The Power Of…

Posted on August 17, 2012 by Trish and Rob

I was raised as a Catholic, but have never bought into their ideas and left the church when I was 16. However, the appeal of that church – or any traditional church or religion, for that matter – lies in its rituals, in how those rituals speak to you on a spiritual level.

In most Catholic churches, there’s an area where candles can be lit for the dead. As a kid, I found this candle business to be morbid. But over the years, I’ve discovered a certain beauty in the ritual –I light a candle for loved ones, human or animal, who have passed on so that their path into the afterlife is illuminated.

I also light candles as a way to focus my attention on people who are in need of healing- physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, financial, professional, whatever the need is.  I believe there’s incredible power in focused concentration. Whether you call it prayer or visualization or something else, any time your conscious mind hones in on someone, that person is aware of it at some level and is empowered. Collective energy directed at these individuals makes a significant difference for them. It bolsters their immune systems, lifts their spirits, brings light into the darkness. We’re all connected. The candles we light become orbs of illumination in Indra’s net.

For those individuals who are skeptical about the efficacy of positive thought, prayer, and visualization, just Google any of those terms+ scientific evidence. You’re bound to find something that prompts you to give it a whirl.

The individuals whose names I have included below have written publicly about their health issues, so I don’t think I’m violating anything confidential. There are other names I haven’t included here because they haven’t talked publicly. The names in my empowerment circle are:

Debra Page.  We have posted a lot of her stuff – here, here, here. In the search box, just enter her name and you’ll see all the posts. We’ve used her experiences in both of our synchronicity books, in posts on aliens, loss, politics, planetary empaths.

Earlier this year, she wrote on her blog that she had to take a hiatus due to health issues. She has since developed multiple and complex permutations that include life-threatening   reactions to electromagnetic emanations. I spoke to Debra today and she’s staying at a Spiritualist community outside of San Diego, where she has a chance to recover and gain back her strength. Please, light a candle for Debra.

Mike Perry. We connected with Mike early on in the existence of our blog. I think his blog initially came up in a Google alert for synchronicity. Like us, he usually posts something new daily. Like us, his interests and his posts sometimes take him in other, related directions.

Bloggers get to know each other through what they write, through their routines. So a few days ago, I clicked on my link for Mike’s blog – and nothing new was up. When it happened a second day in a row, I wrote to Daz, who is friends with Mike, and asked if he had heard from him. He hadn’t. I immediately felt that something was wrong.

On August 13, Mike finally posted an explanation for why  he had been  absent for three days.   Kidney cancer. Due for surgery on 9/12/12. Circle that date. Let’s light some candles for Mike, that he comes through this surgery with flying colors.

Mathaddict. This lady is special. She has been up front and forthright about her health problems and how they may be related to her repeated abduction experiences.  Just put mathaddict into the search engine for a list of posts we’ve done about her.  She lives near a beach, so all those negative ions combined with our good thoughts should be powerful.

Our friend, writer Ed Gorman wrote to his extensive email political circle today that he was having radiation treatments and had had a terrible reaction to an anti-inflammatory drug he’d been given. He was en route to see his oncologist. Please light a candle for Ed, too. He’s one of the most generous  writers we’ve ever met.

Please add names to the empowerment circle or create one of your own. You don’t have to explain anything, don’t even have to include the person’s full name. Initials will do. Today there’s a new moon in Leo, a perfect time for powerful, directed conscious thought. Let’s become this net we’ve talked about, blogged about. Let’s send our collective energy toward individuals who need a boost now.

 

Posted in healing, indra's net, synchronicity | 16 Comments

The Subaru Trickster

Posted on August 16, 2012 by Trish and Rob

This synchro comes from Anne Norburn of Lenoir City, Tennessee, which lies about 15 miles from Knoxville.  As you’ll see, it has an element of the trickster to it.

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My next door neighbor is very, very unpleasant.  He comes down to my house constantly, complaining about various things, like how I accidentally blew some grass out into the street while mowing, etc.  He says he owns the street in front of his house and he does not want us there.

So today, my daughter Laura and I had gone to the grocery store and had just pulled into the driveway of our house, which is the first one on our street. Laura asked if we could drive up the road and back because, I’m ashamed to say, she really wanted to annoy our unpleasant neighbor. I told her no, we had frozen food in the car.

