Thomas or Weinberg?

After several days the interest has died down and I have counted the views and it looks like Eve Thomas triumphs over Kevin Weinberg/parogar.

Sorry, kev, you’re not as interesting as a middle-aged English woman with delusions of her own importance. By the by, how’s that leaving Wattpad/changing your alias/leaving GR thing going?

Remember

 

Holocaust Remembrance Day

Whatever became of Raani York?

I’m sure you are just as interested as I am to know what our polite little author has been doing. So I was happy to come across the comments on the GR review of Kerri (the book hoarder)’s review of Dragonbride.

Oh, now where, oh where have I seen Kathryn’s name before?

 

Oh-Oh. Someone’s not what she seems?

 

Wow. Notice she doesn’t quite manage to distance herself from kev’s side and kev didn’t take anything down, Wattpad did. kev lies, but that’s no surprise.

And, and  poor, sweet Raani has been ill! I feel just terrible about the unkind things I was thinking. Poor little thing.

I don’t have the best feels about this publisher, she’s taking the reviews to the editors? Can’t they figure out the problems by, you know, reading the book?

Poor, sick Raani. It hasn’t exactly saved her butt but…

 

 

Oh, oh, Raani, you didn’t!

 

Somebody isn’t buying what Kathryn’s trying to sell. And kev didn’t take them down, Wattpad did. kev lies.

Mmmm, really  not buying Kathryn’s story and not too much sympathy for Raani either.

DKC is Kathryn’s publishing biz. Wait, they promoted a book they now say needs improving? The link goes to their site and the promotion for York and her book. Begs the question, why? Why would you promote the sale of a book you now say needs work? Looks like Scarlet might have nailed it, did they read it?

Somebody needs to work on a more- believable story, don’t you think? And I’ll agree with Auntie J, why is a book that needs this kind of work still for sale?

I guess we don’t want her book in its present form. I guess we don’t want Kathryn’s story either. Um, remember those buttons?

Guess she was well enough to read and like those reviews, unless like DKC she likes without reading.

Well, look at that, guess she might not have been quite as sick as she hopes we will believe.

 

 

My FBI Story (so far)

I love doing new things. First there is a half wall and glass barrier with a window where you tell a man with a badge why you are there. He then takes your bags, purse , phone, and coat and sends them through an x-ray machine. Then you go through a metal scanner and then reassemble yourself and proceed.

It’s a small local office. My case agent, I have a case agent(!), was on the phone so the receptionist escorted me to the interview room. I sat down at a long table and looked up to find this on the wall:

 

*snort*

Somebody has a sense of humor. The room had wall cams and mics and a separate video camera probably for those times when they lose their sense of humor. It took me a while to stop giggling and look behind me.

 

Only the one on the wall was addressed to my local office and signed by Jimmy Stewart. Be still my heart.

I met with my case agent and we had a pleasant conversation on an unpleasant subject. As with any case they look into, there isn’t an instant fix but I have a return visit to make and after that? Who knows.

I wasn’t dismissed, they will give careful consideration to the documents I provide and proceed from there.

On the way out I checked the 10 Most Wanted list, relax, I didn’t see any of you on it.

Strange Roads

Two years ago this month I started this blog. I had a vague plan of posting reviews and articles I found on books and book related matters. That happened but so did a lot of other things. Some interesting, some funny, some truly strange.

I don’t think any of us ever thought that we would be stalked or harassed or physically attacked. But that has happened. It’s easy at times like this to only dwell on the bad and lose sight of the good. I’ve met some incredible people doing this- readers, reviewers, bloggers, authors.

Of all the things I could conceive of doing when I started this, this was never anything I could have imagined. I’ve had a little problem in the last couple of days, and so I went to do something about it. What happened was not what I thought would happen.

We travel strange and fascinating roads. Tomorrow I will be going to a place that book bloggers have never considered a part of their experience but now with all the unrestrained actions of certain members of the book community  it might become one. I get to go to my local office of the FBI.

Strange roads.

I get more hits on my blog when I mention Eve Thomas

Sorry, kev, you’re only a legend in your own mind.

And I guess I have a new job, why didn’t anyone tell me?

He can’t even get my name right.

The Sad, Sad Tale of a Basement Living Mama’s Boy

 

Hello, dear readers, y’all remember my little admirer, Kevin Weinberg aka parogar? Well, it seems I’ve upset him. You know what happens when he gets upset? No? Read this and this and make sure to read the comments.

You have read this, I hope.

Let me entertain you with a few choice comments kev/paro has posted the later deleted, the better to try to deny, on Amazon. Enjoy or trigger warning for violent content.

The “girl” kev is referring to in the first ss is Trainwreck Maggie, the woman who called me this summer. Ah, just look at these posts by sweet little kev, isn’t he just a charmer? Don’t you wish your kids were just like him?

No?

Well, kev has emailed on a couple of occasions. Just last week to apologize for the comments he made about me including the one above. That sure wasn’t worth the time I took to read it.

Tonight he emailed me again. Uh, you all remember I have posted that I’m not a nice person, right?

As you will see saying that you will call his mommy makes little kev wet his pants. However he now makes his first serious misstep.

There are two, possibly three men who can give me an order, oh alright, four since Gregor posted a goat just for me.

 

 

 

 

 

WOW! Did sweet little kev just threaten to take me out? Why, yes, I do believe he did. At this point I downed my glass of Coca Cola and picked up my sharp, pointy stick and, well, you have to know this won’t be pretty.

