I should be in bed but I'm on the East Coast and I'm not tired enough yet. Boy am I gonna regret this tomorrow morning.
I haven't blogged as much as I would have liked lately, life and all that. Travel puts me in mind to rant a bit, though.
I got to San Jose airport with time to spare and had no troubles at all getting through security with my shoes on. These are slides with no heels and a rubber sole. There is a decorative buckle on them. Not a beep from the metal detector in San Jose. Flew to Dallas as the first leg of the trip to Raleigh/Durham. The flight went fast -- I sat in a 3 seat group by the window and there wasn't anyone in the middle seat so up went the armrest and I was quite comfy. The young man in the aisle seat put a blanket over his head and snored quietly for 3 hours.
Took forever to get off the plane as I was in the second to the last row. Got into Dallas airport and decided to stroll out to the street for a smoke since I had over an hour till boarding and it was a quick trip from the gate to the door the way Dallas is set up.
Upon returning I should have put my shoes in the bin but they made it thru in San Jose...*beeep* wrong answer. I got directed to a little roped off area where I waited for a very nice female TSA agent who waved her wand and got all kinds of beeps. From my bra. Then the shoes. Then the zipper in my pants. She just kept up a cheery chat as she frisked me. She was quite good and I wasn't really bothered. As she patted my back she said "Here's a quick back rub for you honey" We exchanged addresses and have planned a reunion for next year...hey, it could have happened, we bonded!...I still had time to grab a book from the bookstore and make my boarding call with time to spare. On my way back to California I go thru Dallas again. This time I go barefoot and braless. I'm not kidding.
The flight from Dallas was on a plane with 2 seats to one side and 3 on the other. I was in the window seat again of the 2 seat side. The flight wasn't completely full and I had hopes. Those were dashed when the aisle seat got filled just before they closed the door. *sigh* The gal on the aisle also had a very generous interpretation of her personal space and not much concern about mine. I was claustrophobic the entire trip.
Got to Raleigh/Durham in good time, got my car and got to the hotel pretty fast. Checked in "Welcome back" they said. I'd been here last fall. I like this hotel because it has a kitchen and seperate living room area. Kitchen as in dishwasher full of dishes and pots and pans in the cupboard. Microwave and stove top with 2 electric burners. A full sized fridge. They do a great breakfast every morning and a nice appetizer spread every evening.
I got directions to the grocery (Food Lion) and went on the hunt for my Diet Arizona Green Tea. No luck at Food Lion but I got stuff to eat for the next two nights and 3 mornings. Saw an Eckerd's which is like Walgreens and I know Walgreens carries my tea. Yay! They had it. I stocked up. I'm soooooo happy.
It's 1:30 am and I have a 6 am wakeup call. I am gonna be miserable tomorrow.
Just saw a new thread about PublishAmerica as the #3 hit on Google...it's a good one at Caveat Scrivner. Go read!
Well, it's Sunday night, although the sun is still shining at 7pm and it's a balmy 73 degrees F outside. The neighbors are barbequeing and it smells lovely wafting in through my window. Just got back from dropping Erin's beau at the airport. He flew up from San Diego to take her to the prom. He was so handsome in his uniform and she was gorgeous in her lovely dress.
Glenn has been playing in a pool tournament this weekend and the team has managed to make it to the final rounds. If they win there's another tourney they are invited to in Las Vegas, although it's on our own nickel.
The O'Bryan family trip to Ireland is getting closer and closer. My sister sent the itinerary and we are going to have a wonderful visit. I might just post some of the stops we're making in a future blog. Of course I'll be keeping a travel journal and will write all about it when we get back.
Later in July I am hoping Glenn and I can attend the Star Trek convention in Las Vegas. I haven't made any reservations yet, probably should soon or we just won't find a decent room anywhere.
In lieu of any commentary about Publish America I've re-posted all the url's for PA information sites in the "Continue Reading" area below. If you haven't posted these in your own blog, I recommend it. Let's keep PublishAmerica's disinformation site as far down the google search list as possible!
