Cyber Security TIps for Writers and Other Professionals.

(Morguefile Photo.)

Spurious E-Mails.

We’ve all gotten those spurious e-mails from Burkina Faso where someone who is barely literate would like us to help them get $10.5 million dollars. The e-mail goes on to mention a plane crash in the jungle, and how the doctor, or the cabinet minister or the president, or alternatively the rebel leader, was the sender’s father, and how they need help getting the money from the Bank of England. It was stashed there by their corrupt government when the money was recovered, and they’re holding it for the rightful owner, but unfortunately they can’t properly identify themselves as they are destitute except for their computer…and they are rebels.

All you have to do is give them some personal banking information, and they’re willing to give you half the money because you are such a good and kind-hearted person. Some of these e-mails are fairly creative in terms of storyline. I’ve been tempted to steal that one about the Princess in the Somali refugee camp and her dad the rebel in the hills overlooking the capital city working to free the people from tyranny.

Most of these probably don't even come from Burkina Faso.

Masquerading.

Lately I’ve seen e-mails purporting to be from Chase Manhattan, Wells Fargo and others. These have a document attached to them and they want you to click on it to see the details of ‘your account.’ I don’t have an account there—kind of a dead giveaway, but logic doesn’t seem to play much role in the typical e-mail scam. I never click those documents. Never. A while back I got a spurious one from Pay Pa1.

There was a warning that if I didn’t update my account information immediately, ‘I could lose my account.’ So there is always a call to action, and from the point of view of the scammers, the more immediate and the more important-sounding, the better. I never respond to any spurious e-mail ever. While they already have your e-mail address, for all I know they might be able to get your IP address—allowing them to masquerade as you, and responding may give them other clues, more personal information, and it could even turn into a dialogue. If you had a soft head, they might go to work on you with persuasion. One e-mail claimed to be from a friend, on vacation far away, and how she had lost her phone, and she needed $1,400.00 to pay the hotel bill and fly home as their tickets were stolen too. Yet we had never really talked. It was a non-relationship, which are common enough these days.

What gave that Pay Pa1.com one away was the e-mail address of the sender. It was: PayPa1.com etc, etc. But what looks like the ‘l’ is actually a ‘1.’ The difference is pretty subtle, but of course Pay Pal already had that address sewn up. The scammers couldn’t use it. When I looked at the image/e-mail again, it was fuzzy and indistinct in some ways. It was a bogus copy, a sort of reconstituted screen shot of a Pay Pal e-mail. (The author is not an expert. –ed.)

Red-Hot Lovers.

Lately I’ve seen quite a few e-cards from red-hot lovers, again they have something they want you to click on. No one loves me, and no one is in love with me, and no one has a crush on me, so that’s usually a dead giveaway.

Notifications.

Another one is Twitter notifications. I couldn’t tell you how many times people have followed me on Twitter. Then they send a direct message. It usually goes something like this: ‘Someone is spreading nasty rumours about you on their blog,’ they provide a link to click on, and here we begin to see a bit of a pattern. Scams prey on common human failings or even human strengths, like greed, or fear, or vanity. They prey on the need to be loved, or your generousity, or the wish to be helpful. They try to play on your sympathy.

The scammers try to cover all the bases. Since I’ve never clicked on a DM link on Twitter from anyone I don’t know, (and they’re not that sophisticated to begin with,) there’s no way for me to say if it’s a virus, inappropriate photos, (a sick joke of some kind,) or perhaps in many cases just a landing page with some form of not-too-scrupulous pay-per-click application running.

Anyone you don’t know sending you photos or documents or links is an alarm signal.

Be Suspicious.

So the scammers will go on your Facebook profile page. They look through your friends list, find some of your friend’s names—say a real estate salesman. Then they pretend to be them. Here the giveaway is that the sender’s e-mail address will differ, as they can’t actually send anything if they haven’t hacked your friend’s account. That’s a whole different problem, even then, if the friend lives ten thousand miles away and you’ve never had personal contact with them, it is wise to be careful about clicking on anything, or replying to anything.

But mostly, they have to send it from somewhere else. These will often show just a nonsense jumble of letters and numbers. After a while, I learned to be suspicious of anything out of the ordinary or routine. Bad spelling and bad grammar, run-on sentences, subject matter, no previous contact, there are often a lot of subtle clues to consider.

So if someone you know on Facebook or other platform suddenly shows up in your inbox, (again with the docs, links or photos,) you should seriously ask yourself why they would be sending you things that have not been previously discussed, from a person who is certainly nice enough but you’ve never met and they live ten thousand miles away. You’ve never engaged in long chats with them, and you don’t even really know who they are. Someone like Wells Fargo is savvy enough about security (and their own reputation,) to put the message in the body of the e-mail, and any links will be the same as the official company links on their website. You can always Google it on a separate tab and see what it really is.

The most dangerous ones are the ones from someone in your hometown, as there is some psychological bond of trust there already.

