land nearly resulted in my dad’s death!

 I shudder to think was horrors the town hall will dish out to us next.

Dr. Greene went on to explain that my dad was now in a diabetic coma on full life support. Wither or not he would live was not yet known.

As days, turned to weeks, my dad remained in a coma, his system getting weaker by the minute, at one point his kidneys failed him and he had to be rushed in for dialysis.

My dad remained in Southern Maine Medical Center in a diabetic coma on full life support for 21 days.

In mid-June they moved him, wheelchair bound, from SMMC to New England Rehab Center in Portland.

On June 29, 2006, my dad came home, unable to walk on his own, and saw for the first time what had become of our house.

Just three days after my dad went into the hospital in May, our electricity was shut off. The town claims they had nothing to do with it when I asked them.

Without electricity, there was no light, and thus no way to see to clean the mess from the flood and the police, and so, it remained just as it had been left on that day in May.

My dad, was now severely disabled, only able to walk a few feet at a time and unable to lift anything at all.

The stress caused by the town’s harassment had left him with a weak heart and failing kidney’s, but the harassment had only just begun, for almost as soon as he was out of the hospital, the town once again began its relentless pursuit to remove us from our land. Land that for us means our heritage, our history, our legacy, but land that for the town, means nothing but dollar signs and profit margins.

Due to the months of the house sitting filled with water, we could not go back in to live in it, but even so, the polce would not allow us to go back home anyways, as they had condemed our house after they got done tearing it apart.

Having no family or relatives willing to help us, we were forced to camp out in the yard.

We signed up for various shelter foundations and were put on their waiting lists.

At HUD we were informed that we were 600 on the list. Problems had gotten worse than I had known… for my dad was now disabled and could not go to work, thus I started my long and fruitless search for a job, which is today (2 years later) is still ongoing.

During his hospitalization, no bills had been paid,  there had been no money at (not one single penny) since May of 2006 (nearly a year), but we lived in hopes that his disability check well eventually be approved by the state (it took 17 months after he came out of the hospital for them to approve it.) With no income, and a house that we can not live in, my dad lived in his car, my brothers now liveing with our mom and her husband, and I built a house-tent-lean-to type of thing out of 12 shipping pallets, 3 cinderblocks, and a tarp.

We had asked the town if we could put up a yurt (not hard to build as our land boarders a forest) until we could get a house back up, but they told us no, only tents were allowed, but we couldn’t afford to buy a real tent, so I built one instead.

(UPDATE: The town has since taken our house. No one ever did make an attempt to help us as every one is just too scared of the town counel to stand up to them.)

Letters from the town continued to arrive.

We continued to visit the town hall where we got the run around… “Come back in the morning, he’s only here in the mornings.”…

Next day: “I’m sorry, did I say mornings? No, you’ll have to come in the afternoon.”…

Day after day after day… week after week after week… “He’s out sick today”… “He’s on vacation this week.”… “He’s out on an inspection today.”… Weeks became months and STILL we had yet to meet the man behind the letters: Ken Shoupe.

Though we went to his office almost daily, we would not meet him until November of 2006.

In July my dad had to have surgery, and was bed-ridden (or rather car-ridden, as he had no house thus no bed,) for several weeks afterwards.

For food we get one paper bag a month from the Salvation Army (the only place that made an attempt to help us, little as it was) and each month we stretch that single bag of food as much as we possible can to make it last the entire month, but that often means we are limited to one very small meal a day (sometimes less).

The State only allows us $13 a month for food stamps, and we aren’t eligible for TANF (Temporary Assitance For Needy Families) or welfare because we owned our land.

We went to our church for help, but than there isn’t much they can do, you see, our town manager, Jim (James) Thomas, the man giving the orders to Ken Shoupe, is a “leading member” of the church, and others involved in the letters, such as the secretary who mails them out, also go to our church.

The bishop tried to help, but, he had to get church coucil approval, and with his council members also being the town mangaer and the town hall workers, we could not get approval for help from our church either, and in the end all the bishop was able to do was get our electricity turned back on, but for that there was a catch to that even:

The town was only going to let us have our electricty back on long enough for us to remove our belongings from the house, before they tore it down.

So, with the electricity back on, and this new threat hanging over our heads, me and my 3 brothers, built a second tent-lean-to-thing next to the first one, and began to move what we could salvage out of the house and into the second tent-thingy.

Everything we own now sits outside, damp and wet, under a tarp, buried in snow.

Such threats and happenings have been going on now ever since my dad came home from the hospital, and the stress has made his recovery nearly impossible, and thus he remains weekly, sometimes daily, in and out of doctor’s offices and hospitals with increasingly failing health, and every day his doctors tell him: “You have got to get the stress out of your life before it kills you.”

And now I shall skip ahead to where we are at today and why I am writing to you:

In December, with below zero temperatures and snow burying the “tent”, a woman from the Department of Human Services showed up at our land, explaining that someone had filed a complaint, because there was a family living outdoors during Maine’s harsh sub-zero winter.

We have been on waiting lists for shelter since this had happened, but we are such a large family: 5 people, plus cats, dogs, and farm animals, there is no landlord who would take us, we had no choice but to sit out Maine’s winter and try to keep the tarp from collapsing on our heads under the weight of the snow.

She was furious, at the Town Officials, because, as she told us, she had just come from the town hall, where she had attempted to contact them first and was given the same “run around” that we had been given.

She told them that if they were going to force us out of our home than they should at least pay for a hotel room (Old Orchard Beach has over 300 hotels, motels, cabins, camp grounds and condos.) She said that they had {quote}”told her off” {end quote}.

She is the one who told us that what was happening here was not legal, that it was harassment, it was unconstitutional, and that it was bordering on criminal. It seems that, according to her, that if one of us had died from the cold, the town could be charged with murder, we did not realize this.

Before the DHS came in, we didn’t know that what was happening was illegal, that they were acting on {quote}”Communist Rules”{end quote}, and we didn’t know before than that we had the legal right to fight the town.

She gave us the phone number of Pine Tree Legal, Maine’s free lawyer group. We called. And called again. And keep calling, but can’t get past the operator, who says our name is on a waiting list.

This woman from DHS was the very first person to make any attempt to really and truly help us, with her help we went from 600 on HUD’s waiting list to 1 and on January 10, after months of homelessness, me and my dad were allowed to move into a temporary apartment in Biddeford, while HUD, AVESTA, and CALEB Foundation, tried to find a place that well take both us and my 3 brothers, and our pets… a wait that we are told could take as many as 8 years!

Unfortunately the apartment is tiny beyond belief and so everything we own is still back at home in the 2 “tents”.

 (UPDATE: We have been taken off the CALEB foundation list because our income is too low. huh? our income is too low for section 8 housing? WTH?)

We thought things were looking up at this point. We should have known that the town officials would not allow us to be happy for a single moment.

Following the news that we are in an apartment the town has moved on to a new level of harassment: This week, we received a letter from the town, saying that we have until February 12 (just 3 days from now) to remove EVERYTHING from our land (including not only the things they had listed before but also the 2 tents, the sheds, the barns, and even my beloved Goldeneagle {a town landmark and worl famous car}), after which time they well come in and level the land.

They came to the land (with a developer, no less!) and told us that they wanted a totally empty lot… nothing, apparently not even the trees, as they talked about cutting them down as well!!!!

 They are complaining that the tents are an eyesore… the tents that THEY told us we had to put up to store our belongings in, because back than they were threatening to tear down the house. Among the items in the tent is my book collection, some 7,000 books that I have been collecting over the years; antiques that had belonged to my great-grandmother, (many of which have since been stolen), and grandmothers; and other such items.

Everything we own, now stands to be stolen from us, by the town officials, and why? We asked Shoup why he was doing this to us, he said: {quote} ”This is Old Orchard, you have to change you lifestyle.” {end quote}

We know this is Old Orchard!

Unlike outsiders like him and the town manager, our family has been here on this land since 1657.

My dad’s family (Thomas Rogers, the Googins, and the Rickers) built this town. Of course we know its Old Orchard.

What kind of a reason is that to force a family off their land?

We have 3 days to stop them, and no one well helps us.

It seems like the whole town has turned on us. People who we once called friends now seem to be strangers.

Today this caper of harasment has taken on a new level… they are now threaten to take our animals away, based on false accusations made by one named “Smith”… I only know one person named Smith, and I thought they were our friends, so either they are 2-faced, or the code enforcment officer is lieing to us yet again.

They say they well take them, but they have no grounds to take them, and as with everything else they have done, they have no court order to back themselves up with. The animals are part of our family, they are like children to me, they have no right to threaten to take them. No right at all!

We have gone to everyone we can pleading, begging for help, but no one is willing to help us fight these communistic bullies.

Every church, every charity… even the volunteer lawyers, but Old Orchard Beach is Maine’s biggest tourist attraction, a town that draws in millions of tourist each summer, tourists who bring with them, money that makes Old Orchard one of Maine’s wealthiest towns, and because of that no one well help us fight them.

We are told to give up, to just move… we are told that we can’t fight the Town of Old Orchard because it’s one of Maine’s most powerful government seats. But that doesn’t give them the right to steal our belongings!

That doesn’t give them the right to steal our land!

That doesn’t give them the right to force us to live in a tent during the winter!

How can they just come in and level our land?

How can they steal my car?

How can they steal my pets?

They don’t even have any court orders to back themselves up with!

What they are doing is not legal, but no one well do anything to stop them!

They well not break us into losing, but if this doesn’t stop, they well kill my dad, and the stress has yaken it’s toll on my own health now as well, I’ve been sick for weeks, I don’t know how much longer I can hold out under these conditions, and I have no medical insurance so the hospital won’t admot me, and the state said I’m not eligable for a medical card, either, again, saying that our income is too low.

This has to stop.

They have too far.

Please, there must be someway someone can help us! If you know of anyone who may be able to help us, please let us know!

Our Mailing address is:

Wendy C. Allen

P.O.Box 1452

Saco, ME

04072

my email address (my dad don’t have one) xavychup@yahoo.com

Please some one help us!

You can write a letter of protest to the town council at:

 

Old Orchard Beach Town Council

1 Portland Ave

Old Orchard Beach, ME

 04064

 

Please, even if all you can do is write a letter to the town hall, please help us.

 

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post.

Leave a comment and share your views!

If you liked this post, than you might like what I say on my other blog too!

Need To Publish Your First Novel?

Save the Goldeneagle

Shot at 2007-04-04

Hello! I am a 1964 Dodge 330 4-door sedan, VIN 4142216364, my name is The Goldeneagle. This site was created by my owner Wendy C. Allen of Old Orchard Beach, Maine, to save my life.