Recommended Reading:
http://www.publishamericasucks.com
http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire2005/index.php?category=0&id=30389
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05022/446283.stm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25187-2005Jan20
http://www.digitalmedievalist.com/writing/pa.html
http://www.steelypips.org/miscellany/publishamerica.html
http://sarashay.tripod.com/pafaq.html
http://www.webspawner.com/users/truthaboutpa/index.html
http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/news/041205_cr_bookpublisher.html
http://www.wnbc.com/askasa/4124957/detail.html
http://www.sfwa.org/beware/
http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2005/01/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about.asp
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/2005_01.html
http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10211
http://www.anotherealm.com/prededitors/
http://www.critters.org/sting/
http://www.lulu.com/travis-tea
It's late and I'm tired but I'll post a few thoughts before bed.
Watched the CSI season finale tonight and thoroughly enjoyed it. Tarentino is brilliant. It was a bit sad to see Frank Gorshin's last performance. I remember seeing him do impressions on TV when I was a kid and always loved them. He was brilliant.
This morning at 4 am Glenn took the kids to see Star Wars. He's taken them to each one of the last 3 on opening morning. Me, I enjoyed staying home in bed.
I got a book yesterday How to Make a Real Living as a Freelance Writer by Jenna Glatzer. I'm not gonna quit my day job yet :-) but I think I'll give this a try. As much as I like research I should try and get some $$ out of it. I'll let you know if anything happens!
I'll be going to Research Triangle Park, NC in a couple of weeks and hope to meet some of my online friends in person while I'm there. I'm looking forward to the trip.
Finally I hope that folks will contact A. C. Crispin about her project to help PublishAmerica authors.
Good Night all!
I had hoped to find the time (and energy) to write daily, but unfortunately it hasn't been possible for the last few days. I think one of the reasons is that on the AW forum and tehSoapbox there is a kind of dialogue, even if it isn't always direct and personal. On LiveJournal the comments and friends lists keep folks connected. Here it's just me and comment spam ("Like your blog. www.spammer.com Get out of debt!" to paraphrase a recent one) so it's hard to stay engaged since I don't have any interaction. Interaction is the primary motivator for me. I'm not one of those people who can just write things down for themselves and get satisfaction.
Back when I was in HR I took the Myers-Briggs assessment. On that you come up as introverted or extroverted (amongst other things). The common understanding of those terms is likely to be shy versus outgoing. I score high on the extrovert and I am outgoing but that's only part of it.
At TypeLogic.com there's a definition of the Myers-Briggs usage of the word "Extraverted: turned toward the outer world, of people and things. An extravert, or extraverted type, is one whose dominant function is focused in an external direction. Extraverts are inclined to express themselves, using their primary function, directly."
Pretty close. My source of inspiration, enthusiasm and energy comes from being involved with and interacting with people. I like dialogue, argument even. I'm not crazy about conflict, especially extended conflict. I also get frustrated at constant chaotic ambiguity about the vision and direction of a particular program or project. Give me a goal and let me succeed or fail, but stop tweaking the direction every ten minutes. If I am just following orders and not being able to make real decisions, use my own judgement, I can't give something my best effort. Recently I've been in a very depressing place and part of the vicious cycle is that I don't care enough to do something about it. I'm like a cork on water letting the currents and waves just move me around aimlessly without resistance.
Enough about me...go read about some of the more amazing things claimed by PublishAmerica and don't forget to say "Hi" in the comments if you've read this.
Erin's last dance performance with her high school dance troupe was Thursday night and my Dad was here to see it. Glenn, and her brother Matt also came along for the show. I'm always so proud of her and a bit amazed that the daughter of someone with two left feet is so graceful and talented a dancer. One of the sets was just the seniors and it was so lovely to watch them but also a bit sad as it's their last performance. I'm not being very descriptive or eloquent about an event that was so well done and so important a milestone, for that I am truly sorry, I just don't have the words yet.
I've had a great weekend and although I wanted to post, wanted to keep my comittment to say something every day in support of the Publish America authors, family does come first. The most important thing was to spend every minute possible with Dad. I'll get back on track tomorrow night!
Go read the final entry at PublishAmerica Sucks.com (bonus points for coming back and commenting that you saw my name!) The writer of the epic adventure has done a great job and gets my kudos. Yay for Sherry!
On the PublishAmericaSucks website there's a little satire page called the Tour. I got to drive the bus today. Rather than try and explain, just go there and read for yourself. May 11th entry is where I get to drive the bus. I've gotten to use my 'translation' skills twice now in previous days on the tour.
