Hey, I wrote something (actually, some things, and I don't mean this post)

So, if you follow this blog, you’ll note that I haven’t posted in a long time.  That doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing, though.  Let me tell you about it.

I’ve been working on a variety of YA (young adult) products, all under my pen name, Rex Michaels.  The first was a novel about a young boy who wants to be a radio DJ in the worst way…and succeeds…in the worst way.  Titled “Heavy Rotation,” it was (self) published this spring.  You can learn more about it (and buy it) here: https://books2read.com/heavyrotation

The second project was a novel, but I decided to try this new Amazon Kindle Vella.  It’s an episodic story program – you write episodes and release them over time to a “waiting audience.”  Readers can see the first three episodes for free, and then read subsequent episodes by using tokens (the rate varies as to the length of the episode).  Each reader gets 200 FREE TOKENS just for signing up, to be used however they wish.

I asked a few fellow authors if they had any experience with Vella, and the overall consensus was “meh.”  So, I have low expectations…however, you are more than free to check it out as the first three episodes are up, and I’ll add an episode every other day beginning August 27^th (and remember, the first three episodes are FREE) and you get 200 FREE TOKENS just for signing up, so you can read as much as you like.  Or none at all, but seriously, go check it out here:  https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/story/B0CG8DZQSP

Oh, what’s the story about?  It’s a fantasy called “Otis, the Boy Who Could Control Gravity (somewhat).”  Otis is a young boy who accidentally discovers he can change gravity’s flow…sometimes.  He’s actually scared to death about his new superpower, which isn’t all that super.  Anyway, he learns more about it and tries a few things and…oh, go read the write-up and the first three chapters (did I mention it’s FREE) here: https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/story/B0CG8DZQSP

Finally, I wrote a third YA novel, but I’m not releasing that one.  Yet.  It’s all about mini-golf!

Watch this space.

 

485 Verbal

No, do not buy this.

I just finished the book “The Stepmother” and have two issues, which leads to two different complaints.  As noted, I am not the guy one thinks about when one thinks of “literary criticism.”  The “485 Verbal” of the title refers to my old SAT scores (barely above the minimum).  I have no real excuse except that I spent too much time on the match portion (685 score) and that just totally dogged it (pretty sure my PSAT was a lot better, but I don’t remember).  My wife and I laugh about SAT scores now because we both denied reality and obtained degrees and professions NOT in our strong suits.  I studied Communications and went into radio, while she took up accounting and became a CPA despite a low SAT score in Math (her Verbal score was 700-something).

But I digress…

Before I discuss my issues with “The Stepmother,” a brief plot summary:  Poor single mom acts as a personal trainer to a rich millionaire who falls in love with her and asks her to marry him.  She accepts, which pisses off his three adult kids (who are true leeches on the family fortune).  There is a threat to her life, but she survives and marries him, and then shortly after, HE dies in an accident which looks like was targeted for her, but instead, she winds up charged for the crime.  The rest of the book is about how she tries to figure out who really did it with the help of a friendly cop (who she falls in love with) and her attorney.  There are a couple of plot twists, but nothing too complicated and it gets predictable near the end.  That’s not my issue, although it didn’t help my “enjoyment” of the novel.

No, what grinds my gears is (a), horrible grammatical mistakes, and (b) the tendency to tell, not show, which is a cardinal sin in writing.

Now explaining the concept of “show, don’t tell” to a non-writer/reader is akin to explaining critical race theory to a Republican.  Even though we call it storytelling, one should SHOW the action, not TELL about it. 

Is Mary angry?  How angry?  Don’t tell us she’s very angry – show us?  Did she grimace?  Bite her lip?  Snarl?  Slam her hand against the window?  Throw a pot at someone?  SHOW us.  In this book, there was far too much telling when it would have been easy to show (the plot practically begs for it).  I noticed it pretty quickly and went back to read the critical reviews online, and I wish I had done so before buying the book (fortunately it was a used book, dirt cheap, but still).