At precisely that moment, a car EXACTLY like mine, a four-year-old year old silver Subaru Forester, came up the road, went by us, and disappeared out of sight over the hill.  I was so surprised that I ended up standing there with my mouth hanging open for a moment or two.

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In addition to the trickster element here, maybe there’s something else woven in, a  car Doppelganger that appeared as wish fulfillment for Laura!

Posted in synchronicity | 7 Comments

The Eagle Feather Synchros

Posted on August 15, 2012 by Trish and Rob

I once tried to left-brain analyze who reads my fiction, and the nonfiction Rob and I write,  the kind of people they are, what they’re looking for in a story, what kinds of questions they have about life, the universe and well, you know, everything else. My sense is that Judi Hertling fits the bill pretty closely.

Judi and I have never met. And yet, on some level, we have not only met, we are good friends. Our  commonality lies in the Seth books, that’s the foundation. It’s true with all of my closest friends. It isn’t just that Seth readers have the same psychic  interests; it’s deeper than that. It means you share the sane psychically, spiritually, intellectually.

We used one of Judi’s synchros in 7 Secrets of Synchronicity,  and we may have used one in Synchronicity and the Other Side. At any rate, she has a solid grasp of synchronicity and recognizes it when it happens to her.

This synchro involves eagle feathers and a pending move.

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In March, my husband and I sold our house with the intention of moving to the Okanagan Valley, which is in the interior of British Columbia. We had been talking about relocating for about a year, and in our minds everything was decided. The house was sold and we had until the end of September to find another house and move. The only fly in the ointment was that while we said one thing, the Universe appeared to have different plans for us.

We knew the type of house we wanted, we just couldn’t find it and didn’t realize at the time that we were looking in the wrong place. One afternoon a few weeks back we went for a casual drive to look at some newly built homes which was about a thirty-minute drive from where we live now, thinking it would give us an idea of what we were looking for. The houses were not quite right for our taste, however Jamie the realtor did know of a house that was for sale but not yet listed.

We made an appointment for the following day and after viewing the home we unexpectedly and rather hastily made an offer, thinking that all was well because  my husband went back to his work rotation away from home, and I was to view the house a second time prior to committing. Although happy that we’d found a house we liked, something nagged at me when I went back a few days later with the realtor. I felt like I was waiting for something, that although it was a great home, it wasn’t The One.

Going by instinct and much to the surprise of us all, I withdrew our offer and again we appeared stuck and time was running out – we were now just into August. I had checked and re-checked the new listing daily for weeks, but decided to give it one more try – just in case. And then when I had about given up the search, I saw it… the one. It had been on the market only a few days.

We made an appointment, saw the house the next day and I fell in love. We went home excited at the prospect of unexpectedly finding the listing. Just when we were talking about doing a second viewing just to be sure, we received a call saying that an offer had already been made and the house was being sold as we spoke.

I was crushed. My house was going to someone else.

The next afternoon we received another call saying that for some reason the couple pulled out of negotiations and we could now make an offer. We did. It was accepted, and we will move into our beautiful home at the end of September.

The synchro. The first house we built on Vancouver Island was in Eagleridge. In the past couple of years I have asked for an eagle feather to be shown as a sign for any major decision that I have been unsure of. I now have three that have shown up out of the blue, one I found on my doorstep the morning after I had asked for a sign.

Our new home is in Eaglecrest.

One more twist to the story. The realtor whom we met at the new show homes was the brother of the designer of the home we have purchased, and the builder was the same builder who had built our home in Eagleridge.

Here’s the house:

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Pretty cool.

Posted in birds as messengers, eagle, synchronicity | 5 Comments

Romney, Ryan, and Little Egg

Posted on August 14, 2012 by Trish and Rob

human egg

The wonderful  thing about dog parks is that everyone is there for one reason: to exercise their dogs. So, you’ve already got something in common and from there, friendships develop. Today before we left for the dog park, I grabbed a couple of copies of Ghost Key to give to several of the women. I received my free copies from the publisher on Friday, but the book isn’t officially released until August 21.

