Ann I. Goldfarb's Blog

It happens every summer so I don’t know why it came as such a surprise to me, but when the temperatures hit above 103 degrees (my personal comfort level) to 111+, my brain simply turned to mush. Yeah, even in an air-conditioned house.

By now I should be used to writing with sweat pouring down my neck and an overhead fan running at breakneck speed. Trouble is, it came too soon. I was basking in an enjoyable 98 degrees when the triple digits arrived a month early. I hadn’t braced myself for the sudden onslaught of heat, and as a result, I became an actual danger to myself at the computer.

The first realization came this weekend when I received three pages of edits from one of my copy editors for my next “Light Riders” novel, volume V. I opened the manuscript from my documents and began to read her notes. Nothing made sense. I couldn’t find the paragraphs, let alone the sentences, and worse yet, the chapters didn’t line up. It took me fifteen minutes before I realized that I had opened the manuscript to a previously published novel!

Pretty bad, huh? Don’t worry – it gets worse. I re-paid bills on my banking auto-pay, making a few credit card companies more than happy. I wished the wrong people “Happy Birthday” on Facebook and a sent a condolence card to a friend who emailed me to ask, “Who died?”

Producing quality work while guzzling ice water and dripping beads of sweat on my desk is a skill that I should have mastered years ago in New York. Back then it was called taking the Regents exams. At least 100 of us were crowded into a stuffy, stifling gymnasium in late June, with the desks lined up as far as the eye could see and a few miserable teachers walking up and down the aisles telling us to keep our eyes on our own papers. (As if we could focus past our own blurry eyeballs!) If we were lucky, the custodians would manage to drag in a large fan or two for the corners of the gym. About as useful as a fly swatter in the Amazon.

Unfortunately, dealing with the heat is more of an attitude than a skill. I tell myself that “it’s a dry heat,” but that’s like saying, “working inside of a 450 degree oven is better than laboring at the steam cleaners.”

Like anything else, it will just take time for my brain to adjust. That’s why I’m thankful to have such great editors and proof readers. By the way, guys, don’t tell my publisher that I sent you last year’s book!

How can something that looks so innocuous, so simple, and so inviting, turn out to be such a hair-pulling challenge for me? I just don’t get it! I’m fluent on Facebook, well versed with LinkedIn, and comfortable with Goodreads. Yet, when it comes to pinning something on Pinterest, everything goes wrong! In fact, even logging onto the site is a challenge. The screen behind the login scrolls down with all sorts of foods and artwork as I’m trying to type in my name and email. Carnival sideshows are less daunting!

My pins don’t show up, and if by some miracle, they do, they wind up in the wrong place! Start a new board? That’s easy for you to say, but when I try it, all I get is a blank space. So far, I’ve managed to create two secret boards, so secret in fact that I can’t even find them!

At least I had a fighting chance with “Pin the Tail on the Donkey” when I was in grade school. I was pointed in the right direction and if, by some miscalculation of space, I wound up about to stab a classmate, someone always screamed. Well, there’s no one screaming here except me.

I’ve tried the HELP button on numerous occasions. It’s apparently the only thing I seem to be able to push when I’m on that site. Today, I decided to give it another try and create a new board for one of my upcoming novels. I started the process at the same time three contractors arrived at my house to install five windows. They started the job at 7:30 A.M. I entered Pinterest at 7:35. They were completely done by 12:30 with fabulous energy efficient windows. I, on the other hand, lost two pins in the next hour and a half..

I managed to post the same thing in six different places and two repetitive places before giving up. I know there has to be some trick to the whole thing, like recognizing the secret image in those paintings people always send you, but I’ll be darned if I can figure it out.

Meantime, I’ll keep trying. Just don’t expect any terrific results soon! However, if you hear a bloodcurdling scream, then you’ll know I was really way off with my next “Pin!”

Yep, there are no other words for it than Monkey Business, and that’s exactly what I’m about to embark on tomorrow when my web designer walks me through the latest development on my website – a fan database under the management of something called “Mail Chimp.”

