Anne Rice, Maggie Spence, and the NOtorious Blogger RMB

You all remember Maggie Spence, the “author” who called me at home and tried to intimidate me into changing my review and making my friends stop talking about her? If you missed all the fun try here and here.

All the more outrageous comments on KDP have been deleted  or edited by the mods and both of Maggie’s GR accounts are gone since she was banned both times.

Maggie has to be jumping for joy at this moment because  ANNE RICE, she who thinks the universe rotates around her, has declared Maggie’s actions to be in her favor.

 

Way to go, Annie. You notice that Rice carefully skirts around the fact that she hasn’t and doesn’t intend to actually look into what Maggie did, much like she carefully doesn’t look at what the seemingly dormant STGRB really is about. Rice is losing credibility and this is part of the reason why.

I suppose I have to thank Rice for making me far more important than I really am, so, thanks. Don’t expect a fruit basket.

Did you all know I’m a notorious blogger? Why didn’t anybody tell me? Why am I always the last to know?

TNBRMB

Edit to add:

Because try to cheat the system, insulting those who tried to help, trying to intimidate a notorious blogger, having your friends and family review your book without disclosure, being banned from GR twice, and acting like a complete twit everywhere is good.  But Maggie sold her book to Rice, wanna bet if there is a review?

 

Writers, Time to get visual.

Live to Write - Write to Live

As writers, we are – let’s face it – pretty obsessed with words. We get geeky about grammar, excited about syntax, and delirious over great dialog. We have strong opinions about the Oxford comma, have been known to swoon slightly over a perfect turn of phrase, and can debate the merits of different POVs for days.

You know who doesn’t do any of this? Normal human beings. Non-writers care very little about the nuances of language or the underlying structure of story. They are not concerned with finding le mot juste. They do not understand why anyone could agonize over a single sentence for hours. And, they often judge books by their covers.

Normal People do not succumb to the allure of words the way we do. Their attention is much more likely to be caught by an image than by a beautifully crafted sentence. Especially in this fast-moving, clickety-click…

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A rose by any other name…

Rick Townley dot com

A book has got smell. A new book smells great. An old book smells even better. – Ray Bradbury

You know the smell. It’s nothing you can buy to use as a perfume, though I’m a bit surprised no one has ever tried, and it is uniquely identifiable to anyone who has ever handled an old book. It’s easy to understand that the smell of a new book is a combination of fresh paper and ink (mostly), but what gives old books their unique, slightly acidic odor?

A team of scientists from major European and UK universities wondered about that and did an extensive study. This is what they came up with:

Using supervised and unsupervised methods of multivariate data analysis, we were able to quantitatively correlate volatile degradation products with properties important for the preservation of historic paper: rosin, lignin and carbonyl group content, degree of polymerization of cellulose, and…

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