We pulled in just as our friend Cassie did and I walked over to her truck to give her a copy of the book. She works for novelist Tami Hoag and earlier this year, she took one of the Ghost Key galleys and asked Tami if she could blurb it. As it turned out, Tami had a stack of books from her publisher to blurb, was in the midst of writing her own stuff, and couldn’t do it. But I deeply appreciated Cassie’s efforts.

“Listen, before we get into the dog park,” Cassie says in a hushed voice, “let’s talk some politics. What do you think of Paul Ryan, Romney’s VP choice?”

“If these two guys are elected, women’s rights will be relegated to the dark ages, social programs will be gutted, and the poor, old, and sick will be living on the streets.”

“It’s a bunch of old white men trying to tell everyone else how to live, trying to tell women their bodies don’t belong to them.” Cassie nodded toward the park. “Old white men like you know who.”

Yes, I knew who. A confrontation a few weeks earlier with one of these Old White Men was still vivid in our minds.

On Friday afternoon,  August 10,  Mitt Romney nominated Paul Ryan   as his VP. This development is potentially devastating  to women everywhere, regardless of your marital or financial status, your ethnicity, your religious beliefs:  Paul Ryan believes that your body belongs to him. He thinks that a fertilized egg should be conferred with personhood.

Yes, you read that correctly.

So let’s talk to that little egg, let’s find out what that little egg thinks about, you know, the larger world.

Me: Hey, Little Egg. What’s up?

Little Egg: Go away. I’m not doing interviews. I’m too embarrassed. I don’t wanna be on Fox News.

Me: Would you talk to Rachel Maddow?

Little Egg: Well, yeah, maybe. She’s cute. And smart. Has a doctorate, right? From Oxford? Or is it Cambridge? Well, somewhere across the pond.

Me: What would you say to Rachel?

Little Egg: Do I look like a person to you? Do I sound like I know what the hell I’m doing? Am I a fully developed consciousness? No, no, no. I have nothing more to say.

Me: Wait.

Little Egg (agitated): What? What the hell do you want from me? I’ve said everything I’m allowed to say. See, when they conferred me with personhood, it restricted what I can talk about. Like, you know, I can’t say that they are really hoping that I’m not gay, that I’m not a person of color, that I’m not an immigrant, that I am born to a very rich person who will support their tax breaks for the wealthy so that the poor and the middle class can die, just die, because that’s all they deserve, death, these bastards, death. Who needs the middle class?

Me: Who? Well, uh, you and me, Little Egg. What’re you going  to do when Romney loses the debate with Obama because he doesn’t know squat about foreign affairs? Romney couldn’t even win fans in the U.K., one of our allies. He insulted the Brits about the Olympics.  And Ryan? What does Ryan know about anything except the books by Ayn Rand? Before Ryan was elected to Congress, he worked at MacDonald’s. He was the prom king at his local high school. And he worked at his family’s business.

Little Egg: Ayn Rand? OMG. WTF. LOL. Listen, just between you and me, okay? These guys are really a couple of alien hybrids. One of them is a Mormon, a supposedly Christian church that was started by a guy who claimed he talked to angels and maybe even Mr. Supremo himself, but who really just wanted more than one wife. Lots of Little Eggs, right? The other guy sees himself as John Galt, the individualistic American standing tall against the terrible government that regulates corporations – i.e., his corporation. They love Little Eggs. But you know what? As soon as I’m born, I’m on my own – no universal health care, no public education, no firefighters in my own community, no policemen, and if I manage to survive all that, no Social Security, no Medicare, and definitely no Medicaid if I’m born poor.

Me: Great christian values.

Little Egg (weeping):  I don’t wanna be born.

Me: They’ll make you be born, even if you’re the result of rape or incest.

Little Egg (now inconsolable):  You gotta vote for Obama. He’s not perfect, a lot of the change he promised just hasn’t happened, he thinks the other side actually wants to talk and negotiate. But compared to these bozos, he’s FDR, okay?

Me: Suppose they rig the election? And Mercury turns retro on election day, Little Egg. We know where that went in 2000.

Little Egg: These guys will be worse than Bush/Cheney. Promise me you’ll have an exit strategy, some other country where you can go.  Promise.

