More on the Facebook page hack, plus another NaNoWriMo win.

As this is ostensibly a blog about my writing, I'll put the writing news upfront: I have won NaNoWriMo once again. Go me! 

This makes ten times I've attempted a NaNo event, either NaNo or CampNaNo, and ten times I've won. NaNo gave my avatar a cute laurel wreath to commemorate my tenth win. (The halo is for being a donor to NaNo.) I've had the wreath previously, and it has been growing bigger with each win; the info on the winner's page this time seemed to indicate I'd maxed it out.

Oh, you want to hear about the book? Well! It's a standalone (at this point) that I've been calling Janis, but the title is definitely going to change. When November started, I thought I would be writing a thriller, but no -- several curve balls later, it appears to be either a straight fantasy or a paranormal romance. Probably straight fantasy, as there are no shapeshifters. It's still about a couple of middle-aged folks who get together, after many decades apart, to act against an authority figure who hurt them both when they were kids. One of the themes of the book is that the choices we make have consequences.

Anyway, it needs a ton of editing, as well as a cover and a new title. I'm hoping to publish it this spring, but probably not right at the equinox, as the temp job will be wrapping up at that point. So I'll shoot for publication in April and hope I don't have to push it back.

***

So about the hackers.

First, I have control of my Facebook page again, so yay for that. The IP people pointed me toward the "I think I've been hacked" people; their Help Center info on the subject talks a lot about how you should just talk to your fellow admins about why they booted you, like I was buddies with these people. There's a link for filing a report if you actually were hacked, but it's not obvious; I probably overlooked it four or five times. Anyway, once I filed my report, Facebook promptly booted the hackers and gave me back my page.

I have now asked them twice about getting the charges reversed for the boosted posts that the hackers took out without my authorization, and I have not received a useful response. I suppose that means I'll have to go spelunking at their Help Center again. UPDATE: I asked Mama Google just now about where to request an ad refund from Facebook, found the proper place to make a report, and... Facebook doesn't think I have an ad account. Which I guess means I won't be charged for those boosts? Stay tuned!

My third concern is the slew of emails I've received over the past few months, each with a bogus account recovery code that I supposedly requested. Here's an example:

I get these nearly every day. Facebook's Help Center says someone probably typed their account name in wrong. Somebody's doing it every day? Really? 

Another thing: While getting my page back, Facebook had me reset my password. I noticed the email I received from them -- from the same email account -- provided me with a six-digit password recovery code. The bogus codes I've been receiving have all been eight-digit codes.

Clearly something's dodgy here, but Facebook doesn't seem inclined to do anything about it. Which brings me to the other thing that bugs me: This whole misadventure started because the hackers sent me a Notification from within Facebook. I gave away my personal info because nobody but a legitimate Facebook department had ever reached me that way before. I was so spooked by the situation that when Facebook logged me out and made me change my password to log back in, I didn't want to do it. How did I know the hackers hadn't gotten control of my account again?

Anyway, I have my author page back and all is well. My message to you guys, though, is to be very, very careful if you receive a message from Facebook -- either in an email or on their platform -- because it might not be Facebook trying to reach you.

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These moments of anxious blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Social distance! Wash your hands! Don't become a COVID statistic! 

Another knitting post, but first: I've been hacked!

lollok | Depositphotos.com

I promised you guys another knitting post this week, and I'm going to get to that in a sec. But first I wanted to let y'all know that my Facebook author page has been hacked.

A couple of weeks ago, in a moment of inattention, I responded to a notification within Facebook that looked like it came directly from Facebook. It said someone had complained about the content of one of my posts and could I verify some stuff for them. Again, without thinking, I gave away some info that would allow somebody to get into my personal Facebook account. And somebody did.

By the time I realized what was going on, a business entity called Ivo Fidriyani had claimed ownership of my page and installed someone named Linda Chhay as an admin. I played cat-and-mouse with these people (and a couple of other names that never showed up as admins on my page at all) until they bumped me down to Analyst -- the lowest possible permission setting, which doesn't allow me to change anything on my page at all.

I tried deleting the page, but there's a 14-day grace period. Every time I'd set it for deletion, the hackers would undelete it.

In addition to all that, any Facebook ads purchased for my author page are charged to the banking info attached to my personal Facebook account. And the hackers have already started to boost some of my old posts. I've set my budget to $1.00. That ought to slow them down.

I think you can understand how freaked out I've been about this. I've reported the intrusion to Facebook as a violation of my intellectual property rights. Hopefully they will do something about it ASAP. 

In the meantime, if you, Dear Reader, happen to see something posted on Facebook from my page (in my author photo, I'm wearing a lavender t-shirt, if that helps), please report it to Facebook as...whatever you think will get their attention. Fraud, if you can. Bullying or harassment will also work. If you get an option to report it for an intellectual property violation, that would be ideal. And thanks in advance.

I'll write more about all this later. Maybe next week, if I'm not crashing on NaNo then -- which I may be, given the amount of heartburn this whole mess has given me this week.

***

Okay. On to happier topics, a.k.a. knitting.