And then, once you’ve shown us, don’t try to tell us what you’ve shown.  More than once, there was a line like, “Dammit,” she snapped angrily.  The “angrily” is superfluous; how else does one snap the word “Dammit?”  How about, “Dammit,” she snapped lustfully?  “Dammit,” she snapped gaily?  Nah.  It makes one wonder if the novel was edited or proofed.

Even more evidence of a lack of editing or proofing was the grammatical errors.  Desert instead of dessert (three times!), breath instead of breathe, not rather than now, draws instead of drawers, and other faux pas. Every time I came across one, I snapped, “DAMMIT,” and angrily, too.

I did so because “The Stepmother” isn’t a one-off.  It’s one of SEVEN books by this author, all with similar dreadful titles (The Babysitter, The Trophy Wife, The Daughter-in-Law, etc).  Oh, wait, there’s more – Diana Diamond is a pseudonym for New York Times best-selling author William P. Kennedy.  In other words, he should know better.

It’s also not a one-off because it’s an indictment of just how stupid we’re becoming.  This book got decent reviews.  It’s apparent to me that many readers never noticed the errors or the “telling, not showing” problems.  This is why there are lots of Facebook pages like “America's Cultural Decline Into Idiocy (ACDII)” with sign errors or other examples of our mental decline, and they never seem to run out of examples, do they?  That’s one of my complaints.

And “The Stepmother” isn’t the first book I’ve read with all these flaws.  Last month I finished “Mr. Churchill’s Secretary,” which again had an exciting-sounding plot but suffered from poor (OK, shitty) execution.  If you read the reviews you see many were hoodwinked into thinking this was a great read (enough so that the author has ground out 10 similar novels in a short time), but if you read the critical ones, you’d know better than to waste your hard-earned money.

The other complaint is more personal – how does this crap get published, while I can’t get anyone interested in any of my works?  The first novel was rejected 128 times, and only one agent/publisher asked for the entire manuscript (and then rejected it, but rightly so – eventually I will make corrections and try again).  More rejections were perfunctory; “…regrettably, your project is not a right fit for our agency,” “…it is not the type of book I am considering at this time,” “however, this project doesn’t sound right for me,” etc.  Novel #2 isn’t faring much better.  If there's anyone who wants to read it, let me know.

I guess what I need to do is write a mystery, claim I can do a series of them with pithy-sounding titles, and push like crazy.  I already have Grammarly installed, what more can I do?

BETA Means “Not Everything Is Working Correctly, Maybe”

I do not claim to be a computer expert, but I do know something about how they work.  I know what an algorithm is.  I know how they’re supposed to work, and I know that when there’s a pattern that is evident all the time EXCEPT in one specific case, that specific case must have some “difference” that causes it to be an exception.

Some background:

As you may know, I have a variety of small paperbacks and eBooks for sale on Amazon.  I don’t sell books that often, so when I do there’s cause for celebration (about 130-150 per year, to be honest).  That’s over five different titles, but just two paperbacks make up almost 80% of sales – The ABCs of Craps (over 50%) and The ABCs of 21 (almost 27%).

Amazon has a variety of features in their sales reporting system that shows you how you’re doing; all sorts of sales reports, royalties estimators, and the like.  They’ve made several changes over the years, and now have a new BETA program that shows “Sales Ranking” for the various books in a variety of categories (overall, and the ones you assign to your books).

This is where Amazon’s “algorithm” comes in.  Obviously, the more books you sell, the higher your ranking.  Boy, that’s tough to figure out.  The Sales Ranking is updated hourly, which means it’s more “real-time” than the Sales Report, which always takes a day or two to “settle” before posting.  I’m cool with that, recognizing that charges have to go through, be posted, all of that.

I’ve noticed that when I check Sales Ranking and suddenly, my ranking goes UP, this must mean I’ve sold a book, and sure enough, a day or two later a sale is recorded in the Sales Report.

Except for one book, The ABCs of 21.  For some reason, there’s no sync between sales and rank change. 