 

 

Posted in politics, synchronicity | 7 Comments

Owl feathers & a goddess

Posted on August 13, 2012 by Trish and Rob

Here is a new missive from Jane Clifford of Wales, who is something of a Celtic shaman. She always seems to have curious synchros. You might recall her last one dealt with beheadings. This one is a bit more tame, but quite mythical.

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“I found an owl’s feather at the barn entrance, not a barn ow’ls feather, but definitely an owl’s feather. I have some identical from a woman who cares for injured owls. I work with owl medicine often; it reveals hidden truths.

However, I took this owl’s feather as a hint to connect with the Goddess Athena with whom owls are associated. She is the goddess of wisdom, as I’m sure you know. Although research indicates she seems to be multi-talented, a goddess with multiple roles. I did some more research on her and found an invocation, which I used to connect with her. I also discovered she was born completely formed from the head of Zeus, her father.

The next day I related this curious fact to a friend over lunch. Within the hour, driving home after lunc and listening to the radio,  there was an interview with a man described as the greatest living publisher in Britain today. He had just launched his third publishing company on the net to publish e-books and had called it Athena. The interview asked why Athena, and he explained she was the goddess of wisdom and had been born complete from the head of Zeus!

I took this syncro to mean my invocation to her had worked very well and she was giving me a nudge!

Last week I found a buzzard’s feather at the end of the track. The next day a buzzard behaved very strangely. Driving along the lane it flew out at tree level,very unusual! It then turned and banked over the bonnet of my car and flew in front of my face my side and over the roof. Close!

Such actions are usually a warning for me and the following day I had a very unpleasant experience with an old friend and removed myself swiftly from what I felt to be a toxic situation. It was a full moon in Aquarius and he is an Aquarian!

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After Jane sent her synchros, she went to our blog and read the post of the day, which was about the pit bull attack on Nika, our daughter’s dog. She immediately wrote back and said the ‘toxic situation’ that she had just mentioned involved her dog, Tuppence. The old friend’s collie lunged at the nine-month-old terrier and pinned her to the floor. She wasn’t injured, but very frightened by the aggressive dog who was five times her size.

Posted in synchronicity | 5 Comments

Synchro video

Posted on August 12, 2012 by Trish and Rob

 

Here’s a friendly little video about synchronicity.

https://vimeo.com/47167247

 

 

Posted in synchronicity | 7 Comments

Synchronicity and the Other Side?

Posted on August 11, 2012 by Trish and Rob

Dreams are funny things. We go to bed, get all comfy in our sheets and quilts and pillows, and the moment we shut our eyes, our brains go to work, sorting and analyzing  events of the day, week, month. But at some point, that process stops and dreams provide us with the raw material of the future.

Sometimes, these dreams are so literal you know what’s headed your way. Two weeks before my mother passed on, I had an early morning dream where I was at a writers’ conference (and had, in real life, just returned from such a conference)   when someone handed me a post-it with this message: Your mother has died. When I headed out to breakfast that morning and related the dream to Rob and my dad,   who was living with us at the time, my dad said, “I dreamed that she died, too.”

Right then, we both knew her death was imminent.

Since then, I pay attention to these early morning dreams, which seem to deliver clues about what’s coming up in my life. On August 1, I had one of those early morning dreams and it bolted me into full wakefulness. I glanced around the room, taking stock, taking inventory.

Thanks to the night light in a nearby bathroom, I could see Noah snoozing on a quilt next to his crate, the place Nika occupied when she lived here. Simba, our five-year-old orange tabby featured  in the photo above,  was stretched out alongside me. As usual, Rob was hogging the pillows. I flipped over onto my back and Simba climbed on top of me and as I shut my eyes, I remembered my dream:

I hurry up the hallway from the bedroom and encounter Simba. He has been dismembered by a dog – his body literally cut in half, and is somehow still alive. I’m freaking out, shrieking for Rob, screaming that we need to get Simba to a vet.  Simba, like our other two cats, came to us through our daughter, Megan. She chose him, he’s our only male cat, and for a long time, he used to sleep with her.