I am the main character of the original Twighlight Manor book, and a major supporting character of more that 30 other books and short stories by Maine author Wendy C. Allen.

I started out in life as a silver undercover Police car in Maine. In 1975 I retired from my job as a police car and was sent to Marcot Motors of Old Orchard Beach, Maine, where I was painted gold by some fool with a paint brush. He totally ruined my lovely silver paint job and left me streaked with brush lines. I was only there a few months before I was bought by the Allen family, who sanded me down and painted a lovely shade of metalic orange.

I remained the faithful family chauffer for the next ten years. Together we drove on many roadtrips throughout the NorthEast. In 1978, I took them to New York where we croosed the Brooklen Bridge during it’s major repair construction. That same year we went to Washington D.C. I took the Allen family to Arcadia in Bar Harbor to see The Thunder Hole in 1981. Every year I drove them to New Hampshire where we visited The Old Man on the Mountain and Story Land and The Swift River. Three times I climbed Mt. Washington.

I’ve brought home puppies and baby chickens. I waited in hospital parking lots and veterinary clinics. I remained forever and always a faithful friend. The only friend who was always there, steadfast and unmoveble, silent and unjudgmental. My red plush seats always there like a shoulder to cry on when no one else would lend and ear or a shoulder. I alone remained to one true friend, the only friend to the child who loved me and defend me when no one else would put up with my break downs and failrues.

Over the years I grew old and tired, my engine weak and my transmission failing. My last trip was a desperate trip to the hospital, one dark and stormy night in 1985 when a hurrican flooded the town, sending the Atlantic Ocean over the Peir and up Maine Street. My last trip came when abulances could ride faster than my Mopar engine and Mrs Allen had to be rushed to the hostpital at 3AM. We speed through Old Orchard fatser than ever before, through hurrican floods that went higher than my door panels seeping water into my interior and flooding my floors, filling my transmission and engine with icy salt water, we made it to the hospital with Mrs. Allen, but I did not make it back home on my own and was towed home by a friend’s little VW Rabbit.

In spite of my loyalty, with a dead trasmission and an engine full of salt, I was usless, and parked in the yard, put up for sale for junk.

I was rescued from a trip to the junk yard in 1985 by 9 year old, Wendy C. Allen, after my trans died. Since 1985 I have remained a decoration on the hill in her rose garden, where she sits in my seats or on my hood to write the stories in which I appear. Without me, she can not write these stories for I am the one that inspires them. I have been happy in my life of peace and rest here in Old Orchard Beach these past 30 years. That has now changed.

New town ordinances and zoning laws have been set in Old Orchard Beach. As a result the police, the code enforments officers, and the town manager are now in attempt to see my death and destruction, with threats of stealing me from my rightful owner and sending me to become scrap metal in the junk yard.

This is an outrage! They well not listen to reason.

My profile now comes to you to spread the word and ask for your help in saveing my life. An entire network of websites devoted to my plight are now in the works and links to them well be added here within the next few hours.

Please join the protest and put an end to the Old Orchard Beach reign of terror. Old Orchard Beach is a town not a dynasty, they have no right to take me from my home and kill me!

PLEASE DON’T LET THEM KILL ME!!!!!

To read more, please visit my profile: http://www.myspace.com/savethegoldeneagle

Shot at 2007-04-04

 

This Post copyright Wendy C. Allen 2007. EelKat

Work From Home, Is It Possible?

Work From Home, Is It Possible?

Everyone asks this question, and for those of you with this goal, you prob’ly find yourself asking it more than most people.

Yes, it is, and not really that hard to start either, though most find it hard to keep going. First you have to ask yourself, what is it you want to do?

The most successful work at home jobs are the ones you created yourself…my uncle started working at home in the 1960’s building clay bricks, and building houses for people out of them…today he owns a multi-million corperation that not only builds houses but also building brick churches, but he still runs the buseness out of his home, and he works longer and harder than the average non-home worker.

My mom worked at home too, she was a professional seamstress, sewing fancy dresses for little girls, christening gowns, and cloth dolls. At one point she bought her own brick and mortar store (the house next door to us) and was selling to summer tourists (in Old Orchard Beach we see an average of 2 million tourists each month), but the shop proved to be a bigger home business than my mother had expected. She had no time to sew the crafts anymore, which was her passion, so after 3 years, she shut it down and sold her items to other shops on consignment instead. Now she is hoping to build a web site and move her opperation online by next year.

My dad, he worked at home too, he was a rought driver for the local newspaper, delivering the Portland Press Herald, the Sunday Telegram, the Boston Globe, and the New York Times to over 1000 customers 7 days a week 365 days a year, with not one single day off for the past 21 years… his annual gas costs are over $5,000 each year, and he goes through 3 to 4 cars a year, his annual income was under $12,000 a year.

Another uncle of mine works at home, as a real estate agent. He at one point cliamed to own a multi million dollar alpaca farm in Astrailia. (I can’t verify that as I have never been to Austailia, so never saw the farm myself). Last I heard he had given up on the real estate business in favor of yet another work at home business he had set out to create. Don’t know the details on that, or if it succeeded or flopped.

And yet another uncle works at home, buying juck from yard sales and reselling it at flea markets. His income is average of $10,000 a year, but he does this as a side-line hobby. If he set out to do this full time instead of part-time in his spare time, he could easily triple that figure.

I work at home: I am a writer of both fiction and non-fiction, and I own a small press publishing house which I built myself from the ground up.

So in answer to your question, does work at home exist?

Yes, it does, but it is not a get-rich-quick-scam-artist-work-at-home; that type of work at home well banckrupt you quicker than you can blink. REAL work at home is when you take a skill and use it to help those around you. If you are hired by a business, they pay you for your product/service. If you start your own business, you get paid when your customers pay you. It may look like a private or small business to the world, but it is in fact you working out of your home and thus working at home. However, it is hard work, long hours, no vacation, you get dirty, you get tired, and in the long run, not working at home would have been much less stressful and much easier.

In short working at home is not a get rich quick scheme. Working at home IS NOT getting paid to take survies. Working at home is not, clicking on ads on Google. Working at home is you getting a business lisnce and settingup shop, either online or brick&mortar, and selling your product or services to your customers. Most people are not cut out for the hard labor and long hours of working at home, but for those of you who are, it’s the best thing you could ever do..

Remember:

Employers ask you to fill out a job application, and will ask for past job referances, your SSN, and your criminal records history.

If you did not fill out an application, you did not apply for a real job.

If you filled out an application, but paid for the application form, you got scammed!

and if you can’t find a business to work for: start the business you want to work for an be your own boss in your own home.

We know this, saddly from experiance.

Back in the early 1980’s my mom saw just such an ad in a magazine. BIG promises of lots of money. She sent the money in, for not one ad but 2 differant ones. The first promised big bucks for sewing baby bibs, the second for making beaded earrings. Both ads were pretty much the same: send in a certain amount of money and they’d send you the supplies, you make the items and send them back to them, they sell them. Simple, sounded great, my mom had at one time been a seamstress, she thought she could sew up a storm of baby bibs for a legit company to sell them. That’s what we all thought, we should have read the fine print…or rather, we should have taken a notice that there was no fine print to read! Or maybe that it was a P.O.Box and not an actual address that was listed in the ad, that should have tipped us off.

Well, the supplies came, most of it cheap junk that we could have gotten cheaper and better quality at a dollar store, my mom haveing been a profesional seamstress thought that useing this absolute crap to make these items seemed pretty stupid and unprofessional but, that’s the items the company used so that’s what they sent…alarm bells should have gone off than…we should have realized that no REAL manufacturer, is gonna use such poor quality supplies to make their goods.

Well, we (my mom, my dad, and me) set out to sewing baby bibs and beaded earings. Comes time to send the items back and low and behold, the P.O.Box had been cancled, the “company” turned out to never have existed, and we were stuck with a bunch of stuff we couln’t use or sell.

We learned a lesson. It wasn’t a very big investment, less than $100, but it was not money well spent…or maybe it was, because it taught us to look at these scams with open eyes and questioning minds.

We learned a lot of things:

We learned to read ads more closely.
We learned to question “companies” with ONLY a P.O.Box.
We learned to ask the company for a job application form.
We learned to ask for a history of the company.
We learned to do a background check on the company.
We learned to never pay money to get a job.
We learned to REAL manufatures don’t put ads in magazine classified.
We learned to that most manufactures only hire local residants, so that the employee has to bring the items right in to the factory to be inspected, before the company well accept and pay you.
We learned that REAL jobs assembling items for manufactures, are rare and few and far between, and that you could be on a waiting list for years before they need enough help to get all the way down to your name on their list.

Now we have the internet, and it seems that with it came millions more ways to scam people out of their hard earned money. Every day thousands of new Work-At-Home, Get-Big-Bucks websites are added to the net. A Google search will bring up millions upon millions of them.

When I look at these sites, with their promises of BIG MONEY. I laugh. You see I own more than 200 web sites, 12 fanlistings, and 13 private message boards. I know how to build a website, quite well, maybe not to proffessional standards, but pretty darned close, and than I see these scam sites: many of them are made useing Geo-Cities, Yahoo, AOL, Earthlink, and countless other “free home pages”. Right off the bat that fact alone should set off a RED WARNING ALARM in any person, but it seems that many people do not even notice this fact, and send their money in.

A REAL company would not be useing a “free home page”…a small craft shop run by the sweet little old lady next door, might use a free home page to sell her knitting and cloth dolls, but she wouldn’t be asking you to send money to make money…no she’d show you a picture of her dolls with a price for each one. The Goth girl down the road might use a free site to peddel her homemade velvet capes, while the Wiccan next door lists home made soap on her MySpace. These are people like me and you who are working at home and selling what they make. These people are legit, and you’ll notice they never ask you to pay for a membership before they allow you to buy their products. These people are small business owners working from home.

The free sites that ask you to spend money to make money… those are the ones you got to watch out for. Those are the scams.

If you see a site made by a free home page site, and offering you lots of money for doing next to nothing, run for the hills, because there is no company that is going to use a free web host to seek out workers. Not a single one.

My hope in writing all of this is that it well help you to weed out the scams from the real work at home jobs.

To all: Good luck on your goal.

~~EK

See more progress on: work because I like to, not because I have to

Harassment Update: Lockdown?

I’m not sure I understand what it is they are up to this time, but now we are not allowed on our land??? We are being told it is being auctioned off! ?????? WHAT! Aren’t we supposed to at least get a 30 day notice or something? I don’t get it.

~~EK

National TV-Turnoff Week, April 23-29

Today is the first day of  National TV-Turn Off Week, April 23-29

I have decided to write a list of 101 things for you to do during this week of no TV, should you decide to take on the challange.