Fans, followers, browsers and anyone who accidentally comes across my website and decides to stick around, will now have the opportunity to become part of a database for Time Travel Mysteries. People who sign up will get monthly newsletters and/or updates plus promos, sneak peeks and all sorts of neat stuff. Provided of course, that I am a quick learner and can figure this out by the end of the day tomorrow.

I promise I won’t bombard you with the kind of daily spam I get: offers to lower my mortgage rate, restore my figure to the way it looked in 1986, provide behavioral management tips for my cat, help my lawn to look lush and green (Ha! I live in Arizona and my lawn is gravel!), and of course, secrets to wealth management (Must be the best kept secrets because no one I know is getting rich).

“Mail Chimp” is the third “Monkey Thing” I’ve had to deal with in the past few years. First, it was Survey Monkey for my school back east. As soon as our central administration discovered it, there was nothing they didn’t survey. (On a scale of 1 – 10, please rate the following: your child’s lunch, your child’s last algebra test, your child’s homeroom, your child’s schedule , your child’s homework, band lessons, swim time, library time, and emotional well-being while under the care of our professionals). To this day, I loathe surveys!

Then there was “Sea Monkey,” the prototype for creating your own website. We fed it data and pictures and somehow a website emerged. The best news was that it was FREE. And, it looked like it was free. That old adage held true when it came to “Sea Monkey.” You get what you pay for.

Hopefully “Mail Chimp” will turn out to be a really neat addition to my website and a great means of communication with my readers. So, make my day and please sign up! Just don’t blame me if you start to get bananas in the mail!

Got a Website? Got a Smartphone? Better Get a Responsive Website Design

I knew it was trouble the minute I had to attend a two hour class to figure out how to use it. Bad enough that the Smartphone required a whole new mindset including getting my finger to slide over something before I could even talk!

But never, and I do mean NEVER, in my entire imagination did I remotely think that this innocuous handheld device would become the bane of my website world. You see, when my website, www.timetravelmysteries.com was developed a little over two years ago, everyone was happily using flip-phones for talking and texting, and computers for web searches and the like. All of that changed. Like switching to a microwave to boil water instead of using the stove. (At least that was an easier learning curve).

Now, according to my web designer, publisher, editors, proof readers and the guy in the dog park who usually screams “Poop Alert,” websites need to be mobile device friendly. That’s a nice way of saying, “Cough up the big bucks, lady, because your website needs a “Responsive Web Design.”

Huh? I know. I was lost, too. Apparently, the way a website looks when you’re sitting at your desk or staring at your laptop over coffee, is not the way it comes across on a handheld device. It wouldn’t be so bad if these devices were just limited to phones, but unfortunately they include iPods, iPads, Tablets and anything where a screen can be touched.

Along with this, expect to hear such terms as “fluid layouts” and “optimal viewing experiences.” Essentially, graphic designers have been pushed into a new way of doing things. If you’re a teacher, think “Common Core” as opposed to the way things used to be!

This time folks, I’m taking a sit back and wait approach hoping that it will be the phones that “smarten up” to read the websites and not the other way around. I figure a new phone will cost me a fraction of what a new responsive website will. Then again, I’ve been wrong before when it comes to this stuff.

There is, however, one last glimmer of hope. Since responsive website design is relatively new, maybe there’s a company out there who will do it for me as a promo! I would shout their praises on my website and acknowledge them in my soon-to-be released novels. Any takers? Feel free to call me on my Smartphone.

Any author will tell you that getting past that first crappy draft of your latest novel will keep you awake at night. In my case, it keeps my husband awake.

“Jim, wake up! Wake up! You haven’t read those latest chapters have you? I hope not because I’m changing everything. Too many fantasy elements. I didn’t like it. You didn’t read it, did you?”

“What? Huh? What time is it?”

“1:30.”

“It’s 1:30 in the morning? What’s the matter with you?”

“It’s been bothering me all night. I’ve got to get up and make changes first thing in the morning.”