I completed a couple of projects while I was on sabbatical last spring. One of them was this variation on the Vortex shawl. I made it smaller than called for because I intended it to use it this winter as a table-topper for my altar. 

Of course, I have the altar set up on one of the built-in bookshelves in the new place, so now I have a lovely tablecloth with nowhere to put it. Maybe I'll use it to hide the washing machine.

Next up is my well-traveled Traveling Companion shawl. I bought the yarn a few years back at a yarn shop in Boulder, CO, that has since closed. It sat in my stash until I decided to use it for this pattern. A lot of the knitting got done on my Amtrak trip out here in June to find an apartment. I'm sure I'll find somewhere to wear it eventually.

On one of my last days in Virginia, I stopped by my favorite yarn shop, fibre space in Old Town Alexandria, to pick up something for Amy -- and found a cotton yarn that I knew would be perfect for this vest. I finished the knitting after I moved in here. It's called the Brookdale. I like the bottom-of-the-armhole detail.

And finally: Back when I was a fairly new knitter, I made a shawl called the TGV. It was stupid easy -- crescent-shaped, with garter stitch for the crescent part and three or four inches of knit-2-purl-2 ribbing on the long edge. The pattern designer released a variation this year called the TGV Smooth Ride, with stockinette (stocking stitch, for you Europeans) in place of the garter stitch. I had some copper yarn left over from the Level shawl that went fabulously with a variegated skein (a blend of wool, yak, and I forget what else). The point was to use up the yarn, so the shawl is bigger than the pattern called for. but I think it turned out really well.

All knitting photos copyright Lynne Cantwell 2020

In other crafty pursuits, I took a Zoom class yesterday on spinning and tapestry weaving. I learned a couple of tips on Navajo-style weaving and I reacquainted myself with how to use a drop spindle. Here's hoping I won't lose this newfound knowledge before I get around to picking up a drop spindle again, because I have a NaNo novel to finish. In all the times I have signed up for NaNo, I have never not won, and I don't intend to lose this year, either.

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These moments of stress-relieving blogginess (and boy, do I need it!) have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Mask up, wash your hands, and save the big holiday celebrations for next year, mmkay?

Political ads don't have to be true. Not even on Facebook.

Gordon Johnson | Pixabay

Truth in advertising was a topic on Capitol Hill this week, when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) questioned Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg about whether Facebook would allow candidates to lie in their ads on the site.

Zuckerberg said he would, because voters should be able to hear all sides of an issue or dispute, so they can make up their own minds about what's true. In other words, he's saying it's a question of freedom of speech. Here's video of the exchange:

This wasn't Zuckerberg's first comment this month on Facebook's policy, and he was drawing fire from the left even before the congressional hearing on Thursday. One blogger suggested that if Facebook continues to run misleading political ads, then it should acknowledge that it's spreading misinformation -- and making money from it.

Sounds like the sort of thing a truth-in-advertising law would cover, doesn't it? In fact, the United States has truth-in-advertising laws, administered by the Federal Trade Commission, and they cover ads for lots of things. But not politics. Why the exemption? Because of the danger of placing limits on freedom of speech.

A truth-in-political-advertising law might have helped John Kerry. The 2004 Democratic presidential nominee's campaign was severely wounded by an opposition group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The group challenged Kerry's record as a Vietnam War hero, among other things, and the idea that he'd lied about his record stuck -- even though vets who'd served with Kerry agreed with his version of events.

It turns out that this argument about lies and half-truths in political ads surfaces at least every four years -- not just in 2004, but in 2008, in 2012, and of course in 2016. And the answer is always the same: political ads are protected speech. The place to sort the liars from the truth-tellers is in the marketplace of ideas, and the job belongs not to those who provide the platform but to the voters.

That worked well enough back in the day, when everybody read the same newspapers and watched the same TV networks, and thereby got the same ads. But now, Facebook sells ad space that can be targeted to, say, certain zip codes, age groups, and interests. That's great when you're selling books, say. It's not so great when you're selling real estate and trying to keep blacks from seeing your ads in mostly-white neighborhoods. Or when you're selling a political candidate and looking for people who would believe anything you say about your client's opponent.

I'm not saying we should enact truth-in-advertising laws for political speech. I guess what I'm saying is that we voters should make an effort to hear what all the candidates have to say -- and make a concerted effort to determine which politicians' claims are true and which ones aren't. 

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These moments of bloggy truthiness have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Book marketing 101: Why not to sell to other authors.

I'm a member of a bunch of indie author groups on Facebook, so I see this a lot: An author puts their book on sale and, with dreams of shooting up Amazon's bestseller list dancing in their head, immediately posts about the sale to every author group on Facebook to which they belong.

But a lot of these groups don't allow marketing posts at all. Or they limit the posts to certain days in threads specifically set aside for that purpose. Groups always, always post their rules -- either in a pinned post at the top of the discussion section, or in the About section, or (ideally) both. And still it happens.