1. Go for a walk on the beach.
2. Read a book.
3. Write a book in 7 days.
4. Volunteer at the local  animal shelter.
5. Do a crossword puzzle.
6. Dress up like a pirate.
7. Buy a camera and use it.
8. Play an hours-long game of Monopoly.
9. Grow a crystal garden.
10. Catalog your book collection useing the Dewey Decimal System.
11. Plan a family budget.
12. Go on a camping trip.
13. Plant a vegetable garden.
14. Watch the stars.
15. Sew, knit, or crochet a blanket for a cause (Snuggles, Linus Foundation, etc.)
16. Raise a family of sea monkeys.
17. Answer all those unread emails.
18. Pay your bills.
19. Start a petition.
20. Take your family out to a fancy resturant.
21. Look for BigFoot.
22. Take in a foster pet.
23. Spend a few hours browsing in your local library.
24. Donate pet food to a local shelter.
25. Take a walk around the block.
26. Have a chat with your mom or dad.
27. Go fishing.
28. Organize your DVD collection.
29. Build a personal website.
30. Write a short story for a fiction magazine.
31. Volunteer at the local  soup kitchen.
32. Go sight-seeing.
33. Put the pictures into the photo albums.
34. Throw a “Just-As-You-Are” party.
35. Attempt to prove aliens are real.
36. Visit a local museum.
37. Take your family to an all you can eat buffet.
38. Invent something new.
39. Start to tackle the list of projects that has been getting longer.
40. Head to an amusment park.
41. Take a cruise.
42. Sew a new dress.
43. Get a family photo taken.
44. Take a child to the zoo.
45. Write a letter to someone you haven’t seen in a while.
46. Attend an art show.
47. Vacuum the car.
48. Refinish an old piece of furniture.
49. Write an article for a non-fiction magazine.
50. Go boating.
51. Start a blog.
52. Attend a book reading.
53. Solve a mystery: play a game of Clue.
54. Visit with someone in a nursing home.
55. Go to the circus.
56. Head to your local swamp to pick fiddleheads.
57. Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper.
58. Take a hike in the woods.
59. Visit an art gallery.
60. Open an online store (Zazzle, CafePress, etc.).
61. Take swimming lessons.
62. Quit smoking.
63. Plant a tree.
64. Cook a gourmet dinner.
65. Help your child with his/her homework.
66. Play a game of basketball.
67. Go birdwatching.
68. Wash the windows.
69. Get a makeover.
70. See a play.
71. Repaint your living room.
72. Read a story to a child.
73. Paint a masterpiece.
74. Go on a picnic.
75. Read a comic book.
76. Start a new career.
77. Organize a family reunion.
78. Study up on your family history.
79. Go on a diet.
80. Sing a song.
81. Write a poem.
82. Bake a cake.
83. Go horseback riding.
84. Set up an aquarium.
85. Write a letter to a prisoner.
86. Take up a new hobby, such as stamp collecting.
87. Spend the week looking for UFO’s.
88. Go rock climbing.
89. Dye your hair blue.
90. Wax your car.
91. Redecorate your bedroom.
92. Play video games with your child.
93. Write a business plan for your dream job.
94. Take dance lessons.
95. See a ballet.
96. Buy a box of crayons and draw.
97. Design your dream-house.
98. Make home-made ice-cream.
99. Dress-up and go to the opera.
100. Take you family out to a movie.
101. Visit a haunted house.
102. Write a list of a 101 things you can do.

Quote: “I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.” —Groucho Marx 

New Book Projects, Job Searches, & Seventh Sanctum

You may have noticed that the past couple of days, I have not been posting as often as I was; from 4 or 5 posts a day to about one every other day. There is a reason, quite simple. I got an idea for a new book, and spent the last few days researching it. As ever, one thing lead to another and now I’ve got ideas for three new books and have been working on them all at once. Of course, me writing longhand means I wasn’t online, meaning I was not here to blog. Sorry.

Other reason, is I’m still out searching for a job type job, but have yet to find one. As usual I am told that businesses just won’t hire someone who had never been to school, or someone my age who has never had a job before. (Apperantly, 7 years as a door to door salesman for Avon, doesn’t count as a job, nor does 27 years of writing… or so I’m told by interviewers.) It is getting quite depressing, as I have been seeking a job since May of 2006 and now May 2007 is just around the corner and still all of my endless applications and interviews have turned up nothing. I’m now having a hard time finding places that I have not yet applied to. I feel like I’ve run up against a brick wall, cause I’m still intent on finding a job, yet I can not find any place that I have not already been turned down.

Well, after a day of searching classified ads and online job searches, I have given it a rest for the night and am back here to say hi to you all and let you know what I’d been doing and thinking. Columbo is on TV right now, so I’m gonna go watch that now, after which I’ll be heading to Seventh Sanctum in search of some ideas for my 3 new book projects. Seventh Sanctum is such a great site, I get loads of ideas from them. If you haven’t checked them out yet, be sure to do so.

~~EK

Conventional Advice that Didn’t Work for Her (or Me Either!)…

Patricia A. Duffy says that when it comes to writing,  “Conventional Advice Wouldn’t Work for Me”.  After reading her article, I have to say that basicly, she has said pretty much what I would have said, and what I do say, whenever someone asks me.

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

1) Write every day.

This piece of advice is repeated in almost every book on “how to write.” Maybe some people need this sort of discipline, but I would find it counterproductive. Sometimes I write feverishly every day. Sometimes real life intervenes. I have a demanding job and a family. If I believed I had to write every day, even when I absolutely had no time, I’d quickly grow to hate writing and I’d stop doing it. Mostly, I have more ideas than I have time to process, so “forcing myself to write” is not a problem. And during those periods when “real life” heats up and I can’t write, I don’t feel any guilt. Why should I? Writing isn’t a religious penance or a health routine. It’s something I enjoy.

My responce to what she says:

You’ve heard it preached from the pulpit of every sacred book on writing: WRITE EVERY DAY!!!

Now ask yourself this: What does writing mean to you? Is writing a hobby or a career? How did you answer?

A hobby?

If you think of writing as a hobby, than who cares when you write? No one. If you write as a hobby, than who cares if your writing gets sloppy? No one. If you write as a hobby, than who cares if you ever get published? No one. If you write as a hobby, than by all means writer seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, because you know what? If you are writing because writing is a hobby, no one cares. Why? Because hobby writers write for their own pleasure. If they get published, it’s a great big WOO-HOO! for themselves and their family. But very few hobby writers ever get published. Why? Because they are content to post their stories on message boards and web-sites and blogs. They are happy to see their work on the internet. Writing after all is just a hobby to them. They are content with what they do.  So, for writers who write as a hobby, it is not important when they write, because their family is not dependant on the writing. Just search on Google for Fan-Fiction. Millions of stories are posted all over the internet, but because they are written by hobby writers, tthose stories well never be printed in books. They well never be published, but no one cares, not even the writer. So why than does it matter if the hobby writer writes every day?

Let’s look at the other side of this story.

Now ask yourself this once again: What does writing mean to you? Is writing a hobby or a career? How did you answer?

A career?

I ask you: What is your day job? Do you  wait tables? Drive a school  bus? Are you a cashier at the local super market? Maybe you teach high-school geography? Whatever it is that you do for your day job, ask yourself this: How many days do you work each week? A few well say three, some well say four, almost all of you well say five. By law your employer is required to give you at least two days off each week. That’s a law. That law is enforced. If an employer asks you to work more than five days a week, they are required to pay you time and a half. That too is a law. Why? Because even the government knows that you can’t get the job done if you are not given a day or two of rest. If you work seven days a week, you well run down, wear out and get sloppy. Your work well suffer, because you didn’t get a day off.

So, we come back to your answer: Why do you write? Hobby or career? If you said career, than you know that being a writer is just like every other 9 to 5 job. Nine o clock you sit down at your desk and you start writing. Around noon you take an hour break for lunch. After lunch it’s back to your desk to write until five. Five o clock comes around and no matter how compelled you are to keep writing, you put down your pen, turn off the light and don’t go back to your desk again until tomorrow morning when nine o clock rolls around again. Like any other job, you take the weekend off. Why? Because for you writing is more than a hobby. For you writing is what puts food on the table. For you writing is what puts clothes on your children. Writing just paid for your teenager’s PS3. Writing pays the mortage. Writing pays the vet bills caused by the recent pet-food recall. You write because writing is your career, your job, your livelyhood. For you writing is not a hobby. You can’t afford to let you writing get sloppy and you know that, which is why you also know that it is foolish for you or any other writer to think that it is in your best interest to write every day.

And that is  why I do not write every day.

Moving on to myth #2…

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

2. Don’t Edit Until the First Draft is Done.

I edit obsessively as I go along. I like rewriting things. I can’t imagine another way to write and would be utterly incapable of completing that first draft if I didn’t do it this way.

My responce to what she says:

This, I think, depends on the writer and what they are writing about at the time. Personaly I do not believe in editing as you write, as a general rule. Why? I find that when I am writing, I  write better if I don’t stop. I have learned to ignore typos and spelling mistakes, to turn a blind eye to bad grammar, and to not listen when my mind says I should go back and re-write what I just wrote. Why? Because if I stop, it creates a speed bump. That speed bump slows me down and causes me to go lose track of what it was I was writing. So I find myself going back to where I had stopped, because I have to re-read what I wrote several times before I can remember where it was I was going with that train of thought. In a sence by stopping to edit while I was writing, I have now derailed my writing train, and put it back on a new track, and it just can’t get back onto that old track, because the old track for some odd reason is no longer there. On a road, a speed bump just jostles your car a bit and make you slow down, but on a train track, that same little speed bump not only jostles the train, but knocks it off track and sends it flying into the oncoming train on the other track. That speed bump is now a mangled mess of crumpled train cars, which ow must be towed away and tossed into  a junk heap. A huge rusted junk heap towering high above your head. The next thing you know you can’t write anything at all because all there is is a pile of mangled wreckage. You have hot a writer’s block.

So, where are we now? Well, for me, stopping to edit while I’m still writing is the deadliest thing that can happen while I’m writing. Usually, but not always. This is just me though, and as I said, all writers are differant.

Moving on…

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

3. Use Note cards or Notebooks to Organize Ideas

Even the thought of using index cards to organize fiction ideas is almost enough to make me run screaming into traffic. In my mind, these little cards will forever be associated with undergraduate term papers. I don’t use notebooks because I hate to write longhand. I do all my writing on the word processor — even background notes for novels. Actually, I prefer to do background for novels as short stories, even lame short stories with no chance of selling. I see things better that way.