You have to think about what you’re doing. Sometimes the best thing to do is to just turn off all notifications, and only use the ones like on Facebook, Twitter, etc. Clicking on links in internal messages, or in the chat box, has plenty of risks, and if you’re a writer, sooner or later you’re going to tick someone off for any number of reasons. The very fact that we have to be out there and visible can attract the attention of scammers and otherwise destructive or mischievous individuals.

Here are more tips on basic internet security from the Ontario Ministry of Consumer Affairs.

The Sleepwalking Time Traveler.

(Jacques-Louis David, 'Mars Desarme par Venus.)









Tim Norton woke with a start. Staring wildly around the room, nothing was familiar.

It was happening again. An unknown woman stirred beside him, mumbling in her sleep. A trickle of drool came out of her mouth. The pillow looked wet beside her face, and Tim was in a whole heap of trouble because he had a funny feeling this wasn’t nineteen-ninety-eight any more.

He eased out of bed, with his heart beating hard in his chest.

No clothes! Nowhere could he see anything that resembled his clothes, or the clothes of any other male.

A younger woman, sleeping on a couch at the other side of the room, sat up, yawned, looked at the shutters, and then she looked at Tim.

Tim stood there in a total funk as the servant screamed bloody murder, and while he couldn’t really blame her, considering he was a naked man in a private bed chamber, it didn’t seem fair because it really wasn’t his fault.

***

“I would like to know how he did that!” Doctor Panjay Sumalamalon was understandably upset. “People don’t just disappear into thin air!”

Nurse May Dowlings huddled beside the doctor. Her head was hanging, but why should she feel guilty? She wasn’t the one who let him out.

“He was right here ten minutes ago.” She wasted no time seizing the moral high ground. “And that damned door was locked, as you yourself can testify.”

The doctor, on Nurse Dowlings insistence, had in fact checked the lock upon seeing the picture in the monitor—an empty bed, some disheveled sheets and no one in the adjoining bathroom. With their swiveling camera, snug behind its plastic bubble in the ceiling, there was no way for Tim to hide around the corner.

Reality mocked him, and he sure didn’t like it very much.

“There has to be some explanation. Check the corridor cameras and the security log.”

It sounded like a warning, or an accusation, and she wasn’t going to put up with that, not even from the great Panjay Sumalamalon.

“Good. We'll do that. And then you can sit down at your little desk and give me a written apology.”

***

“Guards! Seize him!” The husband shouted, red-faced and feeling at his side for a stiletto or a poniard or something.

“Oh, J-J-Jesus.” Tim stammered in dismay.

Two colorfully-garbed and rather beefy young men strode forward, and when Tim saw the tip of the spear coming down to face level he just naturally bolted.

There was nowhere to go. Except for the bed, the couch, a window, a door and a lot of tapestries and curtains and wall hangings, there wasn’t too much in there to hide behind. The maid was shrieking, the husband was hollering and cursing, and the guards were threatening and poking with their weapons. The second guard had a wavy-looking sword and seemed to have a pretty good idea of how to use it as he jabbed and swiped at Tim.

Tim tripped and went down, and the guard with the spear went right over him, falling heavily. There was a terrifying moment when he thought the second guard was going to chop his head off. He rolled away with alacrity, with a sudden shriek ringing in his ears.

The guards stood there, gazing in terror as the master of the house died horribly, staring up at them from a half-sideways position on the floor with the butt end of about a six foot long spear sticking out of his chest.

Tim grabbed the sword from the second guard’s limp hand and stepped in close.

“This is over right now, buster.” He drove the thing into the man’s guts just below the lower ribcage on his right side.

Gurgling and screeching, the man fell at Tim’s feet.

The other guard ran from the room.

"I have to stay alive until I get so tired…that I just fall asleep.” It was his only way out of this place. "Hopefully, I will have some kind of a crazy dream.”

Tim stepped in close and she tipped her head back for one final kiss.

“Thank you, thank you, oh, golden stranger.” She moaned as if in despair. ‘Whatever happens, it was worth it. And these guys were just pigs anyway.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Tim spun on one heel, and dove out the window.

Luckily for the impulsive Tim, they had a moat or something down there.

***

Three doctors, four security men, two lawyers, eight cops and eleven other staff members watched the recording in ultra slow-motion.

“Well. The man actually disappears on screen.” Stone was the night janitor.

He was a well-read college boy who could be pressed into service in an emergency.

“Interesting. I’d like to meet him if you ever get him back.”

Stone was leaning on his mop. About forty eyes turned and stared at him and he blushed.

“So, um, I’ll just get back to work then.” He slowly began to back and nudge his way out of the press.

“You have to admit, it’s a pretty darned good trick.” Sanjay sighed, rubbing his left hand around in small circles in the area of his mouth and chin. "And here we all thought poor Tim was crazy."

For the fiftieth time, they watched as Tim’s body just sort of faded from the bed, where he was peacefully sleeping by any standard of judgment. The bedclothes dropped and Tim wasn’t there anymore. He was just gone.

“This is not happening.” Constable Brewster was adamant, tired as he was at this hour of the night.

Everyone called him ‘Buff’ for some reason.

“Who wants to write this report?” Constable Willikens, a new officer, gave the same sort of initial impression as a side of beef hanging there on a hook, all big and hard and cold.