I had to spike a buy-my-book post this weekend in a group where I'm an admin. I was in a good mood, so I tagged the author in a new post and explained what had happened to hers. Her reply was along the lines of: "But it's a free book! We can't post those in here, either?"

Well, no. You're still asking people to buy your book. It just so happens that the current price is $0.

Then it occurred to me that maybe folks don't understand why so many author groups ban buy-my-book posts. I'm sure a lot of folks think it's because the ads would clutter up the discussion, so that eventually, actual discussions would be lost. And yes, that's part of it. But the other part is that marketing to your fellow authors is not going to do your career much good.

What every author dreams of is a huge, dedicated fan base, made up of readers who will buy their newest book as soon as it comes out. Right? Well, the way to find these superfans is not to hit up a group of authors. Yes, authors are all readers (or we should be, which is a topic for another day) -- but we read, and write, in all sorts of genres. My books are mostly urban fantasy. Laurie Boris writes mostly literary fiction. Chris James writes sci-fi thrillers. K.S. Brooks writes both thrillers and children's books. Shawn Inmon writes speculative fiction and memoir. Leland Dirks writes contemporary fiction, often co-writing with his dog Angelo. J.D. Mader writes gritty urban thrillers. All of these folks are kickass writers, by the way, and if you haven't read their stuff, you should. But we'd have a tough go of it if, for example, we traded newsletter mailing lists to try to drum up more readers for our own work. Our fandoms might overlap, but not by a lot.

Even if you do make fans out of a bunch of fellow authors, it won't help you much at Amazon beyond that initial sale. Most indie authors are leery of writing a review for another author because the Zon has a habit of deleting such reviews -- especially if they can figure out the authors know one another. (You can still post a review of a pal's book at Goodreads, as far as I know, but getting involved at Goodreads opens another can of worms. I think a lot of authors are still steering clear of it, lest they say something that enrages somebody and cause their books to be showered with one-star reviews.)

And yes, putting your book on sale for free is still selling your book.

All that said, there are Facebook groups for readers looking for their next good book. Those groups would love to have you post there. There are also a host of websites and newsletters dedicated to book marketing; many of them cost money to advertise on, and some don't work as well as they might. The best way to find out what's working right now is to check out indie author groups on Facebook like 20 Books to 50K. Just don't post a buy-your-book ad there.

And as always, I recommend indiesunlimited.com as the best website for indie authors.

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These moments of bloggy advertising advice have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Your newbie indie author questions, answered.

I know, I know -- it's Monday. I fell asleep early last night and forgot to post here.

I don't post a lot about indie author stuff here -- or not as much as I should, anyway, probably. This post ran at Indies Unlimited yesterday. Some of you probably don't frequent IU, although I can't fathom why you wouldn't; we have tons of info about the process of writing, editing, publishing, and marketing your work (as you will see if you click any of the links below).

Anyway, here's the post. Have a great week, you guys.

***

Recently, I was invited to join a Facebook group whose membership includes a lot of new authors. I’d forgotten about some of these newbie concerns. I’d also forgotten how everybody asks the same questions over and over, to the point where those of us who have been at this for a while get kind of tired of answering them. So I thought I’d pull together some of these typical questions and answer them here. Feel free to bookmark this post and refer to it as needed.

Q: I have my plot, but I need interesting characters. / I have my characters, but I need a great plot. Can you help me?

A: Sorry, no. I have my own stories to write. (You may want to check Indies Unlimited for articles on developing characters and/or stories!)

Q: Do I really need an editor? Isn’t using Grammarly enough?

A: No. Just no. And running Word’s spellcheck and grammar check aren’t enough, either. Get yourself an editor. If you can’t afford one, line up some beta readers.

Q: What kind of music do you listen to when you write?

A: This is one of those time-waster questions. I mean, some writers use music to block out other sounds so they can concentrate on their writing; others find music too distracting and need to write in silence, or as close to it as they can get. My question to you is this: Why is that relevant to you? Instead of polling other writers about their musical tastes and habits, wouldn’t your time be better spent trying to write with and without music, to figure out which way works best for you?

Q: What’s your book about? What genre do you write in?

A: Another time-waster. I write in the genre of putting my butt in the chair and cranking out some words instead of trying to start conversations with other writers on Facebook.

Q: I don’t read books. Can I still write one?

A: Sure. But reading teaches you a lot about writing. Most writers learn about characterization, pacing, story arc, and so on by reading other people’s books. Plus you learn grammar and punctuation rules along the way. These are all important tools in your writing arsenal. Why would you forgo an opportunity to improve your toolbox?

Q: I can’t tell anyone what my book is about. I’m afraid someone will steal my idea.

A: Relax. Somebody once claimed there are only seven stories in the world. That’s probably an exaggeration – but guaranteed, somebody somewhere has thought of your terrific idea already, and there are likely multiple books, movies, TV shows, and so on that explore it. Mind you, that doesn’t make your story derivative and it doesn’t make you a failure. It means you need to tell your story in your own way. Besides, we all have our own ideas – nobody’s interested in stealing yours. And if someone does actually plagiarize your work, you can take them to court.

Q: Is it ever okay for your characters to go to the bathroom?

