Creative Infusion
Skullduggery in deep places
Well, if you attempted to access my website/blog in the past 12 days, you will have been unsuccessful. Instead you will have been met with a stark message saying in large bold letters: Forbidden …! Yoiks!!
The reason? Persons unknown managed to infiltrate my site with several thousand fake posts – about casinos of all things!! None of these were visible at my level of entry to the inner workings, but when someone in the casino world complained about the content of some of them, the host promptly pulled my site! My website designer (Keren at Creative Infusion) diagnosed the problem as deep-seated but outside her remit; however, she was very willing to liaise between all parties as necessary, so a big shout out to her. I happen to have a wonderful computer-science-graduate grandson, Alexander, who does have the skill-set for this task, and he calmly and expertly searched for and found the offending files, removed them forthwith, and lo and behold, we’re back in business looking and sounding as before! Stars and medals all round, Alex!
I am in awe or anyone who has these impressive abilities and knowledge, and can’t thank them enough. Let’s respect and honour all who work away in the background, unseen, and too often unheralded, to keep our communication systems functioning apparently effortlessly. I salute you all!!
Changes and developments
Good news to report this week.
My latest novel, Saving Sebastian, is now available in Kindle form. Wahey! Within weeks of its publication in paperback form too, and entirely down to my publisher, no effort on my part. Way to go!
And my new improved website is now live, looking fresh and bright. The folk at Creative Infusion were busy transferring it as I tanked down to the Westcountry. I’m indebted to Keren and Tim for their work on this. And to Ben, my personal technical guru.
I hope you like the changes. Do have a wander through the pages and if you encounter any glitches, or have suggestions for improvements, let me know. It’s for you (at the moment I still know who I am and what I’m up to!), so I want it to meet your requirements.
Travelling at Easter time can be horrendous but we managed to avoid the worst mayhem on the M5 and to enjoy the fabulous scenery of the lesser roads and the gorgeous sunsets on our way.
As I’ve said before, writing often takes a back seat when I’m away, but this weekend I actually managed to use travelling time effectively to develop that additional elusive story line for the current novel – I’ve been furiously scribbling in notebooks to capture the thoughts before they are lost forever.
Oh, and I managed to slot in reading two more novellas about organ transplantation. Odd how many short stories I’ve found on this subject (most I have to admit, not well written). Is it a feature of the subject appealing to writers, or the ease of downloading electronic books, I wonder?
Waiting for me on my return was a comment from a lady who’d just read three of my novels, saying that the ending of Double Trouble was just too heartbreaking. It is too. I’ve wept over it many times myself – and I know what happens! I tried my best to change it but the characters just wouldn’t let me. I saw the tragedy happen; I had to record it faithfully. At the time when I sent it out to a raft of critics for comment before submitting it to the publisher, one of them (a professor of medical ethics) said it took him a week to recover enough to talk to me about it. But what these reactions tell me is that these readers really cared about the characters – enough to be upset; and I like to think that means I’m doing that part of my job effectively at least. Feel free to disabuse me of this notion if you consider I’m deluding myself.