“I’ll do yours if you do mine.” Doctor Sumalamalon blurted it out in disbelief, and the group broke up in nervous laughter.

They were past the panic stage.

“Jesus, Christ.” Brewster was at a loss. “All we can really do, Doctor, is to take a report. I’m not even sure we can classify this as a ‘complaint.’ I guess you would call it an incident. We’ll do an incident report.”

“The tabloids will never believe this.” Panjay didn't like this at all. “They’ll think we’re putting them on. Honestly, all I can do is to document everything, and give it to you guys. This is going to drive my malpractice insurance guy buggy!”

They all made several copies of the file, wrote their own reports and notified the next of kin.

There was nothing more they could do for Tim.

***

Walking around a strange land at night, buck naked and soaking wet, with nothing but a sword wasn’t much fun, but it could have been worse. Tim killed the first person he found who looked about the right size and at least then he had a cloak, some sort of leg-wrappings and sandals.

“You shouldn’t have laughed, you bastard."

The body was out of sight, and there wasn’t much blood. It was mostly on the grass. The rain would soon wash it away. Tim threw some dirt from the road around on the more visible splashes and then got out of there.

Thinking it through carefully, he kept the sword, hanging it awkwardly inside of his stolen cloak and down his left leg. In a stroke of genius, he walked with a limp and hunched over. Painful as it might be, it was better than getting hacked up with swords and hatchets and things.

Tim cut straight into the woods. Almost anything was better than the two-lane cow-path that passed for a major highway in this part of the world, and in this era. Tim figured his survival and even comfort and convenience depended upon chucking all the old rules out the window, and for some strange reason, he had never felt better in his life.

“As for why all this is happening…frankly, Scarlett, I don’t give a damn." Tim weaseled through a thick growth of hawthorns.

With enough of this stuff behind him, he would feel a lot better about evading any mounted pursuit.

***

Tim woke up feeling all soft and warm and cozy. He wiggled his toes in sheer bliss. What a wonderful feeling to wake up and feel safe.

Morning light streamed through flimsy curtains.

“No.” This was not his bedroom.

“Good morning.” Someone spoke and Tim’s heart almost shot out of his mouth.

He sat up in a heartbeat to regard a tall, spare figure dressed in a black suit, a white shirt and a bowstring tie. The man was seated at his bedside on what looked like an old wooden Shaker chair, all spindles and things.

“Good morning.” Tim confidently swung his legs out from under the covers, which looked like real linen and a quilted comforter with tiny white points, quills ticking out here and there.

“Please don’t kill me.”

Tim paused with his feet on the floor and his hands on the edge of the bed.

“All right.” Tim looked him over.

He waited.

“You were all covered in blood. You had some awful clothes on and you were sort of clutching this big old sword to your chest. I mean you no harm. You can have your things back…”

His voice trailed off as Tim nodded.

“I found you sleeping the sleep of the damned, and you wouldn’t wake up.” The dark-haired, blue-eyed man explained, or tried to explain as best he could.

He looked to be about forty-five years old.

“Thank you.” Tim was noticing that he was wearing clean pajamas, although he still felt grubby.

“You need a bath. My housekeeper, Missus Lee, will draw you one. My name is John.”

The stranger waited patiently as Tim thought it all out.

“Your things are right over there.” He beckoned at a side table near the window. “I suppose if you must go, you should maybe sneak out of town the back way, or even wait until nightfall. People would talk.”

“What do you want?”

Tim drew a long breath and let it out again. He sagged on the edge of the bed.

“I would love to hear your story.” John face lit up with a grin.

“What year is this?”

“I knew it!” John’s face was overcome with a look of pure awe.

The gentleman put his hands on his knees and dragged himself to his feet.

“Rheumatism." He went out into the hallway. “I’ll get you a drink.”

Tim nodded. Tim heard his footsteps receding and then the voice lifted in query.

“Missus Lee! Missus Lee!”

***

Missus Lee found clothes that fit Tim, although they were a little big. To his delight, John had an old pair of boots that fit perfectly and there was even an old Stetson for him to wear.

The two men sat on the porch, looking out over the street, wide and dusty.

“And you have no idea how this happens to you?” John was filling up notebooks at a prodigious rate, and plying Tim with questions about his adventures.

John was not so much interested in Tim’s time travelling, which he couldn't explain anyway, as he was interested in the details of the cultures he had visited.

“All I know is that I went to sleep one day and woke up in the middle of a big plain, with a cloud of dust on the horizon.” So much had happened to him in such a short time. “It was the Chaldeans, or the Hittites, or somebody.”

John shook his head in envy.

“You may find this hard to accept, but I would switch places with you in a heartbeat, if I could.” John sipped a mint julep.

“You’re welcome to it.” 

They came up with a plan. John slept for a few nights beside Tim’s bed on a cot, uncomfortable as it might be, with the two men hand-cuffed together. This seemed reasonable, as the sword and the clothing stayed with Tim when he ‘moved,’ as he put it.

But it was not to be.