I recently posted a parody of the Dead Parrot sketch on AW which was rather fun to do. That thread has a number of wonderful parodies of famous poetry. It's a very literate and fun loving crew over at AW. I owe a real debt of gratitude to a Soapbox colleague Esseilte for posting about the Atlanta Nights sting at teh'Box which led to my discovery of AW. I think you have to register to read posts at tehSoapbox.net. Of course, I heartily recommend that you do so. My most frequented hangouts there are in Everything Else and Books.
Speaking of teh'Box there's a thread called Google Yourself and I did. I find a link to this blog at #26 some links to AW at the new site and the old ezboard site upstream from that. Mostly I find Polish language links. Apparently the phrase "dawno dawno temu" gets said a lot in Polish. The things you can learn on Google. Ooooh. That reminds me, I need to read the Googlewhacking book. NTS...
Rambling now, aren't I. Time for bed. However, I'm waiting up for my daughter to come home. She's at dress rehearsal for her final dance performance, the annual "Dance Spectrum" event.
Her High School has amazing programs. The choir and Madrigal groups go on these wonderful tours, the drama department is amazing and has a lovely theatre to perform in. Erin has been in the cast and/or crew of every major performance (and some minor ones) since her freshman year -- and hasn't gotten a single credit for it. We're working with the district to award her credits for this because without it she's going to be a tad short for graduation otherwise. I hope it goes through, it would be quite a tragedy for her not to be able to graduate with her class. I'm trying not to worry or nag her because she doesn't need the extra stress right now either.
Well, speaking of Erin, she's just gotten home which means the chicks are all in the nest so I can go to bed now.
On the AW site it's come to our attention that PublishAmerica is now an Inc. instead of an LLLP and they've done some re-work on their site. Some suspect that the change to Inc. was, among other things, to get Publish America a clean slate with the BBB in Maryland and, indeed, if you check them out on the BBB they are now listed as "satisfactory" with a membership date of April 2005. PA had been given an unsatisfactory rating which is discussed on the AW boards. The BBB should be ashamed they're facilitating this attempt to misguide people into thinking that Publish America hasn't had any complaints. LLLP or Inc, it's still PA. Putting lipstick on a pig doesn't turn it into a fashion model.
The site re-work includes a 'news clips' page that excerpts lines from the negative articles (if you go upthread to May 4th I list all of the articles and other links in the 'continue reading' portion of the post) and re-casts them as good press. I hope that folks do their homework, somehow find the whole article being quoted and aren't fooled by the out of context snippets.
I mean does anyone really believe the movie reviews that begin and end and have multiple ellipsis throughout? "...great...time...at this...movie" could be "I was greatly pained at having to waste my time staring unbelievingly at this poor excuse of a movie". If you don't buy that load of happy crappy then you shouldn't buy the trash PA is selling on their press pages either.
In personal news I ran Rudy the Roomba again last night and watched him for probably half an hour. Yeah, sounds insane but I was very interested in seeing if it was 'learning' the layout of the living room or if it was just following some random patterns based on whatever it bumped into. Towards the end it seemed to have learned about the coffee table and was just circling it without any trouble. I think if we run it again it will do a more efficient pattern. This is completely enchanting to my inner geekette. When I was much younger (say 11 or 12) and reading the robot stories by Asimov I don't think I ever believed that I'd own a robot. Well it's not very sophisticated but it's a robot and I own it. So cool.
A couple of posts back I mentioned the Jenna Glatzer interview with Ed Horrell. An archival copy is posted on Ed Horrell's site now (and btw, Ed's site is beautiful and very professional in appearance; he should be very proud of it and really pleased with his web designer).
I've been listening to the interview as I write this and it's wonderful! Jenna has a very natural way about her, it's a pleasure to hear her and Ed have a conversation. She starts off the interview talking about freelance writing, her experience and then gives some great advice. Then she and Ed talked for quite a while about PublishAmerica.
I won't give you a run down of the entire show because you should listen to it yourself! But I will comment that one of PA's former authors was mentioned briefly. His name is Kevin Yarbrough and he sent PA a story titled Eli Smith and the Purple Pony to test whether or not they read the manuscripts they were sent. (They claim to be selective and to reject 80% of submissions) He wrote 30 pages then copied the same 30 over and over and sent that in. They sent him a contract and then were clued into the facts about the manuscript. You can read how PA handled that over at AW.