 

Because I do take that to be a definite threat and considering some of little kev’s other posts and his little group of psycho-followers I think other people will, too.

Okay, did I threaten kev’s family? No, no I didn’t. But notice how just the mere suggestion of informing his mom of his online activities makes him lose it.

Yes, it does make me wonder and, yes, I am going down to grace the boys in blue with the honor of my presence. Now kev’s tune changes.

 

So now he didn’t say he would take me out? And still he tries to make change reality and say I threatened his family and he will take appropriate legal action.

 

Yes, indeed I do have some very interesting screenshots. And not for a minute do I believe that he doesn’t wish me physical harm. He has said he does wish several of us harm all too often.

I’m not the one making the mistake here. So in 9 minutes he has managed to tell his mom and the rest of his family I’m going to be calling? Yeah, sure. He might have run upstairs from his basement boycave and told his mom- what? Oh, I’m sure that totally fictitious conversation would have been one I would love to have heard.

Yes, I really am going to the cops. I don’t have any sympathy or patience for this little boy who despite his claims of adulthood denies responsibility for his actions and tries to shove the blame on someone-anyone else.

Like maybe me or Linda, his drones just love her.

 

 

 

 

 

And now he’s written a whole ‘nother rant about me “threatening” his family so I can just imagine what they are hoping happens to me.  There’s just one very large problem for kev and his drones, they picked the wrong women.

Review- The Long Way Home

 

The tenor of this book is quite different from most of her other work. No murder to start out with just a husband who doesn’t come home on the appointed date.This book revolves around the non-reappearance of one of the two characters I most dislike in this series- Peter. Separated from the long-suffering Clara, the other character I dislike, he fails to return by the agreed upon date and Clara being Clara waffles around until Gamache pries it out of her.

Gamache has now retired to Three Pines and almost reluctantly sets out to search for Peter, joined by Jean-Guy, Clara, and Myrna the search for Peter reveals that he has been searching, too.

Lacking the familiar magic of books set in Three Pines, Home nevertheless kept me reading as Gamache and friends travel around trying to follow in Peter’s footsteps, trying to discover what he is doing.

I know that a lot of readers are/were unhappy with the end but I wasn’t. Sometimes things just happen, there is never a guarantee of a logical explanation and people don’t always act in a logical way. In this case I think Peter’s fate was already set, no matter the distance I don’t believe he would ever have returned “home”. I’m not sure he had truly figured out what/where/who home was.

I was left wondering if Clara would take any responsibility for her part in the end and I hope that Penny addresses this in a future book.

If you are expecting the familiar you won’t like this one, it’s a much different book from the usual but if you can read it as an interlude, a road trip to a disastrous end it might work.

I had never heard of the Garden of Cosmic Speculation before this and I want to thank Penny for the introduction to this most beautiful and fascinating place.

Review- Haunted Hijinks

I picked up this book because it said book 1 and it was, but book one of her paranormal mysteries, turns out there was a whole series with these characters before this book. Consequently I was thrown into a small town with a cast of characters I didn’t know but was expected to. It made for a very confusing story at times.

I love a good cosy but I did not love this one, it was a mildly interesting mystery with too many components and too many characters. At times it felt like the mystery took a backseat to Agnes, Eleanor, and Caroline, and I did not find Agnes, Eleanor, and Caroline all that interesting.

The explanation of Caroline was a tad off, the passage of time does not make some things less than what they are.

I don’t know if it is Johns’ writing style or just this particular book but it was like wading through cold molasses to finish and I won’t be picking up any of her others

How I Rate/Review Books for Kids and YA, yes, there is a pigeon involved

[reblogged from Spare Ammo]

 

I have this little problem, and no, it’s not my dining room. (The dining room is where I keep my Ebay stuff and it looks like a box factory and an estate sale collided and exploded in it) It’s about books, specifically books intended for children, teens, YA.

THESE ARE THE BOOKS THAT I WANT TO BE PROPERLY WRITTEN.

I don’t know how or when you all learned to read but I started very early. I always read above my grade level, I aced my spelling tests. In grades 1-6 we had spelling tests every week and I maybe misspelled three words in all that time. No joke. Why? Because I read

I read good books, good in the sense that the words were properly spelled, the sentences were grammatically correct, the stories had a plot. A simplistic plot maybe but still a plot. The authors cared that they were writing for an audience that would take something away from their writing.

Classes were definitely easier because I could read, and read well. English classes were easier because I had learned by reading. Until I had to diagram, we won’t go there and gerund is a dirty, six letter word to me.

I believe that if any author has a responsibility not to publish unreadable, misspelled, grammatically incorrect, plotless crap it is the author that writes a book for the above mentioned groups.

So when I stumble over a Raani York (her book is listed in teens, YA), a Christin Lovell (make those words up as you go along), or a Pami L Wahl (who can spell her own name but not anything else) then, yes, I am going to leave a freaking 1 star on their crap.

I don’t care if they are a sweet old lady, an upstanding church lady, a Vox Day, or just an over entitled whiner, they are going to get a I star and a pithy little description of their inadequacies.

Kids, teens, they all learn from what they read.

You want to write for minors- you got responsibilities. You want to write crap for minors- I hope I help make your next job asking someone if they want fries with their burger.

Cue pigeon.