MY BLOG WAS HACKED BY MARTIANS: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

This blog is delivered to me by e-mail. It's another way of backing up data. Blogger is a Google service. I send a copy of the blog to a non-Google e-mail provider, in case (gasp) Google dies or goes bust.
   Yeah. A meteor powerful enough to wipe out Google is probably strong enough to do more than just blister the paint on my fence.
   And if Google goes bust, Google deserves to. That's what comes of pinning a huge chunk of the economy on the secret artificial intelligence project Google regularly Tweets about.
   They'll never get that to work with cheese for circuits. Just sayin'.

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Imagine my surprise when a giant meteor hit Google's cheese factory head-on.

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No. Imagine my surprise when I checked my e-mail and saw a message from my blog. What?
   For reasons of the plot, I receive e-mail notifications when the blog takes comments - but that type of warning goes to another e-mail address.
   I post blogs right in front of me if I have the need to deal with some spontaneous matter of great import. Generally I schedule the blog posts to go out over the weekend, Saturday night into Sunday morning.
   What's this? An e-mail from my blog? Not a blog comment. The last one to come in was the recent one by E.B. Black, and that news arrived through the other channel.
   So this e-mail is from my blog, telling me my blog automatically published. Except. I don't publish on a Wednesday night. And I don't receive e-mail on Thursday morning saying this has happened.
   Therefore? My blog was hacked by Martians.

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I didn't open the e-mail, of course. The message was suspect. I hovered over the message to pick up the data that said this came from a noreply service.
   Was that normal? From blogs sent via e-mail, yes.

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What to do? Open the e-mail?
   Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
   Alternative? Check my blog. Maybe I'd accidentally blogged something and not realised. I had rooted around in the blog last night, tidying things and updating entries.
   But an updated entry isn't republished outright.
   There are ways to work on the blog that allow you to exit to the blog itself, and there are ways to leave that work without finding yourself staring at the blog after.
   I'd rummaged around in the blog and left without looking at the front page. There is no back page.
   Well, I checked the blog. Damn. Yes. I had somehow published an old post outright, instead of updating it. I sat staring at a wanted poster from the READ TUESDAY stuff I'd done last year.

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READ TUESDAY is a book sale event. Imagine the seething rush of sales in December. HERE'S A BLOG POST ABOUT THAT.

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I must have hit the wrong button last night, after checking half a dozen blog posts. Well, I returned to my e-mail and opened it. Oh, I've blogged. What a surprise.

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And now I've blogged again. At least this time I suspect I think I guess I imagine I suppose I know what I am doing. Now to await the e-mail, telling me so.

EMERGENCY BLOG POST NUMBER THREE. DIVE, DIVE, DIVE! TORPEDOED BY KACEY VANDERKARR: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

I just discovered that I've been booted out of an aeroplane into clear blue sky. The rest of this blog post will be spent checking for a parachute.
   Who did this to me? Kacey (insert expletives here) Vanderkarr. She just blogged about me, and left me flapping in the breeze. I'll do something a bit different...
   Yes. I'll publish this post now, and continue writing. Kacey is part of some cult called a blog hop. At the last second, she ambushed me with kindness and praise and all that evil stuff.
   Readers of her blog have been steered to my café, in anticipation of GOOD EATS. (See any Harold Lloyd film for details.) I must now frantically scramble literary eggs.
   Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. Abnormal service will be resumed shortly.

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Well, this is a first. Publishing the blog - going live - and then publishing more of the blog post as the world turned. Readers who came late to the show, you'll just have to take my word for it. That asterisk was your signpost of events in the dim and distant.
   Onward.
   Must be a change in the weather. I’ve been bombarded from all sides by people telling me how nice I am. Maybe someone will come along and accuse me of being a grumpy bastard.
   Take Kacey Vanderkarr, for example. If you were steered here from her blog, you'll know that I am Scottish. How Scottish? Really grumpily Scottish.
   It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine.
   P.G. Wodehouse was not wrong.
   I am grumpy. A professional curmudgeon. Kacey Vanderkarr would have you believe otherwise. (Insert expletives here.) Apparently, I drive her crazy with this whole writing nonsense nonsense.
   Why? How? Oh, I do outrageous things.
   For example. I tell her she can write, and that she has to publish her work - just in case she's swept up in a Zombie Apocalypse. That drives her crazy. How crazy?
   Crazy enough to publish. Here's a link.
   KACEY'S FIRST BOOK.
   Is that crazy enough? No. She likes to embarrass me, she says. How? Oh, by throwing a dedication my way. Here's a link.
   KACEY'S SECOND BOOK.
   On her blog, Kacey says I teach her things about writing. As authors, we are in this business to learn stuff. We'll learn by looking out the window, or staring inward to the heart of darkness.
   And we'll learn stuff by researching. Reading books. Trawling websites. Talking to other authors. I learn from Kacey, from Missy, and other writer contacts too numerous to bribe.
   Writers are not rivals.

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Ow.
   I've been sapped over the head and dumped into this blog hop. Which means answering four questions. Is there no end to the torture?