Kevin has been posting on AW for quite some time and he writes about topics other than PA as well. For example, I found some analysis of my place in the universe:
Dawno's power isn't related to anything that she has done, but a consequence of the Universe. I did some checking on this when I first read it and this is what I found, better yet, hypothesised.
On July 23, 1957 there was a giant sunstorm that caused the Aurora's to become more magnificent. With this the Earth's electromagnetic field shifted slightly. When Dawno was born her presence upset the balance of the electromagentic field thus causing a disturbance in the fragile Space-Time Line. The disturbance has, for some reason, caused a massive influx of bad things to happen all over the Universe. Influenza outbreaks, flying sunflower seeds, Alf's bad breath, and the uprising on the far away planet of POZ (though this planet is far away, from reality that is, it has taken years for it to feel the effect of this occurence).
The Space-Time Line is being bent to the point of snapping because of her birth. From what many scientist have agreed on (scientist being me, myself and I) it has been proven that if Dawno were to ever kiss Shemp or publish a book with PA then the world would end.
So, in all essence, it is all Dawno's fault.
Of course, if you know me, you already knew this.
Because this is my first Mother's Day after my own mother's passing it's a bit too tender for me to write much about her other than to say she was a remarkable woman whom I miss terribly. I think I'll be able to write about her some day but for now I'll skip back a couple generations and write about my wonderful great-grandmother, which you can read under the cut.
One of the sites I've linked to in previous postings is PublishAmerica Sucks.com. The owner of the site has posted a lot of good information about how Publish America has treated her and other authors. There are some fun things on the site as well.
My favorite stop is "The Tour" a tongue in cheek travelogue featuring a cast of AW characters. I recently got included in the tour 'cast' as their translator of Poz-eze. Here's an excerpt from one of the daily entries:
Back on the bus, Molly driving us hell-bent for leather to Illinois, Stevie Ray Vaughan, B. B. King, and John Lee Hooker wafting from the sound system, we broke the white-line monotony by getting online. Yep, you guessed it, we had to visit the Poz boards to see what chicanery was afoot. Thankfully, Dawno was standing by at the ready to interpret for us.
"Woof, I recieved my doolar! I am on happy gril! I am on my way my book wlii be ot soon they're is no grater happyness!! My future is shinny. I am an plublished arthur!!!"
"Okay, Dawno," we implored. "WTF? Translate, please."
"This is a female," Dawno pontificated, "who has received her one-dollar advance. She's a happy girl doing the Happy Snoopy dance, believing that her respectably published book will soon be released and serve as a pad from which to launch her successful career as a published author. Oh, yeah, and she has a shining “ or perhaps shiny “ future."
"Bravo!" we cheered Dawno's interpretation skills. "But so, so sad for that poor woman who is about to receive the letdown of her life."
I commend Linda for putting this site together, purchasing the domain name and undoubtedly paying for bandwidth so many people can visit. She would love you to visit.
Her mother died of typhoid fever which Gramma said was epidemic at the time. Her father was young and since he had to travel to find farm work he couldn't care for two very small children.
He put them in an orphanage and paid for their care. When my grandmother was about 2 years old he went for a visit and was appalled at the conditions underwhich they were kept and removed them. Her brother was raised by her father's mother in law and Gramma was raised by Mr and Mrs Doan, friends of her father. She thought of them as her real parents all her life. She was well into her 80's before she met her brother again and he had been searching for her for many years before he finally tracked her down.
She tells of the homes she lived in, one of which was a failed establishment which would be a luxury spa today situated near mineral springs and featuring "healthful baths". This was on the outskirts of Texas, Ohio and because it was remote and transportation in the early 1900's was poor it failed. There were dances held there and she learned to dance at a very young age.
I could go on and on, it's amazing how different life was back then.
We brought home a new member of the household today. We are the proud owners of a new Roomba.
Matt proclaimed that we were now doomed and, hey! isn't that piece a rocket launcher? Flaming shards of plastic will fly, don't say I didn't warn you!
Glenn welcomes our new robot overlords.
Erin sings "Don't Fear the Roomba" but keeps yelling "More Cowbell!!"
Oatmeal watched from the couch, Yogurt was nowhere to be found and Pumpkin stalked it for a while but eventually found it too annoying and left. Glenn took some digital photos of Pumpkin and the Roomba but says they didn't come out very well. I think we need to give the Roomba a real name.