Here’s a table showing sales and rank “bumps” for my Craps book (from the graphs I see in my reports).  Note that the last bump has yet to show up in sales (but I know it will, today or tomorrow):

Rank jump on	Sale made on	Days between	Books sold
3/17/2021	3/19/2021	2	1
3/21/2021	3/23/2021	2	1
3/25/2021	3/26/2021	1	1
3/27/2021	3/28/2021	1	1
3/29/2021	3/30/2021	1	1
4/1/2021	4/3/2021	2	1
4/6/2021	4/8/2021	2	1
4/8/2021	4/9/2021	1	1
4/12/2021	4/14/2021	2	1
4/14/2021	probably 4-17	2-3	1

And now, here’s the same for The ABCs of 21.  I had to go back further than 30 days to show more activity, but it’s still fucked up.  

Rank jump on	Sale made on	Days between	Books sold
8/30/2020	9/6/2020	7	1
	10/28/2020	???	1
11/12/2020	11/15/2020	3	1
11/27/2020	12/1/2020	4	1
11/30/2020	12/2/2020	2	1
	12/5/2020	???	1
	3/10/2021	???	1
3/18/2021	3/21/2021	3	1
	3/28/2021	???	4
4/2/2021	4/4/2021	2	1
	4/13/2021	???	1

Different, huh?  Look at the sales on 3/28.  You’re trying to tell me I sold FOUR BOOKS ON ONE DAY and the RANKING DIDN’T CHANGE A BIT?

Well, Amazon is telling me that.

I’ve written to them (well, we’ve gone back and forth) about this, and every time, they say the same thing using different words:

• “…there are multiple factors that determine the rank of a book and we cannot share our sales rank algorithms and related criteria. Sales, categories, other books determine the ranks, you are being monitoring your tittles but there are lot of tittles that will include on how the rank of your books change.”

• “I do understand your concern, let me explain you how does it works. I've confirmed that the ranking for your book(s) is correct. There are multiple factors that determine the rank of a book and we cannot share our sales rank algorithms and related criteria.”
• “I've checked your book and also confirmed that the ranking for your book(s) is correct as my colleague previously have mentioned.  There are multiple factors that determine the rank of a book and we cannot share our sales rank algorithms and related criteria.”

So, according to Amazon, all is well.  Certainly not their spelling and/or grammar, but that’s a discussion for another day.

After three days of arguing, I gave up (for a time) and went back to check my other books.  As I mentioned, I don’t sell many of ‘em, so I had to dig further, but I found that they also do the same “Rank up, wait two days, Sale posted” dance.  Except…one of the books shows “weirdly” in the graph.  Like so:

Units Ordered = 0?  Then what are those little bumps for?

And so far, Amazon hasn’t responded to this.  Can’t imagine why.

So why is this such a big deal?  Two reasons; first, success begets success.  I know that higher-ranked books sell better because potential customers are lazy and won’t scroll through hundreds of titles to find what they’re looking for.  If you’re not in the top few pages, forget it.  I know this is so because I sell more books when I “sell more books;” also, I do the same thing.

The second reason is far more important.  If this is happening to my account, it CAN’T be the ONLY problem.  I know this because of another situation a long time ago when I argued with my former ISP about our business website.  Overnight, all my changes disappeared and an older version was in its place.  I knew what happened – they backed up and restored the wrong version, and if it happened to my website it happened to a slew of others.  But when I called Tech Support, I got the old runaround about how I must have done something wrong and how I needed to clear my cache and perhaps reboot my system and on and on.  I finally was able to talk to the head of the firm (who was a customer of the ice cream shop, so he knew me), and sure as shit, they discovered I was right.  This happened again not two months later, and…same thing.  I got the runaround, I called the President, and they had to admit they were wrong and I was right and they restored the correct version.  Again.

From then on, I had no further problems when calling Tech Support, most likely because they had a large black asterisk next to my name which meant “Don’t fuck with the old man; he knows what he’s doing.”

I hope that Amazon will also install a black asterisk next to my name soon. 

Wanna Read my [unpublished] Novel?

 Don’t be so quick to volunteer, though.  Read on…

I’ve just completed my second novel.  You may recall that I bragged about writing one last spring.  I was very excited and had high hopes, but after 128 rejections…well, I tossed in the towel.  Sort of.

I still plan to get back to that one, but rather than make fixes, I wrote another story, taking some of the feedback I got from the first book to make the second one better.  I hope.