***

Tim woke up in his own bed. It was really his bed. The handcuffs and John were gone. He lay there, afraid to move, afraid to think, afraid to do anything…but he had to pee. Tim’s heart leapt, for while it was surely temporary, it was also home.

Oh, God, this was his home.

The room was chilly, as he stiffly got up and lumbered to the bathroom, looking at all the familiar things, the stereo system, the big-screen TV, and the fish tank.

There was someone in the bathroom. The noise came again.

Tim stood in the hallway, and the bathroom door was closed but he could see a crack of bright yellow light along the bottom. His jaw dropped, as normally, if anything about Tim’s life was normal, normally he lived alone.

The door opened and the light went off, but he could see just fine.

“Ah, there you are, my darling.” It was a woman dressed like Cleopatra. “We’ve been looking all over.”

She clapped her hands and a whole bunch of weird flute music started up.

“Are you hungry, my love?”

“Yeah—yeah, I’m real hungry.”

Tim rolled his eyes around, taking it all in. He noted a strange air of unreality about the place.

There was no roof, no ceiling, nothing but blue sky above. Tim looked up at the sky, and the hair stood up on the back of his neck with a cold chill of indignation. It was an awful feeling.

There were times when he felt like some plaything of the Gods, and that they were all sitting around up there watching him and laughing at all of his misfortunes.

End

Louis Shalako has books and stories available in ebook and audiobook from Google Play. Thank you for reading, and listening.

E-Book Marketing using Excerpts.

Books are easy to borrow.

Many of the great books I’ve read over the years were borrowed. My friend’s old man was in light cruisers and escort carriers during the war. Another buddy’s dad flew Lancaster bombers, and Spitfires, and taught courses at Pensacola in the early years of carrier aviation, when the Brits invented the angled flight deck, and two or three other things, actually. (Some of what his kid told me might be bullshit.)

What do you buy the aging veteran for Christmas, when he’s got enough ties, socks, underwear, and aftershave lotion to last eight lifetimes? A book. A war book, because you know how he loves that sort of thing. Over a lifetime of birthdays and Christmases, these old fellows end up with a lot of books. With my old man, it was anything to do with airplanes, or anything to do with WW II history. He loved that stuff, but then as a boy he lived through them headlines, right? He was an amateur historian, although his theories were pretty crackpot in some ways.

Both of my buddies had read most of those books, but when I spotted them I immediately went over and started looking at the titles. I ended up borrowing three and four books at a time. This was mostly because I could see them.

E-Book Marketing.

When marketing e-books, the only place people are going to see them is online. The chances of someone looking over another person’s shoulder on the subway and seeing the cover, title and author name are pretty slim. Most of us can’t afford to rent space on a billboard, and we have no measurement of its effectiveness anyway, not so far. On the other hand, paperbacks on coffee tables, bookshelves full of hard-covers in someone’s living room, or a sheaf of glossy magazines in a rack in the bathroom are fairly easy to spot.

Paperbacks at the drug store or in a rack in a department store are fairly easy to spot as well. It makes impulse buying possible.

Other than being in online bookstores, E-books rely on word of mouth to a far greater extent. They aren’t in brick and mortar bookstores. They’re not laying on benches at bus stops, either. So far, they can’t be donated to thrift shops. I have no idea if there is anyone with a ‘used e-book store’ out there, but it may come. What would the discount be based on? Cover condition? It’s getting a little dog-eared around the edges, right?

No one is going to stumble across one of our e-books in Wal-Mart in some desperate last-minute shopping bid for the perfect stocking-stuffer.

This is why so many independent authors feel they must promote or at least advertise their wares one way or another. The real problem is figuring out what works, and how much is just enough. It’s just as easy to shoot yourself in the crotch with a sling-shot, if you have a poorly thought-out campaign.

As we head into Christmas, I’m thinking of trying a campaign of excerpts. As long as I have a picture of some kind on it, I can post it to Pinterest, and a few other places too. It brings blog traffic, and gives anyone reading it an idea of the sort of material and writing they will find in the book.

Here’s a couple of excerpts from ‘Horse Catcher,’ available from Smashwords and many other fine retailers.

This is Chapter One, 'Dooley Wakes Up.'

This one's from a little deeper into the book. Note that I have a better marketing image now.

I’ve never gone at this systematically before. Those excerpts were posted, often while a WIP, (work in progress.) While it might not be the greatest marketing technique to show products that were only half done, the fact is that now I have the excerpts, and it’s easy enough to use them methodically, over the next six weeks or so, and then maybe try something else. This is the value of experimentation.

Now I that I have the excerpts, I can try something different with them.

Here’s a great song by the Tragically Hip. ‘Trickle Down.’

Insecurities.

There will always be insecurities in being independent, because we are relying on no one else for our pay-cheques or our validation. In the above photo, the reader can see how one of my short stories, ‘The Apparition of the Virgin’ ($0.99) looks in the Nook for Desktop application.

Totally off the record, it looks beautiful. Right?

Don’t read that and go thinking that I don’t like Clive Cussler, because I do.

Sometimes a parody is just a parody.