A: Depends. (Old joke, sorry.) Does the scene advance the plot? Does it explain something about your character that you can’t show another way?

Q: How about cursing? How about graphic sex?

A: I happen to curse like a sailor, and as for sex…oh. You’re asking about your story, aren’t you? Again, it depends. There are niche genres for just about everything. As a matter of fact, erotica sells really well. But on the flip side, if you don’t like reading about it, no one can force you to write about it.

Q: Are independent authors real writers? Don’t you need to have a contract with a traditional publisher to be a real writer?

A: Bless your heart.

***

These moments of FAQual blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Stitching memories.

You may recall that I was out of town a couple of weeks ago. One of the things I did was to stop by the house where I grew up, and pick up my mother's old sewing machine.

Here it is, ensconced temporarily in my daughter Amy's room. It's a Kenmore Imperial, model number 117.591, manufactured by the White Sewing Machine Company (which also manufactured sewing machines under its own brand) and sold by Sears only in 1942. Which means my mother bought it when she was single; she and my father didn't get married until 1947.

These machines were all steel, and they were workhorses. I found this video where a guy demonstrates a restored one. He got it to sew through four layers of khaki, and even two layers of garment leather. Mom never would have tried sewing leather on this machine, but I'm pretty sure she sewed vinyl upholstery material on it at least once. It doesn't do zigzag or any other fancy stitches, but it can make buttonholes with a massive contraption that you hook up in place of the presser foot.

It's in the original cabinet, and I had never realized how small that cabinet was because Mom always had the leaves folded out like this. The cabinet is only about 32 inches wide when closed. To close it up, you drop the sewing machine on its hinges and then fold the tabletop extensions in. It looks like a small desk, and I suppose you could use it as one if you didn't want your sewing machine on display all the time.

The machine has no foot pedal. Instead, there's a switch that you control with your knee. Another unusual thing about it is that the hand wheel -- which on this machine is the bulbous extension on the left -- turns the opposite way from most machines. So instead of pulling it toward you to start stitching, you push it away from you.

I have a lot of fond memories of this machine. My mother sewed most of her own clothes and mine, too, and I would often stand next to her while she worked. I don't think I learned how to sew on her machine -- I'm pretty sure I learned in home economics in junior high -- but I made my share of stuff on it before Mom bought me a sewing machine of my own. She continued to sew for herself as she got older, but she suffered from dementia in her later years and eventually gave everything up. After she died, I was the kid who sorted through all of her stuff, and I held it together pretty well until I saw cobwebs on this sewing machine. To me, that was the true measure of how far she had slipped away, even before her death. The machine would never have been still long enough to gather cobwebs in the old days.

Anyway, it's here now. I'm tempted to have someone restore it, even though I don't really have a place for it and I rarely sew anything anymore. I'll let you know what I decide to do.

***
Three bits of news:

1. The second edition of  A Billion Gods and Goddesses is out! You can get a free copy at Smashwords with coupon code NA58R. The coupon expires Sunday, September 11th, so don't wait too long to use it.
2. I'm honored to have been featured on The Heroine's Journey today. The organizer, Peter de Kuster, has featured more than 125,000 professionals in his Hero's Journey and Heroine's Journey project to date.
3. Yesterday, I was live on Facebook! The opportunity to be the guinea pig for the Authors Live! group popped up midweek, so I didn't have a chance to blog about it until now. Here's the video, in case you missed it. (I hope the link works. Technology: It's here to help us...) Enjoy, and I'll see you next week.

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These moments of seamy blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Confessions of a marketing skeptic.

So here we are, in week two of my test run for sharing my blog posts as Facebook Notes. It seems to be as good a time as any to make a confession: This is basically the only marketing-type thing I've done for my books in months. Why? Because I have an innate suspicion, bordering on irrational fear, of anything that has to do with marketing.

There, I said it. And I apologize in advance to my friends who work in marketing, because the rest of this post is going to be about why this is so.

For starters, I came up through journalism. It's hard to believe now, but in those days journalists thought themselves above any involvement with filthy lucre. Yes, we did our jobs and got paid for them -- but we were supposed to be discerning about the topics we covered. If we were asked to write about a new store or a new product, it had better have something more interesting going on than just being new. It had to be unique, or very nearly so. The redevelopment of a decrepit retail block? We're in. A mac-and-cheese box whose perforated, thumb-sized "open here" button actually worked? We'd like to talk to the inventor. A product that would keep one's shoes from coming untied during the course of a day? We'd be all over that. (Am I the only grownup who has trouble with her shoes? Even if I double-knot my Keens, they untie themselves in a matter of hours.)

Anyway, the point is that we had standards against running stories that amounted to unpaid infomercials. (That's one big reason why so many news releases end up in the trash: the hook is too weak. If there's no real news in your news release, it's going in the circular file.)

Sometimes it was someone from the sales department who would try to sell us on doing a story on his/her client's new something-or-other. Unfortunately for the client, the same rules applied: No hook, no story. And "cool new store in town that's going to buy a lot of advertising from us if you put it on the news" was, unfortunately, not a hook. Sorry/not sorry.

