Down with Air New Zealand.
What a joke! Air New Zealand ran a inflight safety film which was all bikini and boobs on some Pacific island. Naturally the guys drooled but we women protested. I didn't see half naked men in the ad, it was just women. Either they do an ad like that for both men and women to drool if they must or it's rank male chauvinist piggery.
There was a Twitter campaign a friend told me about. I joined in and we did get the safety film off the air. But Air New Zealand had a squad of Tweeters to protest us and I received a lot of silly tweets. They did make me laugh! Honestly it seems to me no one knows how to insult any more. My tweets were so boring - 'You're jealous 'cos you're ugly or old or fat' was popular as was 'You jealous lessie'. I tweeted back and told them they made me laugh. The idiots from Montana who emailed my private email - wouldn't it be Montana? - got a polite email from me saying I was so impressed with their standard of education I was sending copies of their emails to their State representatives with the comment that I really admired the level and standard of the Montana education system and hoped the representatives were impressed. Haven't heard back yet.
Invective has to be inventive to be of use. And Air New Zealand have merely lost a customer, but not just one as this customer is one who books flights for other people and won’t be using Air New Zealand again. Now that’s a lot more powerful and useful than a load of silly Tweets.
Friday, 5 September 2014
September.
That will teach me!
The Indie Book Fair was great, not for books sales but because of the people I met and stayed with. I haven't had so much fun, sitting chatting round the dining table, for years.
There's a tremendous amount of work to do now it's Spring. I am planting the seeds ready for the fine weather outside. The bottom paddock is still very wet and have I have lost most of my hazel trees down there because their roots drowned. Bang goes my income.
Seems to me the whole farming lark is one long battle which one inevitably loses.
Jim Azevedo's visit from Smaswords was a great success and he left a whole group of people fully informed as to what ebooks are and how writers should be making them and why. He was a good speaker and he and his wife were fun to have as visitors.
Now with at least half the world raging mad it seems to me we need a universal peace movement to bring a little sanity back to ordinary people's lives.
The general election looms. As our current conservative government has ruined the country lining the pockets of their friends
I despair of ever seeing good government in New Zealand.
That will teach me!
The Indie Book Fair was great, not for books sales but because of the people I met and stayed with. I haven't had so much fun, sitting chatting round the dining table, for years.
There's a tremendous amount of work to do now it's Spring. I am planting the seeds ready for the fine weather outside. The bottom paddock is still very wet and have I have lost most of my hazel trees down there because their roots drowned. Bang goes my income.
Seems to me the whole farming lark is one long battle which one inevitably loses.
Jim Azevedo's visit from Smaswords was a great success and he left a whole group of people fully informed as to what ebooks are and how writers should be making them and why. He was a good speaker and he and his wife were fun to have as visitors.
Now with at least half the world raging mad it seems to me we need a universal peace movement to bring a little sanity back to ordinary people's lives.
The general election looms. As our current conservative government has ruined the country lining the pockets of their friends
I despair of ever seeing good government in New Zealand.
Tuesday, 22 July 2014
Monday, 16 June 2014
It's June, and half way through already. May disappeared in snow storms, frosts and floods! This is unheard of as May is the last month of autumn and therefore usually grey, louring and foretelling of winter. It does not act like winter and dump on us with cold snow and heavy rain.
Seems to me the climate is crazy. Could it be that thing the Americans don't admit is happening? We know all about climate change in the Pacific. All those tiny atoll islands now losing their drinking water as the sea rises or suffering violent waves washing over their homes. Some islanders have already had to leave and come to New Zealand.
Last winter we even had icebergs off the South island coast. Antarctica is melting fast and the glaciers are slipping. I think we should move all climate change nay-sayers to Antarctica and let them measure the effects.
The floods have made my land a revolting mess of squelch and mud. So much so that I nearly lost my gumboots this morning. I cannot open my road gate without wearing gumboots and have to travel to town with boot on board. Our local council is useless. We need a new larger culvert at my gateway to replace the inadequate one already there. No response from the council officials, of course. They spend their whole time saying NO and dodging what is legally council responsibility.
No change at Amazon and Goodreads either as they dodge their responsibility to prevent cyber bullying. Having watched, with horror, the bullies at work and then have Goodreads tell me that their so-called reviews, without having read the book, were allowed. Ah me! I'm trying to get Goodreads to allow readers a private review system where they can be as nasty as like but their one star nastiness is not counted against the poor writer's rating. I will keep trying. I have stopped giving star ratings to any book I read and can't give 4 or 5 stars to. It seems to me to be grossly unfair to affect a writer's rating for the simple reason of personal preference which has nothing to do with whether a book is badly written or not.
PR work for Writer's Choice goes on. I am learning daily of new sites and newsletters where I can get our books mentioned. It is time consuming but I hope the work will pay off and in future I will know which sites work for us and how to do it so that I save time.
The technology is killing me though. I never think the way the website designers do and consequently I spend ages on each website searching for pages hidden behind weird buttons or incorrect labels. It takes me ages. I'm wrestling with shelfari right now. I've seen its icon on several authors' websites and thought I ought to have one too. Looks neat. Joining up was easy, moving the darned icon has proved impossible.
It's going to be a cold snowy week so thank god for the huge log burner and the 20cubic metres of firewood. I can write and stay warm.
Seems to me the climate is crazy. Could it be that thing the Americans don't admit is happening? We know all about climate change in the Pacific. All those tiny atoll islands now losing their drinking water as the sea rises or suffering violent waves washing over their homes. Some islanders have already had to leave and come to New Zealand.
Last winter we even had icebergs off the South island coast. Antarctica is melting fast and the glaciers are slipping. I think we should move all climate change nay-sayers to Antarctica and let them measure the effects.
The floods have made my land a revolting mess of squelch and mud. So much so that I nearly lost my gumboots this morning. I cannot open my road gate without wearing gumboots and have to travel to town with boot on board. Our local council is useless. We need a new larger culvert at my gateway to replace the inadequate one already there. No response from the council officials, of course. They spend their whole time saying NO and dodging what is legally council responsibility.
No change at Amazon and Goodreads either as they dodge their responsibility to prevent cyber bullying. Having watched, with horror, the bullies at work and then have Goodreads tell me that their so-called reviews, without having read the book, were allowed. Ah me! I'm trying to get Goodreads to allow readers a private review system where they can be as nasty as like but their one star nastiness is not counted against the poor writer's rating. I will keep trying. I have stopped giving star ratings to any book I read and can't give 4 or 5 stars to. It seems to me to be grossly unfair to affect a writer's rating for the simple reason of personal preference which has nothing to do with whether a book is badly written or not.
PR work for Writer's Choice goes on. I am learning daily of new sites and newsletters where I can get our books mentioned. It is time consuming but I hope the work will pay off and in future I will know which sites work for us and how to do it so that I save time.
The technology is killing me though. I never think the way the website designers do and consequently I spend ages on each website searching for pages hidden behind weird buttons or incorrect labels. It takes me ages. I'm wrestling with shelfari right now. I've seen its icon on several authors' websites and thought I ought to have one too. Looks neat. Joining up was easy, moving the darned icon has proved impossible.
It's going to be a cold snowy week so thank god for the huge log burner and the 20cubic metres of firewood. I can write and stay warm.
Saturday, 12 April 2014
It seems to me that technology takes up too much time and I'm wasting more and more precious time trying to get out of the mess technology creates. With malign and thoroughly evil intent I might add.
I'm trying to get my blog smartened up a little and of more use with an opt in email address place.
Can I do it? No way. I follow the careful instructions and yet there is always a major problem. Either step one or step two are not possible because the place I need to find isn't there.
Take this 'add the email' business to my blog. Go to your dashboard say my instructions. Now how the hell do I do that? There is nowhere on my blogger page that I can find a way to a dashboard. I can find my personal profile. That isn't it.
Now I'm attached to Google + and life is even more chaotic. Google seems to have taken over my blog. I get cheery and revolting messages and stuff from Google but nothing about how I can attach the email thingie.
I have wasted most of the day trying to do this and various other tech things. In despair I hit the close button for the websites and somehow manage to close the inbox. Thus losing an unsent email of vital importance.
I hate computers!
I'm trying to get my blog smartened up a little and of more use with an opt in email address place.
Can I do it? No way. I follow the careful instructions and yet there is always a major problem. Either step one or step two are not possible because the place I need to find isn't there.
Take this 'add the email' business to my blog. Go to your dashboard say my instructions. Now how the hell do I do that? There is nowhere on my blogger page that I can find a way to a dashboard. I can find my personal profile. That isn't it.
Now I'm attached to Google + and life is even more chaotic. Google seems to have taken over my blog. I get cheery and revolting messages and stuff from Google but nothing about how I can attach the email thingie.
I have wasted most of the day trying to do this and various other tech things. In despair I hit the close button for the websites and somehow manage to close the inbox. Thus losing an unsent email of vital importance.
I hate computers!
Thursday, 10 April 2014
It's April and I missed again. It seems to me I need to give up on this blogging lark.
It's a horribly grey, overcast, coastal mists type of day and I am so depressed. 12 acres is too much on my own. The WWOOFers are great but they are kids - mainly - and not experienced workers so need supervion. The lack of a job and no money means that all those jobs that need doing are simply put away on the list to wait year after year. I've always been a 'get up and do it' person and this hanging about doing nothing really hacks me off. I have this reoccurring nightmare - and I mean a terrifying dream - of the house slowly rotting and sliding into decay all round me and I cannot do anything to stop it.
March was a good month. The indies do went off well. 'Tizzie' launched with a cheerful party, good book sales, and more people knowing a bit about what Independence writers do and why.
My WWOOFers were cheery young students and quite a few of those little tasks were finished. NOw all I need is a lottery win and then I can write more and pay a manager to do the orchard work.
The new novel is trotting steadily along, page by page, day by day. It's a tough story and I find it a bit harrowing as I write it at the moment.
The good thing is that Writer's Choice is linked to three other co-operative groups like ours and we can learn a great deal from them as they have been working as INsdies much longer than we have. It is nice to be able to give their writers and books PR and we will keep mentioning them on our website.
Meanwhile I think I need to go and run round th e21 acres several times to induce a more cheerful state of mind.
It's a horribly grey, overcast, coastal mists type of day and I am so depressed. 12 acres is too much on my own. The WWOOFers are great but they are kids - mainly - and not experienced workers so need supervion. The lack of a job and no money means that all those jobs that need doing are simply put away on the list to wait year after year. I've always been a 'get up and do it' person and this hanging about doing nothing really hacks me off. I have this reoccurring nightmare - and I mean a terrifying dream - of the house slowly rotting and sliding into decay all round me and I cannot do anything to stop it.
March was a good month. The indies do went off well. 'Tizzie' launched with a cheerful party, good book sales, and more people knowing a bit about what Independence writers do and why.
My WWOOFers were cheery young students and quite a few of those little tasks were finished. NOw all I need is a lottery win and then I can write more and pay a manager to do the orchard work.
The new novel is trotting steadily along, page by page, day by day. It's a tough story and I find it a bit harrowing as I write it at the moment.
The good thing is that Writer's Choice is linked to three other co-operative groups like ours and we can learn a great deal from them as they have been working as INsdies much longer than we have. It is nice to be able to give their writers and books PR and we will keep mentioning them on our website.
Meanwhile I think I need to go and run round th e21 acres several times to induce a more cheerful state of mind.
Sunday, 12 January 2014
New Zealand Indie Writers' Month
March, all stops are out for March. March 27th for me actually but the whole month has been taken over by the Indies writers. It used to be New Zealand Book Month but the organisers suddenly changed it to August, leaving quite a few writers' groups and libraries with plans already underway for March. I'm launching my novel, 'Tizzie', promoting my Writer's Choice colleagues' newest novels and selling our already published books at a launch in the library. It will be fun as I'm being supported by the friends of the library to help with food and service and we will enjoy a party atmosphere. I hope! Roll on March 27th.
It seems to me that sales only come if you put in the work, not on social media, but with people. I hate getting tweets about buying someone's books. I'd rather chat. I hate my LinkedIn messages to buy a book. I hate blog tours and bloggers where it's all about 'My Wonderful Book'! I've been talking about Writer's Choice a lot and people are interested in the group and why we are doing what we do as Indie publishers. It's easier to do that than push my novels. This way people don't feel pressured and I also have my colleagues' books with mine and am delighted to chat about them too as a reader, so it's gains all round. I've sold quite a few for them.
And the KiwiReads group grows. We are behind the NZ Indie Writers' Month and are pushing our books into public notice in a good way. So far the website is our main weapon. Tui Allen is working hard to get a perfect site for readers to finds New Zealand books.
We are still stuck on the quality bit. How do you choose without becoming like the agents and traditional publishers? It seem unsolvable.
Too many writers, too many readers and not enough ways to link the two in a sympathetic way. Or is it that there are enough readers for all the writers but we have yet to learn how to connect to the readers who will like our particular books?
I'm working on it!
It seems to me that sales only come if you put in the work, not on social media, but with people. I hate getting tweets about buying someone's books. I'd rather chat. I hate my LinkedIn messages to buy a book. I hate blog tours and bloggers where it's all about 'My Wonderful Book'! I've been talking about Writer's Choice a lot and people are interested in the group and why we are doing what we do as Indie publishers. It's easier to do that than push my novels. This way people don't feel pressured and I also have my colleagues' books with mine and am delighted to chat about them too as a reader, so it's gains all round. I've sold quite a few for them.
And the KiwiReads group grows. We are behind the NZ Indie Writers' Month and are pushing our books into public notice in a good way. So far the website is our main weapon. Tui Allen is working hard to get a perfect site for readers to finds New Zealand books.
We are still stuck on the quality bit. How do you choose without becoming like the agents and traditional publishers? It seem unsolvable.
Too many writers, too many readers and not enough ways to link the two in a sympathetic way. Or is it that there are enough readers for all the writers but we have yet to learn how to connect to the readers who will like our particular books?
I'm working on it!
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