“When are you going to write a successful book?” When my thirteen year-old nephew asks that question, I think he means million-copy bestseller status.

He means being on the cover of Playperson Magazine and getting interviewed by Colbert.

(Phooey on you, Monsieur Colbert.)

Time to make a will.

It’s just the sort of terms that people think in. They don’t know any better. Theoretically I should make a will and leave all of my intellectual properties (sic) to my nephews. It’s hard to imagine them guys knowing what to do with 'The Company,' but if I don’t legally leave it to them there’s no chance at all for them to find out…right?

It’s probably not going to make whole hell of a lot of difference to me. I could always leave it as a cultural artifact to the Canadian people. I doubt if they’d know what to do with it either, which basically just leaves the government or some charity somewhere.

I’m just saying.

Spammers.

Every so often I'll read a snarky comment about spammers. If you have a traditional publishing deal, hopefully you got a $50,000 advance and your book is in all the stores. The rest of us have to learn how to promote our books one way or another.

Stuart goes postal.



“Good morning, Stuart. How are you today?” Mr. Shin’s voice greeted Stuart as he entered the cool yet brightly-lit interior of the local supermarket.

The automatic greeting emanated from an overhead speaker in the lobby, with its air-sealed doors and glass panels from floor to ceiling. It was twelve-oh-seven a.m. on a Tuesday night; or rather a Monday morning, according to the machine.

“Uh.” Stuart stalked past the glassed-in booth where the manager’s actual head was visible, bent over a blue-glowing computer screen.

All he wanted was a lousy quart of milk, and he wasn’t in the mood for small talk right now.

It had been a long day. He didn’t want to be up half the night without any milk or food in the house, and he was concerned that maybe tonight would be an insomnia night. Although he hoped not, it kind of looked that way.

“Would you like a cart, Stuart?” The stock clerk’s irritating voice came.

But Stuart only wanted a quart of milk. The only place that was open this late at night in the whole town was right here, a mile and a half out on the Golden Mile Parkway, and he didn’t need a cart for a quart of milk. Theoretically, he could go to the Nine-Twelve Gas Bar and pay two bucks more for it. Two bucks is two bucks.

“Argh!” He grunted at the thing as he sauntered past.

“Hi, Stuart, it’s been a long time.” The butter on the end of the dairy case had a bright, cheery voice. “When was the last time you picked up a pound of dairy-fresh butter?”

Stuart just shook his head at this question, as he’d just had a big blow-up with the car over the parking position. The vehicle was arguing that he could park a ways away, as he could use a bit of a walk, while Stuart would have preferred to park it right in front of the store, as it looked like a spot of rain was on the way. And it was late at night after all. The parking lot was empty, there were plenty of spaces for all, and when was the last time you saw a disabled guy who could afford a car anyway? Not that he was planning to take one of the disabled parking-spots, but there you have it.

But the talking butter display reminded Stuart of an important point, which was that one often thought of a few other items while in the store. Spinning around on a whim, he went back and got a cart.

“I told you so.” The stock-clerk had a note of triumph, and he growled at it in response.

Stuart walked down the aisle, and wished he could turn all this stuff off, as one-hundred-and-fourteen cheeses bid for his attention. As he moved along, each product had a range of about two metres, in which it would activate by motion sensor or body heat or something and then it would go into its spiel, trying to outbid all the other products on the shelf for his attention.

“Mister Jones! Mister Jones!” The cottage cheese yelled.

“Stuart! Stuart!” The Monterrey Jack Cheese by Kraft had something it urgently wanted to draw his attention to.

“They’re fun for your tummy, Stuart.” The process cheese slices clamoured as he proceeded past.

“Argh.” Stuart groaned as he went by.

He wished he’d never accepted their ‘points’ card, the one with a little radio ID chip in it, but he had thirteen thousand points saved up, almost enough for a trip to New Guinea that he was promising himself. Only another two thousand points to go, and only a month and a half before the deadline. At that point, he would lose the first five thousand. But he couldn’t let that resentment stand in his way…one quart of milk would be five more points.

All he really wanted was a quart of milk.

Not that it wasn’t a good cheese or anything like that, but at some point one tired of all the racket. Just then his phone buzzed, and he pulled it out of his pocket, pushing the cart along one-handedly while his attention was momentarily diverted by the pictures on the push-handle mounted video display screen: the Sports Illustrated Annual Swimsuit Edition was out, and Stuart reminded himself to grab one at the checkout. The display on the phone indicated that an automatically-generated e-mail from the auto-dealership where he had bought the turkey, the lemon, had arrived. The last time he had taken the car in for a free recall repair, he walked out with a bill for over ten thousand dollars.

'A few other little things' were found wrong with the car upon, ‘a casual inspection.’

None of them were covered by the original warranty on the two-and-a-half-year-old car.

He shoved the phone absent-mindedly into his pocket again.

“Ten cents off a half-dozen eggs, twenty cents off on a dozen.” Yackitty-yack went the eggs. “If you forgot your coupon, just ask at the checkout.”