From news, I jumped into the simple living movement. And among that movement's tenets -- besides downsizing your life and reducing your footprint on the earth -- is keeping an eagle eye on your discretionary spending. Don't buy something just because your neighbor bought one; analyze your spending habits and stop buying stuff you don't need; buy the store brand if the quality's the same; kill your television; and so on. These things were pretty much second-nature to me, as my parents grew up in the Great Depression. And I never made a fabulous salary in radio, so I was doing a lot of them anyway, out of necessity.

Fast-forward to today: I've let up on simple living and I no longer work as a journalist. But I still have the sort of inquiring (all right, maybe cynical is a better word) mind that asks what's so new about this thing and do I really need to spend money on it.

And yet here I am, writing novels, which are pretty close to the top of the "stuff no one needs" pile, and asking complete strangers to take a flyer on them. Karma sucks.

Plus, to get my name out there so that people will know about my books, marketing is a necessary evil. But now I'm doing business with people whose messages I've spent decades resisting, and I am skeptical of all of them. Will Marketer X give me the return on my investment he/she claims? (Doubtful, in most cases.) How much is Marketer Y relying on me to get the word out about the promotion I'm paying him money for? (Crowdfunding sites, I'm looking at you.) Why does Marketer Z insist that I must use a particular blogging platform/book distributor/etc., even though other marketers argue for a different one? Whose pockets are being lined by all this advice, and how?

Last fall and winter, I put a fair amount of time and money into marketing, and didn't get much in return. There are a number of reasons why I've pulled back since then, the Denver saga being one of them. But I'm not planning a big push for any of my books this fall -- despite the fact that A Billion Gods and Goddesses will be out in the next week or so, and I expect to release a Pipe Woman's Legacy set for Kindle just before Thanksgiving.

Which is why I'm counting this blogging experiment as marketing. It's another avenue to get my name out there -- and a fairly unique one right now. And it's free.

Anybody else feel the same push-pull about marketing that I do, or am I the only one?

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These moments of skeptical blogginess have been brought to you (on multiple platforms!) , as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

When social media worlds collide.

Crab Nebula | NASA

Starting tonight, and for the next few weeks, I'm going to try an experiment. Instead of posting at my blog and sharing the post via links on Facebook and Google Plus, I'm also going to try posting a copy of the blog post itself to Facebook's new and improved Notes feature.

You guys remember Notes, right? Back in 2009 or so, it was a place on Facebook where you could post lengthier things: screeds, diatribes, and "how many of these 100 speculative fiction books have you read?" lists. Then Facebook quietly extended its number of characters per regular post to 60,000, and Notes became kind of redundant.

This summer, Facebook resurrected Notes, and turned it into a sort of blogging platform right inside Facebook. It even looks like a Wordpress blog. It's not as robust, obviously, as a regular website -- you can't add tabs and "buy my books" buttons and all that jazz. So why would somebody want to blog on Facebook instead of, say, Wordpress or Blogger?

In a word: eyeballs. Marketers advise that you limit the number of clicks someone has to perform before you get them where you want them to go. Wherever your blog is hosted, you need to attract people to the site before they can read what you wrote. Usually that means posting a link on social media. But unless you're a blogging superstar, not many people will click through. My blog gets a little more attention since I linked the comments function with Google Plus (which you can only do with a Blogger blog), but it's still not widely read, shall we say. So I'm wondering whether cross-posting to Facebook will encourage any more interaction.

I got the idea from Mitch Joel, who wrote in a Facebook Notes post this week that he sees value in putting your posts where the readers are. People have so many choices these days in where they spend their time on social media. If they're comfortable on one platform, they may not feel comfortable clicking a link to go somewhere else. They may even be leery of external links, when so many websites annoy you with autoplay video ads and popups -- to say nothing of viruses. But a lot of people are already on Facebook; if you post a blog there, your readers don't have to leave Facebook to read it.

So I figured it's worth a try. Tonight, I'm going to post this at hearth-myth.com as usual, and also as a Facebook Note on both my author page and my timeline. Let me know if you see it, would you? Thanks!

***
This bloggy supernova has been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

How much would you pay for a verified page?

An odd thing happened to me this week. All of a sudden, out of the blue, I started getting a ton of likes on my Facebook page.

I'm not the sort of writer (yet!) whose fans are racing to sign up for my Facebook page. Oh, I get a few new fans every now and then -- and I love each and every one of you! Have I mentioned that recently?

Anyway, the point is that my page typically doesn't attract likes in droves. The only time I get a lot of action is when I participate in a like-fest, either at Indies Unlimited (where we run them pretty regularly) or some other group where participants agree to like each other's pages. When that happens, I can tell where the likes are coming from, because I recognize the names.

But this week, I got a whole bunch of new likes -- all from India and Pakistan, as near as I could tell, and none of them were names I recognized. I wondered what was going on. I know I haven't sold enough books there to account for that much attention.

