Surprises

When a "surprise" pops up, it can put a smile on your face, or a furrow on your brow. Last week, both happened to me.

One of the surprises was a double-edged one -- a letter congratulating my daughter on her acceptance into Roanoke College, as well as the amount of her scholarship award, which is $20,000/yr. A good surprise, no? Well, no since a bill in the amount of $26,500/yr accompanied it. This amount does not include text books either. The college is quite nice, but totally impractical, especially since they do not offer a degree in the field she is interested in -- broadcasting & web design. She is a huge history buff so she thought if they offered her enough of a scholarship she would look to earn a major in history. They didn't. And frankly, paying $106,000 (sans textbooks!) for a degree that costs $186,000 (sans textbooks!) in history is insane...unless she wanted to teach history. She doesn't. Just for yuk-yuks I did the math -- I'd have to sell 321,212 copies of The Valentines Day Curse to pay for our portion (sans textbooks!)

The next bad surprise is one that I really can't talk about right now other than to say I'm really not "surprised" by it, saddened, yes, surprised, no. I'll have to leave it at that, for now.

And now for the good surprises: As I was checking my stats on Amazon for The Valentine's Day Curse I noticed something called Shelfari was on the book page. So I clicked on it and saw the book was being read by 9 people and had even received a review -- "This was just a great story, interesting idea." I'll have to find out more about Shelfari and if this is something I should join.

Another surprise was a Google alert on my name which let me know The Valentine's Day Curse was reviewed on Goodreads. Goodreads? I thought you had to submit a book there to be reviewed, but apparently not. I joined Goodreads a couple of months ago, and promptly forgot about it. I never joined as an author and frankly was afraid to even go back there after I read so many negative things from other authors on Facebook about it. Then there were other authors who said it was a great site that offered probably the most unbiased of all reviews.

So, with some trepidation, I checked it out and found I had two reviews: One four star - "Very short story about an unexpected phone call. Quick 15 minute read, but well worth it." One five star - "This short story was funny and appealed to that vengeful part of me ;)" One three star with nothing else. Hmmmm. Wasn't thrilled with that, especially since no "reason" was given, but it's still cool that someone "rated" it after reading it, so it's all good...Goodreads, that is.

I figured since my one book was up there I'd better join as an author and hope my novel, Fractured Facade gets discovered and reviewed as well. I'm still exploring the site and have added books to my shelf that I've read, am reading and want to read. I've gotten requests from people on Facebook to do "something" in Goodreads but since I do not use Facebook apps I have no idea what they are and hope they don't think I'm ignoring them. So let me make the announcement here...if you want to be "friends" or whatever it's called on Goodreads please send me the request directly there and not on Facebook. I'm sure it's going to take me some time to figure all this out, and I might be pleasantly surprised when I do.

I had one more great surprise that came in the form of an e-mail from Yuma, AZ regarding Fractured Facade. That deserves a post all by itself, so when I get some time I will compose one.

It's a rainy Monday morning here. My bones are stiff, my joints are swollen, but the birds are singing and the trees are blooming and I'm still breathing, so I'm going to be thankful...Enjoy your week!!!