But Stuart just wanted time to think. He knew he needed a quart of milk, and surely there was at least one other thing. He’d driven all the way out here with a mental list of three, or maybe four little things. At least two of them had been crucial, one of which was the milk, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember the others. And yes, a bag of chips would be nice, and something else as well—if only he could remember that one other thing. He was pretty sure it was just the four items.

“We can beat that.” The next product display spoke matter-of-factly. “While the sizes may vary as pictured in this week’s flyer-insert, our eggs in the five and ten-packs are only a dollar ninety-nine and three-forty-nine. And you don’t need a coupon.”

“Why in the hell would anyone make a five-pack of eggs?” Stuart was mystified as to where the world was headed sometimes.

Was the whole world going insane? Or was it just him?

“Originally, increasing demand led to a slightly smaller pack than a dozen, i.e. ten eggs. Then one thing led to another, and we ended up with a half-sized pack, of five eggs. But people of a certain demographic group love the trendy and upscale asymmetrical packaging.”

“Who in the hell would buy five eggs?” Would the madness never end?

“New Age, the twenty-five to forty-year year-old segment, college or university-educated, mostly lesbians, many of whom only eat one egg at a time. Or they eat two and serve three to a friend. Or maybe they each eat two and save one for mixing up a batter of some sort or another.”

“I’m sorry I asked.”

“Most of our clients have a tattoo. We get that from all kinds of surveys. Do you have any tattoos, Mister Jones?”

“No!” Stuart wondered whether to take the car in for the recall, or just ignore their e-mails.

Milk, chips, pop…was it pop?

“Well, you probably don’t want any of our eggs, then.”

“I already knew that.”

Was it pop that he wanted? It was milk, chips, pop, and one more thing. Was that it?

Lunchmeat? Bread? Pickles? None of these items jogged his memory with any conviction.

“Would you like to participate in a survey?”

“Argh.” Stuart moved on, finding no peace as he sped up abruptly and zipped along towards the other end of the aisle where the milk was kept.

“Orange Juice! Margarine! Poppin’ Fresh Breakfast Buns!” Their words blared and blasted and sang and murmured and muttered and buzzed all along beside him as he went.

Dozens of voices called out to him as he traversed the hundred feet or so till he got to the refrigerator he sought.

“Argh. Argh.”

He slowed there, gripping the push-handle of the cart and grinding his jaws.

“And how can we help you today, sir?” The fridge greeted him in vacuous cheer as he approached.

“I just want a quart of milk, a fucking quart of milk. And I don’t want no fucking back-talk from you!”

“What size of milk are you looking for? Our two-quart jug of two percent is thirty cents off.”

“I want one God-damned quart of milk. One God-damned quart, just one fucking quart of milk. One quart. Where is it, you son-of-a-bitch?”

“Our line-up includes one-quart plastic jugs, and one-quart waxed cardboard containers."

“Argh. Just tell me where they are.”

For some reason he was blinking at a high rate, completely uncontrollably. For weeks now, he had been under stress at work, and at home, but just knowing it did no good. He wondered if it was all coming to a head, and if he was having a nervous breakdown. All that commuting at a high rate of speed to save time…racing from traffic back-up to traffic back-up, stoplight to stoplight, waiting endless minutes at a standstill in the coffee shop drive-through…

“Milk.” Stuart snarled resentfully, as he ground his jaws back and forth. “Just give me some fucking milk, before I smash your ugly display into a million pieces.”

“Two metres further down to the right, sir.” The machine muttered quietly to the still hulking and tension-ridden figure of Stuart.

Stuart, who just stood there, holding on to his cart with both hands for dear life.

“Is there a problem here?” The store’s security-drone floated directly ahead of him, it was right in his way.

“I just want some fucking milk! Get the hell out of my way.” An ashen-faced Stuart Jones seemed unable to move on.

He had just about had enough of this place.

For some reason this place was always better when it was crowded, then the hum of real human voices, women, kids, infants, store employees, all two of them in this eighty-thousand square-foot retail space, drowning out the bedlam of the artificial ones.

“There’s no need to create a disturbance.” The machine chided him in its metallic, officially-oriented voice, like a Canadian news-caster speaking through a tin horn.

“Argh. I just want some fucking milk. Why can’t you turn all this shit off? I’m tired of all these voices, voices. I just want you to shut them off!”

“But they are so pleasant and helpful to our other customers. We have to think of their safety and convenience as well.”

“You don’t have any other customers, I’m the only one in here!” The outburst brought only more reproof.

“Sir, if you cannot behave in a civil and socially-acceptable manner, then store security will have to ask you to leave.” The thing had flipped over into its neutral, non-judgmental tone.

“Argh!”

“I don’t know how to interpret your response, sir.” The machine floating there in front of him had an air of regret. “Perhaps it would be better if you were to just leave now, sir.”

“Argh. All I want is a fucking quart of milk. And why should I be polite to a fucking machine? Fuck you. I want a quart of milk.”

“I’m sorry, sir. Police are being notified, and I will have to ask you to leave peaceably.” The floating cop-thing spoke in its imperturbable fashion.

“All I want is a quart of fucking milk!” Stuart manfully shoved the hovering machine aside, which took a surprising amount of force.