My responce to what she says:

As most of you know, I never went to school. I can’t identify with term papers because I’ve never had one, let alone seen one, and I’m not realy sure what they are, except that everyone who talks about school talks about term papers too. I’m not sure what an undergraduate is, I’ll look it up next time I’ve got my dictionary at hand. For those who have followed my posts on the net since 1997, you already know that when I joined the internet world, it was my first time typing. I had never used a keyboard before in my life. Likewise, I had also never learned how to spell. I wrote at that time in what I have since been told is a form of a “native lingo of my own invention, cause by lack of previous contact with humans”. In 1997, I first I joined the internet, and became an over night celebrity, not because I posted on every forum and chat room I could find, but because people were fascinated by my complete and total lack of any ability to spell. In the years since that time, my fan following grew to a cult status as people set out to teach me how to spell via online forums.

Than came a revilation to the world, that no one had befor known: My books, the Twighlight Manor seires, several thousand pages, and countless drafts of each, had never seen typewritter, I had written all of them in longhand. The manuscipts where totally written in bright colored notebooks with Lisa Frank art on the covers: thousands of them. Some 40 boxs worth of notebooks, stacked floor to ceiling. Noetbooks that I have been writing in since 1978. Thirty years worth of notebooks.

Today, I still write my books in longhand. I still hand write all of my manuscripts in bright colored children’s note books. To date, I have only ever written one outline. I have never used index cards. I do not type my manuscripts until after haveing hand written several drafts. I do not organize my ideas, my ideas flow from my mind at a rapid rate, and I write them as they come. No notes. No note taking. They are not my style.  They do not work for me.

And finally we come to:

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

4. Keep a Story Circulating until it Sells.

This is another piece of almost universal advice that I don’t follow. I tend to select my markets rather carefully. If something is rejected at the market I’ve thought most probable for it, I will normally only try it on one or two other markets before giving up (or in some cases no other markets). Although there are a lot of magazine markets for speculative short fiction, there are actually relatively few professional markets for speculative short fiction of any given type. I guess my economics training makes me weight the possible benefit (payment for a story) by my subjective evaluation of the “odds” of being published in that magazine. If the weighted payoff is less than the postage, I put the story in a drawer and work on another one.

My responce to what she says:

In some cases, this is true, in others it is not.

Some times I write for copyrighted characters not of my own making. For these stories there is only one publisher that I can legally send the stories to. If they reject the story, than that’s it. It can’t be sent to anyone else.

More often I write stories of characters of my own invention, and for these, I can choose any publisher I damn well please. I can also choose who I DO NOT want to publish it. Than again I can also choose to do what I usually do, and that is to self publish my stories. That is how I came to own my own publishing house. It is through owning my publishing house that I came to become an editor. Today I am a writer, a publisher, and an editor, because I reserved the right to choose when, where, and to whom I sent my manuscripts too: no one!

Well, that is my take on what Patricia A. Duffy says that when it comes to writing,  “Conventional Advice Wouldn’t Work for Me”. 

~~EK

The Three Great Myths of Writing

Everyone knows that the great writers follow hard and fast rules for writing. The great writers are thought to have some secret code, some vast conspiracy that only they know about and are withholding from all the unpublished writers of the world. Everyone knows this. Everyone. Don’t they? This must be true, otherwise why would every would be writer seek out to approach the great published writers for some insight into knowing “the secret to being published”?

Uhmmm? Do these people REALLY believe that writers are holding back some great secret? That’s just… well… weird.

I often wonder why it is that would be writers spend so much time seeking out the secrets of great writing instead of doing what the great writers they are seeking do, which is to sit down at a desk and writer. Successful writers are to busy writing to head out seeking the secrets of writing and there in lays their success.

Today I found this article. Great stuff. If you are one of those who seeks out the secrets of writing success, you might want to read this before seeking any farther:

by Joan Marie Verba

For a long time, many people thought that they could get warts from handling frogs. Now we know that this was a myth–something “everyone” thought was true, but which had no basis in fact.

Writing, too, has its own mythology. In writing, as in everything else, mythology is perpetuated for a reason. People use myths to explain phenomena they do not understand, or to deal with realities they do not wish to face, or to avoid confronting the fact that events are often random and unfair. Because myths have such powerful uses, myths are seldom questioned, and people become very upset when their cherished myths are challenged. But myths, because they are untrue, can cause people who believe in them to feel hurt or lost or confused when they rely on these myths to guide their actions.

That is why I believe that writers should become aware of the myths that exist in our profession. In my experience, I have discovered three myths which I believe are particularly misleading, and are worth further discussion.

Myth #1: If your writing is good, you will have no trouble selling your stories; if you are not selling your writing, it means your stories are no good.

This myth has a factual basis. A lot of writing does get rejected because it is poor. But the myth, as repeated by many experienced writers, is that good writing guarantees acceptance and, conversely, non-acceptance surely means that the writing is poor. To debunk this myth, researchers have recently taken classic novels–The Yearling comes to mind as an example–and submitted them as manuscripts to publishers. These were seldom recognized by the publishers, and almost universally rejected. The reason is that publishers nowadays are less interested in the quality of writing than they are in the commercial potential of the writing. If the publisher thinks the writing will sell, even if the manuscript is flawed, the publisher may be inclined to buy it. If the publisher thinks the manuscript will not sell, the publisher may not take it no matter how well it is written. This, for instance, explains rejection slips which say, “good writing, we just don’t want to publish it.”

Myth #2: Once you sell a book, or several short stories, you will not have any trouble getting an agent, and you will not have any trouble selling any more of your own writing.

I recently read an interview with an award-winning author who said that she was not able to get an agent until after she sold her fourth novel. Another author, a friend of mine, also worked out her fourth book contract without an agent, though she was able to get an agent for her fifth. I know a third author who has had five novels published, but for the past three years has not been able to find anyone interested in the two novels she has written since then. And I recently read an account from a writer whose first book sold tens of thousands of copies who reported that she did not have an agent for her first book, and has had trouble finding an agent for her second.

With so many counter-examples cropping up, this myth is beginning to lose its hold, though it still persists. My guess is that those who perpetuate this myth are the lucky authors who were able to find an agent after (or even before) their first book came out, and had no trouble finding a publisher for any novel they wrote thereafter. Such authors do exist, but I suspect they are not as numerous as mythology would have it.

Myth #3: If you follow the advice of experienced authors, you are certain to get published.

I recall the advice that the late science fiction author Robert Heinlein had for writers: write, finish what you write, and keep sending the manuscript to publishers until it sells. Experienced authors tend to add other advice: study the markets, improve your skills, and so forth. This third myth is very seductive because the advice is sound. But the fact is that novices can read and follow every word of advice that experienced writers print and still not get published. The problem is not simply that no method works for everyone, and to say that writers must find a method that works for their particular situation is too superficial. The problem is that many writers who give advice imply–if they do not say it outright–that any writer who follows their advice will absolutely, positively, get published….now, if not sooner.

This leaves novices who follow such advice beating their heads against the wall in frustration. (“But I did everything J. Doe said in the article ‘How to Get Your Story Published’ and I still have not placed my story.”) Novices will be helped, instead, if they are told that writing is a complex task involving a lot of intangibles and random variables (or, in other words, luck). Authors need to be told that no one piece of advice will guarantee acceptance; at best, following good advice merely increases the probability of publication.

Writing, as a profession, is tough enough without well-intentioned authors passing along useless myths. A writer who has a stack of unpaid bills on one hand and a stack of rejection slips on the other is not helped by being told that if the writing is good, it will sell; or that once the first story is sold, there will be no problem selling the next one; or that if the writer just follows J. Doe’s advice, the acceptances will start rolling in. Encouragement and reassurance need to be based on a realistic appraisal of the obstacles writers inevitably face. Writers can and do sell stories. Good writers can and do get rejected. Writers with track records can and do have problems placing succeeding stories. Advisors can and do fail to give suggestions that work.

I suspect there are other myths making the rounds, but either I have not yet come across them, or I have not yet found out that certain statements I have heard are myths. I am interested in hearing from anyone who has other myths to report (that is, myths that writers tell other writers, as opposed to myths that the public has about writers). Myths about writing may never disappear, even if exposed as falsehoods, but at least those of us who love frogs should be able to handle them without fearing that we will get warts.

© 1994 by Joan Marie Verba.

Permission to copy this essay is granted provided the copyright notice (previous line) is included.
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What Does “Non-Genre” Mean?

Many publications say they only accept “Non-Genre Fiction”. A common question writers ask is: “What is Non-Genre Fiction? Doesn’t all fiction have a genre?” I had just read this post and noticed a debate over what is the meaning of Genre Fiction VS Non-Genre Fiction had begun on it’s comments.  Being an editor, I think I can be of help here. So, here is my answer to that question. I hope that some of you find it helpful when submitting your future stories to publishers.When a publication says, “they’re non-genre focused”, they mean that they only want literary fiction and will automatically refuse all stories that a genre driven. A genre driven story is one that falls under the following:

Romance

Fantasy

Sci-fi

Horror

(and the many other such genres out there)

Genre driven stories are focused largely on promotion of their genre and the story focuses totally on that genre. I.e., a romance focuses on a girl’s romantic infatuation; a fantasy will focus on the life of elves wizards and he-men type characters fighting evil in a epic quest; sci-fi focuses on alien life forms traveling from one planet to the next and other such sci-fi type things; horror focuses on scaring the pants off the reader

When a publisher say “they’re non-genre focused” they want to see a slice-of-life story about the day (or week or year) in the life of so-and-so… this is what is known as non-genre or literary fiction. The story focuses on real-life type characters in real life type situations; stories that real like they could be the life of the guy next door or the girl down the road. Non-genre stories tell a story that is not dependant on a fantasy quest or the eloquent narration describing the alien landscape or the steamy sex-scenes. They simply tell a story about life and thus have no genre.

Well, that’s what I see it to mean. Feel free to comment on your own veiws as to the meaning of “non-genre”.

~~EK

A Writer’s Emotions

Writing is a very sacred thing for a writer, it is deeply personal and deeply emotional, because we pour our very heart and soul into what we write, and when someone rejects our words, they in a way reject our very soul as well. While writing we are thrown through every possible emotion, both the good and the bad. Writing can been very relaxing when we do it, because we feel that our words well hold a warm meaning to our readers, but than it become stressful and we are filled with the fear that what we wrote well not be well recieved by our readers.

Writing is prob’ly the most emotional, exhilerating, and stressful act anyone can ever do.

~EK

Pet of the Day

Peeco and Angel are seeking a new home. If you likve in the area and are looking for a pet bird, why not head to the shelter and adopt them or one of the other pets waiting for new homes.

