Just Snip It In The Bloom!

No one real topic to elaborate on today, but I do have a few snippets on which to bloviate, so I shall. Bloviate on the snippets that is.

Facebook. Sometimes knowing that certain other people also occupy the same cyberspace as you is not a good thing. Just like most other people, I too have family members in which I want absolutely nothing to do with. Permanent estrangement you could say. So you could well imagine my surprise when a blast from my very distant past reached out to friend me. Naturally the name did not ring a bell, so I did what I usually do, which is to send a very brief one sentence message asking who they were. They proceeded to identify who they was, which in turn I responded by saying that it was very nice to hear from them, but I have a personal rule of thumb of not friending family members. I told them that my only respite from my family is my blog and Facebook, and I don't bother them on Facebook and they certainly don't bother me (and they don't. my entire family is on Facebook, but they have their life and I have mine). So with one click of the mouse, I declined their request.

As one might say, I have a very very long memory about certain things/certain people, and the less contact I have the better I feel.

The Inner Sibling. I finally got off my butt and started looking into buying a book cover for the re-release of my commercial debut. First I decided to use a graphic company that I saw on Facebook, and I found a very good photo to use from Fotolia that would've fit like a glove for the book, Unfortunately, no response from an e-mail query and form query (from the website) over the course of three days (found out later that the owner decided to take a holiday) prompted me to contact the company that designed the cover to my debut. After catching up on things (we used to be published by the same company. she's still there), it was determined that she would be able to design a very nice cover that is similar to my debut (double image but fully clothed). Right now, I'm trying to figure what package I can get for the cover (possibly print in the future, but definitely e-book for now).

My next step is contacting the formatter that I found via Mark's List (he of Smashwords), who does formatting for both e-book and print, because quite frankly, this time around I have absolutely no patience for formatting. If I want it done right, I'll pay a professional to do it.

Writing. I finally did some writing over the weekend as I had a large chunk of uninterrupted quiet time in which to pursue it. As most of you are aware of, I started using my Dragon software to write. While overall it's been a positive experience, the mere fact that I'm verbally writing causes an unlimited amount of aggravation. Why? Because of the type of fiction I write (paranormal/fantasy peppered with scenes/language that starts at R and goes progressively downhill), I'm really worried about what my immediate family would say/react should they hear me talking like this. So yeah, I do have some ethics that do crop up from time to time. In any event, I wrote about 2 1/2 pages, which may not sound like a lot to you, but considering that I actually had to think/edit before speaking, it was a tremendous accomplishment.

So, for those of you on Facebook, do you face similar sticky situations? If you blog, do you have similar sticky situations as well? How do you handle family members that you suddenly come into involuntary contact with after a certain number of years (in my case, 25 years)?

(c) 2014 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved.