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Kelly I. Hitchcock Posts

Facebook, I don’t “like” you. Wednesday Wrant 2/22/2012

Published by Kelly on February 22, 2012

Today finds me ranting about something I think we can all rant about… Facebook. I have a general policy that my Facebook is a social media outlet completely separate from my author brand or persona, which I think is probably mostly healthy.

So for me, Facebook is all personal, and zero business (except when I am giving my book away, which I think is fair). What bothers me is other people who don’t respect those same boundaries.

“Like my page!”

“I want to play you in Scrabble!”

“I just bought a new pair of Toms and I’m doing a shitload of good for humanity with my overpriced $54 shoes!” (Hmm… there’s a topic for a future rant)

There’s also this new thing where it’ll show you where Person A commented on Person B’s status, even if you have jack shit connection to Person B. I unwittingly saw a uterus photo that way (again, a topic for a future rant).

Maybe it’s just me, but I get advertised to enough in my life; I don’t need it from my friends on my news feed in Facebook, and I don’t care to see status updates from people I don’t know. The interface has changed so that you can only determine what types of updates appear on your feed on a per-user basis. I’m not about to go through and set this for every single friend of mine, so I figured out a little trick that I thought was brilliant (and, behold my technical writing day job skills in action):

  1. In Facebook, in the left pane of the news feed, in the LISTS heading, click MORE.
  2. In the Lists page, click Create List.
  3. In the Create New List dialog box, in the List Name field, enter “All” or something and click Create.
  4. In the list page, click Add Friends.
  5. In the Edit <list name> box, add all your friends and click Finish. No, there’s not a quick way to do this. Thanks, Facebook.
  6. Now that you have everybody, click the Manage List arrow and select Choose Update Types. You might have to click this twice to see all the categories, because the UI is very finicky.
  7. And voila, you can uncheck games, likes, comments on people you don’t know, music, etc.

I was ridiculously proud of myself for figuring this out. Here’s the problem, though, it only works about 60% of the time! I still get “So and so is listening to Nickelback on Spotify!” (Really? Are you sure we’re friends?) or “Suzy just watched 20 YouTube videos and here they are in chronological order!” from time to time. So, it’s not perfect. But if you wanna hack your way to a better news feed, this is a start.

And no, I won’t host a 31 party, a Scentsy party, an Arbonne party, or any other party. I thought you were an “independent” distributor! (Yet another rant for the future.)

So, having ranted the following, it’s now the first day of Lent. Do I or do I not give up Facebook in hopes I’ll be less cranky after celebrating Christ’s resurrection?

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You Don’t Know Everything: Manuscript Strength in Numbers

Published by Kelly on February 13, 2012

If you’re a writer, and you’re not a part of a writer’s workshop group, I want you to go ahead and kick yourself in the gut. And if you’re capable of this feat, maybe you should consider a new line of work. Those of you who are regular followers of my mostly mundane author news know that I am the de facto leader of a writer’s group (via Meetup) here in town (on Twitter at @WeirdATXWriters), and I have to say, their feedback is priceless. Typically, I bring my first drafts of short stories, chapters, and poems to my workshop meetups, and my first drafts are usually pretty clean. But if it weren’t for my writer’s group, I wouldn’t have known the following about my next novel (which now has a title, btw… PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN IN INK: A TATTOO STORYBOOK).

  • One of my stories takes place on Thanksgiving, and there’s a reference to football playing on the television. If not for my writer’s group, I wouldn’t have known that the teams that play on Turkey Day are Detroit and Dallas, every year. And I LOVE football. (Yes, it was a Texan who corrected me.)
  • The correct height and weight of a 4-year-old boy. Also, the age at which boys are fully potty-trained. Sure, I can guess, but my guesses proved inaccurate.
  • That not everyone remembers 1984 (the book, not the year – I was two) with the same level of recall as me, and the term “proles” is lost on most.

Bottom line? I’m a pretty smart cookie, but I don’t know everything. No one’s life experiences can make them an expert on everything, and it’s only by having a few fresh sets of eyes on a manuscript that you can resolve little misgivings in the prose that hurt your credibility with the reader.

