pet food recall update: HUMAN FOOD BEING RECALLED!!!!!!!!!

Remember when I wrote this post and questioned what would happen; the effects of farm animals eating tainted food ; being a poultry farmer, my post focused on chicken not pork, but news that corn was now effected, and chickens eat corn one thing lead to another and I started questioning what we feed our chickens…. PORK from pigs that have eaten tainted food, has now been added to the recall!!!
Reading this post lead me to:
Pet Food Contamination Scandal Spreads to Pork, FDA Opens Criminal Investigation.

You know what this is staring to sound like? Biological warfare.

Star Log’s Blog Carnival for Writers

I have spent the last couple of hours browsing through Blog Carnivals. I love them.  They are such a great way to find new blogs to read. Well, I submitted several posts from Star Log to some of the carnivals. When browseing the carnival index though, I was disapointed to find that more than half of those aimed at writers have been shut down and are no longer taking new submissions.

In light of that info, I am now starting a new one, to be posted on an ongoing basis here at Star Log. I have decided to hold 12 carnivals a year, one each month. Submissions are open and accepted year ’round.

The overall theme is blog posts of interest to writers. What I am looking for are posts (written by you and posted on your blog), that offer advice to writers of all levels. The prime focus being on fiction stories, though all advice for writers is accepted. Posts on “general” writing topics accepted each month. Additionaly, I’d like to have a sub-theme each month as follows:

January: Writing Mysteries

February: Writing Romance

March: Writing Children’s Fiction

April: Writing Fantasy

May: Writing Science Fiction

June: Writing Pirate Fiction

July: Writing Action/Adventure

August: Writing Gothic

September: Writing High Fantasy

October: Writing Horror

November: Writing Family Memoires

December: Writing Holiday Fiction

Submissions are due by the last day of the previous month. Blog listings will be posted the first week the month. Send your submissions here.

You can copy the following tag to add to your blog so people will have a link back to find your listing with Star Log’s Blog Carnival For Writers:

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

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

LuLu Has a New Blog here on WordPress…

Well, my goodness! LuLu, every writer’s favorite printer, has got a blog here on WordPress!

For anyone not familiar with LuLu, you can read this post  from their blog:

So, what’s Lulu?

Posted by henryhutton under Lulu , publishing
1 Comment 

Good question. Let’s start here:

Our founder is Bob Young of Linux fame. He founded Red Hat in order to bring Linux into the world as a viable product that could compete against Microsoft, and harnessed the power of a world-wide developer community. And, as you know, Linux is open source, so users have much more control over how they use it, and therefore aren’t at the mercy of someone else to improve it. They, the user of the product, hold the keys to the castle. If you want to have a feature added to Microsoft Word you can request it, and you might get it in a few years if enough people complain. If you want a feature or functionality added to Linux that can happen much easier, and generally in a level playing field.

In many ways Lulu was the same idea, but taken one step further…
CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST OF THIS POST

testing tags

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

Who Links to You?

I found this site (wholinkstome) and decided to give it a try.

Look up site:

Now displaying links to: eelkat.wordpress.com

Summary of results:

• Google Page Rank for this page:
• Yahoo! has found 774 links to this site.
• MSN Search has found 3,026 links to this site.
• Blogrolling.com has found 0 blogrolls that contain this link.
• Google Backlink Search: 52 linking to eelkat.wordpress.com
• Alexa Traffic Details: eelkat.wordpress.com
• Technorati Search: found 80 links to this URL eelkat.wordpress.com
• Icerocket Search: 7 links to eelkat.wordpress.com
• Del.icio.us Bookmarks: this url has been saved by 1 person. eelkat.wordpress.com

 eelkat.wordpress.com

Wel, I found that very informative. Wow! MSN found 3,026 links! I do know that the Blogrolling on came up wrong, because I know of at least 4 blogs that have Star Log in their blogrolls, so this scrore result isn’t entirly accurate.

Try it out with your site, and see how many are linking ti you!

~~EK

Who links to me?