1. What am I working on?

More than one book at once, as usual. I'm dividing my time between JAPANESE MONSTERS and many other things.
   JAPANESE MONSTERS is a tale of demonic possession, betrayal, and supernatural spookiness in Old Japan. Expect a dash of Lafcadio Hearn, a hint of Akutagawa, and a hefty dose of Kurosawa. What's not to love?

2. How does my work differ from others of its genre?

I don't know, for a rather obvious reason. To write in a genre, read outside the genre. (This is what Kacey means when she says that I drive her crazy with writing help.)
   If you've never had this advice handed to you before, here it is. On a plate. With yummy sprinkles. Get stuck in. Read outside your chosen area.

3. Why do I write what I write?

I must write. Writing is breathing for scribblers.

4. How does my writing process work?

I could stop to analyse that. Hmm. I'm sure the process would fall apart if I tried to dissect it. However, as you are here looking for substance...
   Come up with an idea. Write it down. Worry about fixing things later. Right now, let the words flow like molten lava. There's a time for editing. A special time. Called LATER. That's a technical term. Remember it.
   Editing? Look for typos, formatting glitches, gremlins, continuity errors, and holes in the plot. Fix all that stuff. Don't rewrite your story. Trust to your gut. Stick with that instinct.
   Endless rewriting leads to endless rewriting. Skip that madness. Develop the ability to cut loose of your story. Wave it goodbye. Treat it like a cake in the oven. Cook it. Remove it from the oven. Slice and serve. Write another tale.

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At this point, I'm supposed to hand the hopping blog over to some people. They were too busy to participate. But you can still visit places on the internet.
   Try here. E.B. Black. She just moved house, and is about to get married. Which is why she won't be answering the four questions above. E.B. BLACK.
   Or here. Chris McMullen. He's teaching physics as I speak. The founder of READ TUESDAY has been putting out valuable blogs on the writing game. CHRIS MCMULLEN.
   No blog for this next one. Instead, there's a video station, broadcasting to the world. Melissa C. Water is a mental health activist on YouTube. MELISSA C. WATER.

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It remains only to invite writers reading this to mention Kacey Vanderkarr and drop links back the way, if you feel like answering those four questions. Here they are again, for ease of copying and pasting...

1. What am I working on?

2. How does my work differ from others of its genre?

3. Why do I write what I write?

4. How does my writing process work?

WANTED FOR QUESTIONING. SECOND SIGHTING. E.B. BLACK.

WANTED FOR QUESTIONING. E.B. BLACK.

READ TUESDAY. TWENTY QUESTIONS WITH...E.B. BLACK.

Writers chatting to each other on writing. Tedious or devious? Let’s have twenty questions, and find out. In this guest-spot, Death Author E.B. Black delivers the answers...



1. Fire rages in your house. Everyone is safe, but you. You decide to smash through the window, shielding your face with a book. What is the book?

If I'm trying to save the book, then my kindle, because it has all my books on it. If I'm expecting the book to get burnt and damaged as I shield my face, then maybe a giant dictionary because it's a huge shield and I use the internet to look up words anyway.

2. Asleep in your rebuilt house, you dream of meeting a dead author. But not in a creepy stalkerish way, so you shoo Mr Poe out of the kitchen. Instead, you sit down and have cake with which dead author?

Probably Shakespeare. I think he'd be a very interesting person. I want to know what inspired him and if he wrote all his plays or if someone else wrote some of them like rumors say.

3. Would you name six essential items for writers? If, you know, cornered and threatened with torture.

A laptop, the internet (for dictionaries and distractions), chocolate, pets to cuddle with, a quiet place to sit, and some way to reward yourself when you meet your goals.

4. Who’d win in a fight between Count Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster? If, you know, you were writing that scene.

Probably Count Dracula. I want to say Frankenstein's monster because Frankenstein is one of my favorite books of all time, but he actually seemed pretty kind and gentle in the book. He only lashed out when he felt hurt because no one loved him.

5. It’s the end of a long and tiring day. You are still writing a scene. Do you see it through to the end, even though matchsticks prop your eyelids open, or do you sleep on it and return, refreshed, to slay that literary dragon another day?

I stay up as long as I can stand, but sometimes it's still not long enough.

6. You must introduce a plot-twist. Evil twin or luggage mix-up?

How about dramatic confession instead?

7. Let’s say you write a bunch of books featuring an amazing recurring villain. At the end of your latest story you have definitely absitively posolutely killed off the villain for all time and then some. Did you pepper your narrative with clues hinting at the chance of a villainous return in the next book?

It depends on how amazing this villain is, but probably I don't leave clues or a chance of the villain returning. I'm a huge fan of tying up all the ends of my stories, so I like concluding things. Sometimes I conclude them too quickly.

8. You are at sea in a lifeboat, with the barest chance of surviving the raging storm. There’s one opportunity to save a character, drifting by this scene. Do you save the idealistic hero or the tragic villain?

Probably the hero to make the audience happy, but an evil part of me wants to save the villain because it sounds interesting.