Then I started getting messages from people I'd never heard of: "Hey i am ur fan...plz help me...I Want To Be A Editor on yr Page...I will xchange for thousands of likes!!!" Stuff like that.

At that point, it all came clear. These people weren't fans at all. They'd likely never heard of me. What they wanted was my verified page.

See, Facebook doesn't give that little blue checkmark out to everybody -- only to people with pages whose identities they have verified. And even then, you have to be an American. And even then, not everybody gets one. (Frankly, I have no idea why they gave me one. I suspect they looked at my LinkedIn profile and saw I'd worked at CNN and Mutual/NBC Radio News once upon a time.)

So my guess is that some folks on the other side of the world have hit on a brilliant (to them) idea: Contact the admins of verified pages and pester them for access to the back end. Everybody wants likes, right? So offer hundreds of fake likes in exchange for that access. No, thousands! A million!

One guy claimed he was trying to set up a verified page for Kristen Stewart -- who, as an American and an honest-to-goodness celebrity, wouldn't need to hire some guy in Pakistan to do it for her. Another guy asked me to apply for a verified page for him. I tried to explain why that wouldn't work -- Facebook would need to verify his identity, not mine, and I'm not going to submit a fake ID with a US address on his behalf. I think that's when he offered me the million likes.

As entertaining as all of this is -- and it is -- it's also kind of...hmm. Worse than surprising, but not quite all the way to horrifying. Let's call it "causes concern." Because if someone asks you to break the rules to get into the back end of your page, it's pretty much guaranteed that they're not going to play nice with it once they have access. Here's what an editor can do on a Facebook page:

Can edit the Page, send messages and publish as the Page, create ads, see which admin created a post or comment, and view insights.

In other words, if I'd let that guy in, he could have changed stuff on my page, spammed it with his crap, created spammy ads and had Facebook charge me for them, and on and on. And who would Facebook come after? Not Editor Boy, that's for sure.

So far, "Go away or I'll report you to Facebook" has been working pretty well as a deterrent. I hope I don't have to get to the point of blocking whole countries from liking my page. Some day I might have actual fans there.

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These moments of bloggy concern have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Curmudgeon's Corner: Giving "deeply intimate" info to Facebook.

Jim Holmes | CC 2.0 | flickr.com 

I'm back on the East Coast as of late last night. (No further word on the day job. Maybe this week.)

I'm grateful to my friends at Southwest Airlines, who once again set up my boarding pass with TSA PreCheck -- which meant that I was able to sail through airport security without either undressing or unpacking. Eventually, I'm sure, Southwest will quit giving me the status for free, and then I'll have to pay the $85 to the U.S. Transportation and Safety Administration in order to enjoy the privilege every time I fly for the next five years. But it would be worth it. It almost makes flying the way it used to be.

So anyway, I had a pleasant flight home, and then walked into (vulgarity alert!) a shitstorm.

I wrote a post for Indies Unlimited this week about how to get a verified Facebook page. The post went live on Thursday, and The Passive Voice picked it up today. Facebook has had this feature for about two years. A lot of celebrities, corporations, and government institutions have gone for the little blue check mark that tells all of Facebook that their page is the real deal -- not a parody site or some other fakery.

This is for a business page, mind you. You can't get verification for a personal timeline.

For verification of an individual's business page, Facebook requires that you submit a copy of one of three documents: your driver's license OR your passport OR your birth certificate. (For a corporation, they want a copy of your articles of incorporation.) So I put that info in my post.

You would have thought I was directing people into the ninth circle of hell.

"Identity theft!" they cried. One commenter who claims to be a lawyer (but who uses more all-caps and exclamation points than any lawyer I've ever met in real life) said I'd have to be "FOOLISH" to give "such deeply intimate personal information" to Facebook.

Deeply intimate....? It's my driver's license. What can anybody do with my driver's license? Look up my record of traffic tickets? Get into bars? Sure, it's got an ugly photo of me, and my address (which anybody with a little Google-fu can get pretty easily elsewhere). But the license number isn't connected with any of my financial or health records.

Neither is my passport number. Plus, US passports now feature an electronic chip embedded in the back. The number's not going to be useful without that chip.

And freaking out about a birth certificate is just laughable. It's a public record, folks. Anybody can look it up.

What a criminal wants is your financial info: your Social Security number, your credit card numbers, your bank account information. Sure, I suppose a crook could go to the trouble of lifting your driver's license, replacing your photo and signature with their own (good luck with that with a Virginia license), and apply for credit under your name. But why bother? Wouldn't it be easier to just skim your credit card number from an ATM or an online transaction?

But it's the paranoia that gets me. A sense of fear has permeated so much of our lives since 9/11, making us second-guess everything from Facebook to online shopping to military exercises to, yes, airport security. We've become a country where it makes sense to pay the government almost a hundred bucks for the privilege of keeping our shoes and belts on before we get on a plane.

I swore I wasn't going to get into politics on this blog, so I'll stop here. Just...please, folks, for the love of the gods, think before you freak out.

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These moments of deeply intimate blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Don't pamper me, or: Whaddya mean, it's not Sunday?!?