Update on Death of Skeezics vs Pet Food recall

new items added to the recall, includeing yet another one that my Skeezics (died Dec 2006 from kidney failure) liked to eat (we still have some of these on the shelf,I just checked the codes).

http://www.purina.com/Company/Press/2007/MightyDog.aspx

http://socalmuchacha.wordpress.com/2007/03/31/pet-food-recall-items-added-330-331/

You should also read this post, which I have pasted here:

update ii : emergency pet food recall

March 24th, 2007

Well, they say they have found the culprit responsible for the emergency recall of 60 million or so cans and pouches of pet food spanning almost 100 brands of dog and cat food — numbers attributable to MENU FOODS being the sole supplier for an enormous number of different brand labels’ contents. Interestingly, “They” is not Menu Foods. “They” is New York State Agriculture Commissioner Patrick Hooker and Dr. Donald Smith, dean of Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, who issued a JOINT STATEMENT Friday after initiating an independent investigation Menu Foods played no role in.

“Rat poison.” “Cancer treatment.” “Chinese wheat.” That is what people are saying it is all about. “AMINOPTERIN,” a chemical used some places to kill rodents, and others to treat cancer patients. [I am so glad I am not a cancer patient. Or rodent.] And allegedly nowhere in the United States or Canada, two of the three countries hit. Mexico being the third.

[Someone needs to ask if aminopterin is manufactured in the United States. Plenty of stuff we allegedly do not use in the U.S. — can anyone spell DDT? — we still manufacture here, we just ship it — we say — other places. Anyone asked that question yet?]

While a majority of news reports have habitually reported nominal numbers of animals effected and/or killed by the Menu Foods incident, [anything ranging from 10-16 fatalities in most reports — based on Menu Foods’ lab reports], on March 22 THE ANIMAL MEDICAL CENTER IN NEW YORK CITY reported they were already aware of 200 cases and expected thousands of pets to eventually be affected. [ABC NEWS : DOCTORS CAUTION THOUSANDS MORE PET DEATHS EXPECTED].

That is just one veterinary facility in one city in the U.S. You do that math. The last count of self reported pet fatalities on PET CONNECTION was 1,188 deaths. [713 cats | 475 dogs]

Other contaminants mold and heavy metal have been ruled out. However, while aminopterin has been identified in recalled pet food, vets are not all convinced aminopterin is the only contaminant present : ABC NEWS : SOME VETS REMAIN SKEPTICAL :

Some veterinary experts say they are still skeptical as to whether the chemical is responsible for the kidney damage the pets endured.

“With the information that we have, none of us feel that this product fits the lesions we are seeing, but there may be information we don’t know yet,” said Lawrence McGill, a veterinary pathologist in Salt Lake City. “The feeling is that there are more questions than answers with this product.”

“Renal failure is not the expected response to these drugs,” said Susan Weinstein, executive director of the Massachusetts Veterinary Medical Association. She added that most rodent poisons work as severe anticoagulants — meaning they cause the rats that ingest them to bleed to death.

“Whether this particular toxin in this case can create renal failure depends on how this drug works in the body, which may be an entirely different pathway than the anticoagulants,” Weinstein said. “Because we aren’t yet familiar with this toxin, we can’t be confident of the causation link.”

Investigators also have not yet determined whether aminopterin is the only contaminant in recalled food.

“If it is not the only culprit, as I suspect, the problem isn’t over,” McGill said, adding that it is also uncertain as to whether the finding will be much help to veterinarians.

According to McGill, even if the aminopterin is the culprit, “most veterinarians have never heard of this product. There will need to be more information put out to suggest therapeutic regimens.”

There are still a lot of glaring questions here. For starters, is aminopterin the sole cause of the animal fatalities and illnesses? Why did it take a lab less than a week to identify poison in Menu Foods pet food, but Menu Foods over a month to even ascertain anything might be wrong with food after reports of fatalities reached the company from consumers and vets? And why didn’t a single Menu Foods production facility stop production during investigations or the pet food recall?

It is kind of difficult to take a company seriously that professes concern over the discovery of contaminated food on one hand, while continuing to manufacture and distribute the food on the other.