9. It’s time to kill a much-loved character – that pesky plot intrudes. Do you just type it up, heartlessly, or are there any strange rituals to be performed before the deed is done?

The more dramatic a scene is, usually the easier it is to type for me. I'd effortlessly be able to write about a much-loved character dying, but struggle when writing about mundane things like describing scenery.

10. Embarrassing typo time. I’m always typing thongs instead of things. One day, that’ll land me in trouble. Care to share any wildly embarrassing typing anecdotes? If, you know, the wrong word suddenly made something so much funnier. (My last crime against typing lay in omitting the u from Superman.)

The most embarrassing typo I've ever had is one time I wrote "he broke her clitoris" instead of "he broke her hymen." Someone read it and mocked me for several hours afterwards.
   (E.B. Black wins the prize for this one, though it's not a competition and I'm struggling to think what the prize would be - Eclectic Ed.)

11. I’ve fallen out of my chair laughing at all sorts of thongs I’ve typed. Have you?

I've fallen out of my chair laughing at all sorts of "thongs" that I've mispronounced out loud.

12. You take a classic literary work and update it by throwing in rocket ships. Dare you name that story? Pride and Prejudice on Mars. That kind of thing.

Pride and Power Thrusts.
   The Old Man and the Galaxy.
   The Lion, The Witch, and Pluto.

13. Seen the movie. Read the book. And your preference was for

Usually the book.

14. Occupational hazard of being a writer. Has a book ever fallen on your head? This may occasionally happen to non-writers, it must be said.

No, but I have dropped my laptop on my toes a bunch of times.

15. Did you ever read a series of books out of sequence?

Yes, The Chronicles of Narnia. It's actually really confusing trying to read those books because different editions have the books in different orders. Like, some in chronological order and some in the order he wrote them in.
   I borrowed them from the library when I read them and they had three different editions of the books and all of them were in a different order, so I said, "I will read these in whatever order I feel like!" And I did.
   (Many of us reached Narnia through different starting volumes - Eclectic Ed.)

16. You encounter a story just as you are writing the same type of tale. Do you abandon your work, or keep going with the other one to ensure there won’t be endless similarities?

This has happened to me before. While some books appear similar on the outside, when you actually compare them in detail, they are usually not at all the same.
   So I completed my book, then later read theirs, and saw a million differences between our novels.

17. Have you ever stumbled across a Much-Loved Children’s Classic™ that you’ve never heard of?

Not yet. My Mom read to me a lot as a child.

18. You build a secret passage into your story. Where?

If my story has a castle, then definitely somewhere in the castle. And I'd make it lead to every room, so I could spy on my characters as the story was unfolding.

19. Facing the prospect of writing erotica, you decide on a racy pen-name. And that would be…

Shh! I actually have already done this and my pen name is boring compared to others.

20. On a train a fan praises your work, mistaking you for another author. What happens next?

I might blog about it the next day.

 














Click on the links to check out those books.

PANDORA'S LINK - less dangerous than her box.
MEDUSA'S LINK - less dangerous than her gaze.

Find E.B. Black here...

Website: http://www.ebblack.com/
Blog: http://deathauthor.blogspot.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/writerblack
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ebblackauthor

I answer my own questions on E.B. Black's blog HERE.

SNOW ON THE BLOG, HTML-PERMITTING.

Mortality.
   I was advertised over at GREEN EMBERS. Cool? Well, it was snowing over there. So I searched the internet for some HTML code that actually worked.
   By chance, the piece of code that did the trick was the same one used by Bradley Corbett - host of that blog. Now it's snowing on my blog.
   If you want to use the same thing, here's the code.

<script src="http://yourjavascript.com/25223141921/snowstorm-min.js"></script><a href="http://www.globeinourhands.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">SNS Blog Snow Effect</a>

   In Blogger, you add a gadget. Then you choose the option to add HTML. Paste that code into the location and you should have snow. Mouse movement alters snow direction and speed.

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Bradley Corbett was one of those bloggers who popped up all over the place before my eventual collision with his READ TUESDAY plans.
   Another blogger operating in that vein was E.B. Black. It seemed likely that she'd end up visiting this blog, as, for a time, she accidentally owned the internet.
   She bought it from Jack in exchange for those pesky beans she tried to ditch. Hey, the guy walked away with a beanstalk. Don't knock that deal. You'll be reading about E.B. Black on this blog very shortly.

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Mortality?
   Since you asked...
   So there's this snow effect on my blog. For how long? December. January. Maybe into February. Will I run a rain effect after that? I don't know.
   This much I do know. If I die while the snow falls on my blog, that snow will fall eternally.
   Or until Blogger disappears up its own digital backside.
   Yes, that afterthought wasn't quite as poetic. I should add that eternal snow might be the result of a glitch in not being able to remove the effect. Doesn't mean I'm gone. Just lost in the snow.

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Update. At the distance of a year, snow went back on the blog and I decided to make it a permanent feature.

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In an update to the update, there was a blogquake. After changing basic formatting, I found my blog lost the ability to snow. Nice, while it lasted.