April flew by me. I didn’t keep up with my blog posts so here is a mini version of all the posts. The first week while I had the chance to work at the computer, I got well under way on a book. I thought there would be warm days I’d be working outside soon and less time to write so I didn’t want to waste a minute. Turns out my sister-in-law was right when she said we’d have a late spring because Easter was late. April over did it with the April showers which kept the days in between cloudy and cool. I managed to plant flower seeds and bulbs, but as long as the ground temperature stays cold, the seeds and bulbs don’t sprout. My time in the barn shortened to three times a day bottle feeding for the smaller than a cat baby goat. He follows me around like a puppy when I take him for walks. Now from my window vantage point by the computer, I’m on chicken patrol. They scratch in the freshly cultivated flower beds. I rushed out on the porch, yell, like a crazy person, loud enough for the neighbors to hear me and clap my hands, but nothing keeps those chickens from their quest for a tender nightcrawler. I check and find I have to replant a bulbs. I sure wish those bulbs would hurry up and root so they wouldn’t pop out of the ground so easy.
The first of April, I wrote five short stories for the contests I enter every year. Usually I’d have the stories done a couple months before, but I spent February finishing up two books. In March, I was selling and mailing my third in the Amish series Nurse Hal Among The Amish. My book about my mother-in-law’s life was a hit with the family so I was mailing out books to extended family.
I redownloaded five books into Smashwords. That project wasn’t as simple as I thought it would be when I downloaded in mid January. I mastered Kindle which wasn’t easy at first and Nook, but Smashwords has a Microsoft only setup so the automated scanner for mistakes kept finding problems with my format. I used Open Office and save as is in a Microsoft word. I’d fix one problem and another would crop up. One problem was my open office saved the books in single line but when I saved as Microsoft the line went to single with various points. I couldn’t change that.
So I downloaded a trail sample of Microsoft and put all my books through it. Out of five, four have been accepted now. The fifth one’s problem is the lines needed centering and somewhere an indent for paragraph was done with space bar instead of enter. I discovered when the lines went left, they were only going to the indent for paragraph which made them off center when centered. Thought I had the problem mastered and got the same off center message for the last book. I redid all the chapter titles and front page again though I think they were centered. Now I wait. Each book is read by a human before acceptance so I’m waiting to see if the automation could be wrong. I have the Microsoft program for 60 days so I’ve redone all my books. Now I can submit the rest if I want to. Hopefully, it’s a one or two time only process and not five months worth of downloading.
One week of April was spent downloading Microsoft 2010. I have dail up which makes downloading slow. I started a professional version at 191 hours and realized that wasn’t going to work. Found the home & student version at 45 hours. Once the program downloaded into the computer, it would have taken about 48 hours to install it.
If downloading that program wasn’t time consuming enough, I made the mistake of answering an email I thought was from my dail up company. WRONG! It was spammers trying to get into accounts. Once I clicked the link to see what my urgent problem was, I was sent to my account name and password which seemed right to me. In a couple days, I couldn’t use my email or internet. I phoned for help which was on going for a week. Several password changes later and reinstalling my dail up I’m back online. This happened during the installation of the Microsoft program which made it took longer since the installation kept shutting off, and I’d have to restart it again. I’ve been getting the dial up messages two or more a day. I’ve blocked them and the emailer’s address comes up. The addresses are changing. As I block one, another one takes over. It does strike me strange that the dail up company spam filter doesn’t take care of these messages.
Amazon has let me know that my ebooks are now in Amazon Germany. I’ve found trying to get into the discussion groups are not as easy as the UK, because all the buttons are in German. I left one message in an English and German mixed discussion but don’t know if it downloaded. I’ll have to wait to see if I gain anything from this venture.
I checked the Good Old Days magazine site for the May June issue to see if my story was mentioned. The site has changed. One story from the magazine was usually featured. Now each of the story headlines are in a row with a picture beside them. First thing I saw was a picture of my mother beside the title 1950’s Memorial Day Memories by Fay Risner. Mom would have been so pleased. Now I can’t wait to get the magazine and see what other family pictures they used.
The last week of April and I’m just now downloading my blog posts. This time it has been because my husband is waiting for a call from a Tire Store that is going to deliver and put on a large tractor tire. Right now it’s after hours at the Tire Store so I’m posting while I can use my computer. Oh well, I hope for better luck posting in May.