Brushing past the hellish thing, he headed for his destiny.

He remembered a report on TV that said these things were gyro-stabilized. He gave it another shove, and then forced his way forward with the cart. He could see the milk, his prize, awaiting him just two feet away…suddenly his body stiffened and convulsed, and before his numbed brain could comprehend what was happening, he was laying on the floor, as another bolt of lightning flashed through his body.

“Please leave quietly. This establishment is private property…we have rights.”

“Argh! Argh! Argh!” The machine hit him with blast after blast of Taser energy.

“If you continue to resist arrest, you will be subdued using sufficient force.” The cop-thing regarded the squirming blob of protoplasm that had once been a fairly rational human being, Stuart Jones.

“Argh!” Stuart moaned and cried, his tears leaving a wet path, and lubricating the floor under his limp torso and abdomen as he tried to crawl away from the freezer case.

Unfortunately, blinded by tears and rage, anger and resentment, Stuart crawled in the wrong direction. He was headed for the back rooms, by all factual indicators, and the cop-thing Tasered him again, while Stuart cried, shouted, gasped, choked, gagged, and puked on the floor, his limbs, no longer under rational control, still moving reflexively, still struggling to get away.

It was mercifully over. Strong hands gripped him under the armpits.

“Fuck.” Then a short, sharp blow to the head stunned him into a silence that he stubbornly decided to maintain against all assault.

He watched with a corner of his mind as the cops, real, flesh and blood ones this time, dragged him out to the parking lot. As he slid along, he noted the blood dripping from his head, or facial area, leaving bright, flower-shaped spatters on the highly-polished flooring of the store.

“Up you go." Then Stuart heard a big ‘thunk’ noise, a light flashed in his head, and his world went black again.

Stuart Jones woke up in the back of a police cruiser, and slowly became aware that they were still sitting at a standstill in the parking lot of the shopping center. The security drone hovered outside the car window as an officer in the driver’s side engaged the thing in conversation, and another officer took notes from the other side of the front seat.

“Whoa.” Stuart groaned in disbelief.

“I’ll have to ask you to restrain yourself, sir.” The female cop in the passenger seat warned Stuart.

Unable to help himself, Stuart bent over at the waist and began to vomit into the floor well, shoving his feet over against the door, and trying to hit the far side with the sudden upwelling of stomach contents.

Suddenly the fire of fifty-thousand volts shot through his body from a hundred short, sharp metallic electrodes in the seat and back bolster of the car seat.

“That will teach him.” The pretty blonde female cop smiled as Stuart screamed and screamed and screamed.

Finally she pulled her hand off the little yellow button on the dash, complete with its little logo, ‘Taser International.’

“Are you going to behave?”

“Oh, God, oh, Jesus Christ.” Stuart's bad back had just been sent into a spasm, and suddenly he began vomiting again.

“Ah!” Stuart’s screaming rose again as the female cop zapped him with another ten or fifteen seconds of high-voltage.

The tasering only stopped when Stuart was little more than a blubbering, sobbing, broken thing, no longer recognizable as a man or as a human being. Finally he was able to speak.

“What are you doing? Why are you doing this?” He gasped and sobbed uncontrollably. “All I wanted was a fucking quart of milk!”

The cop-bitch’s hand was hovering all over the yellow button as he said all this, so he stopped. With a mean glance at her victim, she waited for a moment of silence, then slapped the button again, sending Stuart into a paroxysm of fits, starts, seizures, and forlorn attempts to get up and stay off of the seat. Finally, he was unable to sustain it, and fell back onto the seat with a little groan, and then apparently went unconscious.

“So what did this turkey do?” The male cop asked the security-drone for more details.

“He was causing a disturbance.”

“Did you receive any complaints? Like from other customers?”

“No, not really, but he was bothering our employees.”

“And how many employees were on duty at the time?” Stuart’s cracked and almost psychotic voice came unexpectedly from the back seat. “Can you tell me that, you stupid and immoral machine?”

“You’ll get your day in court, Buddy.”

Stuart was rewarded by the sight of the female cop’s hand on the button again, and another jolt of electricity was sent sleeting throughout his body.

“He assaulted a store employee.”

“You don’t have any employees.” A berserk Stuart shouted from the back seat.

“Another fifty thousand volts for the rude person in the back seat.” The female cop, a certain Rodericka von McGuinty, known far and wide, and even in this stinking little shit hole of a town, as, ‘The Bitch in Blue,’ hit the button with reckless joy.

“I’m sorry, I have decided to withdraw all charges, and am irrevocably wiping all details of this incident.” The drone, for no apparent reason, began backing away from the car.

“What up with him?” The male cop, a certain Steven Culvert, was quite mystified by this.

Turning around, he was slightly bemused to see what had once been a living, breathing, human being, albeit one with a few issues, maybe…or what was left of him, smoking in the back seat.

Jake looked at Rodricka for a moment, then shook his head in resignation.

“We can only kill so many people before someone somewhere begins asking questions.” He gently reproved her. “They can’t all be mentally ill—we have to shoot a criminal once in a while or it doesn’t look too good.”

