Monday, August 29, 2011

A Note to Campaigners

...and other folks with great blogs:

I am semi-illiterate when it comes to this kind of "stuff." But I am learning! For those of you who use Wordpress, how in the world do I follow you? I don't do the Facebook thing (I know, I know, but you see, that hermitess, do-my-best-writing-while-living-under-a-rock streak is strong in me!), and want the blog updates and info to come to my Blogger dashboard, not my email. I shall be looking this up shortly, but if you have any tips, please pass them along!

Following aside, I'll be listing the sites in the right hand margin under a new blog roll. I'm going to try and do this as I visit individually, rather than all at once. If I haven't gotten to you yet, never fear; I shall!

If for some reason you don't see your site in the margin, or my little blank icon in the Followers listing on your page, drop me a comment and I'll troubleshoot, just in case.


What I would look like if I
 were a poorly drawn computer
 cartoon that lived in Paint.
And didn't wear my hair
 in a mean librarian bun most days.
Which I do. So there.
 On to other business; a brief intro. "Getting to know you; getting to know all about you..."

My name is Jes. I have about a thousand nicknames, or at least a few dozen (that's actually not an exaggeration), but for our purposes, I'd love to be your one-name-only household blogger, like Cher or Madonna, with perhaps a much smaller dash of infamy than those two have in their makeup.  What do you prefer to be called?

I'm from the United States Midwest. Home of hills, prairies, virgin forests, caves, lakes, tornadoes, humidity up the yin yang, rednecks, hillbillies (oh yes, there is a difference in those two!), Mennonites, grocery stores and movie theatres with hitching posts, wide accents and wider towns, and super low cost of living.  From what neck of the woods do you hail?

I adore old movies, as you can probably tell by the quote, and of course, books. I'm also a huge fan of food, so if you like to cook/putter in the kitchen, be sure to check out the recipe posts. My WIP, other than the various unfinished short pieces on here, are my JUNOWRIMO novel, which is completely bogus and I'm in love with it anyway, and my upcoming NANOWRIMO novel. I do have a finished novel; Shadow Child, but frankly, it's crap, including the title. It's about a pair of incestuous twins, joined by a young woman, all on the road to individuation. Long story short, all hell breaks loose, and murder strikes. Total crap. Might pick it up again. Errr, yeah. Twenty years from now! What are your projects, scrapped and otherwise?

 In real life I can be a bit of a bit*h, but only when people are stupid and do things like trying to cite Wikipedia as a source for a newspaper article (oh, it's happened). That's just moronic--not to mention professionally inexcusable--to me, and it gets me all hot and bothered! Otherwise, I strive to be kind (or at least strive to remember to be kind!), and my normal temperament is determinedly cheery. You may think these personality traits are at odds with each other; I assure you they are not! When a determinedly cheery person blows up, all in-yo-face,  it's taken as a Very Serious Occasion, and people hop-to much more readily. I find this extremely satisfying. It's the only way I've found around the awful temper that runs in my family. What about you? What is it like to deal with you in "real life?"

That's enough for now; I look forward to meeting all of you!

15 comments:

  1. I don't know how to get them up on blogger, Jes. I manage the blogs through google reader, which is very handy. Rachael did a good post about it, last campaign.

    My names Debs, but you can call me Kelda -- hee hee.

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  2. I just go by Shannon; I'd never even heard the nickname Shan until a couple months ago, if you can believe it. Now only my middle brother calls me that and from anyone other than him, I prefer Shannon. ;-p

    I'm from Colorado! I love it here, which will likely be evidenced in my [Mostly] Wordless Wednesday posts. I'm even thinking of starting a blog about Colorado history, but I'm just not sure yet. One seems to take up plenty of time all on its own!

    Like you, I can be very nice and helpful or I can be a big B. Stupidity is one of the fastest ways to send me over the edge. That and being rude. I can also be a person's most loyal friend and supporter, though.

    As far as Wordpress, I haven't figured all that out yet. Sometimes they have Google Friend Connect, but when they don't I have to really like the blog to subscribe to it. I'll do Networked Blogs before subscribing via email.

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  3. Nice to meet you Kelda and Shannon!

    I'll have to check through Rach's archives and see if I can find the post you mentioned, Kelda. Thanks for the tip.

    Colorado; that's just a hopskipandajump away! And I've never heard that nickname either; but I only know one girl with your name and we call her "Sha-na-na-nahh, Sha-na-na-nah" (and preface by saying "Make 'em say uhh," lol), like the Master P song. Drives her nuts, I think. Shan is much quicker! lol.