In the dream, my dad suddenly materializes. “He’s in pain, Trish,” he says (or something like that), and pulls out a puny .22 pistol and shoots Simba, ending his misery.

In real life, my dad never shot anything. He owned a .38 because in his later years he became paranoid about robbers, break-ins, etc. So now I’m beginning to think that dream was a hint  about what was coming up for Megan’s pet (Simba in the dream, Nika in waking life): A dog (pitt bull) attack in the neck, which necessitated drainage tubes in her neck.  I also think it’s a synchronicity in terms of after life communication; my dad often appears in my dreams to deliver messages, warnings, affirmations.

If I had been paying closer attention, I might have been able to warn Megan to be vigilant about  Nika when it came to other dogs. But, frankly, this option never occurred to me.

And that’s the challenge with precog dreams, at least for me. The interpretation. I know I drove Simba crazy, checking on  him every hours of the day. But…

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The update on Nika: the tube in her neck has been removed, she’s her usual bouncy, joyful self. Today, Megan presented the owner of the pitt with the vet bill for Nika – $1300 and loose change. The woman promised she and her boyfriend  would pay by next Friday. If that doesn’t happen, I’ll be knocking at their door on Saturday. I’m a pretty laid back person until an injustice hits someone I love.  And then it’s not a pretty sight.

Posted in synchronicity | 19 Comments

Learning to Dance in the Rain

Posted on August 10, 2012 by Trish and Rob

Lori McDermott, who co-authored this book with her husband, Brian, sent me a copy in July. I’m squeezed for time, but felt it’s an important book about afterlife communication  and coping with tragic loss, so I asked mathaddict to read it and write a review.  She loved it. Here’s why:

Learning to Dance in the Rain,  by Lori and Brian McDermott,  came to me as an unexpected and welcome surprise.

Anyone who is a parent with older teenage and young adult children who have spread their wings and have begun to flee the nest, understand the innate concerns that accompany their children’s ‘coming of age’. We continue to carry the parental concerns, all the while understanding that we must allow them to go; allow them to fly, without clipping their wings and restricting their flights.

And there is, always, the hope that our children will be safe and happy and will chase their own dreams to fruition. We pray that life will treat them kindly and that their falls, their scrapes and bruises, will be few and far between because Mom and Dad are no longer close-by to kiss the hurt away.

When a knock comes at the door in the middle of the night, I believe we instinctively know, before we open the door, that whoever is standing outside isn’t bringing good news. And that is how it began for Lori and Brian: that knock on the front door in the middle of the night. Their beloved, precocious daughter Maia, barely 21 years old, had been killed in an automobile accident.

I was pulled into their lives as I read the preface, before I had even turned to the first chapter. As I continued to turn the pages, I felt as though I was there with them, and that they were here with me. The story of Lori’s and Brian’s moment-by-moment journey through the valley of the shadow of Maia’s transition into the realm of The Other Side reached out to me and wrapped me up in a cocoon of their emotions; of their memories of their daughter; of their struggle to cope with her physical demise, and of the staggering awareness that they would never see her physical presence again in this life.

Theirs is a story that doesn’t censor its devastating tears or its magnificent joys. I didn’t weep until I reached the epilogue, and at that point, my own tears joined theirs in a river of hope; of appreciation for the years shared with Maia: and most of all, of unconditional love for a child and for all that her physical death and on-going spiritual presence taught them and continues to teach them. Maia bequeathed a legacy of her personality; of music and poetry and sparkling, occasionally acerbic, wit.

I didn’t find the book to be depressing. It is filled with uplifting synchronicity after synchronicity; with the undeniable Essence of Maia, who manages to find both subtle and screaming ways of letting her family and friends know she is HERE with them; that she is well and happy; that she hasn’t left and doesn’t leave them.

Lori and Brian use every modality available to them to learn to cope with the loss of Maia’s physical presence. They they take each step of their healing with tears of joy and tears of sorrow, because the two cannot be separated.

The loss of one’s child is, for me, an unthinkable circumstance. For me, there would be no greater challenge and I cannot even begin to imagine such tragedy, or how I would cope with it.

But Maia’s mantra was, and is, “SEIZE THE DAY”. One of her favorite sayings was, “When it storms, learn to dance in the rain!” And that is what her family and friends are doing, and what they are sharing in this book. Each of them is Seizing The Day, and Learning To Dance In The Rain.