“So why did you wake me up?”

“I just wanted to be sure you haven’t read it. And make sure that you don’t read it until I fix it.”

“It’s 1:30. I’m not going to look at anything except the inside of my eyelids. Goodnight.”

“You’re not going to forget that we had this conversation and then get up and read it while I’m still sleeping, are you?”

“Probably not. Goodnight.”

“Because I wouldn’t want you to read it with that fantasy element. I knew it as soon as I wrote it. It didn’t fit.”

“Fine. Goodnight.”

This kind of conversation takes place during the entire extent of my first draft writing. It can include the following:

“I don’t think the character names are right.”

“Uh-huh. Go to sleep.”

“Did I have too much detail? Was it boring?”

“I don’t remember. Goodnight.”

“I’m not sure if I want the killer to stalk them. What do you think?”

“About what? Go to sleep.”

And on it goes until the lousy first draft is finally done and I can move on to revisions and rewrites. Come to think of it, I wake my husband up for those, too. No wonder people in the dog park at 7:00 A.M. ask him if the dog kept him up all night. And he always says the same thing.

“Not the dog. It must have been one of the cats. They can be so annoying and demanding when you’re trying to sleep.”

I just smile and offer to make a coffee run!

I literally froze in terror when I read the message on my computer screen. The User Profile Service Failed the Logon. It was accompanied by the sinister red circle with a large white X in the middle. This was worse than getting a letter from my junior high telling me that I had failed the physical fitness test! Much worse. It meant “Verboten! Forbidden! You can’t go any further!”
I did what I usually do when weird things happen to my computer. I shut it off and tried it again. Did that for five times until I realized that I was following the definition of insanity. So, I took it one step further. I unplugged the thing. Then tried it for three more times. I even checked all the wires and plugs since the cats have a nasty habit of loosening them. Still no luck.
By now my fingers were actually trembling. My God! What have I lost? I wasn’t worried about anything on the internet. I could access that anywhere and anytime. As far as my pictures were concerned, no big deal either. They were still in my camera’s internal memory. I haven’t cleared that out since Clinton was in office. But my novels that were still in progress? That was a different story.
Thankfully, I sent my new sci-fi thriller to three of my editors. Wasting no time, I called one of them to make sure that it would be backed-up on their computer. Whew! My other novel, the fifth in the “Light Riders” series was still in its infancy. Five thousand words worth that represented hours of research. I had gotten pretty cavalier about this stuff and only backed-up the first two thousand words. That’ll teach me. By now, full-fledged panic was beginning to set-in. It was augmented by the fact that I was scheduled to present a workshop for the West Valley Writers and the entire thing was on the computer. The computer with the You can’t go here because something failed. Too darn bad for you.
Somewhere in my brain a voice kept saying, “This probably happens all the time. There’s got to be a fix for it.” Thanks to Google and the smartphone, I found it. Trouble was, I couldn’t understand a word of it!

Step One – Trawl Through the Registry
Who uses the word “trawl” anymore and where’s the registry?

Step Two – Two SID Keys with the Same Number
What the heck is a SID key?

Step Three – Only One SID Key Ending in “.bak”
Yes. This helps me a lot!

It was time to take real action – call a profession and try not to let them know you’re scared. (The price could go up!) Lucky for me, a have just that person in my family and he didn’t freak out when I used words like SID and Registry.

“Help! Help! There’s like a zillion steps to fixing this thing!”
“Uh-huh. And does it say “Panic” on any of them?”

“This is really bad. Really bad. Maybe I need a new computer.”

“You don’t need a new computer. If a sparkplug goes on your car, you don’t get a new car, do you?”

For the next thirty minutes I listened to everything he said and just pushed whatever keys he told me to. Voila! It worked! A miracle! I was up and running! No more nasty red X’s to scare the daylights out of me.

Then, I immediately took action to ensure that my important files weren’t lost. I printed them out! That’s right. Old School! Now as long as my copier doesn’t give me any heart-stopping messages, I’ll be OK!