That’s where you come in.  I received a couple of suggestions to have others read the book first before submitting it to agents, and it seemed like a good idea.  So, if you’d like to read it, I’ll send you a copy (Word or pdf file only - sorry, I tried to convert to .epub but I’m a Luddite).

But not so fast.

The complete synopsis is at the bottom of this post, and I do mean complete.  What looks like the last three paragraphs (the end of the book) is there, but in WHITE, so you can’t find out how it ends unless you really, really want to (copy it and change the font color).

I am hoping that a few of you will volunteer to read it and then give me some feedback.  Don’t sweat the grammar – Mona has yet to touch this (and she’s the Grammar Nazi of the family).  She’ll also give me some feedback, but I already know what she’ll tell me (the same thing she always does, and she’s right, but ironically, it’s the same problem she and other authors have).  Why is it we can see other’s faults but not our own?

Well, that’s why you’re not supposed to edit your own stuff.

One more thing – the title.  I started out with SPEECHLESS but there’s a shitload of stuff with that title, then I came up with THE TOSS-UP, but then last night I had a brain fart, and RHYMES WITH LUCK popped in my head.

Which do you like?

 

And here’s the synopsis:

It’s Fall, 1993, the start of a new semester on the Northern Oregon University campus, and Robert Brinkerhoff is on a bench eating lunch while watching co-eds move into the dorms.  He’s single again, but the watching only fuels his fantasy life.  He writes short stories on the side, and occasionally he delves into bawdy fiction for the pulps.  While that writing might help pay the bills, it doesn’t help him find another smart, dynamic woman in his life, and he’s also not progressing academically, either.  Still an Assistant Professor in Communications, he knows he can’t get on the tenure track unless he completes his Ph.D.  He’s done as much about that as he has his dating life.

Preparing for the new semester, he’s hoping that the new crop of graduate assistants will pan out, and for once, he’ll get a helper for the student radio station who knows something about radio.  Acting as the faculty advisor for the station is one of the many little things he does to stay in Department Head Stan MacNeil’s good graces.

Robert is one of two professors who teach speech lectures for NOU; the graduate assistants teach the individual lab classes, and everyone meets once a week in “Seminar” to discuss those classes.  In one Seminar a GA describes an unusual (to her) event – an older student (old enough to be her mom) shocked her by using the F-word in a speech.  Curious as to the back story of the speech, Robert makes it a point to seek out the “fuck lady.”  Later that day he bumps into Rachel Shipley, the speaker, and is smitten.

University policy frowns on fraternization with students, but Robert thinks if he keeps it platonic, he’s OK until Rachel finishes her speech class, the only one in his department (she’s a Marketing major).  They strike up a friendship, and he discovers the reason Rachel gave the speech she did and used the F-word, though she’s not very forthcoming on details.

Robert does another good turn for MacNeil and fixes the department laptop, earning brownie points to use later.  His friendship with Rachel turns serious over the Thanksgiving break, as he invites her back to his mom’s place in Albany and she finally tells him the whole story.  When she was younger and in school the first time around, she became pregnant and had to drop out.  She had the baby but got divorced a few years later, hating her daughter and breaking all ties with the family.  On the drive back to campus things get a bit romantic, but Rachel insists that her schooling comes first, as she doesn’t want anything to prevent her from getting her degree this time around.

Things remain cool with Robert and Rachel, and just before the department Christmas party, he learns he’s losing his GA at the station.  He’s bummed because he promised Rachel he’d get back to his dissertation to finish his doctorate, but he gets to cash in his brownie points when MacNeil assigns a new GA to him.  He meets her at the party and becomes infatuated by both her brains and her beauty.

Stacey Mills would be Robert’s ideal mate except for the fact that he’s twice her age and they work in the same department, but he still can’t get her out of his mind.  Meanwhile, Rachel signs up for a heavier class load, putting a crimp in her time with Robert.  He doesn’t mind too much, as he thinks about spending more time with Stacey and fulfilling his promise to work on his dissertation.

Over the break, Robert discovers the floppy disks holding his dissertation writing and notes are damaged and his backup is blank.  This causes a drunken spree and a writing orgy, where he pens a series of Letters to The Penthouse Editor featuring Stacey. 