~~EK

“Peeco and Angel”

Greetings, Peeco and Angel here! We are beautiful 7 year old Cockatiels. Angel is a Lutino with yellow coloring and Peeco is a White-Faced Pearl mutation. Quite pretty, don’t you think? We are generally friendly birds who need regular handling and interaction to stay friendly and sociable. Have you ever had a bird companion before? Please read up on our species before coming down to meet us. We have special care, housing and food requirements. Visit Cockatiels.org to learn all about us! Let’s get together!

Want to adopt this small animal?
Fill out and print an application or send an application online.

Donate Now, the small animals at the shelter need nutritious food and snacks.

Volunteer Opportunity, The small animals at the shelter need volunteers to help out by socilaizing with them and giving them plenty of one on one time!

Submission Guidelines for Moonsnails

 

Basic Submissions Guidlines:

This is a quick overview of our basic guidelines. See our fully detailed guidelines for each seperate genre on our Submission Guidelines website.

Status:
Moonsnails is currently accepting submissions

Title:

Moonsnails Magazine

Magazine Format:(projected)

Quarterly: 6″ x 9″, 96 – 132 pages per issue;
60 lb bright white paper, B&W text; 10pt glossy laminated perfect bound full color cover

Circulation:

world-wide though print on demand

Contact Info:

Wendy C. Allen, editor-in-chief, twighlightmanor@yahoo.com

Submission Format:

Send in body of email, 12pt Courier or Times New Roman or Send at attachment .RTF 12pt Courier or Times New Roman.

Payment:

copies only at this time; buys one time rights, (the right to print story in one issue; author retains copyright)

responce time: 2 – 6 months

Needs:

Short stories up to 13,000 words.

Literary Genre fiction. Cross-gen OK.

Rarely uses poetry. Poetry used only if it can be considered a full-fledged story, complete with characters and plot. Never accepts free-verse.

Genres Accepted:

Sci-fi, Fantasy, Gothic Romance, and “mild” Horror

Sub-Genres and Cross-Genres Accepted:

Action, Adventure, Alien Invasion, Alien Realms, Alternative Histories, Amateur Detective, Americana, Ancient Civilizations, Animal Stories, Biographical Fiction, Christmas, Classic Literature, Colonial America, Cryptozology, Dark Fantasy, Dragon Tales, Easter, Ethnic Fiction, Espionage, Faerie Realms, Fairy Tales, Family Sagas, Fantasy, Folklore, Frontier Sagas, Furries, Futuristic, Ghost Stories, Gothic Romance, Halloween, Hard Science Fiction, Haunted Houses, High Fantasy, High Seas Adventure, Historical, Horror, Humor, Inspirational, Kung Fu, Literary, Mad Scientist Sci-Fi, Mermaid Tales, Military, Mystery, Murder Mystery, Paranormal, Pirate Tales, Psychological Thiller/Terror, Regional: Maine, Regional: Quebec, Romance, Science Fiction, Serials, Short-Shorts, Slueths, Space Fantasy, Space Travel, Spiritual, Sword & Sorcery, Supernatural, Suspence, Thiller, Time Travel, Twilight Zone style, UFO stories, Unicorn Tales, Utopian Realms, Victorian, War, Western, Wizard Tales, Young Adult.

Things Rejected:

Rejects all stories that contain:

abortion, animal abuse, child abuse, cutting, death glorification, depression, depressive self-pity, drinking, drugs, elder abuse, erotica, expose`, gore, hatred, hunting, politics, pornography, sex, smoking, swearing, suicide, vulgar verbology, and stories about “how my teenage years were crap”.

Stories must be family friendly and rated PG-13 or less

Poetry Needs:

We focus on short stories, thus rarely use poetry.

Sometimes accepts poetry, at best it’s only 4 poems per year, IF it tells a story and has strong characters. Same as fiction needs, seeks longer “epic length” story poems akin to Robert Browning’s Pied Piper of Hamlin, Edgar Allan Poe’s Raven or Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs & Ham. Prefers long rhyming poems with strong characters and a strong story plot.

Poetry Rejects:

Same as fiction rejects, plus: Does not accept free-verse poetry, haiku, short poems, poems without characters, poems without plots, meaningless ramblings, odes to…, poems without rhythem, or any other type of poem that does not tell a complete story from beginning to end.

Cover Art:

Usually done “in-house”, but well consider submissions of full-color photography or paintings, covering any genre. Always seeks beach and ocean themed photos or paintings. Do not send originals. Email files as atactment. Files must be compatible with MSWorks, MSPaint, or MSPublisher 97, .jpg files prefered. Note that we can not accept .tif files, our email treats them as a virus and deletes them. See fiction for needs & rejects list. Buys one time rights.

Art & Inside Illustration:

Usually uses spot illustrations and copyright-free/public domain illustration, but well consider submissions of B&W, pen & ink, line art only … no pencil, no shading, no grey-scale, no color, our printer well not accept them. All illustrations must be 4″ x 6″ or smaller and camera ready. Do not send originals. Email files as atactment. Files must be compatible with MSWorks, MSPaint, or MSPublisher 97, .jpg files prefered.  Note that we can not accept .tif files, our email treats them as a virus and deletes them. See fiction for needs & rejects list.

Advice:

Best advise: buy a copy of Brian Froud’s Faeries. Use it as though it were our Submissions Guidelines. Treat it as your Writer’s Bible. Use it to create believable fantasy characters. Never go anywhere without it. If you want to write for us than consider Brian Froud your new best friend, read everything he ever wrote. Study every painting he ever did. Watch every film he ever created. Watch the 2 movies written by Brian Froud: Dark Crystal and Labyrinth.

Read the Retief series by Keith Laumer and The Hitchhicker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. We like that kind of sci-fi best.

Watch Star Trek (the original series), Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, X-Files, and Tales From the Dark Side. Let them inspire you. If your story would make for a good episode on one of them, than we want to see it!

We like to see strong characters. Character driven stories. Well written plots. We like fantasy realms, dreamscapes, and alien planets. Creativity is always welcomed. Pirates are always good, we need more pirates. Always seeking stories about Mermaids, Sirens, Dragons, Unicorns, or other creatures of the Realm of Fay. We like to see characters that Brian Froud would have created.

Let your imagination run wild.

Twighlight Manor Press Home Page

Twighlight Manor Press Home Page

Business Plans: Moonsnails Magazine: We’re Back!

In fall of 2005 Twighlight Manor Press announced that it was planning the release of a new magazine, which at that point was untitled and it‘s genre unknown. Our original idea was to keep it local; local writers, local sales, local flavor to the stories. Market research, however showed us that that would be a very unprofitable venture that would doom our magazine to failure before it’s fifth issue. We had to rethink out plan.

Over the next several weeks we threw around ideas and finally decided that the magazine would be a fiction “literary journal”. At first we planned on “all good fiction”, but than after studying the market, realized that this was virtually a bottomless pit, that would result in more manuscript submissions than our tiny staff of four would be able to handle.

Another thing we decided early on, was that, we wanted to stand out on bookstore shelves. Looking at other magazines sold at a local bookstore, Nonesuch Books in Saco, I discovered something. Rack upon rack of magazines, where all the same: 8×11” glossy and flimsy issues, that would not stand the test of time on a bookshelf, given them a shelf life of just 3 weeks. (This short shelf life was according to a study I found online.) According to that study, only a few magazines would be shelved and saved to be read again and again for several years. These magazines had good content and a sturdy binding. I went to Nonesuch Books looking for magazines with good content and study bindings, and was amazed at how few there actually were. In the end I found only three, out of the hundreds of magazines the shop had on the racks. By the end of this stage in our study we came to one conclusion: this magazine, was NOT going to be a 8×11” glossy; instead it would read like a book, with crisp white paper and a square bound “paperback” cover.

After some more market studies, we came to the conclusion that rather than focusing on fiction in general, we would instead use the same rule we use for writing: Write what you know. In our case it would translate into: Publish what you read. All four of us are sci-fi buffs. Sci-fi movies, sci-fi TV, sci-fi comics, sci-fi books… well it seemed only natural that we would thus choose sci-fi as the genre for the new magazine.

By January of 2006 we had a pretty good idea of what we wanted to do with the magazine. On Space Dock 13 (the website) we announced that the magazine was a defiant go, and we were planning it’s release later that year.

With our genre in mind, we set out the name our new magazine. After several weeks of debate, only one thing was agreed upon: that the magazine must have a sci-fi sounding name and that it should reflect our local home base, namely that we are on the world’s most beautiful beach: Old Orchard Beach, Maine.

In April 2006 we introduced the world to two new websites. The first was the message board for writers: A Writer’s Desk. It was our hope that through here we would find new talent seeking to be published in our magazine. A message board built entirely to promote the magazine, today it stands on it’s own and has no connection to the magazine at all.

Our second Website was of course the homepage for our magazine. We had finally decided on a name, and that name was: Moonsnails. After a walk to the beach that cold April, me and my three brothers returned home with tote bags filled with Old Orchard’s most beloved seashell: the Atlantic Moonsnail. Later that day, while sorting the shells on the lawn, it hit me: Moonsnails was the perfect name for our magazine, it kept the local flavor and it sounded sci-fi. Later that week Moonsnails homepage went online.

By the end of April 2006 we were getting quotes from various printers, both local and online. Announcement went out with the news that Moonsnails would see its public release in September of 2006. We were off and running, and than came May 9, 2006 and the flood that washed away all of our plans, destroying everything we owned and bringing Twighlight Manor Press to an instant standstill. We lost everything, the building was condemned, and nothing survived. As far as the business was concerned, we were back at ground zero.

That same day, as a result of the flood, my dad went into a coma. In July of 2006, my dad awoke from the coma and returned home disabled and in my care. In September of 2006, instead of releasing Moonsnails, we found ourselves in the midst of fight to save our land from a local land shark. The result was my dad’s return to the hospital. In October of 2006, a fire swept through. What little we had that survived the flood, was destroyed in the fire and we were faced with fighting out Maine’s frigid winter in a tent, a fate that did not sick well with my disabled dad’s rapidly failing health.

In January of 2007, things took a turn once again, this time in our favor, and we found our selves with electricity, heat, and a roof over our heads, for the first time since May 9, 2006.

Reunited with my computer, I was amazed to find, that in spite of the flood, in spite of the fire, the hard drive remained intact, and with a few minor repairs, it runs as good as new. It looks like hell, a bent mangled mess, but who cares, all my files are still here! All my plans and templates, all those months of research and market studies: they had survived! With that knowledge in hand I set out to pick up the pieces, and once again, plans are underway, full speed ahead, to bring Moonsnails into production.

And that brings us to today. Nether flood, nor fire, nor cold of winter, could stop Moonsnails. Moonsnails rises once again.