Roomba explored the room, it hasn't 'learned' all of it yet, that will take some time and the initial charge wore out before it had learned much. The funniest thing was how Matt would stand somewhere and the dang thing would come right at him. It's almost as if it could 'sense his fear' ::snicker::
There is also a 'Roomba Translator' page on the iRobot site. Of all the things they've done to market this product, that's a really clever one.
In PA news, Bonnie Gibson has a book through Publish America and posted a press release saying she doesn't want anyone to buy it. That PA would put an author in such a position is mind boggling. Bonnie also has a bookstore and she carried many PA books and as such did more for those PA authors than their "publisher" ever did.
Speaking of bookstores and books...If I had a way to put up some sidebars on this site I think I'd have a list of books I just finished, the book I'm reading now and books I've got in the stack to read. Since I don't know how to do that I'll just mention here that I've been reading through the Eve Dallas series by J. D. Robb. I'm currently reading Holiday in Death. There is a growing stack of SF magazines to read and the new book by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter, Time's Eye.
I also wish I could put tons of links on my site - working on that!
I've decided that I'll try and post every night this month (starting 2 nights ago) with something that relates to the fight against Publish America over at the AW boards. And maybe some personal stuff too.
The Atlanta Nights book that brought me to AW has spawned a thread over there where people have posted their cover art concepts. I volunteered to help narrow the field to 10 so Jenna Glatzer, the site owner can post a poll and we can all vote for the winner. Jenna will choose her ten and I've sent her mine. Somehow from that we'll come up with a final list.
UPDATE: The finalists are chosen and the poll is up! I'm not sure if you have to be registered to vote but you can scroll below the poll to see links to all the covers.
It was so hard choosing my 10! I started with 20 and really had to do some soul searching to narrow that down. The thing that helped was to copy the graphics into a word doc, resize them to thumbnails and look at them as a group over and over and over...well you get the idea.
Finally got my short list over to Jenna just a little while ago. Good luck to all the finalists.
I've made a new online friend recently and I can't wait to read her book. (You know who you are but I won't share your identity unless you give me the ok) I've also ordered Jenna's book Make a Real Living as a Freelance Writer. Even if you're not interested in becoming a freelance writer, go read the page I linked because its damn clever and then the rest of the site; it's interesting and fun to read!
"Memphis Ed" Horrell has a radio show about customer service. Last week he featured Ed Williams and 'changling'. Ed is an author advocate and 'changling' has a book with PA but he's one of the many who is trying to get his rights back. The program is available online. The interview with Ed Williams (changling calls in) is towards the end but the whole show is great listening.
This weekend Ed Horrell is interviewing Jenna. Show starts at noon central and runs for 2 hours you can listen live online
I've not been a frequenter of many message boards. I discovered my first one just over a year and a half ago so I don't know what it takes to be banned most places. I'm so non-contraversial I don't even get private messages from the mods telling me to calm down which I hear happens to some folk.
I do know that only the most egregious conduct got people banned on The Soapbox and at TehSoapbox, it's successor. However it's apparently quite common for PA to delete threads that say anything they disapprove of (yes, entire threads, not just the offensive posts- and lordie do they leave *some* offensive posts up for days! See the AW thread on some recent ranting and raving by one PA author. (You can't go to the PA message board and read those posts, they were eventually deleted, but they stayed up quite a long time.) and ban people for having opinions or *yikes* stating facts. Amazing.
The sense of it is hard to explain--perhaps it's like standing on the West side of the Berlin wall. You made it to West Berlin a while ago and have been enjoying the benefits of life in a free nation. You've managed to get the message to some of the folks you left behind and finally, they're ready to come from the East side of the wall. Imagine you've been faithfully waiting to welcome them day after day. Finally, a whole group come through at once. They all have amazing stories of their escape. You just want to dance, to celebrate what they've done. You feel good for the part you played. That's the imagry that comes to mind for me. Of course I'm a geezerette and maybe the cold war isn't something you can relate to...feel free to put your own take on it in comments. (yes, another shameless plug for comments, I have no other way to know if anyone reads this drivel!)
As I wrote the above I had a flashback to 1980 and Neil Diamond's song Coming to America. So I went and 'adapted' the lyrics to fit the occasion and posted them here.
Thanks for visiting! Come again soon.