I felt embraced and warmed by the messages in Maia’s story, and in the journey her family and friends are taking in the wake of her whirlwind life. She is gone too soon, yet isn’t gone at all.

Read the book. Have a box of tissues handy, but your tears will be tears of joy as well as of pain and empathy, and learn to Seize The Day and Dance In The Rain. It lessened my burdens and left me feeling as if this big bad world is a much better place because Maia spent a little bit of time here.

 

 

Posted in synchronicity | 3 Comments

Romney: Ambivalence, Secrecy, and Why

Posted on August 9, 2012 by Trish and Rob

This illustration depicts a pair of fish swimming in opposite directions. It’s the symbol for the sun sign, Pisces, one of two signs in astrology that is depicted by two of something. It happens to be the sun sign for Mitt Romney, born on March 12, 1947,  at 9:50 AM, in Detroit, Michigan.

Pisces individuals often have trouble making up their minds – their heads says one thing, their hearts scream another, thus the two fish are forever swimming away from each other.  This tendency is certainly evident in Romney. Known as the consummate flip-flopper, he holds one position today, the opposition position tomorrow. When confronted with his many flip-flops, he just laughs and denies that he said the opposite of what he’s saying right now. He seems to be oblivious to the fact that everything he has ever said as a public figure is recorded somewhere.

This ambivalence is glaringly prevalent in Romney’s approach to health care as a governor of Massachusetts and his platform about health care as a presidential candidate. When Romney was governor, he initiated mandatory health care for all residents of Massachusetts, probably his most outstanding feat as a politician. And Romney’s health care plan became the template for Obama’s health care plan. Romney, the  presidential candidate, promises to completely overturn Obamacare.

Huh? Go figure.

Well, the Obama campaign released an incredible ad today that highlights this ambivalence. “It tied the activities of Bain Capital to the death of a woman who lost her health care coverage as a result of her husband losing his job at GST Steel, one of the celebrated casualties of Bain’s business practices,” reports the Huffington Post (and every other news outlet).

Take a look:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Nj70XqOxptU

The right-wing machine, of course, immediately came out against the ad – how scurrilous and nasty it is, one big fat lie. Yet,  on Fox News yesterday morning, Andrea Saul, a Romney spokesperson, blew this whole thing wide open by offering this defense of Romney: “To that point, if (the) people had been in Massachusetts, under Governor Romney’s health care plan, they would have had health care.”

WHAT?! Did she really say that? The right-wing machine went nuts. One conservative blogger said this was the moment when Romney had lost the election. Rush Limbaugh appeared to be on the verge of a stroke.

The left wing was instantly all over the story, noting the irony that Romney’s campaign has been forced to sweep his greatest feat as a politician under the rug, along with his undisclosed tax returns, his new home that features an elevator for his numerous cars,  and what his net worth actually is.

So while Rob and I were watching the news this evening, I suddenly blurted, “Pisces.

Rob’s hands went up into the air, pointing in opposite directions. “The two fish, swimming in opposite directions,” he said. “You should do a post on that.”

So I went online to look for Romney’s  natal chart.   Ambivalence is certainly part of the Pisces archetype. But even more to the point with Romney, I think, is his Scorpio moon. This sign for the moon is probably the most secretive in the zodiac. We will never know the full truth about Mitt. Never. We will never understand what possessed him to put his dog, Shamus, in a dog carrier on the roof of his car for a trip to Canada. We will never know what travesties he actually committed at Bain Capital. And we will never know how much dough he has parked offshore, how much he’s worth, or whether he has paid in dime in taxes for the last decade. We will never know what it’s necessary to know about any presidential candidate in order to make an informed choice in how we vote.

But because of what he did to his dog, Shamus, he has long since lost the vote of dog lovers everywhere, and as of 2009, the most recent figures I could find, that amounts to nearly 80 million people.