I took today off from work, which gave me a four-day weekend from the day job. It didn't even occur to me that I owed y'all a post yesterday until I was heading for bed last night.

Clearly, I'm still in vacation mode. A week and a half off work, followed pretty closely by an extra-long weekend, will do that to a person. But tomorrow I'll be going back to the day job, and I'm not sure when I'll be taking my next vacation. So it's Back to Real Life Night here at hearth/myth.

Which segues nicely into a post I've been thinking about writing for some time, i.e.: the problem with America's culture of celebration.

The illustration above, which (if memory serves) originated on The Mind Unleashed's Facebook page, got a number of likes when I reposted it on my own timeline last week. It's a great sentiment, right? It's all about living life to the fullest, enjoying every blessing that comes your way, and so on. Right?

But like anything else, "celebrating everything" can be taken too far. That's how we end up with graduation ceremonies for kindergarteners, and with Bridezillas who expect all their elderly relatives and their friends with little kids to pony up to attend their destination wedding in Zanzibar. It's how we end up with a cake a week at work -- a birthday here, a shower there -- and the accompanying squeeze to contribute toward a gift card for the honoree.

Marketers love this, of course. Every special event is an opportunity to convince us to part with some of our cash. Parties need decorations; kids' birthdays need a clown and a moon bounce rental, along with gifts for the birthday boy or girl; and so on. It's tempting to blame the marketers for starting it -- but the truth is that they're just playing into our desire to each have our own special day. We all want to be special, after all. Even the rugged individualists among us sometimes want somebody to fuss over them.

Which brings me to the word "pamper."

I hate that word. Not just because it was the name of a popular disposable diaper when my kids were growing up (although the diapering flashbacks I get when I hear it probably don't help). What really bothers me about it is that I only ever hear it in conjunction with sales of beauty products or services for women. "This product will let you pamper yourself," or "Let us pamper you!" And it's usually followed by, "You deserve it!"

You know. Live a little. Treat yourself. Any time is a good time.

Celebrate everything.

I feel like a curmudgeon for suggesting this, but maybe it's time we ratcheted back some of our celebratory culture. Yes, we all work hard; yes, we deserve to be recognized for a job well done, or a milestone reached. But pampered? Come on.

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These moments of curmudgeonly blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Curmudgeon Corner: Weight loss for fun and profit. Mostly profit.

-PaulH- via Flickr

Oh, leave me alone, already. Two posts about losing weight in two months hardly constitutes turning this into a dieting blog.

Yes, I'm once again doing the Lifestyle Change Minuet. This makes my 974th attempt, give or take, to get my weight into the "normal" range. I went on my first diet in junior high; I lost 27 lbs. and still wasn't within the normal weight range for my height. (Yes, I still remember the number of pounds I lost on that first diet.) In the decades since, I have tried a number of weight loss programs -- everything from Nutri-System (where they provide you with pre-measured food packets, all of it laced with protein powder, and tell you not to eat any bananas) to Geneen Roth's suggestions (my favorite, which actually is excellent advice: "Eat sitting down in a calm environment. This does not include the car") to counting fat grams under a dietician's care to Weight Watchers. Weight Watchers has been the most successful program for me, in terms of the aggregate number of pounds lost -- I'm up to 100+ lbs. for all the various times I've signed up over the past ten or twelve years, including the 14.6 lbs. I've lost so far this go-round -- so I'm doing it again.

All told over the course of my life, I have lost probably hundreds of pounds -- and I have never, ever reached my goal weight. I don't expect to get there this time, either.

Because here is the thing about weight loss programs: If they worked and kept working, then America wouldn't have a problem with obesity. Everybody would be thin. And then the people in the diet industry would all be out of work. So it's in their best interest to design their programs so that their customers have a little bit of success, and maybe even a lot of success. But the deck is stacked against us for a number of reasons (portion creep among them). So we will always be back.

The Weight Watchers program is one of the best of a bad lot. When you pay your money (and it ain't cheap -- the 17-week Weight Watchers At Work program I'm in cost me $186), they give you a two-digit number. This is the number of points' worth of food you are allowed to eat each day. (Your points-per-day drop as you lose weight; as a friend said jokingly, they punish you for being successful.) You also get access to a website (although depending on your iteration of the program, you may have to pay a monthly fee for the site access) that includes a database of hundreds of thousands of food items. The site includes a place where you can list every bit of food that has gone into your mouth, and it will tell you how many points you've eaten and how many you have left for the day.  You can even type in your personal recipes and the online calculator will tell you how many points there are in each serving. And they have a smartphone app with a barcode reader that's tied to the food database. (This beats the old days, when they handed you a sort of cardboard slide rule and a booklet at your first meeting, and you had to keep track of your food on paper.) They give you some weekly fudge-factor points, and you get extra points if you exercise. But that's the program in a nutshell.

But that's not all there is to Weight Watchers. They also produce cookbooks with point values listed for each recipe, cooking tools designed to help measure portion sizes, and a FitBit-type activity monitor. They also sell food under their brand -- lunch-sized entrees, snack foods in two-point single-serving packets, "ice cream" treats, and so on.

