Learning Things The Hard Way

On August 14th, my first book will have been on sale for a month. That, by itself, is great! It's wonderful! It's TERRIFYING.  Why?  Because of the assumption that I (please tell me LOTS of others do this) made about writing.  Writing an e-book is totally DIFFERENT than writing a manuscript. I didn't think that was true at first.  It is. Anybody who tells you it is NOT? Yeah, they also have an oasis in Egypt, compete with almonds and fans, just for you.  For a steal! lol

All joking aside, I thought that the writing was the hard part. I know I mentioned this in my first blog, but it is worth repeating. Writing is easy-- the promotion is hard. HARD HARD HARD. I thought that anyway.  I have found something worse.  It's called html. Or maybe it was mobi. No, I remember now.. it is EMBEDDING.

Now, I can make my way around a computer for the most part. I know how to use Word, Works, Open Office, etc...   Copy/Paste? Sure, we are besties! Links? Yep, like the back of my hand.  Embed?  I thought I had gotten out of bed already.  Wait- does that mean I am helping a criminal? Oh God, now the cops ARE gonna be after me and not because I took the last donut before the shop closed yesterday.  Obviously I do not know code *stuff* .  I did not take a computer class on how to make cover art (oh wait.. that's falls under graphics... that's a totally different blog subject) or how to make programs.  Html looks like my youngest child got my laptop again and had fun with the keys.  Do I need to go back to college? 

No- I am going to go to the bookstore this weekend and find the best book in the world for computer illiterates like myself.... Html for dummies. Not the name? Hmmm, I will find it. Hopefully it can explain why I can't make the kindle version look NORMAL, no matter how many times I tried to fix it.  lol (I have now taken it off just so I can try to redo it. I don't want people buying ugly formatted stuff that makes me look bad.) If it can't be professional-looking then I just proved the whole point of Indies not making on their own.  And they can... and they DO. Everyday...
Now if I can just find my wizard's hat to turn the pumpkin back into a book....

Funny Things You Type On The Internet

I love being online. In fact, I stay on it constantly (trying to remember to put up the laundry at SOME point in the day... or clean the dishes lol) to promote my first book, get the word out, etc... But I love to LOOK at *stuff*.  Facebook comments, myspace comments( although I haven't even been to that in over 2 years... do people still use myspace?) and blogs. I love blogs. Which brings me to security spam codes.

Ok~ we all have to do this on the internet. We find funny things that we have to comment on. Or there is a blog that absolutely ROCKS and we must follow it... After typing in your comment, joke, hilarious smilies EVERYWHERE - there it is.  The security code.  Now, I KNOW that the codes are computer generated. I KNOW there is not a person somewhere on the other end making these up. But, at some point, you would think there had to have been a person installing some type of dictionary. No? Then they definitely installed a great sense of humor!

Take one of my favorite blogs.   Erica Dean has a great and funny blog that I recently came across and have started following it.  She is super funny so I have to comment... when I remember to hit the send button (which is difficult for me for some reason...?).  My security code that I have to type in order to prove I am not a spammer intent on destroying the cyber universe? wait for it... wait for it...

az ass

You can't tell me there isn't a little person (probably wearing green and sitting on a pot of gold somewhere) laughing his rear off at this? I did... for 2 minutes I actually cried, I was laughing that hard.
Or how about another blog from 2 weeks ago on yahoo... are you ready?

but2  corkz

I swear I cannot make this up. Even I draw the line at some point on insanely funny, yet, bad bar humor.  I want to meet the person who came up with this idea and shake his/her hand.  They have given me much joy ever since we started seeing those codes.... I'm off to find another one!  If you have any codes that you remember as being funny, stupid, etc.. feel free to post them on the comments~

As a shout out to Erica, you should read her blog because she is hilarious! lol You can find her here:
http://networkedblogs.com/lnLwt