    You should so do a Colorado history blog --I can geek out on history. Yeah, do that! In, you know, all your spare time from your other blog, lol.

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  4. Hi there! I'm in your short story group for the campaign so I'm stopping by to introduce myself.

    I haven't figured out Wordpress either, so hopefully someone can share a tip with us for that!

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  5. Hi back! -->Don't tell, I ended my sentence in a prepostional phrase.

    I literally just figured it out and cam eback to post an update comment--all you do is copy the URL. Then, when you're in your dashboard, go the the bottom left of the viewing pane, click "Add," and paste the URL. Der; I dunno why it took me all this time to try copy and paste...

    Nice to meet you! I'll pop over to your page directly.

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  6. What do I prefer to be called? Trisha!

    Where do I hail from? Well, I was born in the UK but I live in Western Australia.

    What are my projects? see here: http://thefarseas.blogspot.com/p/my-projects.html

    What am I like in real life? I'm hilaaaariously funny (a must-have at any party!), smart and witty. I'm also incredible humble. Oh, did I mention sarcastic?

    Now, seriously - about following Wordpress folks, I had to give in and use Google Reader. It's the only way!

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  7. I just started Google Reader myself, because I have the reverse problem; I've got a Wordpress, and I'm still having difficulty following Blogspot blogs. C'est la vie.
    -Michael

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  8. I didn't know you were born in the UK, Trisha! I bet your are pretty darn funny in *real* life. And I figured out how to follow everybody on my regular Blogger Dashboard, just took a while; .

    You know Michael, that just figures, lol! I just cottoned on how to actually follow yours; I think Mish had trouble following me earlier this summer, and I believe she uses Wordpress too. Ahh, well.

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  9. Hi Jes!

    Fellow campaigner, of course, and I use wordpress and I have a few tips on subscribing!

    On my blog, in the first sidebar, there is a little blue button that says 'follow'. If you click that button (and I just logged out of my wordpress account to test this as a non-subscriber), a box pops open where you can put your email address in to get my posts in your inbox.

    If you use an RSS reader, my RSS link is all the way at the bottom of the page on the left. A trick I learned the other day is that if a wordpress blog doesn't have an RSS link posted, all you have to do is add /feed to the end of the main url. (This only works on wordpress.com blogs in my experience.)

    IE: http://blackanddarknight.wordpress.com/feed

    That will allow you to point it to whatever reader you prefer. Hope that helps!

    Now on to the rest!

    I prefer to be called Rebekah or Bekah. I don't respond at all to Becky.

    I live way north of Texas, and a little bit south of Kansas ;).

    I have lots of projects, but what I'm working on right now is an entry for Writers of the Future, and planning for NaNo (both my story, and for the region, because I'm an ML).

    Today I'm dealing with real life by doing Campaign stuff. One of my childhood pets (that lives with my parents still) is being put down tomorrow morning, and I've been weepy all day. This is at least distracting me a little. It's been about an hour since I last cried . . .

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  10. Hello Rebekah, lovely to "meet" you!

    Thanks for the Wordpress tip, though I found a way around following by email (I have really tight spam filters on right now and wanted to avoid changing all my settings) and it was relatively straight-forward, if a little old school Good ol' copy and paste. Perhaps I should do a short post on it...I'll start by editing this one.

    Seems like we are distant neighbors!

    I'm not familiar with Writers of the Future; now you've got me curious and I must go a-Googling.

    NANO is intimidating enough, I can't imagine being a ML; props!

    As for your pet--I'm so sorry! I don't necessarily know you, but I do know the pain you must be going through right now. The animals in our lives--whether still at mom-n-pop's or not--have a real relationship with us and deserve a good long cry. But I hope you get to feeling better; he/she would have wanted you smiling (and petting and playing) as much as possible. Happy writing, Rebekah!

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  11. Jes,

    Fellow Platform Campaign blogger just stopping by to say hi.

    Hi

    ;)

    Stobby

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  12. Hi Stobby! I'll pop over to your site in uno momento. Happy trails and happy writing.

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  13. ....or I would, but I can't seem to find the addy on your user profile. What's your site, Stobby, so I can stop by it?

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  14. Hi hi. Returning the favoring and following you back from the campaign trail.

    I should do one of the intro posts where people can chat about what they do.

    Incestuous twins and a girl. *thinks* male twins or male/female? :D

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  15. Hello, hello! I'd definitely read an intro post; they're helping me keep everyone straight, lol.

    Err, boy-girl twins. *sigh* It's such a hot mess I don't even look at it any more, lol

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