It's the Weight Watchers-branded foods that make me crazy. They are not healthy. The lunch entrees are loaded with salt and chemicals to make up for the lack of fat, the two-point snack foods are jam-packed with artificial sweeteners and other chemical additives, and the "ice cream" ingredients list is mostly unpronounceable.

Sure, the foods appeal to Americans whose palates are used to the chemically-processed sugar/salt/fat American diet. People at my meeting buy boxes of them. But shouldn't Weight Watchers be setting the bar higher? Wouldn't it make more sense for them to sell really healthy foods under their brand? How about Weight Watchers-branded produce? Or fruits sporting "0 points!" Weight Watchers stickers? Because even though they tell you that you can eat anything you want (as long as you count the points), it doesn't take long before you realize that it's really pretty easy to beat the Tyranny of the Points System: you just have to quit eating full-fat dairy and anything fried; cut way back on your consumption of grains, sweets, and alcohol; and load up your plate with fruits and veggies, most of which have zero points.

But, see, if they sold really healthy foods, they wouldn't make as much money. And if people broke their dependence on processed foods, then they wouldn't fall off the wagon as easily, gain back all the weight they lost, and need to join up again.

And yes, even knowing all that, I joined up again.

Stay tuned. I'm sure I'll have more to complain about as the weeks go by.

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A few bits of business: As promised, the Crosswind e-book edition is now 99 cents; Undertow is on schedule for release March 20th; and I'm busy planning the Facebook virtual beach party in celebration of the launch. Y'all come!

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These moments of curmudgeonly blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

The NaNo hangover, or: I had a great title for this post, but I can't remember what it was.

Yes, that's right.  After all my dithering, less than a month ago, over whether to participate in NaNoWriMo this year at all, I have won.  In the wee hours of this morning, I dumped the first draft of Book 4 of the Pipe Woman Chronicles into the Validator at nanowrimo.org, and NaNo stuck a fork in me and called me done.  (You guys remind me of this next October, when I'm dithering over doing NaNo again, okay? Thanks.)

Fun Facts to Know and Tell:  At 52,760 words, the first draft of Gravid is ten words longer than that of Tapped, 630 words longer than Fissured's first draft, and 110 words longer than Seized was at this stage.  In other words, I'm scarily consistent.  (Whoa.  I had no idea.)

I'd also like to point out that I started late this year.  I wrote a little bit of the novel while I was in Toronto, but I didn't really get going on it 'til the 5th.  So really, that's 50,000 words in 20 days.  (I just want to kick myself.  If I'd gotten serious about writing fiction when I was in my twenties, I could have a backlist as long as Joyce Carol Oates's.)

But all the late nights are telling on me.  I'm feeling stupid-sleepy right now, as if I might fall face-first into my keyboard at any moment.  I write a word or two, and then my brain goes walkabout; eventually, my eyes refocus on the monitor and I go, "Oh, yeah, I'm supposed to be doing something.  What is it?  Oh, yeah -- Facebook!"

But I really do want to finish this post, because I have news other than just NaNo.  Yes!  Now that I have cleared the decks, I am about to embark on the final round of edits to Tapped.  Which means uploading will commence this weekend, and the book should be available for purchase shortly thereafter.  (I think I've said this on Facebook already.  But maybe not.  Gods know what I've been saying lately, as short on sleep as...uh...was I doing something?  Wait, I was.  Was it important?  Wait....)

In addition:  As all good Americans know, Thanksgiving means Yule/Hanukkah/Christmas/Kwanzaa/Festivus is not far off.  And Yule, as all good Neopagans know, falls on the winter solstice (which, this year, is December 21st).  Now, this particular winter solstice is important for a couple of reasons:  yeah, yeah, that Mayan calendar thing; but more importantly, it's a significant date in the Pipe Woman Chronicles.  Plus, I'll have a new book out. 

So I'm going to start a Winter Solstice Advent Countdown event.  For the next three weeks, there will be a new contest each week with prizes, but I promise not to ask you write anything this time (because that worked so well last time...).

So that's the news.  Tapped will be available sometime next week (don't worry, I'll let you know when); and the Winter Solstice Advent Countdown starts Sunday, Dec. 2nd.

Now I'm going to bed.  Oh, wait -- there was a vote for moar kittehs.  Here you go. 

Please welcome the Lady Morgana to the blog.  But please don't applaud -- the poor thing startles easily.  She has rejoined us at Casa Cantwell for the winter, to help keep Mr. Wommy occupied so that he doesn't drive me crazy.  These two grew up together but have lived apart for several years, so they are currently renegotiating their personal space.  It's going pretty well -- there has only been one night when the hissing/spitting/yowling jolted me out of bed. So far.

(Why is there packing tape on the bar stool, you ask?  Why, that's because Mr. Wommy considers it the ideal scratching post.  The things I do for my grandkittehs....)

Now I'm going to bed.  No, really.

Wait.  Was I doing something...?

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These moments of sleepy bloggitude were brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.