Vaya con Dios, BookBar

I originally wrote this for October and set it to autopost, which didn't happen. 

Take 2. After too long of a delay, I finally had another book launch to get excited about. Unfortunately this news is bitter-sweet. The venue for the book launch party was BookBar, which sadly announced that after ten years, they will be closing on January 31, 2023. The reasons are many, explained best by them. After wrestling with the usual challenges of running a small business, aggravated by Covid lockdowns and its precautions, the final nail in the coffin was the City of Denver's mandated increase in minimum wage.

A decade ago, BookBar took over the location of another bookstore in the Tennyson Arts District, one that limped along and even sold ice cream to help pay the bills. BookBar expanded that hybrid model by offering coffee, food, and alcohol. Wine and readers, who would've guessed? Though the inventory was heavy in literary fiction and contemporary non-fiction, what endeared BookBar to the local community was their willingness to take a chance on local authors. BookBar became the go-to venue for book launches, poetry gatherings, and even hosted readings for the Colorado Book Awards. BookBar was a favorite location because of their friendly staff and attention to detail, like making sure consignments were paid, something other area bookstores found hard to do. In appreciation, people (me included) regularly ordered books from BookBar to avoid patronizing Amazon, who themselves are retreating from brick & mortar store fronts. BookBar was a spot to meet friends, out-of-towners especially were taken by the place, or to kick back with a good read, a coffee and pastry, or with a beer, glass of wine, or a cocktail.

During the quarantine, I sought to cope with the disturbing weirdness of it all by drawing a daily cartoon of cats dealing with the pandemic in ways that were both feline and human. Honestly, I thought that after two weeks to flatten the curve, plus another two weeks to let things settle down, that we'd be back to normal in a month. Two months, tops. Was I wrong. A few dozen cartoons became a hundred, then two hundred, three hundred, and more. When I was done, deciding that the fiasco in Afghanistan and the then looming war in Ukraine were fitting disasters to end cap the Covid disaster, I realized that I had chronicled the history of this pandemic--lockdowns, the masking, the hoarding, social distancing, Zoom calls, mostly peaceful protests, the vax/anti-vax wars. Hex Publishers offered to publish an edited collection of my work in Cats In Quarantine: A Cartoon Memoir of the COVID-19 Pandemic, which received a Starred Review from Kirkus Reviews.

As for my favorite cartoon? I have many but if there is one that I think best describes me and everyone else during the pandemic, it's this one:

Old Useage

by Charlotte Hinger 

I've almost let this day slip by without posting. Truth is I've had such a frustrating experience with Amazon that I'm beside myself. Now that's an outdated usage if there ever was one. "Beside myself" I mean. I have plenty more old usages. 

The fact is, I would be much better off if I really were standing beside myself or otherwise completely detached from this problem. Or hovering over myself or psychologically in a pleasant place instead of being completely engaged with this apparently insoluble mind-wrecking situation. 

I will send a complete set of my Lottie Albright mysteries to anyone who can solve my problem. Here it is:

I have sold copies of my first historical novel, Come Spring, on Amazon Vendor Central for many years. Twelve, I think. The company sends an email when it has an order. The orders come from warehouses, not customers. Suddenly, I cannot log in to my account. There is no central support email for Vendor Central without logging in. 

But I can't log in. That's the point. When I try workarounds like changing my password, it changes the email to my customer account. Which I do not want to do. The hang-up may be in the two-step verification which also wants to address my customer account. I don't receive the code on my iPhone, nor will they call me. Which suggests that there is something wrong with the stored phone number. But there doesn't appear to be. Naturally since I can't log in, I can't check the validity of this information. Besides, it's been there for 12 years and worked just fine. 

All the emails sent from Amazon through customer support are boiler plate and address problems with a customer account, not a Vendor Central account. 

Solutions will be gratefully tried. Remember, this is a Vendor Central account, NOT a seller central account. 

Tiredly, 

Charlotte

Something old, too much new

As a kid I loved Christmas presents. I liked to think I was easy to shop for since what would always make me happy were model airplanes. There was the year that I dropped hints, in the form of brochures, of my desire for a minibike. The experience taught me not to put much credence in the Law of Attraction. Older now, and as a dad having masqueraded many times as Santa Claus, my perspective on the giving of presents has shifted. I realize that the best things we can give one another are not material objects. But I'm not going to risk being labeled as a Grinch by withholding gifts. I know the pressure of giving something, and the closer the relationship, the more money you tend to spend. As a result, I've bought expensive gifts that ended up gathering dust or were promptly regifted. Gift cards are a convenient way to assuage gift-giving guilt.

