As I have said before, I don't know what's on my Bucket List until it happens. As a retired geek, I don't shy away from techie stuff, but it's been a long time since I had a paid job doing techie stuff. In today's information age, there is so much to keep up with. I have to depend on my kids to tell me about the latest technology.
My latest new thing is Red Box. Yeah, I know they've been around for over ten years, but I don't usually have a reason to rent movies. With my Adult Attention Deficit Disorder, I find it much easier to focus on a movie in a dark theater. If I watch a movie at home, I'm multi-tasking all over the place.
It took Quvenzhané Wallis to make me think I should rent a movie. The Beasts of the Southern Wild didn't make it to any theaters in Raleigh, or Durham where #1 son lives, until after the Oscar nominations for movie, director, and bast actress were announced. Now it's appearing at a theater in Morrisville near the RDU airport. My son had some time to hang out at my house on a recent Sunday afternoon, and used my PC to find the movie for himself on Red Box. "It's cheap, and it's easy," he said. (A dollar, twenty-eight with tax) I really wanted to see the youngest Oscar Nominee in action, so the next weekend, I signed up with Red Box, and drove three miles to the Hess station pick up my movie. I tried not to look like a newbie when I swiped my credit card on the machine and waited until the big red box spat out my video. Then I looked around to see who was watching....nobody. I felt so proud of myself.
The movie...hmm. It has won awards at the Cannes Film Festival, the Sundance Film Festival, the Deauville American Film Festival, and a bunch of others. What seems to have impressed the judges was a cast of total unknowns, filmed on 16mm film. Five-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis, is an obvious standout.
But what the movie was about, leave it to your own imagination. It's a fantasy set on the Louisiana gulf, on a fictitious island set apart from the mainland by levees. There's a storm coming, and there are huge wild boars, and melting icecaps, and a little girl trying to survive with her sick Daddy, in a place they called The Bathtub where every day is a holiday.
The little girl gets five stars. The movie gets a foot in the door for its young producer Benh Zeitlin.
I want to thank everybody who came to my blog tour. Special thanks to my blogger friends who opened up their blogs for one day to promote TELL THEM I DIED.
My email report from Goodreads says 591 people entered the giveaway for four (4) autographed copies of TELL THEM I DIED. Goodreads selected the winners through some unknown algorithm. The giveaway was open to US and Canadian members of Goodreads. All the winners are from the USA, none from the North East.
And the winners are: Kathleen from Virginia Jeremy from Hawaii Marque from Colorado Tonya from Oklahoma
I put your books in the mail this morning using the cheapest method, Media Mail. Our friend in Hawaii should expect delivery by February 16, 2013. Happy reading!
I gave myself a new mobile phone for Christmas. My first Smartphone is a Samsung Galaxy S III. See how big it is compared to my old phone!
So I have spent the last month discovering new ways to do the things I used to do with my old texting phone, and finding apps to do things I could never do on my old phone.
I can scan QR codes! I don't know why I want to, but I'm scanning crazy. And my phone can tell me the name of the song playing on the radio, when I can't.
My latest discovery was to replace the simple "Notes" I had on my old phone. I thought there ought to be a simple function already on the Galaxy. When I couldn't find it, I went searching for an app. Yes, there's an app for that. Probably a few dozen apps for that. But I chose Evernote, since it's free and has a lot of five star reviews.
I powered it up and at first it seemed like overkill, then I found I could synch my notes from my phone with my desktop. Had to install Evernote there too. What's really annoying is the little pop-up from the system tray telling me it's synching...every ten minutes. I don't have that much stuff in notes!! But I could if I wanted to...add photos, videos, docs, pdfs.And if there is stuff I want to keep track of on my desktop, but don't need on my phone, I can tell it not to synch that stuff.
I bet there are hundreds of you out there saying, "I knew that!" OK, tell me how you use your Evernote.
When I wrote my latest novel, TELL THEM I DIED, I didn't realize I had fallen into a new genre, Boomer Lit, sometimes called Gran Lit. I was only writing what I know, and I do know what it means to be "of a certain age." The good news is that we Boomers are the biggest generation the world has seen, and we are more active and vocal than previous generations who lived to see their 60's.
When I spent the last week "discovering" my new Samsung Galaxy III phone, my son told me, "Ma, you are so Baby Boomer!" Whatever that means.
Anyhoo, you don't need to be a Boomer to enjoy Boomer Lit. One of my favorite books in recent years was "The Hunger Games," a book for Young Adults.
TELL THEM I DIED is a romantic adventure that doesn't conform to the usual romance novel genre in that the protagonists are all over fifty years of age, retired, and with discretionary time and funds to enjoy life, and online friends to share every minute. And unlike other romances, much of the action takes place on the internet on social networking sites. The story was inspired by the many people I came to know and love over many years on social networking sites. People who are not online a lot don't realize how real those long-distance relationships can be. Over all those years, my online friends have married, had children, divorced, and some have died. And then there is the travel element. My husband and I travel a lot, and we share our travel photos with our friends online. Several friends have suggested that I write a book about my travels. I think travelogs can be rather boring, but I decided to waeve some of our adventures into the story.
The main characters of TELL THEM I DIED are Laura (Screen name: A1QTEE), owner/operator of Blaq-Kawfee.com, and the men in her life who come in an out of the social networking scene. There is Laura's number one confidante and forum moderator, Angela (Screen name: Angelplaits), and her husband "Bodine." The men in Laura's life, ex-fiance', Jackson (JackDaniels), Lester (TheGuy), Laura's son, Carlton, and her some-time boyfriend Harman all present challenges for Angela as she tries to find out what happened to her dear friend when she gets the news that Laura has died.
And I'm celebrating the New Year with a giveaway: GOODREADS GIVEAWAY - January 2013
I am giving away four (4) autographed copies of TELL THEM I DIED through a giveaway administered by Goodreads.com. If you're not already a member of Goodreads, it's easy to join. Go here for the giveaway: http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/40065-tell-them-i-died
