"The notion that such persons are gay of heart and carefree is curiously untrue. They lead, as a matter of fact, an existence of jumpiness and apprehension. They sit on the edge of the chair of Literature. In the house of Life they have the feeling that they have never taken off their overcoats."
- James Thurber, My Life and Hard Times

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things


First of all, I'm going to ask that everyone reading this post, stop and offer a prayer to Whoever you believe in, to give our California firefighters victory over this battle. The closest fire is a good 25 miles from my house, yet there is a layer of ashes on my car, and the sun has been filtered through a brown haze all day. The heat won't stop, either, as though the clouds are on fire and pressing down on us. We need relief, either in temperature or humidity, or (miraculously) even rain. If you don't pray, then donate some $$, volunteer at a shelter, or grab a bucket.
It's time to help.



Now, let us move on to other subjects.

Back in August, I offered up another contest for an autographed copy of Freezer Burn. The rules were amazingly simple: just crawl around my website and answer five questions. The first person to answer correctly would win.

Not only did Nancy Sharpe answer everything, she did it the first day of the contest, and no one else even tried. Tsk, tsk, people, I'm a little disappointed, although I hope Nancy isn't disappointed with her book. Email me your address, Ms. Sharpe, and I'll get it in the post.

Finally, let's have a little fun, shall we?

Back in April, Michael Steven Gregory, of the SCWC, put a little teaser together for my book and unleashed it on YouTube. Here it is again, for those of you who are interested:





At the time, MSG promoted it on the SCWC blog, with these words:


Columnist and longtime SCWCer Gayle Carline’s Freezer Burn is out shortly from Echelon Press. Here’s a little glimpse into the characters Gayle had to wrestle with in her debut comedic mystery.


I bring this up because I subscribe to Google Alerts (who doesn't?) and receive scheduled emails telling me where my name has appeared on the 'Net recently. Well, not exactly my name - I get a lot of Gayles who aren't me, and some Carolines because Google thinks it looks an awful lot like Carline, but there's usually at least two or three links that are correct.

This week, one link caught my interest. A certain "jamesdanieluc" re-posted MSG's original blog. This is how it ended up:

Editorialist and longtime SCWCer Gayle Carline 's Deep-freeze Burning is out deadly from Echelon Pressure. Here Holds a trifle glance into the characters Gayle shoulded wrestle with in her launching comedic enigma.

I don't know who this person is, but I admire their attempt to translate MSG's words into their own language and back again. Poetry. Sheer poetry.

What more can I say? Please read Freezer Burn, my debut comedic enigma.

5 comments:

Author Guy said...

Game of Telephone, anyone?

dino martin peters said...

Thanks for the reminder to pray for all of you living in California, especially those near the burning fires...stat safe my friend...

Patricia Stoltey said...

My prayers are with you. We had some of the CA and UT smoke in Northern Colorado for a couple of days, enough to give us itchy, drippy eyes and make it hard to breathe. If it was that bad here, it must be horrendous in CA. Stay safe, Gayle.

N A Sharpe said...

My thoughts and prayers are with everyone having to battle those horrible fires. Wildfires get ferocious in California - it's tragic.

Thank you so much! I am thrilled and really looking forward to reading your book! And...for anyone who hasn't gone to Gayle's website, you are really missing out. It is a great site with lots of interesting and fun pages - you really should check it out. I'm sure glad I did :D

Nancy, from Realms of Thought…

Jane Kennedy Sutton said...

The forest fires look horrendous - I hope the state gets some much needed relief soon.

I see (actually hear) that I'm not the only one who loses control over their character's actions!

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