Good books are a major factor in the happiness equation, more on that later. I'm going to meander a bit, but this does all have a point and a very important purpose. There will be multiple links embedded here. Please visit them now and for some of them I hope you will want to go back to them often. You might even see Dawno posting there if you do. There will not be a test later, I trust the one or two of you who might actually visit. Hey, comment will you?? It's kinda Twilight Zone-ish posting with no comments.
About a year and a half ago I also discovered that I really enjoyed posting on a message board connected to Wil Wheaton's blog called The Soapbox. Well the Soapbox is no more but the community that had gathered there, at least a goodly number of them (and me too, so I guess I should say 'us') are now posting happily over at TehSoapbox.net. Earlier this year one of my favorite people (Writergirl) over at TehSoapbox posted about this wild book Atlanta Nights by Travis Tea (you need to say the author's name out loud fast).
Disclaimer here, Atlanta Nights is not a good book. It is perhaps one of the, if not the, worst books ever written by professional, published writers. They did it that way on purpose. Why? To make a point about a certain publishing company that was preying on writers who were looking to get their first book into print. I have a copy of this book...if you read the site linked below you'll understand why. The reviews are priceless, btw.
Intrigued, I visited Neil Gaiman's site (the first link off of Teh'Box) which led me to yet more sites that were talking about this 'sting' operation which involved getting Atlanta Nights accepted by a publishing company, Publish America, that they were calling a scam operation. I was even more intrigued. Link again and I discover AbsoluteWrite and the AW forums with "The Neverending PublishAmerica Thread" which to date has over 300,000 views and is at 19,500+ posts.
The AW forum has become another place to read and post that makes me happy. I've started posting there in a couple of forums and there are a couple things I've discovered about what makes me happy as a result.
I like helping. If I can answer a question, look up something, index a huge thread so others can easily find things...that makes me happy.
I also like to have a good laugh and, apparently, there are others who share my sense of humor and are letting me know they're glad I'm posting. If you're reading this, thank you, you made my day when you PM'd me or sent me an e-mail.
I found out that I can help a number of really wonderful people, people who have published with Publish America and are now fighting hard to get their Publish America contracts cancelled, and get the truth about the PA publishing fraud exposed.
Now I know this site doesn't get a lot of hits and I'm not really sure how some of this internet stuff works but I figure if I link the words PublishAmerica and scam or Publish America and publishing fraud to links that uncover the scams and frauds then perhaps in my own tiny way I help that person who might Google for information on book publishers and instead of seeing the scam publisher come up as the #1 hit they'll see a site that warns them about the scam publisher.
Makes me very happy to do that.
Yep. I've been reading since I can remember. I'm told I taught myself to read before I started kindergarten. Books are a treasure and a joy to me. Because I love books I also hold the authors of those books in high regard. Perhaps not all of them are worthy of esteem, but I don't know them personally so until I meet one who's a real shit I'm gonna continue to think highly of authors as a class.
Because I have this esteem thing going on for authors, I am appalled, righteously indignant and just plain pissed off that there are people out there who would perpetrate an insidious scam against aspiring authors.
I've had a chance to get to know some of the authors who had their books printed (yep, sadly the services of Publish America are basically those of a printer) by PublishAmerica on the AW board. I really like them and know they deserve better than they got. So we're back to one of my core motivations (come on, you're motivated by it too, so don't even try to deny it), happiness. What makes me happy? hmmm...wow, helping authors who write the books I love or could write the books I love--sounds like a winner!
This post and future posts (hey, not all of them, but more anyway) will be my small attempt to join the fight. I'll post links to things that reveal the truth about Publish America and in the extended entry (aka, "continue reading..." section below) will post the full url's so you can copy/paste and go do the same on your blog!
Thanks for reading this. Comments are welcome from all polite, rational and considerate points of view. Trolls and spammers will be deleted.
http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire2005/index.php?category=0&id=30389
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05022/446283.stm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25187-2005Jan20
http://www.digitalmedievalist.com/writing/pa.html
http://www.steelypips.org/miscellany/publishamerica.html
http://lindadroberts.tripod.com/
http://sarashay.tripod.com/pafaq.html
http://www.webspawner.com/users/truthaboutpa/index.html
http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/news/041205_cr_bookpublisher.html
http://www.wnbc.com/askasa/4124957/detail.html
http://www.sfwa.org/beware/
http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2005/01/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about.asp
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/2005_01.html
http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10211
http://www.anotherealm.com/prededitors/
http://www.critters.org/sting/
http://www.lulu.com/travis-tea