~EK

Spring In Maine

It’s a nice warm spring day in April in Maine. I bet you can tell, that is if you can see through the driving snow outside your window. Yep, it’s April, and right on schedual is our annual snowstorm. Jim Thomas and Ken Shoop must be ripping their hair out right now.  More snow mean longer snow on the ground and a longer time we got to stop them from stealing the Goldeneagle (my 1964 Dodge 330 which they have said must be junked as soon as the snow melts, otherwise the town of Old Orchard Beach well fine us $2,500 a day for each day we refuse to remove it.)

For those of you who do not know The Goldeneagle is the heart and soul of The Twighlight Manor series. If not for this car, none of the books would ever have been written. Back in 1978 when the first volum was written their were 4 characters: EelKat, Sir Roderic, Emporer Blue, and Captain Goldeneagle a.k.a Etiole. Captain Goldeneagle was the character based on this car, the character that would go on to be the most celebrated and most contraversal of the entire series: Etiole. The car itself has been featured again and again thoughout the series. It is an icon with fans of the series. An icon who is now threatened on the latest method of harassment that Jim Thomas and Ken Shoop have brought down on our family. (and ours is not the first they have done this to, they have a long history of doing this!)

First they put my dad in the hospital in a coma.

Than they force us to live in a tent during Maine’s sub-zero winter.

Than they threaten our pets.

Now they threaten my car.

And I continue to wonder: when well this end? When well someone put a stop to this man’s reign of terror? Why does everyone turn a blind eye to what they are doing?

~~EK

Communist blacklist, Communism in America, the communist town of Old Orchard Beach, Jim Thomas the Communist, Will Watson the Communist, down with Communism, fight for your rights, make America the land of the free again, 1964 Dodge 330, angry, animal rights, animal welfare, animals, anti-elder abuse, antiquies, author’s rights, authors, bantams, belief, beliefs, Biddeford, birds, cats, chickens, Christ, Christianity, church corruption, conspiracy, corrupt leaders, corruption, crime, criminal, criminals, cruel, cruelty, danger, disabled, discrimination, dogs, evil, evil men, faith, Family, farm animals, farm life, fear, Garden by the Sea, geography, God, government, government crime, harasment, harassment, hell, help wanted, Holiness, Holy Spirit, humans, in need of help, Jesus, LDS, lies, Life, life blogging, local government, Maineland, Mormons, my thoughts on…, news, ocean, ocean life, Old Orchard, police, police corruption, police threats, politics, Relationships, religon, seniors, sin, sinner, sinners, social change, stamp collecting, stamps, stealing, Stolen House, stolen items, strange but true, strangers, tent, terror, terrorism, terrorists, Theology, theology beliefs, thief, thieves, thoughts, threats, town hall, Town of Old Orchard, vandelism, vandels, villain, war, weather, Winter, World, writer, writer’s rights, writers, York county

testing tags

having a problem getting posts to show up… testing to see if tags are working yet

A List of POD Publishers

I found this list of Print On Demand publishers and found it quite interesting as I had only heard of a few of them before. Well, you know me, now I must go check them all out and compare them against each other. I am compelled to do nothing less. I haven’t had a chance to study up on these yet, so I can’t vouch for them, but feel free to check them out for yourselves and see what you think of them.

Here’s the complete list of Publishers covered in the Guide:  

(links added by me, as the article contained no links ~~EK)

• Arbor Books Inc.
• Authorhouse
• Authors Online Ltd
• Aventine Press
• Blitzprint
• Booklocker
• Bookstand Publishing
• Booksurge
• Café Press
• Cold Tree Press
• Dog Ear Publishing
• Endeavor Printing Llc
• Equilibrium Books
• First Choice Books
• Foremost Press
• Golden Pillar Publishing
• Infinity Publishing
• Inkwater Press
• Ithaca Press
• iUniverse(not pod)
• Llumina Press
• Longdash Publishing
• Lulu
• Outskirts Press
• Page Free Publishing
• Pleasant Word Publishing
• Pod World Publishing (URL expired)
• PublishAmerica(not pod)
• Rj Communications
• Tate Publishing(not pod)
• Third Millennium Publishing
• Trafford Press(not pod)
• Twilight Times
• Virtual Bookworm
• Wasteland Press
• We Publish(URL not found)
• WheatMark(not pod)
• Wingspan(URL not found)
• Writers World
• Xlibris
• Xulon Press

For those interested in POD self-publishing, I also recomend that you first read this:

For the sake of referance, I pasted the first paragraph below:

PRINT ON DEMAND  Print on demand (POD) is the commonly-used term for the digital printing technology that allows a complete book to be printed and bound in a matter of minutes. POD technology makes it easy and cost-effective to produce books one or two at a time or in small lots, rather than in larger print runs of several hundred or several thousand.POD has a number of applications. Commercial and academic publishers use it to print advance reading copies, or when they can’t justify the expense of producing and warehousing a sizeable print run–for instance, to keep backlist books available. Some independent publishers use it as a more economical fulfillment method, trading lower startup costs against smaller per-book profits (due to economies of scale, digitally printed books have a higher unit production cost than books produced in large runs on offset presses). Last but not least, there are the POD-based publishing service providers, which offer a fee-based service that can be described, depending on one’s bias, as either vanity publishing or self-publishing…. To read the rest of the article CLICK HERE.

Except for graphics, and where specifically indicated, all Writer Beware contents copyright © 1998-2007 Victoria Strauss

Attack of the POD People! They are not evil.

Are you a self publisher? Maybe you have a manuscript you want published, but you are not sure if self-publishing is right for you? I’m a self publisher myself and I’m always looking for ways to improve, so as you can expect I spend a lot of my “blog reading time” looking for blogs that help writers in general and self-publishers esp. Well, today I came across a new blog I hadn’t found before. My search lead me to this post:

POD is not Vanity is not Self Publish

April 1st, 2007 · No Comments

POD is a technology. It’s a way to print books. It’s quite useful for printing small quantities, particularly if there is intermittent demand. LOTS of publishers who are not vanity houses or scam mills use POD technology. University presses spring to mind, as do very small limited runs of very tightly focused books. POD is not evil.

Vanity presses can use POD technology OR they can use webfeed technology. Vanity presses are essentially printers with some support staff. They’ll help you print up nice editions of whatever you want. You pay for this. It’s called vanity because they don’t acquire the book. Acquire means there is an editorial staff choosing particular books to publish. Vanity houses do not maintain lists, issue catalogs or sell books in bookstores. Vanity presses are not evil

Self publishers can use POD technology or webfeed technology. Self publishers are not vanity presses in the everyday sense of the word. They are “vanity” in the sense that there isn’t an acquisition but the two phrases are used to mean different things in publishing. Lots of people self publish for a lot of reasons. Self publishing is not evil.

POD/scam mills are companies set up to persuade you, the author, that printing your book with their company is the equivalent to having it acquired by a publisher. They charge you money. Unlike a respectable vanity press, they don’t copy edit or produce high quality products. They are out to make money on volume. They prey on author’s insecurities and lack of knowledge. POD/scam mills are the scum of the earth.

Whether a company is the scum of the earth depends on how they run their business, not how they print their books.

There are several POD companies that do not try to persuade you that you have but to print up books with them to be on your way to fame and glory. Lulu and CafePress come to mind. There are others I’m sure.

– Miss Snark, the literary agent

[via To Publish a Book]

→ No CommentsTags: Self-Publishing · Articles · Books

to the authour of this post, I say:

bravo!

*insert clapping smilie here*

every one with a manuscript should read this post, if you know someone with a manuscript pass this on to them.

~~EK

Why Do Editors Reject MSs?

I just read this:

Treat your editors like the coach from any sports team because the editor knows their audience and only rejects writing with a good reason–even if you never learn the specifics.

Seemed like good advice, though I know nothing of sports or coaches. I do know, however, that editors have no choice but to reject 90% of what they recieve. Why? Well, for every book they have the physical ability to publish each year they receive 1,000 or more manuscripts. Many publishing houses only print 12 new books a year, one each month, and yet they receive ten times that many manuscripts in a single day. What does that mean for you the writer? That means that your manuscript had better be damn good if you want it to punch out the compatition and make it onto the editor’s desk. Once on the editor’s desk it had better glow if it wants to get picked for publication.

Why do editors reject manuscripts? Well as the editor in chief of Moonsnails Magazine and The Twighlight Manor Press, I think I might know the answer.

Here are copies of a few of the rejection forms we use:

Rejection Notice: No Space At This Time; MS Put on File:

After careful consideration of your ms entitled [ms title goes here] we must regretfully inform you that we are unable to accept it at this time. The decision to deny acceptance was based on the following:At the current time we do not have space for your story in our publication. The reason for this is that all of the space slots have already been appointed for all of our upcoming issues, meaning that it may be a year or more before we well be able to use your story. However, we did like your story, and may use it in the future. Therefore I have put it on file for possible future publication. This does not mean that we can guarantee we well accept it in the future.
Because it may be a year or more before we would be able to accept your story, you are welcomed to submit this same ms to other publishers. If it is accepted by one of them, please inform us of such. If it does get published in an other magazine, we well move it to a file for possible reprint in our magazine.
If at some point in the future we do decide to use your ms, you well be notified and payment well be sent at the than current payment rate.So, you are now staring at this letter, wondering what to do next. Should you polish your ms and resubmit it? Should you submit it elsewhere instead? Should you give up writing like great aunt so-so told you to do?
Answers: maybe, yes, and no.
Yes, go ahead and polish your ms. Correct any spelling and grammar mistakes. Re-read it, possibly re-write it. When you’ve honed it to a fine point, send it out on it’s rounds again. Who knows maybe we’d like the second version of it even better, maybe not, depends on the changes made. Do not let this rejection stop you from writing though. Write more stories, get lots of practice, keep sending them to magazines, keep polishing each draft. Never listen to great aunts who tell you to give up.While your story was not accepted for publication in our magazine at this time, you do have potential and I wish you the best of luck on your writing career. Though I can not promise that we well accept your work, you are welcomed to submit other mss for our consideration in the future.Sincerely,

Rejection Notice: Inappropriate Content:

After careful consideration of your ms entitled [ms title goes here] we must regretfully inform you that we are unable to accept it at this time. The decision to deny acceptance was based on one or more of the following:

explicit sex or sexual references
graphic violence for violence sake
mention of or reference to suicide
animal, child, or elder abuse
excessive use of vulgar verbology
mention of or reference to drug use — this includes one or more of the following:

smoking
drinking
illegal drug use

At this point if you are like most writers, you are sending me a long letter of complaint, protesting that your ms was misrepresented and misjudged, followed by a list of reasons why sex, drugs and gore are essential to your story, ending with a threat of some sort at the bottom. Now, before you write back to me demanding that I force an editor to re-read your ms, let’s review the problem that got it rejected in the first place.