P.S. I have the greatest, smartest cousin in the world!

I keep telling myself that I managed to live quite decently before technology took over but that was before my world became computer driven. As a result, when something goes wrong, I go berserk. Why? Because I have no clue how to fix it and must rely on someone else’s expertise. This is a veritable nightmare for a control freak like me. No wonder I lost sleep this past week – everything went wrong!

First, it started with my home alarm monitoring system. The battery in my key fob lost power. Not a big deal, one would think, but a MAJOR deal for the stupid computer voice on my touch screen that kept calling out “Zone Trouble! Zone Trouble!” I tried everything I could do to silence that voice. It was unbearable. I even tried reading the manual! That’s how desperate I was! No luck. I was forced to call the company and beg them to shut off the voice only to learn that I couldn’t do it without shutting off the system. Leave yourself wide open to burglars and killers or be driven insane by a repetitive computer robot.

“All you need to do is to replace the battery in the key fob, Mrs. Goldfarb.”

Yeah, real easy. The batteries are special ones that are only sold in specific stores and the one nearest me was closed on Sunday when the system started its “Zone Trouble” chant. I did the next best thing. I turned up the volume on the TV.

The next day I raced to the store and had the battery replaced. I could finally relax over a cup of coffee with my web designer. Ha! That was just the beginning of technological torture. As soon as I walked into the coffee shop I was greeted with, “Do you know your website is down?” And . . . not just down – GONE! VANISHED! DEAD!

Someone had deleted my files and GO DADDY, who handles the domain, didn’t have a clue. I tried to remain calm when hearing, “There are worse things than having your website down.” I responded with “I can’t think of a one!”

A few hours later, the website was restored but I wasn’t. I had just received word that the company handling the review for one of my novels had lost track of the data. Yep, lost. Gone. They would have to start all over again.

Cyberspace and clouds may be wonderful but if data evaporates like water in Arizona, forget it. Someone told me that astrologers believe it is because Mercury is in retrograde. I’m not sure what this is, but I’ll buy it! Anything to forget about technology for a while.

I don’t know if this happens to other authors since writing is such a unique process for each of us, but my characters are dueling it out in my head, leaving me reaching for the Tylenol before they give me a migraine.

They’ve all become so demanding lately. Leo Dawson needs to be pulled out of a mess and Wendell, whose last name I haven’t come up with yet, needs to be shoved into one! My characters collide back and forth with dialogue that grips me when I’m in the middle of the supermarket or worse yet, dining out with friends.

“Excuse me for a minute, but I just need to write something down. Damn! I hate it when they just have cloth napkins.”

“What’s so important? I was just about to show you the pictures I took of Lilly’s pre-school play.”

I look down at the iPhone under my nose and smile at my friend, all the while hoping I can remember that perfect dialogue.

I wish that writing was orderly, sequential and logical. It’s none of those things for me. Everything seems to happen in spurts, like finding a way out of a sticky plotline or discovering just the right element of suspense for chapter 19. Unfortunately, everything that happens in-between is fragmented. I always feel as if I’m putting together a giant jigsaw puzzle but having trouble finding the edges. And when I do find them, I’m not at my computer!

This has been a jumbled week for me. I’m at the climax of a new time travel novel slated for 2015, with totally new characters and adventures. Tough luck for them. My “Light Riders” don’t want to give up and keep pestering me with their latest endeavor. On the calendar, it all looks good – finish Time Tracer first draft by end of April and start roughing out the newest “Light Riders” at the beginning of June. (Use May for editing and pulling out hair ).

I left 15-year old gamer, Leo Dawson, in an awful mess. He’s about to literally collide with a serial killer thirty years into the future and if the timing is the least bit off, well . . . you know how that goes. Then, there’s Wendell, a 12 or 13 year-old menace (haven’t decided yet) who winds up making Aeden’s life a living nightmare when she gets stuck taking care of him for her professor.