PREVIOUS POSTS ON THE EMERGENCY PET FOOD RECALL :

UPDATE : EMERGENCY PET FOOD RECALL 03.21.07 [this includes a list of recalled foods as well as links to sources for information on feline and canine renal failure and the fda’s posting on the pet food recall]

EMERGENCY PET FOOD RECALL 03.17.07 [this includes the original posting and discussion on the pet food recall]

IMPORTANT LINKS :

NEW YORK LABORATORIES IDENTIFY TOXIN IN RECALLED PET FOOD

HOW TO NOTIFY THE FDA OF A PET’S ILLNESS OR FATALITY

PET CONNECTION : UNOFFICIAL PET ILLNESS AND DEATH REGISTRY

ABC NEWS : DOCTORS CAUTION THOUSANDS MORE PET DEATHS EXPECTED

MENU FOODS LIST OF RECALLED PET FOODS

PET FOOD BRANDS THAT DO NOT CONTAIN MENU FOODS INGREDIENTS OR EMPLOY ANIMAL TESTING

SYMPTOMS OF POSSIBLE KIDNEY FAILURE :

• Increased water intake
• Increased volumes of urination
• Unwillingness to eat
• Vomiting
• Lethargy
• Eating litter [cats]

Animals exhibiting these symptoms should be taken for veterinary care immediately.

OTHER INTERESTING SPOTS :

Pooks posted a pretty INTERESTING PIECE on just who is selling wheat to Menu Foods — while simultaneously funding the war on Iraq and buying up the U.S. And oh yeah, who owns Wal-Mart? I do not think that proves the Chinese just poisoned all those dogs and cats. I do think it means they paid a lot of advertising dollars into FOX NEWS. The biggest propoganda arm the current White House regime has. Wow. Thanks, Chinese Guys. We really needed four more years of Bush. Zee has posted a LETTER FROM PETA about the recall. I do not approve of all of PETA’s methods. But hey, the idea is right. Protect animals. Animals cannot protect themselves.

EDITED MARCH 30 TO INCLUDE : UPDATE III : EMERGENCY PET FOOD RECALL

Posted by max

Filed in pet food recall, life with animals, all, politics

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

Share the Link Love

As you know I’m a regular reader of ProBlogger, it’s prob’ly the blog I read more than any other; it’s certainly the one I talk about most often here on Star Log. Well, today I was reading this post on ProBlogger, and of course it lead me to reading the links in it, includeing this one.

Oh my! I don’t think anyone would accuse me of being a link nazi!

I love surfing the blogs out there, and everytime I find one that I want to go back and read again I always forget where they are and can’t find them again…

I solved that problem though… the way I figure it, if I like the blog enough to go back and read it again, than people who like my blog, prob’ly well want to read it too, so I write a post about the blog, which contains a link to it, and than I add it to my blogroll… today my blog roll has over 100 links in it, it’s by far the biggest blog roll I’ve ever seen on a blog, but at least now I don’t lose my way back to blog I like to read.

well, an unexpected side effect of doing this is that a few days after adding my long blog roll I checked my Technorati rank, and was shocked to learn that I had gone from being in the millions up to being 200,000 that was quite switch…

well I come to find out, that several of the blogs I had added to my blogroll, had in turn added me to theirs, I was not expecting that, but that’s what did it… when I added them to mine, it raised their rank, and they did me the same favor…

WOW! You see at the time I started doing this, I didn’t know about pingbacks, I had never heard of them before, so I didn’t know that everytime I talked about a blog I liked, my blog sent them a copy of my article, so each time I sad something nice about them, they knew I had said it, only I didn’t know that was happening, so I didn’t know that the blogs I was talking about knew about my blog… well long story short, I found a great way to do link exchange and I wasn’t even trying!

~~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. 

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

Town Begins Investigation of Manager

What follows is a copy of a news article from a Maine newspaper: Portland Press Herald. If you haven’t done so already, please read last month’s post: Government Corruption: Town’s Harasment of Disabled Senior Goes Too Far!for more information regarding the series of events in the lives of just one of the families that this man has tormented.

Town Begins Investigation of Manager

Jim Thomas’ management style has led to complaints in Old Orchard Beach

By Seth Harkness;Staff Writer, Portland Press Herald York Edition March 15, 2007 copyright 2007 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

OLD ORCHARD BEACH_ The Old Orchard Beach Town Council voted Wednesday night to hire a lawyer to examine complaints against Town Manager Jim Thomas.The councilors did not name the employee under investigation when they voted unanimously to hire Brunswick attorney Martin Wilk “in connection with a personal matter”, and no councilors would publicly confirm the town manager was involve. But in the last six weeks the town council has held two closed door meetings to discuss personal issues, neither of which were attended by Thomas. The Old Orchard Beach town charter requires the town manager to “attend the meetings of the Town Council, except when the Manager’s removal is being considered.”

