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Posts by Amanda

Aug 7

16 Comments

Adapting to Changes

This past month or so has been trying, and that’s putting it mildly. As most of you know, my mother is elderly. Fortunately, she is extremely healthy for a woman her age and we haven’t had to worry with some of the terrible mental issues so many her age seem to suffer from. Sure, there’s the occasional lapse in memory about something but it hasn’t become a problem. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that she fell while on vacation in June and tore up her shoulder. So far, surgery hasn’t been necessary but it is becoming clear with every day that passes that the issue isn’t “if” but “when” it will be. She still can’t drive more than a mile or two. She can’t do many of the things she is used to doing and, well, she isn’t handling this decline in her independence well.

Not that I blame her one bit. Read more

Jul 31

35 Comments

Help!

I am stuck in auto ownership Hell. In other words, I’m stuck in the waiting room as my car is repaired and the internet is spotty at best. There will be a post when I’m released from durance vile. In the meantime, help me by giving me suggestions about what you’d like me to blog about.

Until later!

Edited to add: Sorry, everyone. I got stuck at the mechanic’s until a few minutes ago and now I have other things I need to take care of. Continue talking cars and pickups and whatever.

Oh, and Mustangs Rule!

Jul 24

34 Comments

A new form of Amazon Derangement Syndrome

The other day, Forbes published a post entitled “Amazon Should Replace Local Libraries to Save Taxpayers Money”. Yes, you read that right.  The article was written by Long Island University Post economics professor, Panos Mourdoukoutas. All I can say is if this is his idea of fiscal responsibility, I don’t want my kids or grandkids (when I have them) studying under him and I am really glad he isn’t on my city council. For it’s part, Forbes has realized just how ill-advised it was to publish the post. Why? Because after only a couple of days, the post is gone from the Forbes site. If you follow the link provided in a number of places, you get a 404 (or 4-0-Forbes) error.

Not that it has caused Mourdoukoutas to take down his tweet announcing the post. Read more

Jul 17

14 Comments

More Amazon outrage, but is it justified?

It’s a new month and you know what that means. Amazon is being hated all over again. No, I’m not talking about the technical glitches it had yesterday during the early hours of its Prime Day event. Yes, I’m one of those grumbling about it because I missed out on something because, when the item went live and I clicked on it, I got the “Oops, we are experiencing a problem right now”. I lost out on the item as a result. But that’s not the current outrage, at least not in the writing community. If you’re on social media or if you follow the Kindle Boards, you know there’s a new round of “Amazon is pulling author accounts without explaining why!”

I’ve seen some references to some author having his or her account yanked. Then others chime in and claim they know someone else it happened to. Now, all this might be true but when I see no supporting evidence, no names, not substance, I find myself wondering. When someone dares to comment that it looks like a dogpile or witch hunt, they’re slammed by others in the thread. After all, if someone said it happened, it did and Amazon is evil. Read more

Jul 10

21 Comments

Who — or what — are your characters?

My brain has been on overload the last couple of weeks as I published one book and started on another. Family obligations and scheduling conflicts added to the overload. So the other day I gave up, pulled out my Kindle Oasis and read. Just read. For more than 12 hours, I let my imagination go where several different authors took it. One book was traditionally published and several were indie books. Each had their strong and weak points. Each came to mind when I read a post and the accompanying comments on The Passive Voice yesterday.

PG quoted from a New York Times article telling us we need more diversity in romance novels. Read more

Jul 3

9 Comments

Release Day!

The most exciting day in an author’s life is also the most terrifying day. Release day. That day when you push the button, the virtual door opens and your “baby” races out the door into the world or readers. Will they love your baby? Or will they look at it, screw up their noses and say “ewwww!”? You hope for the former, pray it’s not the latter and promise yourself you won’t keep checking your rankings and sales numbers every hour on the hour and, if you’re like me, fail miserably at finding anything else to do.

Well, that’s me today. Fire from Ashes, the fourth (and next to the last in this story arc) book in the Honor & Duty series is now available for download. The print version, along with new print versions of the other books in the series, will be available in approximately two weeks.  Read more

Jun 26

21 Comments

On going indie and an announcement

When I sat down in the much too early hours of the morning to write this post, I found myself at a loss. My brain is fried and the ability to come up with something new seemed beyond me. So, as I will often do when I’m unsure what to blog about, I started checking out a few writing-related sites to see what they had to say. Nothing really jumped out at me until I started scrolling through The Passive Voice. One article in particular caught my eye. I’m not going to actually discuss the article, so I’m not linking to it. However, the idea behind the article did set me to thinking — something that might be dangerous since I’m pre-coffee. Read more

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