Mortaine’s Blog

I sometimes get phone calls from people who find my cell phone number (the old #– I don’t get these anymore) on my old resume and call me directly. Usually, these are people who had to go the EXTRA mile to reach me by phone, who had my email address, and who are calling me because they read my book or they saw my Speech Recognition website (which is so defunct now, it’s just not funny) and wanted to talk with me about it.

For anyone on my friends list who is wondering: If an author has not specifically told you her phone number and invited you to use it, it is NOT OKAY TO CALL!!!! Phones are the devil to a working writer– they do nothing but interrupt our work. In particular, you may NOT use VOIP to call a writer long-distance for free. If you can’t be bothered to pay for the long-distance call, why should I bother talking to you? [I must add-- these aren't fans raving over the book; they're people wanting more help than they got from the book.]

Similarly, website designers do not wish to be telephoned to answer questions– that’s why we put up the website. My favorite was the one recently who wanted to ask me about a particular speech recognition program for Windows that has been the bane of my existence, despite having never used it. I interrupted the guy as soon as he said the name of the program and told him that I don’t do Windows, nor AOL, nor Point&Speak. You could hear the disappointment in his voice when he said good-bye. I swear, I should sue AOL for the amount of time I’ve put into telling people that I’m not AOL’s Point&Speak tech support department.

Also: It doesn’t matter if I write from 10 PM until 2 AM– no one is welcome to call me after 9:30 PM, nor before 8:00 AM (9 on weekends)– that goes for family, friends, as well as strangers. If my house isn’t on fire, don’t call at those hours!

Anyway, when I shift into my new career as a fiction writer, I’m going to use a pen name, and I’m going to be as obscure and inaccessible as you can possibly be without actually falling off the face of the planet.

I submitted some poetry to Red Cider Review earlier this month.

Got the rejection note this morning– I guess they’re on financial hiatus.

OK: Time to go hunting for other markets, then….

Ordered Illegal Aliens from abebooks.com.

Work is…. work. Just leave it there, ok?

I’m backdating this– it’s such a nothing entry, I don’t want to clutter my friends’ pages.

I dreamed Jose Conseco (sp?) pitched for the Cubs…. which meant we were winning, of course.

I dreamed Inga and I went to a Cubs game (there were other teams there), and we sat in a special friends/family box, even though we weren’t, but nobody seemed to mind.

I dreamed I was going to the post-game party across the street. That was schweet!

And then I got up and came in here to check email, post these dreams, and write nearly 300 words in my novel (300 is my goal for today– Wednesdays are my busy day).