Before the meeting, Town Council Chairmen Joe Klein was asked whether the personnel matter on Wednesday night’s agenda involved Thomas. “That’s a logical deduction,” he said.

As recently as last fall, the council extended Thomas’ contract and gave him a raise. Many people also credit the town manager, a Lewiston native who was hired in 2003, with helping to improve the appearance of downtown and attracting a new wave of economic development.

However, what some describe as Thomas’ headstrong style of dealing with town employees and members of the public has credited conflict, both in Old Orchard Beach and at his previous manager’s job in Sterling, Colo.

Thomas was fired from the Colorado position in December of 2002 after four months on the job, according to Frank Gower, a city councilor in Sterling for the past nine years. “He didn’t get along with employees and it was like his way or the highway,” said Gower. “He’s a good visionary man, but I think his management style left a lot to be desired. It was a conflict type management style like I’ve never seen before.”

Some former town employees in Old Orchard Beach said they had similar experiences while working for Thomas.

Tim Braun was director of Public Works in Old Orchard for six years and is now town engineer in Gorham. Braun left his position in Old Orchard one year after Thomas arrived, he said, because he could not tolerate working with the town manager. Braun described Thomas as a temperamental boss, prone to delivering orders and threatening employees with the loss of their jobs.

“He uses the authoritarian model,” Braun said. “I was reminded that I was an employee at will. There wasn’t any mincing of words.”

Thomas did not respond to requests for an interview Wednesday.

In September of 2005 the Town Council discussed residents’ complaints that the town manager had shown a lack of respect toward individuals and a disregard for public opinion. The council took no action at that time and Thomas said that his efforts to improve the town were bound to upset some people.

One recent controversy involving Thomas occurred last week when two town councilors, Jim Long and Robin Dayton, questioned the legality of a closed-door meeting in which they said Thomas urged the council to extend a contract with Poland Spring.

Thomas also was accused of running afoul of freedom of information laws during his tenure in Colorado. In October of 2002, the Journal Advocate, a daily newspaper in Sterling, published an editorial that chastised Thomas for refusing to release a copy of minutes from a city staff meeting. The paper also criticized Thomas for a policy requiring city employees to answer questions from the press only in writing.

Despite the controversies, a majority of the Old Orchard Beach Town Council voted in October to extend Thomas’ contract through June 2008 and raise his salary to $92,000.

Contact Staff Writer Seth Harkness at 207-282-8225 or at: sharkness@pressherald.com

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old orchard beach
corruption
government
government corruption
government harassment
harassment
abuse
torture
civil-rights
human rights
news
crime
corrupt leaders
corruption
evil men
crime lords
criminal

Blogs for Writers: Third Round of Blog Additions

Here once again are more blogs for/by writers, which are to be included in the Writer’s Z-List…

Self-Publishing
ZDocs Blog
The Golden Pencil
DarkMoon Press
Home of the Children’s Writers Coaching Club
SmallPress Blog
Tumbled Words
yoga gumbo
The Writing Show
Stories Rule!
Murderous Ink
Advice on Novel Writing by Crawford Kilian
Right Writing
Fiction Writing Site
Fiction Factor

this last addition is not really a writer’s blog nor a blog by a writer, but I thought it would be of great interest to writers, and so I am adding it to this list as well:
Pretty Good on Paper
How many words do you actually use?
Which words do you own?–Neil Gaiman

Writing Exercise: What is your favorite type of weather?

A sure fire cure for writer’s block. Try it and see, this little trick works wonders for getting you thinking about the atmosphere of a story, thus setting the scene for everything eles.

You know how they say when you can’t think of anything else to say, than just talk about the weather? Well, now, that got me to thinking: Why not? Well, one thought lead to another, and here I am asking you, What is your favorite type of weather? So, I ask you, who says you can’t write a story or get an idea for a story, from writing about the weather? And thus I bring you to this week’s writing exercise. Undertake it with care, for in the wrong hands the weather can be a dangerouse thing.

To help you get started, I’ll first figure out which is mine.