As the second semester begins, he’s convinced that a doctorate isn’t in the cards, and since he’s selling more of his ribald writing, a different career track is an option.  He’s having weekly Sunday dinners with Rachel that are fun, but there’s no sex.  He finally tells her Ph.D. is dead; she gets mad and reveals she was holding out on him so she could reward him with sex for various completion points on his doctorate.  Now, all that’s off the table.

As the term progresses, she gets busier and puts his off; they don’t meet for almost a month.  Frustrated, Robert decides to seduce Stacey, deciding that there’s no harm if no one knows about it.  Turns out she has the same idea; they go out of town for pizza and spend the night at a nearby motel having wild sex.  That same weekend Rachel calls him.  She feels bad about everything and wants to rekindle the relationship.  They have dinner again, and finally, sex.

(last three paragraphs are in "white" font, remember?)

Now he having relations with both women, at different locations on different days.  Still convinced he can have it all and keep it all hush-hush.  Near the end of the semester there comes a day when both Stacey and Rachel expect to be with him.  Since he can’t be in two places at once, he must choose.  But which one?  He flips a coin, an old trick his mother taught him – when the coin is in the air, your brain makes the decision (and ignores how the coin falls).  He picks Rachel.

He plans to spend the night with her, but after dinner and sex, he confesses his love for her.  He’s convinced she feels the same.  She coyly admits she feels somewhat similar, as she was practicing signing her name “Rachel Brinkerhoff.”  She tells him it’s a lot tougher than her previous married name…Mills.

The final scene finds Robert at the start of a new semester, sitting on a bench eating lunch at the University of Oregon.  He’s convinced Stacey is Rachel’s daughter, and knew he had to leave NOU and Maple Falls, and start all over again.

THE END

Paperback Writer Part 2, or “The Further Adventures of Marilla Parabola”

Available exclusively at Amazon.com

Yesterday I spoke (bragged) about Mona’s new book, “Just Pick the Least Worst.”  To some this may be obvious – of COURSE I am going to brag about it, not because she’s my wife (and I really do like sleeping in the same bed instead of the closet), but because she is the writer in the family.  Yes, I write, and have written, but she WRITES.

I mean, she’s the real talent.  I’m just a hack.

I did a lot of freelancing in the 90s.  Was published in a variety of places, including a number of gaming-related magazines.  Made a couple of airline mags.  Wrote a regular column and features for a long-dead Boise weekly newspaper.  Had fun and made some money, but not a lot, so I went back to a real job.  At the same time, Mona tried her hand at writing, and sold a few articles, and then a short story that became a serial and then an actual book.  A popular book, that sadly is no longer in print (but copies remain in the resale market on Amazon and others).

So when she set out to write another book, I had all the confidence that she’d get that one published, too. “Just Pick the Least Worst” is a humor book, because that’s what she really wanted to write, and she’d a very, very funny person.  She’d have to be to be married to me (stop it right there – having a sense of humor is not the same as being funny, although both are needed to be married to me).  We’ve read lots of so-called humor novels and frankly, they mostly leave us wanting in that the story might be OK, but it’s not funny.  At all.  Hence, her desire to write something that makes you giggle at times, guffaw in spots, and occasionally spit something out your nose.

Yeah, THAT funny.  And where does she get the material for such funniness?

From life, and that crazy head of hers.  Is buying a house that difficult?  Perhaps.

Is it as crazy (and hilarious) as she describes it?  Whaddaya, nuts?  You bet it is.

She wrote her first book, Home on the Trail, as a fictional historical novel.  It’s a tale of a couple that flees a life of hardship in Michigan and tackles with Oregon Trail with a group, only to stop short of the goal and settle near Fort Boise.  And even though we’re from Michigan and lived in Boise it’s not about US.  It’s fiction, even though the couple had two kids, a boy and a girl, and we had two dogs, a boy and a girl, and…OK, there are a few more “coincidences.”  But it’s fiction.

So is “Just Pick the Least Worst” – a story about a couple on the move and fiction.  Really.  No, YOU ARE NOT IN THIS STORY and MARILLA AND FORELOCK ARE NOT US.  