If you’re not part of a group, there is no excuse for that. There’s Meetup, where you can probably find about 5 writers groups in your area. If there isn’t one, you can start one, and it’ll cost you about $100 a year. I joined one when I moved to Austin, and ended up running the same group when the organizer moved out of town, and we typically have about 5 or 6 people in a workshop meetup. That’s 5 different people with different life experiences (parent, engineer, sports fan, etc.) reading my manuscripts and pointing out these little issues that never would have crossed my mind. Is that worth the $100 a year I’m spending on meetup dues (that I could be getting from sponsors or my group members if I were that concerned about the cash)? You bet your sweet ass it is.

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Six Sentence Sunday 2/12/2012

Published by Kelly on February 12, 2012

Another Six Sentence Sunday is upon us! I recently got a really great 5-star review on The Redheaded Stepchild from a friend of mine who’s not much of a literary fiction fan, and when I asked her what her favorite part was, she mentioned she really enjoyed the chapter where Cady O’Donnell, the protagonist, is 13 years old, spending her court-mandated summer with mom. Thanks for the review, Shannon – this six is for you (and from your favorite chapter)!

I half-walked, half-ran outside into the street, almost tripping over a brick that had been forced up by the roots of the big elm tree in the front yard.  I looked both ways as I ran across so I could be on the same side as oncoming traffic.  I stuck my thumb out, walking ahead with a quick, steady pace.  I had walked about 10 yards when a white hatchback Toyota Tercel with two Hispanic-looking men slowed to a stop beside me.

“Need a ride?” the one in the passenger’s seat said, obviously not sensing my urgency.  Of course I needed a ride; why else would I be risking my life trying to hitchhike out in the middle of Nowhere, Nebraska?

Thanks for reading! Feel free to tell me what you think (come on now, it takes five frakking seconds), pull out the 4 bucks to read the whole thing (available HERE), and whatever you do, check out the other talented authors sharing their excerpts on www.SixSunday.com!

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Wednesday Wrant – What is this ebook thingy?

Published by Kelly on February 8, 2012

I don’t really have a whole lot to rant about this week, but ever since I self-published my first novel on Kindle, I’ve been paying more attention to people’s feelings about books vs. ebooks. There’s a wide swath out there, and to be truthful, I’m getting kind of sick of it. So, you know, I’m gonna add to the slush pile of book vs. ebook hoopla.

Yes, I love physical books. I love the smell of the pages, the feel of the cover, the crack of the spine. I get that curling up with a good book is an experience, and I get why people would think you can’t have the same feeling with an ebook.

Except that you can. And it’s actually easier. I can huddle under the blanket, arms and all, prop the Kindle up against my legs, and turn the page with just my thumb, without even needing to move my arms. Take that, Snuggie… and you can keep the book light.

I tried explaining the fact that I published my book on Kindle to my mom, which was probably a mistake in the first place. After about five minutes of going over the process over and over, she simply asked “When will it be available in print?” Then, when I did a CreateSpace paperback edition (for her, and my family who feel the same way about dangerous ebooks), she asked me what store she could buy it in.

She doesn’t have a credit or debit card because he tends to lose them, so she sent me some cash to get a CreateSpace paperback that I could autograph and send back to her. I’m not saying that a signed book isn’t valuable, but in the time that it took her to mail the letter, me to order an author’s copy, CreateSpace to ship it to me, me to sign it, and then ship it to her, she could have bought my book on Kindle 1,036,800 times. And that’s just a 12-hour day.

I volunteer at the library a couple hours a week. I love seeing all the books, the pretty covers, seeing parents reading Dr. Seuss to their kids. But I also have to sort those books. I’m not sure how many germ-infested books live at our branch at the library, but I’m pretty sure my Kindle could hold about half of them – no sorting, no shelving, no late fees.

I read more on the Kindle. Yes, Kindle books tend to be shorter, but I can set my Kindle on the treadmill at the gym, stick it in the pocket of my purse, all things I can’t do with a physical book. I do read physical books on my recumbent bike day, but it’s way easier on the Kindle. I typically have 2 books going at any given time – an ebook and a physical book – and I pretty much always finish the ebook first.

When we moved to Austin, we went through the inevitable stage of divesting of all the random shit we don’t use, which included – I shit you not – 8 boxes full of books. Oh yeah, and we still have 5 or 6 boxes of books in our storage closet that won’t fit on our bookshelf. What are they doing there? Nothing. To get to them, I’d have to go digging through boxes. When I want to find a book I want to read on the Kindle, I go to the index. If I don’t have it on my Kindle, I can browse Amazon right from my Kindle and get it. I don’t have to put on pants to go to the store, and I can get the Kindle edition for about 1/5 of the cost of a physical book.