This one was a hard toss up with me… took me a while of sitting here staring at the choices before I could finally decide… here’s how I came to my conclusion and how I voted:at first I was gonna pic Sunny, because it’s my fave type of weather to be out in… the warm sun on my face, the warm earth benearth my toes, birds singings in the trees, a cool breeze with soft fluffy clouds… a sunny day is pure heaven…BUT…I live in the very cold north were a sunny day is a rare a precious thing, we don’t see them often, we’ve had snow in all 12 months of the year, and right in the middle of August it’s only in the 50′s F. Here we get alot of snow… 2 years ago we had 102″ (yeah that’s 9 feet)… I like the snow, it’s a peaceful quite thing, soft and fluffy, yet cold and dealy… like a viper, laying beatiful on the ground but well kill you if it had the chance… I almost voted for Snow

…hhhmm…

than I saw Thunder Storms… brillant blazing flashes of purple lights and blue streaks that dazzle across the sky like fireworks, thrundous crackles and booms that shake the ground, wind that rips giant pines off their root stalks and throws then through your house (this happened to us dueing Hurrican Bob)… terrifing and exhilerating, I love a good thunder storm, but I didn’t vote for them either…

ahhhhh…

here we are… Twilight Zone music plays in the background… Alfred Hitchcock slowly come walking in and tells us how birds are such sweet little things… Vincent Price cackles with wicked glee as the pendulum comes swinging closer and coser threatening to rip you in half… and all the while a thick dense fog is rolling in from off the marsh… the lighthouse warns of it’s impending doom, while the Ripper stalks the streets of London under its silvery cloak… and Poe sermonizes on the fears of death and ravens… FOG… it’s the thing nightmares are made of, it send thrills and chills tingling down your spine, it gives you atmoshere and opens your eyes to fears you never knew existed…

and than there’s OOB, my home town, Fog is the weather we see each night, as the tide rolls in, bringing with it the salty mist of the night, filling the air with the smell of lobsters and seaweed… I live in a fishing village in Maine… I love the smell of the salty foggy air that floods our yard each morning…

as much as I enjoy sunny days, snowy winters, and stormy nights… it’s the fog that reaches in and touches my very soul… I voted for FOG

Second Round of Blog Additions

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

Writing Fiction
Crime Fiction Dossier
Kathryn Cramer
WritersWrite.com
Writer’s Beware
The Fiction Writing Blog: Articles, Writing Exercises, Prompts and More….
sfsignal.com
Bowing to the Future
David Louis Edelman
Louise Marley
Among Amid While
Authors Blogs
The Writer’s Life

Weirdly Wednesday

 

You can find “Weirdly Wednesday” posts at these sites:

1) http://atlindas.wordpress.com
2) http://fracas.wordpress.com 
3) http://eelkat.wordpress.com
4)… add your site here…

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Want to join us in Weirdly Wednesdays? Here’s how it works.
On Wednesdays, post a “Weirdly Wednesday” post… a weird site, the weirdest search term in your stats, something from Hollyweird. Whatever.    Link to www.atlindas.wordpress.com  — Let me know and I’ll link back to you.

This weeks addition from EK’s Star Log:

A Chinese Scientist discovered that the Earth is round during the Han Dynasty by measuring the sun and moon’s path in the sky. He recorded this fact down in the imperial records but went unnoticed until it was unearthed recently but Chinese archaeologists.

First Round of Blog Additions

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

Writing White Paper
Fiction Scribe
How To Write and Blog Better
Write Now!
So You Want To Write
Rosebud
Lighthouses
Storyteller
INKSLINGER
Book Blog
Alicia’s Writing Forum
A Writers Words an Editors Eye
Suspence Thriller
The Conjurers
A Writers Eye With Jacob Malewitz
Bearing Life
52 Novels
Write and Publish Fiction
Custom Book Publishing
Library Girl
CopyBlogger
Freelance Writing Jobs
These Words
Finding the Right Words
Reading For Writers
Successful Blog(gers)
Copy Writer Underground
Angela Booth’s Writing Blog
Ink Thinker
Ask Allison
Content Done Better
The Golden Pencil
Blogs In Space
The Human Race
The Black Blog(Italian)
OLIN e-Book e-Publishing
How to Promote Your Self-Published eBook (or Print!)
Corner of Writers Block
Scribe Life
O Making Many Books
Dragons of the Pyramid Book Reviews
WriteLines
Fantasy SF Horror

Is your blog on this list? If not let me know so I can add it.