They are all insistent that I drop everything and focus on their immediate needs. So what if the dog hasn’t been fed or the laundry is beginning to resemble the leaning tower of Pisa. I have dialogue to write, issues to resolve and time travel chaos to create. (My own chaos will have to wait.)

I keep telling myself, “at least something’s going on in your head.” For a long time, IBM had a sign posted everywhere for all of its employees to see. The sign read THINK. Well, starting today, I’m posting a sign for myself. It will just read, “FIND THE EDGES.” I figure if I can do that, I might just be able to get Leo, Wendell and everyone else to shut up for a while and let me work!

I guess I was living in a fool’s paradise. It’s the only explanation I can think of when it comes to the false sense of security I had regarding my website’s popularity on Google search. For the past few years, the mere typing of “Time Travel Mysteries” brought viewers directly to me. I was number one on the list! Yay! One quick click and they could see all my novels, storyboards, blogs, and event updates. It was an author’s dream.

Then, something horrific happened. The dream turned into a feisty little nightmare with no rhyme or reason. Suddenly, I was on page two. Page two? That’s unthinkable. Granted, I was on the top of page two, but still, it was page two. That’s like getting a B on your algebra exam when you expected nothing less than an A.

I was up against urban legends, proof of time travelers and a multitude of Amazon stuff. It was outrageous. Who was going to click past page one? Panic stricken, I contacted my webmistress who informed me that there was a major shift in the way Google decided to do search updates. Apparently, everyone’s search ranking changed. For me, this was a worse upset than the New York Giants defeating New England in the 2008 Super Bowl!

She went on to explain that it may have had a lot to do with conversational searches and mobile technology. She might as well have told me that it had a lot to do with global warming and the decline of the honeybee population. It didn’t matter. What mattered was the fact that “Time Travel Mysteries” was no longer “Google’s favorite website” for that topic. I felt as if I had just been replaced as the favorite grandchild.

The only solace I can find is to tell myself that everything changes and that Google will someday come to its senses and realize that “Time Travel Mysteries” needs to be restored to its rightful place on page one. In the meantime, I intend to check out my ranking on Bing and hope you will, too!

It’s bad enough to get a rejection letter from an agent or publisher when you’ve sent a query. But when you get a rejection letter “out of the blue” from an agency where you’ve never queried, it can literally make your hair stand on end.

Imagine my shock when I opened my email to read a rejection letter that stated, “I’m going to pass on your project. It doesn’t look like something that would work for me. Of course this is one agent’s opinion. You may wish to query other agents.”

What project? Who are you? What on earth are you talking about?

Thankfully I have a great indie publisher who will be taking on the next novel in my “Light Rider” series. So why did I get this strange email?

As the days went by, all I could do was perseverate over it. Meanwhile, my husband thought it was hysterical.

“You’ve probably queried so many agents in the past five years, that they’ve put you on some sort of DO NOT ACCEPT LIST. Kind of like the DO NOT CALL LISTS from telemarketers.”

“That’s not funny!”

“Sure it is. I’ll bet anything that your name is on a computer list for DON’T CALL US, WE’LL CALL YOU. Look at it this way, that email just saved you time. You can cross that agent off your list should you decide to send out queries.”

“It’s very unnerving. I mean, not to know what they were talking about. Maybe I should send them an email explaining that I never sent them anything.”

“Sure. Waste your time. They’ll probably email back telling you to stop pestering them.”

“This is so unfair.”

“OK. Here’s an idea – Send them a query. Attach their response and wish them a happy new year!”

“It will be put in their spam file.”

“Yeah, but at least you’ll have the last word.”

“I’ve got a better idea. I’m just going to push the delete button.”

“That’s what you should have done in the first place!”

I went back to the computer and pulled up my email. My finger was poised over the delete button but I just couldn’t do it. It wasn’t closure enough. After staring at the keyboard, I did what I’ve been doing long before emails. I printed out the darn thing and tore it up in little pieces.

Agents hate unsolicited queries. Well, guess what? Authors really hate unsolicited rejections!