I love both kinds of books, and I don’t see either of them going away any time soon. The bottom line, though, I’ve sold over 400 ebooks. Any idea how many paperbacks I’ve sold? 3. And I know the 3 people who bought them. Ebooks? They’re the future, and you can pry them from my dead, lifeless fingers like I’ll pry the physical book from yours. Stop squawking about how ebooks are destroying everything. It’s evolution. Get with it.

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Six Sentence Sunday 2/5/2012

Published by Kelly on February 5, 2012

It’s time once again for Six Sentence Sunday. Today’s six is from my newest project, a collection of short stories about women and their tattoos.

Erica nearly slipped on the floor as she heard her phone ring, the familiar tingle of fear collecting at the base of her spine and slowly crawling its way up, blocking the neural impulses that were trying to tell her to take the call. She slowly stepped toward it, breathing a sigh of relief as soon as she saw the call was just her husband, Tim, who was in Taiwan on business.  She felt the muscles in her back relax, the tension draining out slowly as she pressed the Talk button.

Erica had had the unnatural fear of the phone ringing ever since her father’s death four years ago.  She had been at work, her first grown-up job out of college, where she had to make calls all day for a market research firm.  She’d just finished consoling her cubicle mate, Megan, who’d just been yelled at by a customer who insisted she was the devil.

Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to check out all the other talented peeps over at www.SixSunday.com!

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Wednesday Wrant 2/1/2012

Published by Kelly on February 1, 2012

I haven’t written a Wednesday Wrant in awhile, mostly because the last couple of weeks, most of my ranting thoughts have been about Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, or Rick Santorum. But, I’d rather keep it mostly unpolitical on my blog, since I’m pretty sure my political opinion won’t skyrocket my readership. Also, the dog upstairs has been getting steadily quieter as the weeks go on, so I can’t complain too much.

So today, I want to rant about the sunroof of my car. Ever since I moved to Texas, I’ve been able to pretty well count on one hand the number of days it’s rained (which, for those who can’t count on their hands, means it hasn’t rained much). Some time ago, I thought I smelled a little bit of mildew in my car, but when it dissipated almost immediately, I didn’t think about it again.

Fast forward to last week, when we had a storm worthy of the Midwest in Spring. Nonstop thunder that left my fraidy-cat dog huddling under the bed, lightning that made me wonder if I was in a rave, rain and hail beating against the window thanks to the gale-force winds that came with it. I’m also a fairly light sleeper, so it kept me up for several hours.

Since I work from home and use the gym at my apartment, I only drive about once a week. So two days later, when I got in my car to go to the grocery store, I discovered about 2 inches of water in the floorboard of my car, a soaked and stained passenger’s seat, and a discolored roof. After finding a place in town that could repair a sunroof leak, which was of course not conveniently located for me, they informed me that there was a lump of mud lodged in the drainage tubes for the sunroof that they needed to flush.

Did you know that car sunroofs had drainage tubes? NO? Me neither. They looked at me like I was a neglectful car mom and cautioned me that I am supposed to flush the tubes once a year. Why have I owned no less than three cars with sunroofs and never, once, been told that part of owning a car with a sunroof is getting the tubes drained every other time I rotate the tires? Also, I get that you CAN charge $80 to run some water though some tubes, because I have no idea where they are and would probably eff something up if I did it myself, but that’s a little steep, don’t you think? Still, thanks for vacuuming out all the water. That was nice. Not $80 nice, but nice.

In other news, it rained again last night and the inside of my car and it’s nice and dry on the inside, so I’ll see you again next year, one place in town that flushes sunroof drainage tubes…

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Help me pick a title for my next masterpiece!

Published by Kelly on January 31, 2012

Greetings, loyal fanbase of fans! Today I sent the drafts of the short stories that are going in my newest collection to the people they were about. If you’re unfamiliar, I’m working on a collection of short stories about women and their tattoos. The stories are chained, meaning you meet characters in a previous story and learn more about them in the next.

I’ve been struggling to come up with a title, but I have a few ideas I’ve been throwing arond, so I want to crowdsource this one… tell me in the comments: which one do you like best?

  1. Vodka Chicken Soup for the Tattooed Soul
  2. Written in Ink
  3. The Girls with the Draggin’ Tattoos

Or, choose your own!

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