Blogs for Writers

 

I’m planning on doing an update for my Z-List for writers. I’ll be posting the new edition in the next week or so. For now I am searching the net for blogs geared for writers, blogs by writers, blogs about the writing life, blogs that give writing lessons, and other such blogs that would be of interest to novelists everywhere. While most of the blogs I have added thus far are blogs that I read, I am looking for suggestions. What I mean is: If you are a writer and you have a blog for other writers, feel free to leave a comment on this post with a link to your blog so I can check it out. If it fits the type of blog I’m looking for, I’ll add it to the next edition of The Z-List for Writers. I look forward to reading your blogs.

For those of you who don’t know what The Z-List is, here is an explaination:

Like the chain letter, the Z-List contains addresses, but it differant in that it never asks you to buy anything. You don’t even have to buy a stamp. The Z-List is the chain mail for bloggers. It gets a blog pingbacks and inbound links, and helps to send more traffic to the blog, hopefully traffic that well stay on to become regular readers.

Anyone can start a Z-List. It’s easy. Just take a list of Blogs which you enjoy reading, and put them in a post on your own blog. Some say not to add your Blog to the list, while others say to go ahead and put your Blog right on the top of the list. Well, it’s your Blog and your list so you can put links to any Blog you please in it.

With the list you leave a message, asking that the next person to read this post, copies it and pastes it into the next post they make on their own Blog. They are free to add as many Blog links to the list as they like, and they are welcome to remove any links that are already in the list, if they feel that theose Blogs are inappropiate to be linked back to their own Blog.

Most Z-Lists start out with five or ten links, but after being passed on to just ten more bloggers, that Z-List can quickly have 100 or more links in it. The advantage of this is, that for each post, that each Blog in each link, well recieve a ping-back for that post. In other words, their Blog becomes linked to your Blog and your Blog to thiers, making it a win-win situation for both your Blog and their Blog, by raising the inbound link ranking with such places a Technorati and Google, meaning that you Blog moves higher in the ranks on search engins, resulting in more people finding your Blog and giving you more readers. Great huh? Absolutely!

P.$.

I only accept family friendly blogs into my Z-Lists, so blogs that promote sex, porn, hate, racism, violence, hunting, guns, drugs, and other such acts are never added to any of my Z-Lists. If after addition to one of my Z-Lists, I later find that such posts and links have been added to the blog, the blogs link well be removed from all of my Z-Lists.

Please note, that spam posts are deleted automaticlynow, cause I got sick of scrolling through dozens of Porn and sex posts. Blogs that are about or link to sex or porn sites are automaticle scanned and deleted and I never even see them at all now, sobe sure your blog has no sex or porn on it or linked to it, before you post it, because it well never be reviewd if it does.

  

This is the Z-List for Writers as it originally appeared. As you can see, it was thrown together as I read the blogs, with no rhymn nor reason. The new edition, well be in alphabetical order.

The Z-List, EK Edition 1.0: Blogs for Writers

The Copywriting Maven
Click Here to Advertise on My Blog
EK’s Star Log, the Pink Edition
EK’s MySpace Blog
Wayfarers Journal
Calling On All Serius Bloggers To Read This And Respond
Are most writing contests even worth it anymore?
Writer’s Block
writers are horribly boring
journalcomic
Troy Worman’s Blog
Copywriter’s Crucible
Copywriting Tuneups
bizsolutionsplus 
Servant of Chaos
darrenbarefoot.com
ANITA’S OWL CREEK BRIDGE
Decadent Tranquility
Welcome to Axe’s Asylum
NaNoWriMo: I Won!
Whew!
Hawaii, My New Novelwriting : thinkmap visual thesaurus
1minute book reviews
livingthequarterlife
Naughty Heather
Mom & Much More
ninglun
lew-lew
Writing Mamas take note
what you write
the book
Blog Of The Problematique
Chasing The Starlight
Saipan Writer
a lifetime of dreaming
 antithete
Michigan::Flint Red Hot Writers Blog
1 Word 2 Words
NaNoCaiRo
The Dream Thief
Reality is Running Away

Today’s featured design from Copper Cockeral: Let’s Rock

Today’s featured design from the Copper Cockeral:

As seen on {March 12, 2007}   Tiddledeewinks Blog:

Let’s Rock

 

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*** These designs by Johnny E. Allen

Romiet-and-Julio

WOW! This blogger did such a great job ay writing this review that I want to go see it now! (that is a rare thing… I’m usually very critical of reviews!)