Our editors read the mss and than accept or reject them based on our writer’s guidelines, our current needs, and most importantly the author’s ability to capture the reader’s attention. You the author, are our client. We are your customer. It is the client’s job to keep the customer happy. Remember, the customer is always right. Why? Because it is the customer who knows what they want. The customer is the one with the money. Likewise, it is the customer who pays you for your work or rejects it and pays someone else whose work was better. You do a good job, the customer pays you to do your job. What is your job?
Your job is to write a story that we well want to buy. What can you do to make me want to buy your story? Ah-uh, now we come to the most important part of writing a story: the customer…that one whose always right…our customers. Who are our customers? The people who buy our magazine. The people who read our magazine. Those are our customers. Our job is to keep our customers happy, by buying stories they well want to read. To determine how to keep our customers happy, we first must know who are customers are.
Who are our customers? Let’s examine our magazine.
Our magazine is family friendly: i.e. read by families. Families include all ages. In other words it would not be unusual for the oldest grandmother to be seen reading a story from our magazine to her youngest grandchildren. Keeping that in mind, we do not accept stories that contain any of the above mentioned things.
We are also a small press, sold locally at a tourist resort town on the frigid North Atlantic coast of Maine. Most people who buy our magazine are often tourists looking for something to read on the beach. Others who buy us are local teachers and parents who trust us to publish stories that provide a safe, clean, enjoyable read for students.
What do our readers want? They want a story that they can enjoy reading again and again. They want action, adventure, fun, and entertainment. They want to read about heroes off on grand adventures, pirates seeking lost treasure, super heroes vanquishing dastardly villains, wars in outer space, knights in shining armor, spooky old haunted houses, the type of stuff that was popular in the 1950’s comic books is what our readers enjoy.
What our readers do not want is pointlessness. What is pointlessness? Pointlessness is ho-hum, I think I’ll ad a sex scene in here because I can’t think of anything else to write right now. Pointlessness is , yawn, the dialogue got to short, so I’ll stick in a few swear words. Pointlessness is, geeze this sure is going slow I’ll add a serial killing vampire and have him splatter entrails all over the pages. Pointlessness is, I can’t think of anything else to write, so I’ll have a teenager overdose herself than slice her wrists while jumping off a bridge, because my life is so dull that that’s what I might do tomorrow. Pointlessness is anything that adds nothing to the story plot, it is simply there to fill up empty space. That is pointlessness. Our readers look at sex, swearing, bloody violence, and suicide and say, “Ho-hum. Looks like yet another depressed teenager wrote that piece of crap. Booooring! When are they going to get some real writers to write some real stories. I’m going to cancel my subscription.”
As you can see, if we print those things we lose our readers. If we lose our readers, we lose our customers. If we lose our customers, we lose money. If we lose money we go bankrupt. If we go bankrupt we have to close down the magazine. If we close down the magazine, we end up homeless and starving. So, the author’s ability to capture the reader’s attention is a big factor in considering a ms for acceptance. Think about it this way. When you buy a magazine to read, would you pay to read something like this:

It was a dark and stormy night, the night I wrote this story. I remember it was dark and stormy because I was watching the drug dealer outside my window that night. But my story isn’t about him, no, it’s about me and my life as a teenager. This is the coolest story in the world! OMG!!!!! It is sooooooo greetarific! It is all about how my teen years were nothing but heaping loads o’ crapola. You’ll just love to reading about how my step-dad was hell and how he raped me and beat up my dog, and how my mom was on drugs (that‘s how I knew the guy outside my window was a drug dealer), and how I run away and everything! It doesn’t have a plot, but that’s okay cause I’m the main character anyways, and I’m so great the story don’t need no plot. YAH! But than I got to thinking it’d be great if it was a horror, so I turned my step dad into a blood sucking vampire and I stuck in loads + loads of blood and gore to shock your readers with too!!!! Isn’t that jus the coolest thing??? I’ll bet no body ever thought of doing that yet. Yeah I know, it’s great, don’t thank me, I’ll settle for you kissing my ass and being my eternal slave, I’m so great you know. Oh yeah and sex too, I added a sex scene on EVERY SINGLE PAGE!!!!!! Who cares about story and plot? You don’t need a story line or a plot, not when you’ve got me! Me and blood and gore and lots of sex and great in your face kiss ass @#$&(+!#@%7 swear words to fill up the space right? Am I right or what???!! Oh yeah! I’m right baby! Can ya dig it?!

Okay, so your ms wasn’t THAT bad, but I’m hoping that by writing that example in that way, it’ll open your eyes to the fact that it is very hard for editors to WANT read a ms that is submitted without the author at least stopping to think about what our readers do and do not want. Other magazines do not publish misspelled, grammatically incorrect stories that focus on me, myself and I surrounding by naked girls and serial killers on drugs and nor do we. Okay, maybe there are a few magazines that publish that sort of thing, so, send it to them, they want it, we don’t.
As I said before, the customer is always right, and we have to think of our customers first. Our customers do not want to read misspelled and grammatically incorrect stories, nor do they want to read pointless ramblings. How long do you think a reader will stay interested in your story if you haven’t actually got a story to tell? You would not read it and you know that, and editors know it even better than you do. You’d never pay money to read something like that, so how can you expect other people to buy it? That said, why should we bother to accept it?

So, you are now staring at this letter, wondering what to do next. Should you polish your ms, delete the sex, blood, and drugs and resubmit it? Should you submit it elsewhere instead? Should you give up writing like great aunt so-so told you to do?
Answers: maybe, yes, and no.
Yes, go ahead and polish your ms. Correct the spelling and grammar mistakes. Re-read it, possibly re-write it. Remove the vulgarity from it. When you’ve honed it to a fine point, send it out on it’s rounds again. Who knows maybe we’d like the second version of it maybe not, depends on the changes made. Do not let this rejection stop you from writing though. Write more stories, get lots of practice, keep sending them to magazines, keep polishing each draft. Never listen to great aunts who tell you to give up.

My suggestions:
Never submit a first draft. Polish your ms until it’s perfect. Write it, than re-write it.
Be sure that your story has a plot which readers want to read about with characters readers well want to read about. Who did it? What did they do? Why did they do it? Where did they do it? What was the result of what they did?
Every story needs a beginning, a middle, and an end. The beginning tells us what the goal of the story is. The middle tells us what the character did to reach that goal. The ending tells us what happened when the character reaches the goal.
Be sure that your main character is someone that you readers well have a reason to love.
Third person stories (he said she did) get accepted more than 80% times more often than first person stories (I said I did), and second person rarely gets accepted by anyone (you said you did). 99.8% of all best sellers are written in 3rd person.
Always spell-check
I always recommend writers use Windows XP and MSWorks Word Processor. They are simple, easy to use, beginner friendly, writer friendly, and readily available to anyone with a PC.
If you use MSWorks Word Processor, set it to spell-check, tell it to include grammar checking as well, with writing style as formal. That’ll ensure that most grammar mistakes, including passive voice, are pointed out to you so that you can correct them.
Before submitting always ask for a copy of the magazine’s writer’s guidelines.
Always read at least 2 sample issues before submitting, so that you know what type of stories the magazine is looking for. Better yet, take out a year subscription and carefully examine how the magazine changes from one issue to the next.
Know thy enemy. Read the competition. Know which writers are being published in which magazines. Ask yourself, why did they get published and not me? Examine the stories that are published. How are they different from yours? How can yours become better than theirs. Think of the world of fiction as a great war. Some writers are your allies, they well help you reach the top. Some writers are your rivals, they well climb over you to get to the top first.
Be persistent and never give up.

While your story was not appropriate for publication in our magazine, you do have potential and I wish you the best of luck on your writing career. Though I can not promise that we well accept your work, you are welcomed to submit other mss for our consideration in the future.

Sincerely,

Rejection Notice: Lack of Spelling and Grammar:

After careful consideration of your ms entitled [ms title goes here]we must regretfully advise you that we are unable to accept it at this time. The decision to deny acceptance is based on:

Lack of correct spelling and an abundance of basic grammar mistakes.

Due to the volume of mss we receive each week, we are unable to read mss which require us to first stop and make spelling and/or grammar corrections in order to be able to read it. In the 1800’s when most authors were unable to spell due to lack of education, yes, editors did correct spelling. This is not the 1800’s, it is 200 years later. In today’s world, you would be hard pressed to find an editor that would correct a writer’s spelling and grammar mistakes. Today authors didn’t grow up in log cabins 1,000 miles from civilization, and even if they do live in the Artic Circle, they type the story up on a computer, and guess what? Computers spell check, and most grammar check too.
Before your ms gets to one of our editors, it must first survive the shush pile. The slush pile is a mountain of stories, which threatens to smother our editors in a paper avalanche. Once in a while is found one or two authors who have sent their 4th or 5th draft, a well polished draft with mistakes corrected, and the ms printed neatly and formatted correctly…and editors can actually read it. Those one or two that we can read because they are clean and neat with no mistakes… those are the ones we read, because those survive the slush pile and make it on to an editor’s desk.
Which mss drown in the slush pile? If the paper is dirty, crumpled, and torn, it drowns. If the font is big and flowery, it gets tossed. If the font is smaller than 12pt, it seeps into the unknown. If the paper is scented and has confetti flying out of each page, it gets fumigated. If the paper is pink, red, yellow, blue, or any other color not white, it gets tossed before it gets a chance to blind the editor. If it reads like a dry collage text book, it gets recycled quickly…we don‘t want our editors sleeping on the job. If there are 10 or more grammar and/or spelling mistakes on the first page, it gets tossed. Of every 100 mss we receive, more than three thirds are tossed in the trash as unreadable. Sadly, your ms has fallen into the unreadable category. As a result, your ms did not survive the slush pile and went unread by our editors.
Now, before you write back to me demanding that I force an editor to read your ms, let’s review the problem that got it rejected in the first place.
Our editors read the ms and accept or reject them based on our writer’s guidelines, our current needs, and most importantly the author’s ability to capture the reader’s attention. You the author, are our client. We are your customer. It is the client’s job to keep the customer happy. Remember, the customer is always right. Why? Because it is the customer who knows what they want. The customer is the one with the money. The customer is the one who pays you for your work or rejects it and pays someone else whose work was better. What is your job? Your job is to write a story that we well want to buy. Now than, what can you do to make me want to buy your story? Ah-uh, now we come to the most important part of writing a story: the customer…that one whose always right…our customers. Who are our customers? The people who buy our magazine. The people who read our magazine. Those are our customers. Our job is to keep our customers happy, by buying stories they well want to read.
The author’s ability to capture the reader’s attention is a big factor in considering a ms for acceptance. Think about it this way. When you buy a magazine to read, would you pay to read something like this:

dis is da coolest storee i’s even did wrote!!!! OMG!!!!! It is sooooooo greetarific! it is all about how my teen years were noting but heaping loads o’ crapola, you’ll just lov at read about how my step-dad was hell, and i run away and everting! it doesn’t have a plot, but that’s okay cause I’m the main character anyways, and I’m so great the storee don’t need no plot. I stuck in loads + loads of blood and gore to shock the readers wid too!!!! Is’nt tat jus the coolest thing??? Ya I knoe, it’s great,,, oh yeah and sex too, I added a sex sence on EVERY SINGLE PAGE!!!!!! Who cares about story and plot? you don’t neeed a story line or a plot, not when you’ve got me and blood and gore and lots of sex and great@#$&(+!#@%7 swear words to fill up the space right? Am I right or what???!! can ya dig it?! howe loong do ya tink a weeder will stae intrested in yor storee ifing dey kan’t weed wat U al wote? and you hav‘nt actualy got a story to tell ? “YIKES!!!!!!!!!!!“ U wood knot weed it and yos no that, & us editers no dat even betta tan U doo, so why wood we bodder to weed it? even if it had been a goode storee, we wood not have nonw for all the mistakes… !!!! it jus 2 bad that mor wriders did knot spell an grammer checke afor dey submit