At my age, I pretty much have what I need. As to what I'd like? Beachfront mansions are unfortunately out of the question. In fact, like most of us, I have too much stuff. I have a closet full of coats, of which I wear only three with any frequency. My spring/autumn coat, my winter coat, and my Are You Kidding, It's a Blizzard Out There coat. For some reason I have five pairs of heavy-duty snow boots. Years ago I wrote a story where a gangster told a smart-mouth wannabe, "Hey kid, I got shoes under my bed older than you." Which is true.

When I was growing up, I was always losing stuff. Since then I've earned how to hang onto things. I'm proud that I still carry a pocketknife that I bought for myself for my 40th, twenty-four years ago.  My yoga mat is likewise more than twenty years old. On my nightstand rests my Ninja Turtle water bottle that dates back to the mid-80s. I get cranky if I lose gloves or a pair of sunglasses, even though I only buy cheepy ones. What doesn't last? I can wear out a pair of jeans in two years. Sneakers and bedroom slippers last about a year. And I've got a cardboard box of obsolete phones, mismatched chargers, tangles of cable, busted keyboards, and dead mouses.

Seeing as this is a writer's blog, I'd like to say that I give the gift of reading, i.e., books. Which I do, sparingly. I have a stack of books given to me which do little more than gather dust. It's bad karma to give them away until the requisite time has passed. I could give cards to Amazon or a local book store, but that seems too much like, "Here, let me give you something that's good for you, versus what you'd rather have."

So as we close out 2019, enjoy the rest of the holidays and have a Great New Year!

Pirates Ahoy and Closing Fast

I have my email program set to alert me anytime someone writes something about my mysteries. It's a handy little gizmo. Whenever Deadly Descent, Lethal Linage, or Hidden Heritage comes up, I get an email.

The past week I've received a number of messages offering my books for free. It burns me up! Someone has pirated my books. Again. This is so unfair. I don't earn a cent from this kind of operation. I'm going to paste in the contents of the email:

If you want to get Lethal Lineage pdf eBook copy write by good author ... The Lethal Lineage we think have quite excellent writing style that make it

Lethal Lineage PDF eBooks Free Download | Page 1 Lethal Lineage (Lottie Albright Mystery #2) by Charlotte ... Lethal Lineage has 35 ... Carol said: LETHAL LINEAGE Poisoned Pen Press 2011ISBN. Flag as irrelevant

Some English, huh? And please note that it's really my book. Not some other book by the same name. It's clearly labeled as part of the Lottie Albright Series. I would be willing to bet that this company is not based here in the USA.

All of the large publishing houses attached to the giant conglomerates (the Big Five) and large independents such as my publisher, Poisoned Pen Press, send Advance Reader's Copies (ARCs) to reviewers associated with magazines and newspapers well in advance of a book's publication date. Librarians also get their share of goodies. Publishers hope that libraries will order the books for their patron’s enjoyment, and that bookstores will stock the book. ARCs are in paperback and they are surprisingly expensive to produce.

It's well worth the expense and effort to have a book reviewed in one of the big four magazines that are especially influential in the trade. They are Publisher's Weekly, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, and Booklist. A good review in Mystery Scene sends us over the moon. Needless to say making the New York Times is almost too much to hope for. That's here in America. I imagine our Canadian friends could contribute a lot more venues.

Imagine the disappointment when three months before a book is published and available for sale to readers, a paperback version of this book is offered on Amazon by a third party vendor at a low price. How does this happen? Well, some reviewers offer their ARCs for sale perhaps even before they have read it. They have a little side business. But the bottom line is that there is no bottom line. The author doesn't make a cent from the transaction.

Pirates are an entirely different matter, although the outcome is the same: no money for the writer. Since my books will be downloaded for free, I'm a bit bewildered as to who makes money on this kind of a deal. There were more links I could have clicked on. I suspected that would be a mistake so I didn't do it. The free books could have been a ploy to collect information and numbers they had no business using.

If you are reluctant to spend the money for a book, please support your local library. This gives an enormous boost to authors. Librarians only stock books the patrons want to read. If no one ever checks out our books, eventually they stop stocking them.