Still, one had to admire her stand-up attitude regarding issues of access to justice for the poor, the mentally ill, the disabled, the working poor members of this here community.

With Rodericka, zero-tolerance meant just that.

Still, if the information was properly presented to the media, the situation might work out to their advantage.

Steve could visualize the CTV News Channel coverage now: “Mentally-ill terrorist subdued by brave, courageous, self-sacrificing, noble, unbelievably honourable, terribly underpaid, quick-thinking city cops…”

Yes, that would do very nicely, and here in Canada, the media was carefully trained not to ask any questions.

Steven Culvert looked at his watch.

“Well, this is all very upsetting. How about grabbing a bite to eat?”

“What about him?” She indicated the figure in the back seat with a jab of her thumb.

“I don’t think he’s very hungry right about now, and if we’re going to dump him in the usual place, then I prefer to do it on a full stomach.”

All in all, it was looking to be a pretty uneventful shift. The best days were the ones where absolutely nothing of any real importance happened. Any cop will tell you the same thing.



Building an audience; psychohistory.

Building an audience requires patience and foresight.

Building an audience as a writer takes time, by that I mean over a longer term, and it also takes time out of your day.

Presently I’m working on my tenth novel and at the same time I commit myself to two major blog posts a week. One of them is always speculative non-fiction that I write that week. I also post short fiction, some kind of crazy story, or a book excerpt on the weekend, usually.

Because there are links to my products on the blog, I work to build up the audience for the blog with the presumption that it will help to sell books.

Sounds simple enough. After getting about 5,900 hits in the first four years of blogging, in the early part of this year I started using the methods of ‘active blogging,’ which can be found here.

At this point in time I’m getting just under 5,000 hits per month, which shows some success with these methods. With a little applied effort toward a specific goal, I might crack 5,000 hits this month.

While there are a million factors that affect the sale of one book to one reader, everything from the blurb, the cover, name recognition, genre and price, number of sales channels, et cetera, at some theoretical level, the more people who simply see your book, the more likely you are to make a sale.

But, there are challenges. If a million people see your book, by reading your blog, and absolutely every one of them says, “Man, this is the worst blog I ever read, Buddy, I ain’t ever going to buy one of your books,” then clearly the blog is a failure. Even though you have somehow developed an audience of a million people for your blog.

The blog’s effectiveness is exactly zero if the sole purpose is to sell a book. There are any number of purposes for a blog, including politics, news, commenting on popular culture, simple information, recipe-sharing, whatever. You don’t necessarily have to be selling anything, but you want to be read, and the same principles apply.

Now, if a million people see your products on your blog and a thousand of them actually go and buy a book, then you have converted that audience into a readership, and the effectiveness of the blog would have a zero, and then a period, and then two or three more zeros—(Whatever. My math never was too good, and then you have the numeral ‘1.’) It’s probably eight or nine or ten zeros.

This looks like this in real math: 0.000(whatever)1

Then the goal or challenge becomes to improve the ratio. You want to take a few zeros out of that result, right? Maybe even move it up into the realm of whole numbers.

There are ways to test results. If you post something on atheism, and get thirty hits off Twitter in the first hour, that tells you that thirty of your available followers are interested in that subject matter, although the quality of their experience is still guesswork. That’s why comments are so important. Someone liked it enough to care about it and comment on it. (Not all of your followers are on at any given moment.) Assuming that people are buying the books, if a post on fuzzy bunny rabbits brings in a hundred and eighty page hits in an hour and you sell six times more books, then the measure of effectiveness remains the same, but the subject matter has six times the audience-interest, and perhaps you should post more of that type of material. Obviously I’m over-simplifying. It’s best to remain true to your basic message, which in my case is that I’m a hell of a good writer and people really ought to consider reading one of my books…

Also, if you post something and get 100 hits in a day, repost it on the weekend and get fifty hits, repost it Monday morning and get three hits, then obviously prime-time versus off-time factors come into play, but also your available followers have become saturated. Those who saw the link the second and third time around might have already read the story. Or, they're just not interested.

The best thing is to post it all over your available platforms, maybe repost it on Twitter once or twice, and then drop the story for weeks or even months. Trust me, I do recycle stories. Stories that started off with fifty hits will eventually have several hundred, or more as time goes on. That involves a certain amount of SEO, (search engine optimization,) which I'll talk about some other time. This is one reason we try to build up the number of Twitter followers, as well as friends and followers on other platforms. This does not exactly equate with ‘fans.’ A fan is someone who likes you or your material for any reason and may occasionally purchase it, download it for free, collect them or swap with friends, etc. (That’s a whole different blog post, in my humble opinion.)

At a very simple level, the interactions, which are all human, can still be rendered in terms of mathematical formulae. Hari Seldon was right, ladies and gentlemen. It’s psychohistory in the making.

The trick has always been to figure out what people want to read and then provide it for them. It's an attempt not so much to predict the future in probabilistic terms, but to somehow affect its outcome, also using probabilistic methods.

I guess that’s all I was really trying to say.