Okay, so your ms wasn’t THAT bad, but I’m hoping that by writing that example in that way, it’ll open your eyes to the fact that it is very hard for editors to read a ms that is submitted without the author first spell-checking it at least. A typo here and there is understandable and overlooked, but how often do you see a magazine publish a story in a complete lack of grammar? Other magazines do not publish misspelled, grammatically incorrect stories and nor do we. As I said before, the customer is always right, and we have to think of our customers first. Our customers do not want to read misspelled and grammatically incorrect stories.

So, you are now staring at this letter, wondering what to do next. Should you polish your ms and resubmit it? Should you submit it elsewhere. Should you give up writing like great aunt so-so told you to do?

Answers: maybe, yes, and no.
Yes, go ahead and polish your ms. Correct the spelling and grammar mistakes. Re-read it, possibly re-write it. When you’ve honed it to a fine point, send it out on it’s rounds again. Write more stories, get lots of practice, keep sending them to magazines, keep polishing each draft. Never listen to great aunts who tell you to give up.

My suggestions:
Never submit a first draft. Polish your ms until it’s perfect.
Be sure that your story has a plot which readers want to read about characters readers well want to read about.
Always spell-check
I always recommend writers use Windows XP and MSWorks Word Processor. They are simple, easy to use, beginner friendly, writer friendly, and readily available to anyone with a PC.
If you use MSWorks Word Processor, set it to spell-check, tell it to include grammar checking as well, with writing style as formal. That’ll ensure that most grammar mistakes, including passive voice, are pointed out to you so that you can correct them.
Before submitting always ask for a copy of the magazine’s writer’s guidelines.
Always read at least 2 sample issues before submitting, so that you know what type of stories the magazine is looking for. Better yet, take out a year subscription and carefully examine how the magazine changes from one issue to the next.

Know thy enemy. Read the competition. Know which writers are being published in which magazines. Ask yourself, why did they get published and not me? Examine the stories that are published. How are they different from yours? How can your become better than theirs. Think of the world of fiction as a great war. Some writers are your allies, they well help you reach the top. Some writers are your rivals, they well climb over you to get to the top first.
Be persistent and never give up.

You have potential and I wish you the best of luck on your writing career. Though I can not promise that we well ever accept your work, you are welcomed to submit other mss in the future.

Sincerely,

As I said these are premade forms. Why do we have premade forms? Because we do not accept certain things, and no matter how many time we tell people that we do not accept certain things, they still send them out anyways, thinking “well, they well make an eception for me”… no, not even if you were Stephen King, would we make an exception.

Baiscly, write the best you can, edit it yourself as best you can, always read submission guidelines carefully, and send your ms out to the places that WANT the type of work you write. Editors are desperatly seeking good writers, they want to accept your work, you just have to find the right editor for what you wrote.

~~EK

New From The Twighlight Manor Press: 2008 Calendar

Twighlight Manor Press on LuLu
Twighlight Manor Art by Wendy C. Allen 2008 12 month calendar
All art, drawings, and paintings by Wendy C. Allen, featureing the characters from the Twighlight Manor series, including EelKat, Sir Roderic, Etiole, Xavier, and more.
Price: $19.79

LuLu has come a long way

LuLu seems to be on many writers minds lately. It seems like everywhere I go, someone is talking about how they have published a book on LuLu. I look at these people and I say: “LuLu! You have got to be kidding! Who in their right mind would get a book published by LuLu!” I guess you can tell it’s been a very long time since I had any dealings with LuLu. I remember the old LuLu. Quite differant from the LuLu of today.

I remember LuLu when it first started, not sure when that was, but I remember searching Google for self-publishing and finding this little site that boasted to haveing printed “over 100 books”. The site was a total mess, very unprofessional, hard to navigate, and really had no info about what they did. Basicly the whole thing looked like someone had dropped a bomb on Hell. It was terrible. So terrible in fact, that I never went back.

The whole web site was based on a chat-room, and didn’t really have a home page. I remember laughing at it and saying that no one in their right mind would let such a crappy looking web site publish their book.

That was a few years ago, and their site was online, maybe a month at that point, and had a notation that it was “under construction”. I blew it off as someone’s little pipe dream and never gave it a second thought.

Well, last week I was chatting with some fellow writers and one of them was telling me how she was doing her next book with LuLu. I thought “You have got to be kidding! Is that crappy site still going!” She tells me, that yep they were and boy had they changed. So I went and checked it out, and WOW! Did they ever change! It don’t even look like the same site. I’m amazed that they have come so far in just a few short years.

Well, now I’m intreeged. This “new” LuLu has gathered my interest, and I think I’ll test it out. I’ve got a short story, I wrote a while back, but never published anywhere, yet, and I think I’ll test LuLu out with it, see what happens.

While searching for info about LuLu, I also came across this blog. I recomend it to anyone who is thinking of starting a project with LuLu, as the author has written a wounderfully detail step by step instruction of the LuLu publishing process.

I’m interested in hearing of others’ experiances with LuLu. So if you’ve ever published anything with LuLu, feel free to comment and share your thoughts, both the good and the bad. I’d like to know more about LuLu as told by the authors who’ve been published by them

~~EK

New Design Available From Copper Cockeral: Purple Easter Cross

March 25, 2007 at 1:27 am | In home decor, religon, Holiness, items for sale, magnets, Christ, stamp, pink, store, CafePress, cards, postcard, purple, buttons, Victorian, shop online, sales associate, product promotion, note book, note cards, Easter cross, theology beliefs, old fashioned, teddy bear, web site promotion, mugs, magnet, ornaments, web site review, Holy Spirit, beliefs, posters, awesome, fashion, Theology, sales, white, product reviews, products, Christianity, Business, reviews, faith, prayer, God, Jesus, Easter, vintage, gifts, belief, Lolita, clothing, t-shirts, prints, spring, holiday, postcards, painting, retail, New stuff | No Comments | Edit this post

 New from Copper Cockeral Cards & Gifts:

 Purple Easter Cross

Just in time for Easter! These products feature a Victorian Easter cross in a lovely  lilac purple adored with spring flowers. We only have space to show a few of the more than 80 products available with this design on them. To see all products available, CLiCK HERE. 

Writer’s Debate Team: Is Working At Home For You?

When one dreams of being a writer, one often forgets that writing is a career, not a hobby. This can lead to problems down the road, esp. when one is not used to working at home. So, I have created this topic to help you to do a little self-evaluateing. Read it, think it through, than write about your answer and how you came by it. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Is Working At Home For You?

What are common problems that you might encounter?

What can you expect from a job out of your own home?

Have you assessed your potential for working at home happily?

You well be working for yourself. Can you be your own boss?

Going it on your own. What does it take? Do you have it in you?

Are you self-motivated?

Are you a self-organizer?

Are you able to manage your time effectivly?

How good are you at keeping a buget?

If you are married, can you manage work and family and not let one interfere with the other?

edit added on: March 29, 2007

here is a blog post that goes well with this one, I just had to add it here.

Blogs for Writers: Fourth Round of Blog Additions

Here is the next round of blogs I plan to add to the Z-List for Writers:

The Working Writers Coach

Sylvia’s Insight
Writer in the Making
Ink In My Coffee
Grow Your Writing Business
DESiGN YOUR WRiTiNG LiFE
KCWrite4u
Wealth of Words
Content Done Better
Writers in the Sky
Musings from a Writer
JM Writing and Editing Services
Renegade Writer
Mrs. Write Right, Word Therapist (aka Writer-Editor)
Practicing Writing
WritingThoughts
Engaging Pages For Working Writers
A writer’s life and times
Six Figure Writers
Write For Life
Writers and Authors
Muse Writers Peer Awards
Will Write 4 Food
National Association of Writers’ Groups
My Words, My Way
Writing for Reason
Funds for Writers
Beginner’s Guide to Freelance Writing
The Rural Writer
Paperback Writer
Creatively Self-Employed
Ye Old Inkwell
Writers in the Sky
Bleeding Ink
Editing for Everyone
Newbie’s Guide to Publishing
Irene Goodman
academia
Pub Rants
EVIL EDITOR
iUniverse
Budding Authors
NaNoWriMo
World of Words
Miss Snark
Absolute Write
101 Sites
Agent Query

This Day in History: March 13

March 13 is an interesting day; here are a few examples:

On March 13 in 1781, German born English astronomer Sir William Herschel discovered the seventh planetfrom the sun, Uranus.

On March 13 1887, Chester Greenwood of Maine recieved a patent for earmuffs.

On March 13, 1964 Catherine Genovese was killed in the Kew Gardens Community of Queens, NY, while 38 of her friends and neighbors, “not wanting the get involved” watched for nearly 30 minutes as the girl was repeatedly stabbed by her 29 years old attacker. Others, outraged by her friends’ testamony declared March 13 “Good Samaritan Day”, a day to emphasize the importance of unselfish aid to those who need it.

What happened to this girl reminds me of our family. Dozens of people, possibly hundreds, know what has been happening to our family, and yet, no one well help us, no one well do anything to stop it, even when we have begged and pleaded for help from everyone we can think of, still no one well help us and thier reason is always the same: “It’s not my place to get involved.” Most of those would say this claim to be Christians. Now I ask you, in view of this being Good Samaritain’s Day, “What would Jesus do?”