Here it is so you can judge it for yourself:

Romiet and Julio

Monday February 12th 2007, b:36 am
Filed under: Shakespeare, Gender, Drama, Culture, women

I attended a performance of Romeo and Juliet this past Thursday. When buying my tickets—at the amazing student price of $10—I realized that I had never seen a “classic” rendition of the play. The two shows I attended in the past were art-house performances and wildly interpretive. These adaptations attempted to create a new edge to the show, but ultimately portrayed the exact same message without much of a twist, aside from some crazy symbolism involving shoes and a dead girl.

The thought that I was going to see a “normal” performance had me feeling excited and cultured. Because I was excited, it’s needless to say that my bubble was about to burst. Not two days before the play I noticed an article in the local news paper titled “Romeo and Juliet: Shakespeare’s tale of life, love and death takes a twist.” Wah Wah, bring in the decrescendo-ing trombone . There went my idea of a night at the playhouse.

I read the article skimming for whatever “gritty” or “refreshing” “twist” the show would take and found that the theater company putting on the show, The Aquila Theater Company, would perform the classic script of Romeo and Juliet but would draw their parts from a hat.

At first this baffled me, but then the possibilities crept into my mind. Did this mean that the couple could be homosexual? Could the roles be reversed? Would Capulet be a cross-dressing, pants-wearing matriarch? Apparently, yes, yes and yes.

These amazing possibilities are plausible because supposedly—I’m still a bit skeptical–each member of the 6 person cast has learned every part in the play, and audience members draw the actors’ and actresses’ parts from bags.

The show could take any one of numerous twists. The performance I attended remained fairly neutral except that Romeo was a middle-aged man, Juliet: a younger woman, a man played the nurse and a woman portrayed Benvolio.

The performers did an amazing job; the nurse was especially hilarious, partly due to the fact that she was a he talking about breast feeding but mostly because the actor did a superb job and played the part well.

Mercutio developed into an amazing character, and while still mischievous, quick-witted and sly, he was played more flamboyantly than I’m accustomed to, which was not a negative point at all; he was even more entertaining than usual.

While the idea seemed strange and very un-classic, I realized that the performance, which had a minimal cast, a conservative setting and few props, probably came closer to an authentic, classic performance than any glamorous movie or “classic” rendition I could have seen or may ever see.

Not only are some of the female characters played by men, but the performance they gave contained much more humor than any renditions I have seen; the actors emphasized many lines, mostly sexual, that had been so unobtrusive in other performance, that I’d never noticed them. The minimal setting and props also seems more realistic from when Shakespeare’s plays and theater traveled through Europe.

The actual dialogue of the play struck me the most, because even though it was the same script, it seemed less pretentious than usual, and the flamboyant, often crude tones of voice and gestures only added to that feeling; however strange this sounds, it seems more accurate. Shakespeare wrote and performed for mass audiences, not just the elite, and that relatability and humor inclusive manner of performing would be key to keeping everyone interested and happy.

The performance was great, and the message we’ve become so accustomed to was given a new twist. Even the thought of a Romiet and Juliet, a Romeo and Julio or a Romiet and Julio was enough to drive home the idea of respecting, expecting and accepting diverse couples with love ultimately being the only important issue.

As a rose by any other name sounds as sweet, love, in any form it takes, remains as pure and strong.

Now I ask you… wasn’t that a great review?

~~EK

Hand Over the Doggie Biscuits and No One Gets Peed On!

As posted on Xaveir’s Nest: Hand Over the Doggie Biscuits and No One Gets Peed On!

 

New from Copper Cockeral

Doggie Biscuits ***

Doggie Biscuits Black ***

Hand over the doggie buscuits and no one gets peed on!

 

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*** These designs by J.J. Voldy’s Assistant

Product Review: BremanTown Musicians

As posted on Xavier’s Nest:

Copper Cockeral’s newest design is Bremen Town Musicians featuring 4 of EelKat’s pets: Thunder Puff the wild pony, Junior the Bearded Collie, Utopia the Albino Siamese Cat, and Spot the White Crested Black Polish Rooster.