 

Posted in politicians, politics, synchronicity | 15 Comments

Smeagol, in Disguise

Posted on August 8, 2012 by Trish and Rob

The digital revolution has created many companies that are reputable – and probably just as many that are not. As self-employed writers, we’ve been casting around for ways to keep pace with this rapid transformation and it’s been tricky. And the synchro here, I think, falls in the trickster domain. Hey, psstt, got something for you to check out, Trish and Rob, whispers Smeagol, from the shadows. And yes, on the surface, it looks pretty good. Then you dig a bit deeper and discover it’s mostly smoke and mirrors.

In 2005, my editor at the time, Kate Duffy, told me I needed to put up a website. Seven years ago, there were no companies – at least none that I knew of – where you could use their online software to create a site. So I paid a guy in New Jersey several thousand  to create a website for me. It was a pretty website, pleasing to the eye, and I could update it without having to pay him for every single update – which at that time was about 50 bucks a shot. But he rarely answered my emails and when, several years later, the landscape had changed, with  services cropping up with online software for creating websites, it was months before he transferred my domain names back to me.

I suspect that company is now out of business as there are many sites that offer online software for creating your own websites – and for a lot less than what I paid!  We use www.1and1.com for our two websites and our blog. Their prices are good, there are no hidden costs – and that’s important. We have published several of our out of print titles through smashwords, which is great if you can wade through their 80 plus pages of guidelines for formatting and know how to design a cover on your own. But if you don’t know how to do this – or don’t have the time –  they maintain a list of people who do know the ins and outs. The 3 titles I published through smashwords cost about $150 each and I used a wonderfully talented woman, Katrina Joyner. She scanned, formatted and designed great covers.

Around this time, my agent’s agency contracted with an outfit called Argo-Navis,  which bills itself as a company that brings your back list titles back into print – but for a very steep price. It would have cost me nearly $7,000 to bring some of my titles back into print through this company, and why would I do that when I could do it through smashwords for a fraction of what they were charging?  I wrote them off to greed and kept searching.

Then  along came Crossroad Press, who did everything Katrina did, everything that Argo-Navis did – for no upfront fee at all, and the split they offer is unheard of in publishing: 80/20, and that’s 80% of the cover price for the author. We did a post on them last month. In traditional publishing, the author receives between 8 and 15 percent of the cover price.  Rob and I signed for ten back list titles with David Wilson, who heads the company.

But because  I dislike having all my proverbial eggs in one basket, I kept researching. When I ran across Marcus Anthony’s webpage, where he’s got an actual store, I wrote him and asked a bunch of questions and decided to check it out. The site offers a friendly interface, you don’t have to know any html code to create a website. But their advertising is fraudulent.  They lead you to believe you can create a free website in moments, but the truth is that it took me five hours to realize that the thirty bucks I’d paid for the year, to create a webstore,  was just for the domain name. Really? I can buy a domain name from Go Daddy for ten bucks for an entire year.

I went onto their support forum – no phones, just echat- and spoke first to Erin, then to Tiffany – and learned absolutely nothing that I didn’t already know. Webs.com doesn’t have an app yet that can sell downloadable ebooks or PDF files and you have to manipulate your way around that flaw. It annoyed me that they don’t have phone support – whereas 1and 1 does. Marcus’ experience was obviously much different than mine. Erin and Tiffany weren’t helpful at  all.

On another recent search, I was looking for ways to publicize ebooks and ran across bookdaily. Sign up for free! You can upload a chapter of your book and they’ll send it out to their zillions of subscribers. I even found an article about them in Publishers Weekly, the industry magazine. So I signed up – and was then directed to PayPal. Turns out you can sign up for free – but you have to pay for them to send the chapter to their subscribers. In the finer print, I discover that the uploaded chapter doesn’t reach all that many people and isn’t worth what they’re charging. So there are numerous sites that advertise that their services are free, but they aren’t.

David Wilson from Crossroad sent me a link for unshelved, which is actually legit, prices spelled right out, and targets  librarians.

So it goes, as Vonnegut would say. Of course, stupid me, all of this took place while Mercury – the communication trickster – is retrograde. Sure, start something new while Mercury, your ruler moves backward through the zodiac. Sure, go right ahead – snicker, snort.

The retro ended shortly after this post went up.  Three cheers for Mercury turning direct!

 

 

 

Posted in authors, books, publishing, synchronicity | 6 Comments