It’s the story of a young couple who, after making several moves around the country decide to move from their last rental and buy a home which is a real fixer-upper and the trial and tribulations they suffer at the hands of realtors and bankers and family and movers and even the stupid people at the title company but it’s NOT about US.  Sure, we’ve moved 13 times in five cities and owned four homes and two were fixer-uppers and Christmas with our extended families means four huge meals PLUS snacks in less than 24 hours but this is a work of FICTION.  Any names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is dumb luck.

Fiction.  And it’s funnier than hell, because truth is stranger than fiction.

And no doubt there will be further adventures of Marilla Parabola, because we’re lived a very full and funny life, and we’re not finished just yet.

Paperback Writer, Part 1

The week before Christmas I made mention that,

“…we’re waiting on one more thing, but it actually goes out to everyone on our list, and it’s been the biggest Christmas clusterf**k in quite the while.  It deserves its own blogpost and it will have one after the holidays, because if I explained it all now it’ll spoil the surprise.”

So Christmas is over, and the clusterf**k needs to be explained.  And the picture tells the story.  Like Paul McCartney sings, “I want to be a paperback writer.”  And now I am.

You probably know that I’ve already written several eBooks (five in all).  Now I’ve written three paperbacks.  OK, yeah, all I really did was take the eBooks and turn them into paperbacks.  Before I explain why I did that, and all about the clusterf**k, let me tell you what’s now in paper (available exclusively at Amazon.com):

The ABC’s of Craps

The ABC’s of 21

Let the Chips Fall: A Collection of Short Stories About Gambling

These three books lend themselves well to the paperback format, and, not coincidentally, they’ve been my best sellers.  However, lately the eBook sales have been lagging, so I thought that I’d try the services of CreateSpace, the book-creation devision of Amazon.  That was one reason I did this.

The other reason will be explained in greater detail in the next post, but briefly – the spousal unit has another book!

Uh-oh…better have the link to “Just Pick the Least Worst” here.  OK, did it, honey.

Naturally, I am happy to see this, and my role in all of this was getting it published.  Her previous book, Home on the Trail, was published by Odgen Publicatons (Mother Earth News, Utne Reader, Grit, and many more).  This book wasn’t in that vein, and so…rather than seek out another publisher, I suggested it be self-published (as we planned to give her book and one of mine as Christmas presents).  That’s the real reason I decided to try out the CreateSpace program. And so now that everyone has their gift, I can explain what happened.

The good news:  when I set up my three books on CreateSpace, I had absolutely no problems whatsoever.  The learning curve wasn’t that steep considering I had made them as eBooks previously, and even with a couple of false starts, I got the job done quickly and the books look good.

The bad news:  every possible thing that could have gone wrong with Mona’s book did.

We did have some issues of our own in the formatics – some of it our fault, and one big issue due to their compiling program.  Briefly – even though the title page was centered, and in the preview it LOOKED centered, when the proof came back, it was LEFT justified.  Asking their Customer Service about this got me a “we’ll respond in a day or two” reply, so I went on to the user forums to try to find a solution.  After a few hours someone there responded, and we eventually solved the issue.  Briefly, even though CreateSpace allows for .doc and .docx submissions, it’s best if you use a .pdf.  And, not just ANY .pdf, but one that is PRINT generated, not SAVED.  I didn’t even know there was a difference, and once I did, didn’t even have a program that could do that.  Turns out there are several, including a couple of free ones, and may I strongly suggest that if you need one try CutePDF (link here).  Works like a charm, and it’s free.

It’s a good thing I sought an answer this way, because once I DID get a response from CreateSpace (a day later), it was basically worthless.  I think it said, “Something something these things happen try again and use our preview mode yargle bargle.”

While this response had no value (because it required human intervention), the automatic functions of CreateSpace seemed to work flawlessly and quickly.  For example, once you review the cover and insides to your satisfaction, you submit the completed document to CreateSpace – they create a “proof” for you to do the “final” review, and then, within 24 hours, your book is ready!

This worked to perfection with all of my books, and the first two times we requested a proof for Mona’s book.  Of course, once we finally had a proof that was completely ready to go…the 24-hour window failed.

After about 40 hours, I requested a call from Customer Service (you don’t call them, but put in an online request for them to call you) to find out what the problem was.  I am happy to report that they responded within a couple of minutes, but why they responded I couldn’t tell you, because they had absolutely no idea what happened, why it happened, or how to deal with it now.  The Service Rep told me that he’d have to contact someone in “Technical.”  I told him, “Go ahead.”  So he put me on hold, called (supposedly) and then got back to me a couple minutes later with “well, it seems as if no one is there – they don’t pick up, so I left a message.”  End result was that he’d continue to pursue this and would get back to me.

He never did get back to me, but a few hours later we got a “your proof is ready to order” email.  What happened?  We had no idea and never found out.  So, we reveled in our good fortune and ordered the books we needed for Christmas presents, confident that our problems were over.

Hah.

When I ordered my three books, I had no problems.  The way it works – once you approve the proof, you can order books for yourself immediately (it gets posted on the Amazon.com site a day or two later).  You can choose UPS Ground, 2-day, or Next-day service.  Printing takes a few days, but once printed they send you a notice with a tracking number (UPS).  First set of books I ordered I did UPS ground and they came a day earlier than scheduled.  Next time I used UPS 2-day just to see how that worked, and again, it was delivered a day early.

So we get the notice for Mona’s books that said they were printed on Sunday the 11th, and would ship Monday the 12^th.  We asked for (and paid for) 2-day shipping, so we could expect them on Wednesday the 14^th so we could box everything up for gifts and get them out before the final weekend.

I kept checking the UPS tracking online, and every time I did, there was no info.  I said a label had been created, and it was to be shipped on the 12^th, but there was no indication that it had been received by UPS, nor did it show anywhere in the system.  Every day I would check – two, three times – and there was no indication that the package had even arrived at UPS, let alone was on its way to us in time to get here on the 14^th.

And once the 14^th had come and gone, I called CreateSpace (OK, asked them to call me).  I asked the Service Rep what happened, where are the books, when will we get them, do you know they were due here yesterday and what the hell happened?  She was well versed in the “I don’t know a thing but would like to get rid of you ASPS” school of customer service, and proceeded to lie her ass off.

First, she told me that the books had yet to be printed.  Once they were printed, then we would receive notice and a tracking number.  I said we ALREADY received that notice – weren’t the books printed?  Well, no, she said, there was a delay. 

“So why did I get the notice?” I asked.

“You won’t get one until the books are printed.  I told you, they were delayed.”

“But I DID get a notice. That means they were printed.”

“Well there was a delay, so you should get them in a day or two.”

“But there’s no information on the tracking report.   How would I know if they’ve actually been sent?”

“Well, they haven’t been sent – they have yet to print them, and when they do print them you’ll get a notice with tracking information.”

“I ALREADY HAVE THAT NOTICE!  It said they were to be here yesterday.  If they hadn’t even been created yet, let alone shipped, why would you tell me they were shipped and be here on the 14^th when they hadn’t even been printed or shipped?”

“Well, sir, as I stated, there has been a delay…”

And we danced around like that for another five minutes.  She could never explain what happened to the order, why there was no tracking info, whether the books had or had not actually been printed, or what should be done now except “wait a few more days to see if they turn up.” 

I haven’t slammed a received down this hard in years.

Fortunately, Mona called back about an hour later and got a different rep who noticed (a) our books had not arrived in the prescribed time so we were credited for the shipping costs (first rep never said boo about that), (b) she had no idea where that order was but she would make up a new order on the spot and send it out no charge on next-day status so we’d have the books ASAP.

Unfortunately, she never sent us any details about the order (like a tracking number), so we had to hope that she did what she said she was going to do and we’d get the books on Friday or maybe Monday (since UPS doesn’t do weekends).

Sure enough, we got the new shipment on Monday.  We also got the FIRST shipment, too.  No word as to what happened, of course.

So…we are both published paperback writers.  And we have more material for another book. 

More on Mona’s book tomorrow (it’s a delightful romp – the book, that is).